Credit received from Comcast

June 16, 2008

Well, I haven’t actually received another paper bill yet to have it confirmed, but I spoke with the supervisor at Comcast again and she said it had been applied to my account.  So, that’s good to hear, and I’m pretty sure I can trust that it’s been applied based on our conversation.  I feel sort of bad because she has been working hard to resolve my complaints and following up on my credit on her own.  If only all of their customer service rep’s could care as much as she does, I might not have canceled my cable modem and phone service with them.  Anyhow, I figured fair is fair, and that I should make it known that things appear to have been resolved at this point.

[see here for previous chain of posts for what this is about]

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Apparently it was too late …

June 12, 2008

As you may have seen … I’ve been in an ongoing battle of sorts with Comcast lately.  Today I received a bill in the mail for ~$460.  I called to ask a question about my bill and navigated through the automated system, choosing options to get to billing.  I got someone on the phone and stated simply, “I would like to ask some questions regarding my most recent bill.”  He got my phone number and then said he’d have to transfer me to someone that could help me with that.  Then a lady answered the phone, I again stated that I had a question regarding my bill.  She said she would have to transfer me to someone that could help me with that after getting my phone number and confirming my identity.  I asked her what department was she with because I’d already been transferred.  She said something like she’s just first tier support or something like that, I had to ask her to speak up previously and she barely started speaking more loudly, so I was having trouble hearing her.  She then placed me on hold and transferred me … to an automated system asking me to put in my phone number.  So I hung up and dialed the number of the supervisor I had from earlier.  I got her voicemail and left a message asking her to call me back.  Then I called back in to 1-800-COMCAST.  I again navigated the automated system, choosing the options for billing, etc.  Another woman answered the phone and confirmed my identity, then said she’d have to transfer me to someone that could help me with that.  I told her that I needed to be transferred to an actual person and that I kept getting transferred.  I finally gave up on having faith in the ability to transfer me successfully and asked for her supervisor.  She said she would transfer me to a supervisor in billing.  I told her that wouldn’t work and I needed to speak with her supervisor.  He got on the phone and finally got me someone that could speak with me about my bill.

It turns out my account has not been credited as I had been promised nearly a week ago.  She was able to tell me that there were notes on my account from the supervisor that had called me back on Tuesday and left me her desk number.  The note said she hadn’t noticed the credit I told her I was supposed to be receiving and that she was investigating it further and planned to call me regarding it.  So I’m left waiting for her to call me back.  It is good that she’s attempting to be proactive about it, but it’s too little too late I’m afraid.  I told the person I was speaking with that I wanted to go ahead and cancel my phone and cable internet service.  You’ll never guess what she said … that’s right, I had to be transferred to someone that could help me with that.  Heh, I should have known that one was coming.

Anyhow, I got the two services cancelled, and I’m considering canceling the entire account.  I can use my AppleTV to get HD movies, and I can use Netflix/iTunes to get TV series when they hit DVD.  It’s beyond poor customer service now, and is well in the land of absurd.

Comcast … /sigh

On the upside, DSL has been installed.  Amazingly it has, so far at least, been nothing but a pleasant experience.  I called in to order it, no problems there (although that’s nothing special, they’re always GREAT at customer service when trying to sell you something).  The guy came out to install it in my house.  He was pleasant, and actually fun to talk to.  We had minor difficulties getting the activation program to run on my MacBook, but then we ran it on my PC and things went through quickly.  My router was acting up, likely because we’d been flipping it between computers and shutting it on and off so much, so I let him go before I had it working with my router.  Shortly after he left I got the router working and called into technical support to get some help with making it work with my DSL modem.  They had no problem with the fact I wanted to get it working with a router.  The phone support simply asked me for the model on my cable modem and the model on my router, and quickly guided me through the steps on both devices (yeah, he even knew every place I needed to click in my routers config) and things were working great.  I get the full bandwidth on it (luckily I’m near a central office apparently, which I didn’t know until the installation guy told me) and things have been smooth so far.

So, I’d have to say, two thumbs up for Verizon and their DSL service.  I’m even considering getting phone service from them now.  However, two thumbs down on Comcast.  They’re having trouble even keeping my cable TV account at the moment.

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Too late or still in time …

June 10, 2008

So, you may remember my comments regarding Comcast, and my … dis-taste for their customer service.  A day or so ago, I received this comment from a representative of Comcast.  I was fairly impressed that my little blog drew their attention.

