Review by oldhand 
UPDATED: 2.2 years ago
member for 6.5 years, 1745 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Saugus,Essex,MA
 $30 per month
 about 11 days
 "Flexible pricing; 7 Mb/s speed; Responsiveness; Mail/web site space"
 "Inconsistant support services"
 "Low price; Rock-solid performance"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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The complete review includes the INITIAL INSTALL, followed by 15 short UPDATES covering over 4 years of service:
INITIAL INSTALL: I purchased a Motorola SB5100 modem at Circuit City in April 2003 for "free, after rebate, when combined with a first-time Comcast HSI installation", but coordination with the designated installation contact failed. I had to call Comcast directly to get an installation scheduled, but then the modem rebate was cancelled because the installation appointment didn't go through the designated contact. I had to call five more times to get the rebate problem resolved. Although the Comcast installer arrived on time and got 4 green lights, the account could not be activated because it came up "cancelled". It took Comcast 3-days to UN-cancel the account and permit an on-line setup. Unfortunately, the Internet still wasn't reachable. It took 4 more days to "set up" my account after Comcast determined that my customer database record contained some blanks and bad data.
The initial caps were 2000/300 (per DocsDiag) producing speeds of 1920/290. At the end of the 30-day trial the caps dropped to 1800/300 and the speeds dropped to 1720/240, but they were above the advertised 1500/256 rates. The receive level also dropped to -16 dBmV. After two on-site service calls, the Comcast techs concluded that there was nothing that they could do because I lived in an apartment building and the landlord wouldn't allow an upgrade of the internal coaxial cables. As there seemed to be no "normal" Comcast solution, I tried adding a +7dB bi-directional drop-amp to solve the level problem. Although the resulting level and noise readings looked good, sync loss began to occur every 2-3 hours. As a temporary work-around, I moved the modem right next to the only cable entry point in the apartment (thereby eliminating 50' of coax) and installed a passive splitter producing a -9dB Rx level, then ran 50' of Ethernet cable to my router/PC. The downside was that I could no longer monitor the modem lights directly or use the modem's convenient cut-off switch. On the upside, the performance problems abated.
Comcast e-mail was initially a problem. My accounts were flooded with spam before I sent a single message or gave an address to anyone. I tried creating totally random e-mail account names, but experienced the same results.
I guess you're probably asking, if I had so many problems with Comcast, why did I stay with them, especially since I installed Verizon DSL on the same day for a similar 30-day trial period and found their service to be stable at 1470/133. The answer is really quite simple -- the cost. Verizon DSL was $30/mo while Comcast HSI was $20/mo for the first three months. Even so, near the end of the 30-day trial I called Comcast to cancel in favor of Verizon since Comcast was scheduled to go up to $43/mo when the 3-month trial ended. When they switched me to their Retention Office, I was offered $25/mo for the remaining 5-1/2 months of the year after the $20/mo promotional rate ended. As I live on a VERY tight budget, this was enough to get me to stay with Comcast and try to solve the remaining connectivity problems.
UPDATE (day 95): The modem rebates arrived (3-weeks late). I had to call the Retention Office to remind them to implement the $25/mo reduced rate. The speeds dropped to 1580/260. I received an unsolicited call from an installation supervisor offering to install a separate coax run for the Internet connection if I could get the building owner to reconsider his prohibition. I am still working on my landlord and remain hopeful.
UPDATE (day 125): Although an e-mail spam blocking option has just been added, it didn't work because Comcast set it up improperly. I kept calling on this issue, but without a positive result. Some of the mail accounts hang when attempting to download.
UPDATE (day 225): Comcast caps were increased to 3300/256, which produced 3120/240 speeds. The Comcast Retention Office refused to extend the $25/mo rate into 2004 to keep me from switching to Verizon DSL.
UPDATE (day 245): Called Comcast to cancel HSI as of 12/31/2003. I was planning to order Verizon DSL from BestBuy (including $13 for shipping the modem, $23 total for 3-months of DSL service). Comcast retention offered me 3-months at $21.48/mo. I accepted.
UPDATE (day 260): The upload speed varied widely (from 80 to 250 Kbps).
UPDATE (day 265): Upload speed dropped (50 to 90 Kbps). Calls to Tech Supt were a waste of time. My request to pass the problem to the NOC was begrudgingly agreed to.
UPDATE (day 275): The NOC reported that all was well, but then I discovered that Tech Supt didn't tell them there was an upload speed drop. I requested that they take another look.
UPDATE (day 300): The upload speed problem was fixed, plus the downstream power level and S/N were both improved by 5dB to 37dB and -4dB respectively. Now if I could just find someone in Tech Support who knew how to fix my e-mail accounts...
UPDATE (day 335): As the discounted price was expiring, I called to cancel HSI service because of price and continuing e-mail problems. They offered to fix the mail problem plus offered a reduced price of $32.95/mo for another 5-months. I accepted, conditional on the mail problem being fixed within a few days.
UPDATE (day 337): E-mail fixed.
UPDATE (day 425): As the end of the discount period was in sight, and as Verizon had raised its speed, I ordered another 30-day trial of DSL.
UPDATE (day 485): I called Comcast to see if they would extend the discount to keep my business -- they said NO, and that I would have to wait 6-months to be offered another discount. I spent the next few days preparing a change-of-email-address list for those people and organizations where I had used my Comcast account as a contact.
UPDATE (day 490): I called Comcast to cancel HSI because basic Verizon DSL was cheaper at $30/mo, and because it provided a higher upload speed (384 Kbps) that I wanted for teleconferencing. Comcast Retention offered to match the $30/mo Verizon price for 3-months, and match the 384 Kbps upload speed. I rejected the offer. When they extended the offer to 12-months, I accepted. A few minutes later, the increased speed was activated. Performance testing produced 3990/365, which showed an unexpected increase in download speed as well. Signal levels are now: -5 dB Rx; +40 dBmv Tx; 37 dB S/N, and I couldn't be happier. I'll cancel Verizon DSL tomorrow.
UPDATE (day 630): Comcast increased my speed caps to 6600/768 for free. Speed test results produce 6320/743. I'm still at the discounted price, and service is still rock-stable.
UPDATE (day ~1,300): Things have been relatively stable for the last 2-years. I negotiated 8,000/768 service for a year at the same $30/mo price, but when that ended, I had to pay $42.95 for one month before I was able to negotiate the price back down to $30/mo. I use an old router/firewall that limits my WAN throughput to 7.3Mbps, but when I bypass it speed tests show up to 23,300/1,680. The only remaining irritants are occasional inconsistent Domain Name Server response (I manually switch to non-Comcast sites when this occurs), occasional short periods of packet loss problems, and spam filters that ignore problem e-mail sources no matter how many times I report them as SPAM from my e-mail web page. In summary, I'm still happy with Comcast HSI at $30/mo. However, I would look elsewhere if I was faced with the standard $42.95/mo price -- my limited budget won't support it.
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