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Xfinity is now known as XXX-finity - US Government! Do not ever allow Comcast to merge with any other company, anywhere, at any time.

As posted earlier in the customer service area of Xfinity:

The following IS Comcast's and Xfinity's attitude toward their customers:

Posted June 7th, 2015, very early, on the Smith's veranda:

My exact experience was:

May 29th, 2015

Installer arrived very close to on time (so in my book, on time), told me that this (my account) was supposed to be a "reconnect", it was not - I do not recall our home ever having Comcast, but may have had - I only recall Post-Newsweek then DirecTV. So, he called HQ to have the order changed to "new".  No one mentioned to me, when ordering by phone, that ours would be a "reconnect". NO mention of that.

Installed, at first speedtest.net was showing the ARRIS TM822 (not even an a or a g!?) modem as being located in Wyoming, then Montana - yesterday and today revealed my Modem being frighteningly too close for comfort (I "fixed" that issue ASAP)

Bandwidth is High Speed Internet with Blast (Blast is a 10.00 ADD ON to High Speed Internet, and they do NOT tell you that up front, you find that on your first ACTUAL bill, not on the estimate they email you before the first bill!) - the tested speed is at 12MB (initially) to 25MB (after a couple of hours, this is normal though)  - supposed to be at or near 40-45MB (50MB is the plan I have)  - we'll see,

Not enough burial cable was on truck, so flycable was used from pole to previous DTV sat position, made install much faster than flying the cable - which I said I "would prefer you fly it, but you're the expert!". I would much rather assume so, anyway.  So he drops fly cable from pole connect, down, across alongside of but not OVER sewer line I knew was underground, I later marked .....  That was May29th.  Installer informed me, after I asked, that the company that buries cables handles all of that JULIE stuff". I say fine.

June 4th, burial cable company (ALWAYS contracted out by Comcast) arrived before noon(?), I wasn't there, no need to be, when I got home, small property items at rear of house were indiscriminately disturbed, not returned to their original state, no matter, wasn't much of a mess, but was unprofessional.  The bury of the cable was NOWHERE NEAR EARLIER INDICATED - I had marked out the cable for neighbor kids and pet safety, just in case, and for landscaper, just in case (and GOOD THING FOR COMCAST, Pedro  -  yes, his real name, not trying to be cute here -- needed the marking!), with a bright yellow power cable, police cross-line tape, road reflectors, goddamn obvious stuff like that.

JULIE was not contacted, no flags or paint were present at site.

The cable was buried 3 inches below topsoil (normal, but stupid  for Comcast as they can not charge you for damage to their cables they or their agents did not bury at least 12" below topsoil).

I digressed.

The trench for "the bury" (industry jargon I just made up) was a large completely unnecessary arc from pole base to "NETPOP" if you will pardon the jargon (I did not make that up), AWAITING A CONNECTION.  Orange (burial) cable is looped up at pole insertion point ON THE POLE and other end at the home connect point right along side of the lain flycable.  The flycable being connected and giving me service at this time, now June 7th.

NOTE TO SELF: JULIE may not in fact need to be contacted for anything buried that shallow? I am not the expert on that.

June 6th, before i started to type this diatribe. I received MY FIRST XFINITY bill. A 20.00 charge of Software installation on it? "...I will be calling for its removal, or be late 20.00 for every bill going forward - a matter of principle since i was NEVER informed PRIOR to receiving email of estimated bill of such a charge..".  Over the phone nonsense. I wont be paying that, but , wait, there's more!

I called - a while ago now - to see "what happened? Why wasn't the burial cable now giving me service? Why is the flown cable still laying across our lawn?"  I was told that a "...Special Request had not been ordered...", I am pissed now, still pissed, more pissed, I am (thankfully) transferred to a Super to have an "SR filled out properly and work " was then "scheduled for June 16th". I yell' "SIXTEENTH!?"  Well, I don't use the passive voice well here.  So, I says to the Comcast Supervisor, I says, "I will have this taken care of by 8pm Tuesday June 9th otherwise I will call at 8:01pm that night to cancel all service." Fair warning, I assure you.

