Tom Eppenberger Jr’s blog

So, they finally fixed our service last Monday. The tech showed up on time, fixed my problem and was gone inside of 15 minutes.

Imagine that. All those problems, all those tech support calls, all that B.S., and it turned out to be exactly what I told them it was two weeks earlier… the damn dish. It had a weak signal from the roof, so he fiddled with some knobs and all is well.

I still wanted to axe the service, but Shelly fears change and told me that I couldn’t. Oh well, I guess my desire to cancel because of a single issue was a little irrational. Especially since I’ve had zero problems over the last seven years, and that includes moving the service to three houses.

Interesting side-note about Comcast. I had an installation/setup appointment last Thursday, just in case DirecTV hadn’t fixed things on Monday. So, I called and cancelled my installation on Wednesday afternoon.

That evening at 5:59 PM, the phone rang and CallerID said Comcast. I answered the phone and had a recorded greeting reminding me about my appointment the next day. After the message, there were some options for re-scheduling and cancelling, etc. I chose the option to cancel, just in case, and was transferred to the customer service department. I was then immediately met with a greeting that their office was only open until 6:00 PM… Yeah, it had to just be a coincidence… nobody would intentionally make it difficult like this to cancel an installation…

The DirecTV tech that was scheduled to be here between 8a-12p today never showed up, or bothered to call. When I got home tonight, I dealt with their “award-winning” customer service, only to go through the same 20 questions that I have answered on a near daily basis this week… ”no, it isn’t windy,” “nope, no storms,” ”yes, I have reset my receiver,” “yes, I have tried other receivers.”

After 26 minutes, and being apologized to nearly 26 times, I was told (again) that the issue had been escalated to a supervisor and I would definitely get a call back within 4 hours.

5+ hours later, no phone call. So, I give their “award-winning” technical support another call. I got through to a “technical support supervisor” pretty quickly (and, by supervisor here, I simply mean a less polite person in a different call center with less technical knowlege and probably less authority), and was merely apologized to some more. She was “really, really sorry,” and helped me reschedule another service tech for Monday. Oh, and, as it turns out, the service call from this morning was marked as completed in their system…

So, to show how important my business is, she gave me a $100 credit on my bill. Gee, thanks.

I would gladly keep their damn service if they would just tell me what the hell was wrong, and how they were going to fix it. Don’t just keep apologizing to me over and over again, as if you really care about my problem. The tone in your voice told me that you couldn’t be any more void of real emotion when it comes to helping me. Don’t pretend. I mean, I already know that you are patronizing me, but your poor attitude simply helps me come to the realization sooner. I’d really just prefer that you pretend to help me fix the problem, at least I’d be able to go to sleep tonight…

No… you know what, forget it. Seven years of happy, blissful marriage has been destroyed in just seven days. Congratulations, it’s not just any company that could pull this off.

They are sending out a technician on Friday to see if the problem we are having is related to this dish, or some other local issue.

Regardless, if they are not able to both restore my service and give me a good explanation as to what has been going on by next Thursday, I’m gone. I’ve secured a Comcast installation date for that morning, in case it comes to that.

My DirecTV DVR is out again tonight. The service was fully restored (without me doing anything) by Sunday evening, and seemed to be working fine yesterday. Tonight, back to a big white screen with this error code that nobody at DirecTV seems to know anything about.

Called into tech support and got the same song and dance about some uber-secret covert team of tech gurus in Oregon that were huddled around computers in a dark room trying to sort through the issue…

After finding out that my old SD Tivo device was still active, I decided to plug it back in and veg out with some TV. Nope, no dice. Same error. WTF?!?!? The tech had told me that an older SD receiver should work.

Call back into their tech support a few minutes ago, and am greeted with “Thank you for calling DirecTV, my name is _____. Before I get any info from you, please understand that our systems are updating and I will not be able to do anything specific with your account at this time. So, how can I help you?” Sigh. I explained my problems, frustrations, etc and was reminded that he couldn’t help me before their systems were updating. I asked the obvious question about when I should call back, and it turns out that their systems will be updating until 9:00 AM tomorrow. Holy crap! WTF is that about?

On a related note, I see that Velocity Micro has started shipping their CableCard ready Windows Vista Media Center PCs… off to find Comcast’s phone number…

By formatting the drive, you will lose all your recorded shows, season passes and manually recordings.

Press the red reset button behind the fold down door on the front right side of the unit.

After the welcome screen that says “Almost there,” when it goes to a black screen, press and hold the Record and down arrow buttons at the same time for 10 seconds (you must use the buttons on the front of the unit).

The record light should come on, and will stay lit up for 30-60 seconds.

When the unit reboots, your done.