I decided to go ahead and respond to the email address that was provided in that comment, and within 15 minutes or so I had received a reply asking for more information about what could keep me as a customer.  I replied back, sharing my stories of things gone wrong throughout the life of my account with them.  That was yesterday.  Last night when I got home, I realized I had some voicemails on my home phone but didn’t get to check them.  Today, I received a phone call from a customer service supervisor with Comcast.  She said that she was contacting me regarding my corporate complaint and wanted to see if I had received her voicemails from the previous day, along with asking whether there was anything further she could do to resolve the issue.  It turns out the voicemails from the previous night were hers.  She had left me her office number, along with the office and cell phone number of a Network Engineer supervisor with Comcast.  She apologized for the experiences I’d had, and asked if there was anything further she could do in terms of help or compensation.  I told her I’d been told I would be receiving a one month credit to my service, so I was content in that regard.  Despite my distaste with the company, I’m not trying to “pull one over” on anyone.  I believe in being honest in regards to these things, so to me that means in terms of further compensation, it would be unfair.  Maybe I’m too nice, but I need to stick to my ideals.

It was definitely interesting.  On one side, it’s great that I somehow got the attention of such high level support (although I haven’t used it, but based on their eagerness to get the information to me, I’d say it’s likely not a joke).  On the other side, it’s too bad that a residential user of their service had to be bumped up to what seems to be a corporate/executive level of support.

So as the title states, I’m left wondering, is this too late, or have they changed my mind…

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DSL Installation scheduled

June 2, 2008

And I’m looking into Direct TV / Dish Network.  Good-bye Comcast.  I can hardly wait.  At this point I don’t even care if it’s not a cost savings.  As long as it’s comparable, then any of my money that does not go to Comcast is a good thing.

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I'm done with this moving thing …

June 1, 2008

Well, I’m done moving now pretty much. I still need to unpack some things, but I’m totally out of the old place and have turned in the keys for it, etc. It’s been both a good and a bad experience.

I had originally hired Starving Students to do the move for me. I had scheduled the move with them in March. The local office was supposed to call me about two weeks before the move in order to get the specifics, confirm the date & time, etc. Well, about 1 week before the move, I still hadn’t heard from them so I called the local office. They said I was in the system but had been canceled for some reason. “Luckily” they still had room for me on the day I had planned to move, so he went ahead and uncanceled me and proceeded to go over the pricing. Most of it was what I’d already been told. It would have a 2 hour minimum, 1 hour on top of that, $75/hr, and then he told me there’d also be a 9.5% charge on top of the total cost for fuel. The fuel charge really didn’t make sense to me. I just don’t understand why a percentage on the total move would be added for fuel. Makes no sense in my opinion.

Luckily, I had talked to a neighbor a night or so before and he told me about a company he was using, Kid Gloves Moving & Storage. He said they’d treated him well and worked really fast. I called them and scheduled my move. That was one, of few good decisions I made through-out the process I later learned. They were great. They had told me to be ready to let them start moving me by 8am. They arrived at 7:50am, took a quick look around the apartment and started taking action. It was 3 guys, and none of them stopped moving until everything was packed. They followed me over to the new place, took a quick look at the inside, and then they started moving me in. They were finished moving me by 9:45am. That’s just shy of 2 hours for a cross-town move. No walls were touched, no items were broken, they were extremely professional.

The only hitch in the actual move itself was that the box spring for my bed couldn’t fit upstairs. So for the past week I’ve been trying different remedies. For the first couple of nights I just put the mattress on the floor. Then I had some slats cut for the bed, but they were constantly falling out (which can be quite loud on a hardwood floor). Then finally I found a bed store close by that was able to sell me a split-queen box spring. So tonight, basically a week after moving, I will finally be sleeping in a real bed. I’m pretty excited about that.