On hold for a brief moment,.then

 "sir, I have escalated this for you and your appointment will occur [tomorrow by now?] Monday, June 8th sometime between 8am and 8pm with a half hour to 45 minute lead time - YOU, dear reader (if you are still awake) might be thinking, oh no she dint!? I taint gonna sit around no house of mine all day to have something corrected that I don't need to be around for!

Well, I don't mind, I work from home half the day anyway, my client load this week are all very nearby, for comfort,  I say fine, I am also offered - because I demanded it - first month free (in all fairness, I am hoping just the service for the month will be made free, not the WHOLE BILL as I would not want the installer to go "without" their pay, I bet that 39.00 Installer visit charger goes directly to the installer?), including not having to pay the "software Installation" fee, whatever, no I wont have to call about that nonsense apparently.

I am writing this all here as one documentation, since CC/Xfinity "...employees are not allowed to send EMAIL CONFIRMATIONS of orders".(?) and to help show that I am being treated fairly (while including all that was promised me in this case) and transparently.

I sure hope no one gets fired for giving me a free month of service for this crap of having a cable across a line for more than 5 minutes after a burial cable is buried.

Hopefully, by 8:00pm Tuesday June 9th, this issue will be connected.

NOT TO SELF: Xfinity, get your stuff together here on CORPORATE INTRA-COMMUNICATION AND EMPOWERING SUPERs TO SEND ORDER CONFIRMATIONS to customers.  You probably need to do that already for business customers, amiright!?

Yes, I was given a CRnnnnnnnnn number.  So, I can trust all this, amiright?

 If this doesn't happen the way I have outlined here (and had demanded earlier today), I wont mind switching to Verizon FiOS (A. Friend says, "but, why? That is so much more expensive!"  "Not, really," I retort, "maybe only by 50 or 60 per month more for, frankly faster service up AND down", and just might be worth the pain = empty threat, I have puppies on the way I'll have to feed, eventually)

What are the real issues here?  I, ME, I was the one who had to call to get this corrected, the CR was NEVER FILLED on Comcast's end AND Comcast did not call JULIE (and, waiting for comment, so I can fire off one more quip - I know what you are thinking 'bout me & JULIE)

Someone should add "the story of the Cable Guy" into Studs Terkel's "WORKING".

--------------------EOF

Tried to post this, then I get a warning, in red, at the page bottom - tiny print - had to scroll down to find it, not really highlighted:

"You used a bad word, pissed, in the body of your post. Please clean up the body before posting.

Well, of course I tweeted out later, "Stop pissing me off XXXfinity!", twitter will no doubt call that out as a passive threat.

Re post, I try again, I get:

You used a bad word, crap, in the body of your post. Please clean up the body before posting.

I repeat my tweet, and add, "What is this crap?"

I try post again.......

SUCKSESS!

What a bunch of stuff it.

------------Now the 8th, Monday, I post after a call:

"You saw that, did you? (in RSVP to forum Admin having seen a scheduled for today, the 8th)

• 
  
• I called tonight, THEY saw (at first, without really looking hard) that I had an appointment RE-scheduled for tomorrow, the 9th,  I was never informed of that prior to calling tonight, although I had discussed it as a possibility on yesterday's ONE call I made, for a rescheduling if for some reason (today was very bad short hail storm, not good), contingent I be notified.

I now understand that this was to be a Special Request, that an open appointment was the order of the day, with an exception I had: how could anyone test that the new connection would be working up to specifications without someone being at home to let a tech test the new connection? To perhaps disconnect the modem for equipment safety? (Perhaps this is done remotely, but I would only be GUESSING)

For the confusion of communication that was to follow, I did receive (an additional to the thankful previous necessity, thank you again) credit of 39.95 :  I asked that the work order be, in general, told to me - it was completely incorrect. I demanded to make correction, which was received and I think appreciated, although my mood and manner was not fit for forum print and I am sure was not appreciated - I would like to remotely extend an apology to both I spoke with tonight.

