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UPDATE: As of 7/1/2015, I am back with Xfinity voice. They made a deal with me that I could not refuse. Also, the call quality and features have gotten noticeably better. UPDATE: 2/172014: About a year ago, I dropped Xfinity Voice and moved over to a $9.99 Vonage unlimited plan. Xfinity Voice was quickly moving up in cost towards what I would have been paying for an AT&T landline. Since I don't use my home phone much, Vonage makes perfect sense. It is good enough for my needs. I am glad I dropped Xfinity Voice. UPDATE: 12/24/2011: I am still a Comcast Xfinity Voice customer. Outages are rare, it continues to work with my alarm system and it works. The price has increased a little bit but I am still a happy camper. UPDATE: 11/15/2009: Comcast Voice is still moving along fairly well. Of course, you have the rare cable outages which affect everything. That is to be expected. Thank God they are usually short and infrequent. I noticed that the cost is going up a bit so I may consider doing a trial with a VOIP service like Vonage. UPDATE: 11/15/2009: Voice service is still pretty solid. I am still a happy camper. UPDATE: 5/6/2009 I am on a bundled special now for a triple play. The phone service is still rock solid and I love the fact I can fax over it with such ease. Outages are rare and I must say that they usually last for a brief moment. Overall, I am happy with the service and glad I made the switch for the super-expensive telco option. I've had Comcast Voice for some months now and feel I am ready to review it so here we go: BEGINNING OF PROCESS: I was paying $70+ a month for AT&T unlimited local & long distance. By having that disease funds-are-low, I needed to find ways to cut expenses. I checked out Comcast to see if DV was in my area. It was and they offered a 1-year promotion for $19.95 a month plus $3 for the EMTA / modem box. Cool. So I called Comcast to get the ball rolling. Then, we ran into a snag (expected with Comcast, of course!). Comcast said they would have problems transferring the AT&T number over because the AT&T account was in my name and the Comcast account is in my wife's name. So, Comcast suggested that we work on getting the account information updated at AT&T to reflect my wife's name. We called AT&T. They had to run a credit check on my wife and I believe they said it would be a charge for it. We decided to just leave it as it is and go back to Comcast. We called Comcast again. They said we could try going in person to a Comcast office and changing the Comcast account name to match up with my information. They couldn't make changes over the phone. We took a trip to a CC office. The agent that assisted said he could not change the account info without closing down the account and we would lose any promotions we have on the account. Great! More time wasted. Sooooo, we called Comcast back again and got another representative. This young lady told us "it rarely happens where the number cannot be ported and that is on AT&T's side but we usually get it ported over if address information match up." Great. I am happy I reached someone who knew what they were talking about but, dang, did it have to take numerous phone calls and a trip to Comcast's office? Ok, we got the number ported and received an install date. On installation day, the tech that came out was very professional and wired up our phone outlets so the EMTA would light up all of the outlets. He also rewired our home alarm system to work over Digital Voice. He confirmed dial tone and we were able to place and receive calls. **** AROUND 7/1/2008: **** We had a technical issue and called Comcast about it. The issue was that calls coming in sounded distorted but the person who called heard us fine. We called Comcast to do some standard troubleshooting and they said they will send out a tech. Then, they called us back on the CDV line and claim they left a voicemail because we were actually having an outage. A question comes to mind: If I am having voice issues where I cannot hear callers' voices clearly, how would I be able to understand a message from Comcast left at my CDV number?? So, this resulted in me taking time off of work and sitting through a cancelled appointment. When I called Comcast about it, they said "we left a message for you". Again, how can I understand the message if my issue would not let me hear incoming voice well? Anyway, the phone line issue cleared up but during some recommended troubleshooting from a CDV user on DSLReports, I tried taking the backup battery out. Guess what? There wasn't a backup battery in the EMTA. It wasn't installed with one. Great! Battle number two: Getting Comcast out to deliver a backup battery. They missed the first appointment and then after I called them and laid into them a bit, we got someone to deliver and install it a couple of days later. Bottom line: It is a great service and has a ton of useful calling features including being able to fax via CDV. The bad part as always with Comcast is dealing with their Customer Service department. It is terrible. I cringe everytime I have to call them because they just plain out suck. member for 20.2 years, 2899 visits, last login: 4 days ago updated 7.1 years ago |