Aaargh! I hate

squirrly · August 2010

the cable company. Back in Louisville we had a mid-sized cable/internet provider at home, and their service wasn't great, but it was good. And, OMG, fast. Here, we have Comcast, and it has fits and spurts where it drops the signal for just long enough to screw things up, or it's slow. And the installation was a nightmare when we first got here. So far, I'm not impressed.

Prior to Louisville I had mostly small, regional cable/internet service providers, and I've gotta say - I think smaller is better. Anybody else have small companies & good luck?

wadingmoose · August 2010

I'm not even sure small companies exist up here in Canada. I use Shaw cable and surprisingly have no problems. I've heard horror stories though and one of our WoW guildies in the city gets DC'd about once a day.

baystateapple · August 2010

Comcast is crap. That's what FI and I have, and we're constantly having troubles with the customer service. It's also what we have here at work, and it took us a YEAR to get them to update our customer accounts after our boss was transferred and we got a new one. Awesome.

danieliza1127 · August 2010

I didn't even know there were small companies! I've always had big ones, like right now we have AT&T. In Florida, I can't remember, I think it was Brighthouse. I've never really had any problems though. My parents have Comcast and it seems like it goes out a lot.

squirrly · August 2010

Yeah, Moose, I've thought about reinstating my WoW account (this winter, probably, when I'm in snow up to my eyeballs). I'm kinda afraid of how that's going to go on this connection. My little home grown place in college that I used probably has the best connection ever. Tiny, tiny town.

[Deleted User] · August 2010

Cablevision has fits too. I can't tell you how often I am without phone service.

georgia_bride09 · August 2010

Not surprisingly, we have a small company, and at first when I had to switch to them from Cox Communications, which I'd say is probably mid-sized, I was worried (mostly about channels and service). But we haven't had any problems with them in the year we've been with them. They just got online billing, so now I don't have to call them every motnh to pay my bill, which is convenient since we're in 2010.

I don't know anyone who doesn't hate Comcast.

squirrly · August 2010

Rural electric companies scare me. I spent half my childhood winter storms without power because our RECC was so crappy. But internet? That seems to be a breeze to keep functioning. I don't get it.

angie74 · August 2010

miami beach has this one place, Atlantic Broadband, that has a monopoly on the island. sucks butt. It's usually pretty good, but it's a little pricey and tends to be spotty from time to time. I wish we actually had choices

mica178 · August 2010

Comcast is horrible. But they're Goliath and have little reason to improve themselves.

KentuckyKate · August 2010

I can't imagine anything being worse than our cable in Louisville. I have so many problems with Insight, and my bill keeps going up every month. Sorry it sucks there, too!

squirrly · August 2010

Kate, I never had issues like that, there. I had a couple of occasions in 4 years where it would go out, and it was usually because of some incident - new construction cut the line when digging, whatever. But they always fixed it in a hurry. Do you have the phone service? I've heard awful stories about that.

It all makes me miss Murray.

laurenclaire1386 · August 2010

We have Cox, and I'm pretty sure that's all that's available in our city. Right now, our cable is screwed up. Every time we switch the station, it goes to the new station and says "This channel is temporarily off air." So we turn the cable box off, then back on, and it's fine. But turning the cable box off every time we switch the station is getting old quick. That's the first problem we've had with Cox though. Our internet never drops and usually runs really fast, unless FI is seeding a large amount of stuff, which happens occasionally, but that's our fault, not theirs.

mocha beans · August 2010

I've heard almost nothing good about Comcast. We had them at our apartment, and it sucked, slowed way way down in the evenings, of course right when you want to get online. We're with Qwest now, and it's not too bad, we haven't had many issues, knock on wood.

louisvillebride21 · August 2010

I actually hate Insight. Dude that did our instillation had no idea what he was doing, didn't speak much English, so I couldn't get my questions answered and it randomly goes out. Really sucks when you're in the middle of something on Netflix and it just decides to cut out, sign you off and you have to start over.

maratea · August 2010

We used to have Verizon Fios, but when they were bought by Frontier, our service went to crap. The customer service was terrible and our internet was spotty. I'm not paying almost $80 for internet that doesn't work. I switched to Comcast Xfinity internet, it has actually been amazing. The guy who installed it was late by about 20 minutes and when I got our first bill, there was a $20 discount since he was late.

mandysmear · August 2010

we have two choices. and i chose the one that is still family owned, don't make you sign contracts, etc. named shaw - but it's not a small company by any means. i haven't had problems ever. and they do phone, cable and internet bundles so that's a bonus. however we got rid of our house phone a few months ago.

squirrly · August 2010

I don't think I've heard of Cox before. Anybody have Charter?

missy68 · August 2010

Comcast is the suck.
I had Time Warner in NC, had all the movie stations plus Road Runner internet, and paid a lot less than J did for basic cable (no movies - well, one step up from basic) and internet.