The fact that Special Reqs cannot somehow be confirmed by email from within the company is probably one of the most frustrating and unprofessional things I have seen in a while from such a large company. Hopefully that will improve within?  Had I received some confirmation, I would have caught the grossly incorrect interpretation of what needs to occur on this SR detail.

"

On a side note: The bulk of my first post was moved to another part of the forum, which I voiced concern over, hence my re-posting here - with out "bad" word edits. I HAD edited for the Disney-challenged, so why was the post moved?

Tuesday - it just got worse  ------  Decided to get serious about the Flycable laying on the lawn. Confirmed with a CSR indeed was a hazard, so a first level CSR made a "Safety Ticket" at around 12:45am (noon-ish) and that the :Safety Tech" would be calling me at "2:22" pm. CSR's exact words - "2:22" .  Huh? OK, sounds rather precise for an as now proven incompetent company.

You guessed, no show, so at around 9pm I call, CSR, explain, get CSR Super - that Super relayed a message via Dispatch that the tech said he would be out by  TEN FORTY FOUR (PM) yes, 10:44pm ! 

At night, new moon, neighborhood dogs on electric fence bark all night as it is, this will be GREAT!  

I tell the CSR super that our town tickets contractors who work beyond 9pm at 100.00 per hour. This is fact.  "Well, the tech will call you ahead of time". Ya, right.

Screw it, 8:35pm I call in to billing for 2 months credit.  BSR, "I can only do 39.95" I say, get me the Super!  Talk with BSR Super (Billing), he starts out with  - after reading most of the mostly correct notes on my account, he can only offer 20.00 - I say, nope, I want 2 (we go like this for 2 minutes maybe) he then changes it to OK, I can do 39, now I say this is not a negotiation, this is a demand.  NOW I become irate, use profanity, he tells me to be more professional, I say, "no, you are the one that needs to be professional here, always, why risk the bad pub here, in Yelp, twitter - so far " - he says, "well sir with what you have told me of the dogs and contractor fines, I will just go ahead and cancel the SAFETY TICKET".  He hangs up.

You think I am pissed now?

I call back, get CSR tell them what happened, she talks with her CSR Super, she says, "I understand your conversation with the Billing Supervisor didn't go so well", her Super gives me  - 2 months credit on FULL bill - not just Service credit. ALL of it.

"Every day of no-show, [you] will get a free month of service"  we'll see, the first two refunds came, so maybe.

That Billing Super needs to be reprogrammed

--------------------------

NOTES FROM Wednesday, June 10th are still being edited:

6/11/2015

I posted this on the Compost forum - was warned that the bad word 'idiotc' had to be removed.  That is idiotic as well.

"Every single employee at Compost needs to listen to this once a month as a bitter pill to swallow.  No one has contacted me as to whether or not I am satisfied with my service so far to date.

I, the customer, has been the sole initiator of every single contact point throughout the idiotic process of cleaning up a mess - since the install. Except for one, single employee - the tech that finally completed the work, he did his job:

He called ahead WHEN ON SITE (supposed to call ahead of time, but at least he called)

He asked what needed to be done (he should have had the ability to read the notes from CSR, told me was not able to do that, but he was SMART to ask)

He followed MY (note MY) instructions to the letter.

The Internet service is close to the same as far as I can tell.

https://youtu.be/yYUvpYE99vg

Nothing has changed in the behaviors of Most Supervisors at both Billing and CSR levels. Retraining is the best option for your employees. Don't use 3rd party call centers from countries that have accents impossible to comprehend.

DO NOT MISINTERPRET THIS POST.

As of this post there are STILL 7 customers REPORTING IN THIS FORUM that have identical issues to mine - cables laying above ground, on ground, etc, that should not be laying there.  One customer since November of 2014."

No doubt, some idiotic employee who wont get the point of the post there and will send me a PM asking, "I understand you wish to cancel your Internet service, is that correct?"

