Comcast internet woes and questioning VOIP
July 23, 2005 10:47 AM Subscribe
Wanted to seek some advise about my Comcast internet connection and tech support problems which seem to happen almost two three times a year. It always makes me question myself for using VOIP (Vonage) for my phone service.
It started again Tue of this week. I noticed I was losing network connectivity between 7.30 PM and 8.30 PM and it repeated for 3 nights almost at the same time. This timing thing really made me curious. Dont know if it happened at other times during the day because I am away at work and I do not get much phone calls during the day. In this situation calls get routed Vonage mailbox. But after around 8.30 PM the connection seems to be up at least till I went off to work next day.
Then yesterday I found out my connection was offline starting around 8.30- 9 AM and was offline till 10 - 10.30 PM last night. In the middle of this I called Comcast customer support from my cellphone of course. I always find their internet customer support not being able to do anything more than running through a cheat sheet of steps which I know are not the issues. But anyway these are people with ZERO computer knowledge probably. So she reaches the inevitable conclusion that their tech support needs to come out, and this is the part that really freaked me out.
The earliest date she could give me was next Wed!!!! So no internet and no phone till then! She tried to explain to me that they have some quota system and the queue gets filled up rapidly. I also got the impression that if I had VOIP from Comcast or had cable TV problems I could be on a different and possibly quicker service queue.
Tell if I am wrong or unfairly angry, I am just shocked to see that in this day and age of internet they expect customers to wait 4-5 days even before they can come out, and chances are just when they come everything will be working fine! and break down as soon as the they leave.
I feel like this is unacceptable I should be able to complain to somebody. I need some advice here ????
If somebody is late with their monthly payment by a day they do not hesitate to send out all kind of nasty threatening letters.
As I was saying the connection started up around 10.30 PM last night. But it went off again around 8.30 AM this morning. I am just baffled by this apparent predictable timing of the outage. Today I went to their service center and exchanged the cable modem, just in case it is the modem. Have not tried it yet. My neighbor said he have not had any problems with his comcast internet connection
Having a VOIP phone simply just adds to the aggrevation !!!
It started again Tue of this week. I noticed I was losing network connectivity between 7.30 PM and 8.30 PM and it repeated for 3 nights almost at the same time. This timing thing really made me curious. Dont know if it happened at other times during the day because I am away at work and I do not get much phone calls during the day. In this situation calls get routed Vonage mailbox. But after around 8.30 PM the connection seems to be up at least till I went off to work next day.
Then yesterday I found out my connection was offline starting around 8.30- 9 AM and was offline till 10 - 10.30 PM last night. In the middle of this I called Comcast customer support from my cellphone of course. I always find their internet customer support not being able to do anything more than running through a cheat sheet of steps which I know are not the issues. But anyway these are people with ZERO computer knowledge probably. So she reaches the inevitable conclusion that their tech support needs to come out, and this is the part that really freaked me out.
The earliest date she could give me was next Wed!!!! So no internet and no phone till then! She tried to explain to me that they have some quota system and the queue gets filled up rapidly. I also got the impression that if I had VOIP from Comcast or had cable TV problems I could be on a different and possibly quicker service queue.
Tell if I am wrong or unfairly angry, I am just shocked to see that in this day and age of internet they expect customers to wait 4-5 days even before they can come out, and chances are just when they come everything will be working fine! and break down as soon as the they leave.
I feel like this is unacceptable I should be able to complain to somebody. I need some advice here ????
If somebody is late with their monthly payment by a day they do not hesitate to send out all kind of nasty threatening letters.
As I was saying the connection started up around 10.30 PM last night. But it went off again around 8.30 AM this morning. I am just baffled by this apparent predictable timing of the outage. Today I went to their service center and exchanged the cable modem, just in case it is the modem. Have not tried it yet. My neighbor said he have not had any problems with his comcast internet connection
Having a VOIP phone simply just adds to the aggrevation !!!
You're having a problem, but your neighbor is not? That tells me it's something in your setup. Try the new cable modem. Also, go to the dslreports Comcast forum and see if others are having the same issue, and if/how they resolved it.
