 Review by Phylop 
UPDATED: 2 years ago
member for 6.9 years, 1523 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 Reston,Fairfax,VA
 $60 per month
 about 3 days
 "Download speed, uptime, good pings"
 "Upload speed, customer service, price$$$, newsgroups could be better"
 "You'll eventually get quality..."
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(ratings below consensus)
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I've been using comcast for years, pretty much since they bought out Reston, Va, but up until now I haven't technically been a customer. Before I was living with my mom, but now that I've moved out and I have an account of my own, I'm now a certified Comcast customer, I guess that's what you can call it.
At the old residence when we first got service the caps were 1.5mbit down and 128kbit up, very slow compared to what I have now. Then it moved on to 1.5/256, then 3/256, then 3/384, then 4/384, and then later they introduced higher speed tiers for $10 more, which were 6/768 or 8/768, and finally just before we moved out they started testing the 16/1 service.
Over the years (at my old residence) I experienced periods of time that spanned months where I would have "on and off" connectivity or I would get dial-up speeds. I would call tech support and complain, they would always tell me the same crap, "It's a problem on your end," "Your computer could be causing the issue," "Do you have a router? That's probably causing your disconnects." Every time I called tech support it was a problem on their end, because I don't call tech support unless I've tried everything on my end. Sometimes I would eventually be able to get a tech to come out to my house, but most of the time the tech would tell me the same crap the people on the phone would, or "Your signals are okay, I can't see what the problem is" or I would get some redneck that doesn't know coax from ethernet.
In my experience Comcast's tech support (and probably a lot of other ISPs/busineses) is filled with people that won't actually consider that the person calling tech support knows what they are talking about. Not every person calling tech support needs to be told where to find the "Start" button or that "Power cycling your modem should fix the problem." I've had dozens of Comcast technicians come out over the years, most of them were contractors for Comcast, and most of them were complete idiots, I can only think of 2 of them that would actually listen to me, and seemed qualified for the job. You can tell when your technician is an idiot, they just blab crap Comcast told them to say, rather than actually saying something that makes sense and that could possibly be related to fixing the issue.
There are a few good technicians out there, but you have to call tech support 800 times before you get a technician that, #1 is smart enough to be doing his job because he isn't just following the training he got when he was hired, and #2 will listen to the customer when the customer says "This is a problem on Comcast's end, I have tried everything on my end to try to resolve the issue and I am 100% sure Comcast is having an issue outside of my residence that Comcast needs to fix." If you can ever find a technician that will listen to you, you'll have a chance at fixing your problem.
Here is the experience/problem I had with setting up Comcast in my new apartment: »[Speed] Comcast won't give me my cap
Basically, the problem is that Comcast's tech support isn't aware of what service is available to it's customers. If I call my local Reston Comcast office, they know what service is available to me (if they ask their supervisor), but if I call the Comcast 800 number (Which I need to use a lot of them time because the local office only takes calls during regular business hours, and even forwards calls to the 800 number in some cases) I get a completely different story about what speeds/prices I can get. I think this is a major problem with Comcast, and it is the reason for my bad move in experience.
On the positive side of things, now that I've finally resolved the confusion Comcast was having about my 16/1 service I've been pretty happy. It's only been about a month since I moved in, but I haven't had any disconnects, and I've been getting my full caps.
All in all, Comcast in Reston is great on the network side of things, but on the customer service side of things, you might as well be calling a different ISP's tech support, because they have just as much of a clue about your service with Comcast.
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