Boycott Comcast!!! Part 3: Slaying the Beast

After a brief hiatus, I will now finalize my Comcast Boycott with Part 3. As time goes by, you hate Comcast more and more. They overcharge for disgusting products, offer no help at all, and they will do all they can do screw with you until you give up and just stop caring or get pissed off and switch to another provider. When you finally make the decision to give Comcast the "Dear John" letter it so surely deserves, they sink their claws in. It's like trying to dump a longtime girlfriend who has used you for years without giving anything back. Over the course of your relationship, she has gotten lots of money, shelter, tax savings, and plenty of attention from you with minimal investment on her part. Of course, she has absolutely no interest in letting her meal-ticket walk away.

When you call to cancel service, the ever so helpful customer service person will make a vain attempt to keep you. They question you why you are leaving and make a pathetic attempt to gather information to make it more helpful. And by more helpful, I mean they will use this data to make their services even more frustrating and user-detrimental. With the idiotic "survey" out of the way, they then get angry and essentially cut you off ASAP. Case and point: I told Comcast I was moving on 3/31/06 and asked service to be cut 4/1. What did they do? Cut my service 3/31/06, citing the "billing cycle". What a joke? Of course, they tried to bill me through 4/1/06. I called them out on that crap, and saved a hearty $5. Take that!

As a last annoyance, once you terminate your service, they make you go to them to return your cable box and high speed modem. To be specific, Comcast has a grand total of 2 return centers for equipment in the DC area. One is in Landover, MD. The other is in Springfield, VA just off the 395 Van Dorn Exit. Neither is Metro accessible. Neither is convenient for anyone other than those who live in Landover or Springfield. In other words, if you are living paycheck to paycheck and have no car, you will spend no less than $20 in round trip bus and metro fare to return a box that costs Comcast $25 to purchase and works about 15% of the time. Isn't that just grand? To continue with the bitter ex-girlfriend analogy, it's like your scorned lover making you haul her worthless crap to her instead of picking it up herself. Naturally, you live far away, and she will make it as difficult as possible. While the spite factor is nice, I like to do the spiting, not the other way around!

Well, I finally got away from Comcast. As a final burn against them, my housemates and I forced them to bring in a private contractor to hook up their lousy internet product. For $50, he successfully gave us a special connection provided us both extra high speed connection, PLUS free Comcast cable. So, take that Comcast! From hell's heart, I stab at thee!!!