 Review by simplykristi 
UPDATED: 259 days ago
member for 6.7 years, 2870 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Kansas City,Jackson,MO
 $42 per month
 about 21 days
 "Reliable Connection"
 "Tech Support and Mail Service and Cost"
 "Not Bad"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I signed up for Comcast@Home in late July 2000. In February 2000, I emailed Comcast@Home to see when service was coming to my area. I had been anxiously waiting for broadband service for a long time. Because of my email, I was offered free installation, a free month, and to be a beta tester in my area as soon as service was available in my area.
I kept checking the Comcast website to see if service was available in my area. Finally, it showed service was available in my area. I got excited so I signed up online for service. A day or two later, I got a call at work from Comcast. It was someone to set up an appointment to get my cable modem installed. I was getting really excited until she told me that they were not quite to my area. They had run out of parts. She said that someone would call me as soon as the parts came service was available in my neighborhood. It wasn't two weeks later when someone called me to tell me service was available in my area. We set up an appt. I could set it up anytime since someone was here at the house during the day. The day came. I was at work. My mom watched the techs as they installed the cable modem. Then she called me at work so that one of them could talk to me. He told me that my speed would be just below T1. I was amazed. The one thing I wish the techs would have done.. Leave me the password for the mail account. I never had it. They installed a COM21 and the @Home software. It took about 24 hours for my modem to be provisioned. Once it was, I was up and running. The techs said that there may be a problem because my modem is in the basement. Two nights or so after I got online with @Home, the service went down. I went on vacation the next day and the service was back up when I returned a week later.
During my time with @Home, I hardly ever had any outages. Only once did I call tech support. That turned out to be @Home not recognizing my system when I was looking at a certain secure site. That was resolved in about 45 mins. or so.
Like any service, @Home's would go down for a bit but that was few and far between.
In late November, I learned that I would be affected by Excite@Home's bankruptcy. I came to DSLReports.com to learn how this would affect me. I learned that the plug could possibly pulled on my service on Nov. 30th. I watched the @Home board here at DSLReports for two days. Nov. 30th came and went. Comcast got a three-month extension to continue with @Home until its network was up and running and all its users were transitioned to it. People started transitioning to the new service in December. I read posts about no service and slow service. I braced myself for the worst.
In early January 2002, I got my notification that I would be transitioned to Comcast's new network on Thurs., Jan. 17th. I was bracing for no service. I got up at 5:45 AM on Jan. 17th. I tried accessing my mail and DSLReports.com. I got nothing. I simply rebooted my computer. And I was online with the new Comcast network. I had one outage on Sun., Jan. 20th for two hours or so. Other than that the service has been great. After I transitioned to Comcast's network, I noticed very little difference in my speed. I am satisfied with the 1500/128 cap. I get higher speed with Comcast's network than I did with @Home.
In late January 2002, we had a severe ice storm here in the KC area. My power was out for four days. It went out on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 30th, and came back on a little after 5:00 PM (right before the kickoff for the Super Bowl) Sunday, Feb. 3rd. When the power came up, the cable modem service was down. The cable worked tho. I checked the service early in the morning of the 4th and the cable modem service was still down. I then went to work. I talked to my mom in mid afternoon. She went down to check the modem to see if the service was working. But my mom couldn't figure it out so I had my seven year old niece open up Outlook Express to see if the service was working. There were new messages so the service was working. As soon as I got home, I checked email and DSLReports. My new Dell pc had arrived that day (the 4th). Some of my family hooked up the system for me. The first thing I did was try to get online. I couldn't. I decided to call tech support. I talked to a tech named Mary. Mary and I went thru all my settings. They were all correct. Then towards the end of the conversation, she told me that my area was having an outage because of an ice storm. I tried to tell Mary that my service was working before I switched PCs. She would not listen to me. I tried some other things.. Nothing. The next morning, I got up at 5:00 AM. I decided to try something. And that something worked. I recycled my cable modem and performed a diagnostic test on my network card. That did the trick. I was online with my new PC.
