Comcast Wants to Kill Me

/ momshieb

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I am not a young woman.  I can only take so much pressure before I blow.

I have high blood pressure, for God’s sake.  You just can’t mess with me like this, or heads are gonna explode.  OK, only one head and its mine, but still!

Damn you, Comcast!  You are definitely trying to kill me.

I know that Comcast complaints are not new, but you really have to hear this.

It all started innocently enough.  Paul and I are looking to cut some expenses, now that I am retired. As we looked over our monthly finances, we noticed that our XFinity is costing us a boatload.  Well over 140 a month!   Yikes!

So, we decided that we’d get ourselves a Chromecast device and give up Cable. All we need to do is contact Comcast and tell them we want to switch from the whole XFinity thing to just plain WiFi.

So I go to Comcast.com.   I try to log in to my account.  But I have forgotten my password, oh dearie me.  Easy, right? I click on “forgot my password”.  I get a box that says,” If you want your new password, enter your PIN”.  My PIN?  My PIN!

I get up and start digging through files (these are the moments when it is good to be married to a packrat with OCD…he keeps all this stuff!)  At last, I find a document that includes my PIN.  Right.  The one that Comcast had to send me through the mail, because they couldn’t email it to me. The one I had to wait a week for the LAST time I tried to get customer service from Comcast!

So, I enter my PIN.

And……I get a message that says that they will now CALL ME on my Comcast landline.

Which would be fine, except that we don’t have a phone anymore.  I mean, not a landline phone. Nothing that I can plug into a jack to ANSWER the STUPID phone call to tell me my password!

So.  Thwarted.

OK.

Deep breath.  Sip of coffee. Pat the dog for a minute.  Blood pressure goes down, I can feel it going down because my pulse isn’t beating in my temples anymore.

I decide to call the Customer Service line. Ya know, just to see if they can help me.

I pick up my CELL PHONE and dial the 800 number.   I get this recorded message: “I’m sorry. This service is not available at the moment.  Please hang up and try again later.”

Temples begin to throb. Another sip of coffee. Pat the dog.  He gets off the couch, throwing me a dirty look over his shoulder. “Sorry”, I mumble as I realize that I was patting him into a concussion.

Deeeeeeeep breath.   Yoga breath. Contemplate adding some Kahlua to the coffee.

I decide that I can “try again later” and I turn on TV, just to relax. I want to watch CNN. You know, just so I can check to see if anything is blowing up, or if anyone is shooting up a school.

But CNN won’t load.  I wait about a minute, then suddenly the screen fills with Sesame Street.  I try CNN again.  Sesame Street again.

Does Comcast read minds? Do they KNOW I’m trying to ditch them?

I try MSNBC.  I am NOT making this up: It sends me to FOX News.

I click off the TV.  Temples pounding, eyeballs pounding.  I wash down a Tylenol with my coffee.  Really, really, really deep breaths.   Now I’m dizzy on top of enraged.  I take out the Kahlua, just in case.

OK.   Recap.  I can’t log on to my account because I forget my password.  They can’t give me a new password because they refuse to call the phone I use; they insist that they have to call me on the phone I don’t have.

The 800 number is “not available at this time.”

Wait!!!! I bet there is an online chat service!!!!  Back to the website.  YES!!!! “Chat with one of our Customer Service Experts”.   I click.

I get sent to a blank page showing only the words: “This services is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

There is a sudden loud high pitched keening sound filling the room.

I realize that its coming from me.  I rush to the kitchen, dump out the coffee and fill my mug with Kahlua.

Sobbing just a little, I open up my banking site.  I remove Comcast from my payee list.

I gotta believe that when we stop paying them, they’ll find a way to get in touch.

I settle back on the couch to watch Sesame Street.

 

18 thoughts on “Comcast Wants to Kill Me”

  1. Does anyone wonder why we used to enforce laws against monopolies? Now that they have driven most of their competition out of business, they no longer have to “serve” their customers. H-m-m-m and we have large charter chains beginning to drive mom and pop operations out of business while they slowly suck up funding for democratically run public schools. I wonder how that will end?

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  5. I belong to a Malden group and there are emails from most towns from that área to southern NH…tons of issues…
    not surprised . Comcast is evil…

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  7. Just went through this exact same maze of burning hell with Sirius Satellite radio. I’ll spare you the details, and I’m not proud to admit it, but I turned into the devil myself eventually starting every phone conversation with a snarky…”what country are you in right now?” The magic “get off death Island pass” came in the form of an online complaint I lodged with the Florida Attorney General which finally resulted in Sirius unlocking their handcuffs on me… and I swam away…fast!!!… never looking back at the super low rate bait they cast out in my wake..attached no doubt to another sharp hook that would take me years to wrangle out of. I now listen to books on tape when I drive back and forth between Charlotte and Fla. “All the light we cannot see” was EXCELLENT and good for about 16 (?) hours of travel..with a few hours of trim-painting mixed in there.

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      • Well just be careful..I thought I could just allow our subscriptions to expire (we had cancelled our card on file months earlier)..and they suddenly sent me bills for the months they went past my drop date, then blamed me for not officially contacting them to cancel during the “cancellation window.” BIG MESS. I was getting a bill every three to four days and they were adding charges for sending the me the bills in the mail! They even continued to charge me for the months after they disconnected our service. I’m telling you it was like dealing with the mafia…not that I have personal experience with mobsters.. but I did see the Godfather.

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  8. All these companies are evil and make it all but impossible to leave unless you die (which they seem to encourage by driving you to suicide). But now you’ve opened yourself up to LATE FEES, and they will try to ruin your credit.
    I’m sure you will win in the end because you are smart and tenacious. When you do, make sure to share.

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    • Aw, you’re a good pal! Truth to tell, we got ourselves a Chromecast device, and paid our Comcast bill for one more month just until we can check out what we really want to watch! If we can stream baseball…..then Comcast is done for!

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  9. Oh my goodness, Karen! You captured my day exactly when Comcast went down! The sad part was my 9 year old lap top did not recover from the sudden shutdown…. I mutttered my way around here. When TV service came back and the compter still did not, I made multiple trips to the basement to reset the router. Finally, I took it to a computer shop for diagnosis – terminal. Deep breaths did not help, but a glass of wine sure did!

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