Until Friday (2 days ago), I was unable to get WiFi up in my new home. I’ve determined that Comcast is perfect example of how evil corporations can become in this country. When the technician came out to my house to do the “install” he was rushing everything. He also had obviously not been told anything about why he was at my home. I had all of my equipment, it was just a transfer of service. I even had everything hooked up, all he should have really needed to do is “flip the switch” that gave my home service, and then verify that everything worked. Well, in his impatience, he decided to swap my cable modem, because the one I already had was taking too long to sync up (he gave it all of about 1 minute max). Well, he swapped it out, we finally got it to sync, and plugged it into my Macbook, and with a little playing around, it was able to surf the web. Shortly after he left. I figured it would be no problem to then get it working with my wireless router. After all, I’m a pretty resourceful guy when it comes to “computer stuff” and all that. Well, my router couldn’t pull an IP off the cable modem. So for the past week I have had to take my laptop over to my cable modem and plug it in directly whenever I wanted on the internet for something (pretty much all the time). I tried all sorts of things, powering everything down, bringing it up one device at a time, making sure things were powered off for the “10 count”, all the typical trouble shooting stuff including making sure my router was cloning my Macbook’s MAC address.

Well, Friday night, I’d had enough. Thursday before I went to bed I had unplugged and powered off every device. When I came home Friday, I slowly turned on each device, giving each device some time to “boot” before bringing the next item on. It still wouldn’t pull an IP. So I called customer service. Ugh, I’m still so flustered from the experience that I don’t think I can explain it all here. Basically, I ended up having to call in 6 times before I finally was able to talk to a supervisor. No one was able to help me. While on the phone all night with them, it magically started working somehow. I have no idea what finally allowed it to happen

Basically, I’ve asked them to credit my account for 1 months worth of service (roughly $200) and I intend to seek out services to replace all things I’m currently paying Comcast for. I’ve had nothing but poor experiences with them for the past year, and I pay them way too much money each month to put up with it. I imagine I’ll just be outright canceling my home phone service, and I’m going to see if I can get DSL to replace the cable modem. As for television, FiOS isn’t offered in my area yet, so I may try to check out some of the Dish Network-ish type providers and see if I can replace them there as well. I just see no need to be paying so much money per month for what can’t even be called sub-standard customer support. It disgusts me.

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More on Apple & the iPhone

July 7, 2007

Just wanted to comment on two blog posts/articles I just read. The first is from All Things Digital and can be found here. Basically the article is a somewhat condemning look at the iPhone. He comments a lot about traveling with the iPhone internationally and also about the keyboard, etc. Some of the stuff he talks about I don’t really know enough about to attempt a rebuttal, but a fair amount of it is either inaccurate or lacking information to the point that it makes me wonder if I can trust what he says on the things I don’t know much about. Two quick examples are him giving the keyboard a hard time in portrait mode. This is pretty subjective, so I’d urge anyone to try it for themselves. I also have found that mine is truly getting better as time goes on, so I wonder how much time he really spent with the phone and how actively he used it. Another part is he leads the reader to believe that when you need the battery replaced, you will have to go without a phone for a few days while Apple replaces it, however, they already have a policy in place that says they will supply you with a loaner iPhone while your battery gets replaced (the loaner will take your SIM card and will sync up all your information as soon as you sync with iTunes).

Now, if you want to give them a hard time about something, I would jump over to this post from Robert Scoble about Apple’s lack of presence at the iPhone developers conference. I think that Scoble is right on in his assessment. It’s amazing that the developers voluntarily organized and are participating in this conference, with no support or even presence from Apple. Apple is losing in two very big ways on this one. The first of which, as Scoble mentions, is that the developers are having to do all of the leg work. They obviously want to build for the platform and help it succeed, but as in 1989, Apple is doing nothing to assist them. The second part they’re missing out on, which Scoble doesn’t touch on, is that by them not participating the developers are going to do whatever they please, and Apple has no opportunity to help guide them in a consistent and unified direction.

The developers are going to find a way to do whatever they want. Apple is missing out. By making it this hard, there is going to be growing resentment in the developer community towards Apple, so as I see it one of two things will happen. Either the developers will strong-arm their way through and make the iPhone do what they want it to, completely bypassing Apple’s desires/wishes/vision for the product (thus destroying a lot of what people like about Apple), or a competitor will rise which makes development easy, and the developers will stop focusing on the iPhone and instead move to the product that doesn’t require them to fight in order to develop for it. Admittedly, it will be hard, and most likely take awhile for a competitor to hope to replace the iPhone, but if Apple thinks it’s not possible, they just need to look back at 1989.

I guess there is a third option, which is Apple deciding to release development tools for the iPhone and releasing a method to develop for it in other ways then just web and Ajax. I hope this happens, but as of right now, I see no signs of it going this route. For the record in case you don’t know me, I am a web developer that is familiar and comfortable with Ajax. To me, a web developer saying they need to do more, is a statement that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

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iPhone keyboard

July 5, 2007

The iPhone keyboard is growing on me slowly. I’m able to type with two thumbs in landscape mode and I’m pretty close to it in portrait mode as well. In fact, I’m typing this entry on my iPhone and its not that painful really. I certainly wouldn’t want to write a long entry on it but I can’t think of many mobile devices that I would want to do that on.

