 Review by tao 
UPDATED: 270 days ago
member for 7.8 years, 3410 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Lansing, MI
 $77 per month (12 month contract)
 about 5 days
 "Internet connection is fast most of the time"
 "They keep screwing up my bill"
 "I am looking elsewhere for TV and Internet"
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Install Co-ordination:
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(ratings match consensus)
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Over the years I have migrated from dial-up to DSL to cable. From the standpoint of service, nothing has been better than using a local ISP for dial-up. I general, the larger the company, the poorer the service. Comcast is the largest company I have ever used for Internet service. I also use them to provide me with television programming, so that will be reviewed here as well.
First sore point is the billing. I received a mail informing me that Comcast was offering TV and Internet for $33 each. At the time I had no personal Internet connection or TV so this deal swung things toward getting it. After three months, the bills showed charges for regular rates. When I called Comcast about this, the net result was they reconfigured my account for a modem I did not have. This took fives days of no connections to figure out. Nice that the TV still worked. Anyway, got it so I could pay the 33/33 bill, which is actually $76 with equipment rental and taxes. Finally, after the five days, I got to talk to a weekend CSR who actually knew what he was doing and he explained what had happened.
Next bill I get is again for regular charges and no credit for my downtime. I again called Comcast and the CSR knew nothing about any 33/33 deal. She placed a note in my account and set the bill to be for 33/33, don't know what was done, don't care.
Next bill is again for regular rates. I called and talked to a couple of people without any results. Then I was able to talk to a CSR who suggested that going into the local Comcast office might be helpful. At the local office, the CSR was helpful and did know about the 33/33 offer; however, the billing system did not allow the CSR to give me that billing rate. The CSR was able to set up my account such that the Internet was billed at $33, but the CSR had to set up the TV at regular rate and then put a credit in file which would bring the price down to $33 for TV as well.
Service: Internet is generally fast, but sometimes is maddeningly slow. After a time, my Zyxel router stopped working, this was due to some change at Comcast which rendered me unable to connect through my router. In fairness to Comcast, this was a firmware issue with the DHCP communication in my router; however, the router did work with Comcast for a couple of months. (This is a puzzle detailed in the Zyxel forum) Anyway, I switched routers and was able to connect, but now the Internet was slow. I decided to switch my DNS server configuration away from the Comcast DNS servers and that improved the connection speed. There still exist times of maddening slowness, detailed in my speed tests from DSLR.
Television: I have digital cable, the television service is mostly excellent, but the installation was hacked and I had to fix it. I have a finished basement and the ceiling had to be removed to run cable. The ceiling is zero clearance to the joists and the connection was being run across the joists. The installer simple left a cable loop from the splitter to the crappy hole he drilled in my oak floor, he did not run it through the joists, nor did he attach the cable to any joists. I wound up having to buy a set of tools to make cable ends to fix the installation, there is nothing I can do about the hole in the floor. In essence, Comcast's 'free' installation is neither free, or really worth bothering with if you care about your home. If you want cable to one room fine, but you will be better off wiring your own house for cable and making Comcast 'fix' your installation with signal boosters as needed to maintain a proper signal level. One sign of poor signal is pixelation or blockiness onscreen.
Switching channels is too slow.
Parental controls are only available on the TV connected to the digital cable box.
Comcast allows you to create a set of favorite channels, but Comcast will also change channel lineups which can mess up your favorites, which you have to do manually. Nor does Comcast inform you when they add channels. These things are mentioned, but only because I have a Tivo box which notices these things for me.
Sometimes there is ghosting in the TV images and sometimes the images get blocky or pixelated, even with a booster.
Comcast does not include the Big Ten Network, which DirectTV and The Dish do.
Comcast is moving the moving the channels containing local material, like city council meetings and school board meetings, off of the analog channels and up to where Digital Cable, or a converter box is needed to view this content. Comcast will provide people with a converter box for one year, afterward, the box will cost $4 per month. I believe the long range Comcast plan is to dump local content, because most folks can't, or won't, pay the $4 fee. Thank you deregulation.
Oh yeah, and the damn remote gets lost all the time. 
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