------I posted this a response to COMCASTCARES PM to me today:

Comcast doesn't care much is your new slogan. Your company has been voted worst customer service for 2014, beating out the IRS.

Congrats!

Re-training in every department is mandatory at this point.   I have blogged personally and on Yelp of my experiences with Comcast so far and will continue to do so, as I have been treated:

Let me say it this way:

No employees of a service company has any business being hurt personally by customers swearing at the COMPANY, using profanity and such . Obviously if a customer is insulting the representative directly (like fuck your mother this, fuck your mother that, then that should be handled with a quick don't, or I will hang up approach), If a customer wants to say "You guys are morons, the most unprofessional idiotic process followers imaginable, un-fucking-believable - THAT IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE IN THE REAL WORLD AND NEEDS TO BE TOLERATED BY CSR REPS.

Telling a person who has been treated as poorly as me (credit aside, as those credits were entirely DESERVED) and as irate as me to "calm down sir or I will have to end this call, you don't need to be shouting at me" is unacceptable behavior from  CSR Supervisor and should never again happen in any company.

Do not ever tell a customer how they should talk or feel about a given situation.

These are just a few training rubrics that MOST good companies use today.

Some more to chew on:

Take clear and accurate notes, repeat the notes back to the customer after some time has PASSED in the call - this should prove to both parties that accurate notes indeed have been taken,

Empower all employees and systems to:

1: send transcripts of audio of all calls

2. record ALL calls

3.  automatically trigger-send copies of the recorded call files to customers, at all times, as soon as the call ends, absolutely NO editing.in a standard MP3 format - save for 18 months

4. Empower CSR first line with up to 3 full months credit to customers with that have lines laying across their property improperly. Allow for 1 month's additional credit PER DAY OF NON COMPLETE handling of improper cable lays.  These are EXTREME HAZARDS and intra-corporate punishment in the form of bottom line money should help expedite these tickets and should be used as an earlier warning reminder of potential LAWSUITS AGAINST COMCAST.

5 for hazard tickets like these, ALL OTHER TICKETS MUST BE BUMPED IN FAVOR OF THE HAZARDS,  unless a ticket ahead is a similar hazard that needs clearing or an elder monitoring system or alarm system needs fixing  - ALL TV and INTERNET issues that are of not a HAZARD to the customer or neighbors are to be BUMPED to service HAZARD tickets injected in to the job cues.

6.  All field techs need to be empowered with the ability to read all customer notes with NO EDITS. This may be an issue, as some transcripts will show things like, "that guy [the tech that was last here] is a complete moron" and the like.  This is the risk Comcast must be able to take on. Proper tech training should PREPARE them for this inevitability.

7.  All field techs need to be empowered to ADD to CSR customer notes, to CSR SUPER and BILLING SUPER notes as well.

8.  NO filed tech should be allowed to close any ticket without FIRST contacting the customer DIRECTLY with a BUSINESS cellphone

9.  All field tech s should be provided with their own Business, Comcast owner and paid for cellphone to use to call customers - techs should never again be allowed to use personal cellphones for call--aheads , these calls need to be recorded and forwarded to customer in same or like manner as the CSR type mentioned previously

10. Appointments that needs to be cancelled internally must not be allowed cancellation without first actually talking directly with the customer as to an appropriate ere-scheduled time.

11.  ALL HAZARD TICKETS SHALL BE GIVEN FIRST PRIORITY TO EVEN NEW INSTALLS (normal, Business or GOVERNMENT CONTRACT  class) with 2 hour window guarantees (one full free month for a late or no show or no call ahead even if they are late and customer accepts), 6a-8, 8-10,10-12, 2-4,-4-6, 6-8, 8-10pm. Some towns levy fines against contractors working without special permits, even in emergencies with two exceptions: Power and Gas utilities.  A 6a-8a call would be reserved to catch rescheduled late appointments from previous DAY or natural disaster delays such as floods quakes, hail, lighting (for outdoor work).