Update (Feb. 2002)
In the last two days, I learned that Comcast is storing information about my Internet activities on a temporary basis. I feel that this is an invasion of my privacy since there is no reason for Comcast to be tracking me. I have nothing to hide. For now, Comcast has supposedly turned off the proxies due to customer's complaints regarding the information gathering practices of Comcast.
Email outages have been pretty common for the last two days or so.
Update (3/17/02)
Comcast's email problems have seemed to cleared up for now. Connection is still pretty reliable. And the proxy is still nowhere in sight.
Update (8/9/02)
I have been on Comcast's network for nearly seven months. Very little problems with connection or email.
Update (10/7/02)
Since at least yesterday, Comcast's email server has been acting up. I don't know whether to keep or delete the account from my email client. It's annoying.
Update (11/30/02)
Since Comcast's mail server acts up so much, I deleted the mail account from my mail client. Don't worry I never used the acct. to send or receive email since I have a domain where I have my main email accts.
Update (10/18/03)
I am getting speeds up to 3000 up and 256 down. I live in one of the markets where the new speeds were introduced.
Update (3/18/04)
Things are pretty good with Comcast. No problems with download/upload speeds or with the connection itself. The only complaint I have is that the email address we had is no longer active. OOPS
Update (4/1/04)
A few days after I posted my update, I started having connectivity issues. It has to be either my router or cable modem. The router is a wired Linksys modem (4-port). The modem is an old COM21 that I rent from Comcast. I will probably replace both soon (when spare cash is available).
Update (4/20/04)
After several dropped connections over the past month, I have decided to purchase a new cable modem. I am no longer going to rent my cable modem from Comcast. I am awaiting the arrival of a Motorola Surfboard SB5100.
Update (4/27/04)
I got the Motorola Surfboard SB5100 installed Sat. AM, 4/24/04, after a dropped connection. (For those of you who don't know this - call Comcast at 1-800-951-0264) to get your new cable modem registered and all that good stuff  ) It took about ten minutes to get everything registered and the new modem provisioned. The only issue I had was download speeds. I was getting download speeds of less than 1 mbit. I knew something was not right. I tried for three days to get some help in the Comcast forum here at BBR.. I had no luck. After a failed attempt to just connect with the modem, I decided it was time to call Comcast. My problem was solved in a matter of a couple of minutes. I needed to recycle both the modem and router for 30 seconds. That's all it was. My first speed test I got 2900 down.
Update 1/14/2005
I have had very few problems since last April. I added a 16-port switch with no problem. The only glitch I had was on Wed., Jan 5th. My cable modem service was down. We had an ice storm here on the night of Jan. 4th. Something must have happened to cause my router to go down. With a call to Comcast, the problem was resolved on Thurs., Jan. 6th.
Update 4/12/2005
Comcast has been having a lot of DNS issues within the last week. There have two major outages.. one last week and one tonight. The only site I can access is BBR. Good thing it is my default homepage.
Update 4/14/2005
There was another outage last night. I hope that the DNS issue is resolved soon.
Update 6/16/2007
I have not had any major issues in a long time.
Update 7/27/2007
I need to add that we have CDV. We've had it for nearly a year. We've had very few issues with it. I think that the Panasonic phones work better with it than the V-Tech phones.
Update 10/1/2007
We've been having issues with the internet and phone the last few days. It all started on Tues., Sept. 25th. Both services have been intermittently out. The problem begins in the early afternoon until late in the evening. Several calls have been made to Comcast, who says it is a problem on their end. We have not been given an ETA of when it will be fixed.
Update 10/4/1007
We are still having issues with the cable and the phone. I think that Comcast is now telling us it is our problem. I get great coverage between the hours of 11:00 PM and 11:00 AM. It's a traffic issue on Comcast's end. We are talking about dumping HSI and Digital Voice. I don't care about the phone but I do care about how I access the internet. DSL sucks out here and I won't do dial-up. We pay way too much for the three services... over $170.
Update 12/14/07
We canceled Comcast back in October. We now have DSL and satellite TV and phone service thru AT&T.
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