We switched to Qwest (and get DirecTV through them), and pay about the same, but get a ton more channels and an HD box with DVR, 2 regular boxes, plus the ONLY time we lose a signal is if a bad storm is right on top of us (the HD channels are a little more sensitive - we do lose those as the storm's coming in, but only if its coming from the south).

We'll never go back.

mkrupar · August 2010

Yeah, Comcast is terrible. Dad and the guys switched to sattelite it was so bad. I don't know what they use for internet though. We have Cox, and I think that might be the only choice here. Don't typically have problems, so we'll stick with them. I remember years ago when I was a kid having Cox in OH, but I don't think they're everywhere.

JanoBean75 · August 2010

We have Comcast and our biggest complaint is the pixelation that happens occasionally with the HD channels. And often, during DVR playback, the sound goes out for a second and usually when someone says something funny or important. We've gone through three boxes to fix this, but apparently it's a signal thing because every box does it.

But because FI is very convincing, we have free Showtime, free HBO and we have a year-long dropped price on DVR and the HD upgrade. A few months ago, he got one bill completely knocked off because our service was pretty shoddy that whole month.

Our other choice is Verizon, but pretty much everyone in our neighborhood that has it goes back to Comcast after a couple months.

MattsPenguin · August 2010

The Comcast guy showed up yesterday to install a CABLECARD in our Tivo. While he was very nice and pet my dog (who was jumping all over him), he also smelled horribly of cigarettes. When he came in the house, he was carrying a can of Rock Star (or some energy drink), then he set it down on my coffee table while he ran out to his truck. I found that to be rather rude!

And now a few HD channels aren't working, that I feel we should have. But I hate calling them. I get the run around and feel like they are trying to sell me something.

squirrly · August 2010

How hard is it to install a cablecard? Did they have to send a guy for that? They can't just ship you the card to slip in there?

aMrsin09 · August 2010

HA to all of you. The internet company in OZ is the suck. I would cut off BOTH arms to have Comcast back again. We pay 2x the price for a 1/4 of the channels (and it's satellite only, so when it rains, we're screwed) and H still won't tell me what we pay for 25 Gs of internet a month because he knows I'm used to unlimited internet for $60 in the states and 50 euros in France.

JessAndTrav · August 2010

When I was in college we had a company called Suddenlink, and our internet would run slow, and our "On Demand" feature NEVER worked.

We have Comcast now, and I actually don't have any complaints. Every now and then the shows will have a brief interruption, but when it happens to me, it's almost ALWAYS something that'll rerun later or that can be found OnDemand/online, but that's also because I don't watch sports or the news, really. Whoops.

KentuckyKate · August 2010

Squirrly and LVB- We have Insight for cable, phone, and internet. Lately, it will all go out almost daily for an hour or more. They've sent someone out here twice already, and it hasn't been fixed. It's been almost two weeks now.

squirrly · August 2010

Oh, crap, Kate. That sucks.

Birdie1483 · August 2010

We're on about our 5th Insight box I think and it's still crappy - we've just given up. It's constantly freezing and then skipping to the very end or very beginning when we try to forward or reverse the DVR. Sometimes the guide will completely freeze and will take awhile to unfreeze itself. Sometimes it completely forgets we have "favorites" and just randomly decides to delete them. We use them for cable and internet, no phone for us. We've thought about switching to a dish, but I've heard bad things about them too.

Birdie1483 · August 2010

OH and when we moved in the cable connection in the master bedroom was really crappy. We called them out a few times and they tried to say it was our tv. The tv was only 2 years old, so we're pretty sure it's the crappy cables they've installed back there and just don't want to fix. It's been two years now of really staticy tv in the bedroom. Some channels we can't see at all.

MattsPenguin · August 2010

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_etiquette_aaargh-hate?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding BoardsForum:9Discussion:c37c0302-e289-4dd4-abae-202f84f12729Post:7e9d11cd-db99-4753-9a7d-82fec50e5992">Re: Aaargh! I hate</a>:
[QUOTE]How hard is it to install a cablecard? Did they have to send a guy for that? They can't just ship you the card to slip in there?
Posted by squirrly[/QUOTE]

you would think.

[Deleted User] · August 2010

We have Comcast, I'm not even sure we have other options here. They are terrible Half the time our bedroom TV doesn't work, or the channels cut out on basic cable. Now they're making us change all our old cable boxes to these new digital boxes. it's free, but you only get 2 and then they charge from there, regardless of how many boxes you have throughout the house. And if you don't upgrade then your TV only gets like 6 channels.

Aaargh! I hate

Re: Aaargh! I hate

Choose Another Board

Search Boards