Earlier I commented on hoping that blogs and websites don’t start releasing special themes especially for the iPhone. I still agree with that for the most part, but I would like to add a little to the thought — web applications do need to try to offer special interfaces, at least for core functions. Like a good interface for adding a post to WordPress would be nice, and applications like meebo are definitely going to need to tweak their interface if they want to service iPhone users. The key problem in both of those examples is that the input fields are almost impossible to see when the keyboard comes up. Having to close the keyboard and re-center the screen just isn’t going to cut it. I don’t mean to single out these apps though, all web apps are going to have this issue for the most part, and it’s quite possible they and other apps will decide its not worth it to refactor their interface for the iPhone and other small mobile devices (although I imagine some  won’t be able to ignore it).

Unrelated to the keyboard, another item i just realized while writing this entry is also the inability to scroll within an element of a page (like the input area for writing a post in WP or the inability to scroll up into chat history on meebo but some of that is a shortcoming on the part of Safari on the iPhone).

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Ta-da List for iPhone

July 2, 2007

So, I don’t really keep it to myself that I’m not a fan of 37Signals.  However, they did just do something pretty cool.  They released Ta-da List for the iPhone.  One thing the iPhone doesn’t have is a to-do list.  It doesn’t import tasks from iCalendar either.  I do think this is a win-win of sorts.  37Signals released a special version of a fairly simple product that works well on the iPhone, and in exchange they hopefully get some users making use of their service both via the iPhone and through the web interface.  They did a good job of making the interface iPhone-ish.

Anyhow, good job 37Signals.

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Some further thoughts on the iPhone

July 1, 2007

This is a continuation of my review of the iPhone from earlier.

  • I was able to get an adapter to let my iPhone work with my current FM Transmitter setup in my car. It cost me $10. On the way home from the store I plugged it in and started playing music and it’s just as nice as using my real iPod to listen to music in my car. Then I navigated to the phone and made a phone call. This is very cool, and something I’ve wanted for awhile. Throughout the navigation to making the call, my music kept playing, then when I initiated the call, the music paused and I heard ringing through my car speakers. It basically turned my cars sound system into a speakerphone. So basically, the iPhone replaces those expensive bluetooth car phone kits that you can get which tie into your cars sound system (at least somewhat).
  • On a similar note as the above comment, the integration with the phone and the iPod continues when listening over the headphones. If a call comes in, the music pauses and there’s a microphone on the headphone wire, so you can start talking. You just give the microphone a little squeeze to answer the call, and another squeeze to end. If you’re just listening to music you also squeeze the mic to pause and restart the music. So simple, yet so smart.
  • It desperately needs iChat or some sort of AIM/GTalk/Etc. chat client. I know some folks that are complaining about the keyboard might find this idea horrible, but I wouldn’t be wanting to use it for long conversations, just enough to let me pop online and have a quick IM conversation with someone. You might be wondering why I can’t just do this with SMS, but believe it or not, I am sometimes in places that have WiFi but no cell signal (with how my apartment is situated in the building, my bedroom is one of these places).
  • It would be nice if there was at least some game on the device to kill time with. I liked BrickBreaker on my BlackBerry for this, and I usually put Tetris or something on most other phones I’ve owned. I think something like BrickBreaker would work on the iPhone too, you could just drag your finger back and forth to bounce the ball. The interface is already there for it.
  • The keyboard is nice, but I’m sticking behind what I said in my earlier post. If you’re proficient on a thumb-style keyboard, you’re going to be slower on the iPhone keyboard. I’ve become pretty fast with it, but in an Apple keyboard demo video, they show a guy do it with two thumbs and he flies through writing an email. So I opened notepad and for quite awhile just rambled on, typing out my thoughts, using two thumbs. It was dropping keypresses like crazy. It wasn’t an issue of it being innaccurate or me fat-fingering words, it just wouldn’t register some of my keypresses. So the software never even got the opportunity to try to correct my spelling (which it is actually VERY good at when I just type with my index finger). When using just my one finger, I’ve already gotten to where I rarely have to correct it, and I actually have faith in it correcting me. I might see a type-o I’ve made, but I’ll continue on spelling the word because 99% of the time, it’s going to realize what I meant to type and fix it for me.
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iPhone