12. Internal jargon or mention of internal ticket closings should never be relayed to a customer, STICK TO TALKING ONLY OF CUSTOMER TICKETS, any other approach or mention will confuse and infuriate all concerned.  First line CSR reps sometimes fail at this, retraining is in order here, too.

I left his obvious one out:

13. All appointment types must be EMAIL confirmed to customers WHILE CSR IS STILL ON THE CALL WITH THE CUSTOMER in order to confirm the email has been sent and noted by the customer before ending the call or proceeding to any other matters.

I mean, after all, we have to believe, don't we, that Comcast can figure that out on their own!?

Of course I had to replace the words idiotic with moronic then fucking with masturbating - yes masturbating passed the Disney Child filter.


----And as a small reminder to everyone reading this: Comcast is run by ex-government fuck-heads that sucked at their old jobs, too.

Airset on the Droid? Why not?

Recently, while trying to see if I could download the Java bits from Airset down to my Droid, I was confronted by a rather strange message on the airset.com site:

"Your carrier does not currently support an email gateway, so we cannot send an SMS with a download link directly to your phone. If this is in error, please let us know. "

Huh? That's not true for the Droid on Verizon's network!

Something important to note here, airset devs:

"Android OS allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries" which are all completely available from Google. So what's the hold up?

Blogtv.com doesn't really "get it".

Something to get from a pro account with BlogTV.com:

"Most payments are approved immediately. However, due to PayPal's policies your payment approval may take up to 7 days.

Really? I know PayPal's policy pretty well, so I'll quote PayPal:

"In order to be covered by the Seller Protection Policy, sellers must follow the risk-reduction procedures specified in #4 (Policy Conditions) below.

.....

4.

f. The seller ships the item(s) to the buyer within 7 days of receiving payment."

Talk about your mis-reading of policy, wow, that is a real stretch of the imagination there, BlogTV.com - you need to get a grip.

As Steve Gibson could be fond of saying: "When will they ever learn?"

TruPhone, recently as of this passed CES 2010, touted somewhat highly - if not at least as popular, "...[I am] a frequent user while traveling...", by famous podcaster - has got to be the worst web 2.0 experience in "total lack of security and oblivious to that problem" company as I have ever witnessed.

You sign up with the usual:

Username (your phone number is used - is changeable later)

Password

PIN Number

However, what is NOT usual for most companies that provide services to their customers which will inevitably need credit card information from you, they sent IN PLAIN TEXT the following (credentials have been altered for obvious reasons):

"...Doing this will ensure your details are secure at all times, and enable you to add credit to your account.

The Truphone website has a My Account section where you can update your details, top up your account, access your account balance and call history, and more. Visit http://www.truphone.com/myaccount and log in using your Truphone account details below.

**Your Truphone User Name and Number is: 12244214122
**Your Truphone Web password is: lover.mare
**Your Truphone Security PIN is: 4173

Please keep these details safe, and we recommend you change your password the first time you log in to My Account. You can also change your username if you wish. You will need to enter your Truphone PIN whenever you top up."

Actually, the password is generated as a temporary (who knows why? I cannot figure that one out at all) - I wouldn't have picked two standard English-language words for a password at any rate.

Also: absolutely don't need the PIN# for website access, don't know why its sent.

Notice the convoluted statement of concern regarding security WE should follow, yet they recommend we change our temp password first time signing in - wouldn't be better to say "as soon as possible"? Of course it would be better.

They sent back the following response to my incredulousness of the matter with:

"We are sorry for the delay in getting back to you!" [There really was no delay]

Looking at your account I can see you have successfully validated your email
address notmyrealgmail@gmail.com Regarding the email Truphone sent you, I am unsure as
to what information you are referring to. If someone resets a password etc. and
has account details emailed to their personal email address, it is expected that
changes would be made immediately by the customer to ensure their security.

If you have any further queries please reply to this email for assistance.

Regards,

Matthew

The Truphone Support Team"

________________________

Notice he includes my email account in the plaintext email response...