Also, I understand/share your dislike of cable monopolies but what you posted was 10% question and 90% complaint. Yeesh.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:20 AM on July 23, 2005
Also, I understand/share your dislike of cable monopolies but what you posted was 10% question and 90% complaint. Yeesh.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 11:20 AM on July 23, 2005
Not sure how helpful it will be this time around, but the frontline of Comcast's tech support really is reading from a cheatsheet when it comes to internet-related issues. Your best bet is to try to get to their second tier of support, which is in Canada (or at least it was last time I had issues). Those folks are actually helpful (the second tier, not Canadians as a rule).
posted by yerfatma at 11:39 AM on July 23, 2005
posted by yerfatma at 11:39 AM on July 23, 2005
If you've got a cellphone, you can log onto the vonage website and have it forward the calls to that. At least that way you won't miss anything important.
I've got comcast and vonage myself, and I have vonage ring my cellphone at the same time as my vonage line so I can pick it up wherever I'm at.
Not really an answer to your question, but it could help mitigate some of the pain that you're going through.
posted by freshgroundpepper at 12:15 PM on July 23, 2005
I've got comcast and vonage myself, and I have vonage ring my cellphone at the same time as my vonage line so I can pick it up wherever I'm at.
Not really an answer to your question, but it could help mitigate some of the pain that you're going through.
posted by freshgroundpepper at 12:15 PM on July 23, 2005
Response by poster: Thanks for the DSL Reports Info. Seems to have some useful info such as second tier support, etc. Regarding 90% whining I wanted to make sure I explained the situation enough. May be I need some training to be more succinct.
freshgroundpepper I also changed the Vonage forwarding this morning for the time being as you had described. But my cell reception at home is not very reliable. Oh well, at least better than nothing.
yerfatma who are these second tier support people supposed to help ? Their own van riding technicians ?
posted by flyby22 at 12:50 PM on July 23, 2005
freshgroundpepper I also changed the Vonage forwarding this morning for the time being as you had described. But my cell reception at home is not very reliable. Oh well, at least better than nothing.
yerfatma who are these second tier support people supposed to help ? Their own van riding technicians ?
posted by flyby22 at 12:50 PM on July 23, 2005
When I was living in LA, Comcast took 2 weeks to come out and "solve" our problem. The tech gave us a brand new modem which didn't help and scheduled us in for another tech to come out 2 days later. It ended up being a cut in the line running from the conjunction point to our house. The guy said it had literally been almost cut through.
We would be able to get online most of the day but at night, every night, the signal would be lost around midnight and last until about 10am.
I couldn't tell you if what he said was the truth, but after that we didn't have a problem.
posted by phytage at 1:01 PM on July 23, 2005
We would be able to get online most of the day but at night, every night, the signal would be lost around midnight and last until about 10am.
I couldn't tell you if what he said was the truth, but after that we didn't have a problem.
posted by phytage at 1:01 PM on July 23, 2005
Response by poster: Put in the new cable modem couple of hours ago. So far it looks ok. Lets see how long it works.
phytage thanks much for the info. Now I dont feel so wierd. May be it is some kind of routing issue.
posted by flyby22 at 7:12 PM on July 23, 2005
phytage thanks much for the info. Now I dont feel so wierd. May be it is some kind of routing issue.
posted by flyby22 at 7:12 PM on July 23, 2005
This happens to me from time to time. Often the tech blames a cable I bought and installed. [The extra buck a month is worth it for "CableGuard."] Sometimes, however, Comcast's DNS servers seem to take a dump. When that happens I go into my router's configs and pick some different DNS servers. [If you're not using a router, you can set these under "Network" in System Preferences in OS X or under your network connections in your Control Panel in Windows.]
Some old favorites:
192.108.1.42 [belongs to Merit, the Michigan academic-institutional ISP]
141.211.144.17 and 141.211.125.17 [University of Michigan]
Most of the ones on this list from dslreports.com. They keep track of stuff like this. The Verizon ones that all go 4.2.2.[x] are probably easiest to remember.
posted by britain at 10:55 PM on July 23, 2005
Some old favorites:
192.108.1.42 [belongs to Merit, the Michigan academic-institutional ISP]
141.211.144.17 and 141.211.125.17 [University of Michigan]
Most of the ones on this list from dslreports.com. They keep track of stuff like this. The Verizon ones that all go 4.2.2.[x] are probably easiest to remember.
posted by britain at 10:55 PM on July 23, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
We have Comcast for internet and cable and periodically we have trouble with each (not at the same time though).
We've had 2 techs come out to look at why we had loss of internet connection after the tech on the phone said "there is no known outage in your area". The second tech showed me they just point to the modems IP to check signal levels and an activity log. Depending on what they see they might call a central location to "reset" the modem or they just power down eveything, wait, and boot up.
posted by sailormouth at 11:10 AM on July 23, 2005