June 30, 2007

iPhoneSo I purchased an iPhone yesterday. All things considered, I ended up pretty lucky in getting it. I was going by the AT&T store anyhow to meet someone that wanted to buy my Blackjack (which I decomissioned a little over a month ago). Anyhow, the line had started forming, and the store was closed until 6pm when the iPhone’s went on sale. I got there around 5:45 or so. So I decided to go ahead and wait in line since I needed to get in the store to get to the guy wanting to buy my Blackjack. I only had to wait in line for about 30 minutes total. When I got in, I took a quick look and decided to go ahead and purchase the 8GB model.

I’ve been playing with it ever since and for the most part, I am very pleased with it. I don’t quite buy into the whole “this is going to change the way everyone thinks about mobile phones.” Sorry, but it’s a VERY nice phone/ipod/browser in my opinion. I don’t think that we’re going to suddenly see a flurry of providers sending people home to activate their phones or anything like that. I was lucky in that my phone activated instantly, unlike some other reports I’ve read of people waiting for a few hours for activation (my guess is AT&T/Apple got swamped with activation requests).

Some of the features I’ll comment on:

  • Keyboard: It’s definitely nice, and a LOT better then I expected. I am able to comfortably use it for typing URL’s, SMS, and brief emails. So I am impressed … but … it is not going to replace physical “thumb” QWERTY keyboards. If you are proficient (and by proficient I mean you type with both thumbs and can look away from the keyboard without making massive mistakes) with a thumb keyboard, you will be slower at data entry on this. What they say about “trusting” it is true. You need to just type away and let it figure it out, it is extremely smart. But typing with one finger is just slower then going with both thumbs, no doubt about it.
  • Browser: This is definitely something that sets it aside from any other mobile device. Having a real browser on the phone is so nice. You can comfortably read websites like CNN, blogs, etc. I actually hope that bloggers/sites do NOT try to release special iPhone themes for their sites. It would be an injustice to the browser on the iPhone. I was out with friends last night and folks started having various side conversations and I started playing around with it and before I knew it, I had cleared out my unread items in Google Reader. It was completely comfortable to do. My eyes didn’t feel strained and navigation was nearly flawless.
  • Phone: It’s a pretty good phone. The sound quality is decent, getting the keypad up and working with it is easy enough. iTunes sync’s all of your contacts over from your Address Book on your Mac, so I was able to easily have all of my contacts available.
  • SMS: It uses the “conversation” style txt messaging, sort of like BlackBerry’s. So you can easily carry on txt conversations with multiple people and not get totally lost in the conversations (I txt a lot, so this is great to find out).
  • Google Maps: As many people have already said, this is quite possibly better then Google Maps itself. It is actually one of the applications I’ve been using to show off the iPhone to friends and none of them have not said “Wow” and left their jaw open after seeing it.
  • WiFi: It reliably picks up my secured home network, so in the apartment I can easily browse, taking advantage of my broadband speeds. If I’m out and it senses a network, it asks me if I’d like to join it instead of using EDGE.
  • EDGE: I really haven’t had problems with the speed. It’s not as fast as browsing at home on my computer over broadband, but I would not call it painful by any means. I wouldn’t have expected it to be as fast as my home computer browsing either.
  • Voicemail: This is really nice. When a voicemail is left for you, it evidently gets downloaded to your phone or something along those lines. You can just click listen and the voicemail instantly starts playing. There’s no need to dial in to voicemail.

Anyhow, I’ll try to do a follow up post after I’ve had some more time to play with it some more as I did with the Blackjack. I will mention a nitpick I just found out this morning however …

I went to get in my car, where I have a setup for an FM transmitter that I use with my regular iPod. It’s not one of the iTrip things that relies on sitting flush against the top of the iPod. My transmitter basically plugs in like a set of headphones would. I’m not sure if part of the plug is too fat to let the pin go far enough in or what, but regardless, I couldn’t get it to play music with my FM transmitter, instead it defaulted to playing with the iPhone’s built-in speaker, which is obviously unacceptable for listening to music in your car. So it looks like I will be looking for some other means of playing music in my car if I don’t want to carry my regular iPod.

Anyhow, that’s all for now. And yes, Pat, I know I’m a lamer.

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