Does this make sense to ANYBODY BUT MATTHEW?

And TruPhone will want my credit card info if I decide to stick with them and once I use up their token 50 cent?

PLEASE.

You think it would stop there, wouldn't you. No.

Testing the TruPhone experience, I notice that my whole dialing string - which Google Voice does not do without asking, by the way, from a contact - and kept that whole string as if it was a contact phone number rather than merely the phone number. The whole string was sent to the contact!?

Also, I noticed 12 hours after signing up, I received an unsolicited SMS with, you guessed it:

" **Your Truphone User Name and Number is: 12244214122;**Your Truphone Web password is: lover.mare;**Your Truphone Security PIN is: 4173"

in one string.

Un. Be. Lievable.

Leo Laporte, I ask you: "Really!?". Please pass this on to Steve Gibson for a good laugh.

________________________________________

Ad nauseum:

"https://www.truphone.com/myaccount/callhistory.tru":

The link directly above is supposed tp show TruPhone customers their Call History of:

Calls Recieved

Calls Dialed

SMS Recieved

SMS Sent

Mine shows nothing made, yet I did do a test call AND I received their SMS with the above mentioned credentials. This is not looking any better for this new startup known only as:

TruPhone

-----------------------------

Now, for the other thing - which is entirely MY fault, I installed the TruPhone app on my Droid, even though it wasn't fully supported for the Droid (yet), so I chose the "Install Anyway" option given!

Well, "no duh" it is NOT ready for the Droid, as upon testing (see above) I tried to end the call; the little Droid bot disappeared, but the dialing controls froze - the only thing I could do was PULL THE BATTERY. Total crash - but as I said, my fault for that one.

Eh, what can I say - I'm a PowerUser. And a mini-review-er.

---------------------------------------

And one more thing today (1-13-2010):

Today I received a Hello and Welcome email from TruPhone, in part said:

"Happy chatting,

The Truphone Team

p.s. You should have received an email with your account details, and a link to validate your email address (let us know by email if you haven't).
If you have any questions, please visit the Support page or give us a call (contact details here)."

ARGH! But that's not all.

As I first received the original Download to install via the Android Market, and have since Uninstalled the program, today along with several other (normal) updates for the Droid, I see an Update for TruPhone!!! How ca that be, as we all know the Market to be a highly efficient and competent entity! I have NEVER seen an app in the Market present me with an Update AFTER I HAVE UN-INSTALLED THAT PROGRAM!

There is a serious problem going on in the background of my phone - either on the SD card or in memory - Android Team has got to do something about this ASAP; either the apps uninstall FULLY or they don't uninstall FULLY, which is it, Android Team, what the hell piece of data can a program leave behind that tells the Market that the app is still installed on the phone, even though it has been uninstalled?

I am going to check the folder system for any remnants of TruPhone; this is redonk.

Android's understanding of Bluetooth - soon?

"...Wednesday from Nick Pelly, Google's Android Bluetooth development lead. Half of the fix, re-enabling the BT button [on the the typical BT headset], is already in their internal source code tree. He confirms hands-free voice dialing is a top priority for his team..."

If you think I am going to keep this stuff secret, tell me to keep it under my hat BEFORE you tell me. Just reporting, sir. And this is a BLOG.

FLO-TV to iPhone and Android

FLO-TV is not on-demand, it's time-shifted! BIG difference.

Due to the contractual nature between the networks, they do NOT want Prime time shows streaming to the device when aired, generally only Nick/AdultSwim(only at night, it's dead in the day)/MTV and ESPN are currently allowing SOME live.

HULU is working a deal with Android and Verizon now using HTML5 (already working for YouTube on Android using the native browser - no flash needed), so just hold off.

Recall that FLO-TV natively is first streamed over 700MHz to the Verizon Network, soon out for iPhone and on a proprietary device and on another proprietary device separately for FLO-TV only, on 700MHz (Now you know why Google was interested in buying that range taken away from analog TV for the Digital swing-over)