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 Review by Chuck22 
UPDATED: 24 days ago
member for 6 years, 2152 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,UT
 $48 per month
 "Faster than dialup. Generally do have a connection."
 "Support services could be much better."
 "Is adequate--better than dialup. (I have no other options--no DSL)"
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Comcast is okay. Obviously better than dialup. At my location I have either cable or dialup options. (Neighbors three blocks away can get DSL, but I cannot.) I do considerable research online thus dialup is really not an option. Generally my download speeds are very good. Upload is slow (but my needs are not too great). The few times I needed assistance, I found the Comcast Help Forums to be better help than using Comcast email, chat, or telephone assistance.
Update: Service occasionally down, but when calling support, nobody knows about any outage in "my area". Only service suggestions given so far were to shut down, then reboot (modem first, then pc); to wait an hour or two and see if service is restored; and (this one takes the cake!) use a dial-up service until cable comes back on! (My feelings about Comcast are not as good as when I initially wrote this review.)
Update: Service considerably more stable, reliable and generally better. Have nothing to complain about. (But faster uploads would be nice...)
Update(2): Had connection problems, Comcast finally sent out tech rep who found modem was intermittent (6 years old and dying). Replaced modem. New modem increased upload speed almost 6X. Hooray for Comcast!
Update(3): Still with Comcast, service here remains good. Rarely any outage. Both download and upload speeds have increased. No complaints!
Update(4): Comcast still working for me, and still the best in my area. Probably will stay with them until something better comes along.
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 Review by jayelham
UPDATED: 24 days ago
member for 7.7 years, 1235 visits, last login: a few hours ago
East Lansing,Ingham,MI
$59 per month
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Great speed (potential) but it depends on your neighbors ... Love the speed, hate the price, but if ya wanna play, ya gotta pay
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Review by DTBurns
UPDATED: 27 days ago
member for 8.7 years, 96 visits, last login: 14 days ago
Alexandria,Alexandria City,VA
$69 per month
"None"
"Inconsistant speeds and line congestion"
"Comcast executives needs to be locked up for committing fraud"
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Comcast sales sold me and they started billing me for the new ULTRA service. I purchased the modem ( DOCSIS 3.0 ) they recommended.
A week and after at least 10 calls with Comcast later I was told by their technical support department they didn't offer this as a service in my area. On all of the prior calls with technical support no one told me this they just kept telling me in must be a problem on "my end."
Bad sales and bad customer support. FCC needs to do something about as this is just an example of how Comcast rips off the public.
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Review by Adam912
Posted: 28 days ago
member for 28 days, 2 visits, last login: 16 days ago
Berwyn,Cook,IL
$180 per month
"My Family loves the Service! Cable and Internet!"
"Pricey"
"Good overall"
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I convinced my family to take Comcast over Dish in January 2009. Installation went smoothly, except we had to reschedule for 1 room to be wired (I TOLD THEM WE NEEDED IT!). But once it was done, the mix up was forgiven.
In 10 months, we only had 1 outage, which lasted about 8 hours (area wide). Other than that, the family loves it. We have 4 laptops, Xbox 360, Wii, and 3 Tvs (2 of the HD).
The Speed of Internet we have is the 16M. Works great.
Only thing is....if another service comes out that is similar, but less price, I wont be able to keep my family from switching.
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Review by junueno
Posted: 29 days ago
member for 3.2 years, 25 visits, last login: 22 days ago
Evanston,Cook,IL
$65 per month
"Cable Internet service is fast, when it works."
"Lots of outages, poor customer support, basic cable TV is terrible"
"Impressive speed but it's not reliable and comes at a high cost"
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I've been a Comcast user for about 10 years, more for the Internet service than the cable TV because I also have Dish Network service. I had the basic analog TV package and the high-speed Internet. Comcast charges more for Internet service if you don't have TV service so I thought it would save money in the long run. What I found though was that the analog cable TV is almost unwatchable. Static, intermittent signals, lack of programming choices. You can get a digital service upgrade which requires set-top boxes and I suspect has better picture quality but it's an expensive upgrade.
Internet service was very fast. No complaints about the speed. However, the problem was with service outages which would last between an hour and a few days. The short ones seemed to be affected by weather in some cases or would occur at certain times of the day, sometimes daily. I noticed early on that they were limiting my bandwidth when using P2P, but that practice was stopped a few years ago.
Comcast customer service is not what I would call helpful. First off, their outage reporting system often doesn't update quickly enough to fill you in on problems in your area. Sometimes you have to talk to someone in technical support for that information. Also, a lot of their support team is outsourced to other countries which negatively effects how information is communicated. First solution is always to unplug the cable modem, wait 30 seconds and then reconnect. If I hadn't memorized that my now, I wouldn't have bothered calling customer support and waiting for an actual person to talk to. After that rigamarole, they will check for service outages, reset your connection or whatever voodoo they do. However, it mostly comes down to poor line quality and aging backbone systems which can't be solved by a tech support call. They'll offer to send an installer to your house to do line checks and I've done this but still the problems continue.
Last month I switched to AT&T U-verse for a few reasons. I had to ditch satellite because it was becoming too expensive and the equipment was starting to break down. Comcast Digital was more costly than U-verse, and I've heard horror stories about their DVR boxes. Since switching, I've been having less outages because U-verse uses underground optical wiring that isn't affected by weather conditions. I did experience a drop in bandwidth speed, but not having to deal with Comcast has been a real relief.
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 Review by IT Guy
UPDATED: 29 days ago
member for 5.3 years, 1511 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Las Cruces,Dona Ana,NM
 Business customer
$347 per month
"Service has improved considerably since my last review"
"SMC cable modems still have problems, seem to get overwhelmed easily"
"Reliability has improved. Outages not as frequent as before"
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Our business connection has stabilized since my initial review, mostly due to addition of management equipment to stem the problem of traffic overwhelming our SMC modem. Area/city wide outages have been less frequent and down-time not as long.
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Review by ricklg
UPDATED: 30 days ago
member for 5.7 years, 1818 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Laurel,Anne Arundel,MD
$43 per month (month by month)
 about 1 days
"Connection Speed, Reliability"
"Tech Support"
"Quite satisfied overall"
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Latest Review at the bottom.
6/15/2004 Original Review:
After having various dial up services since 1992 (remember Prodigy at 2400 bps?) I decided to try Comcast HSI. Dial up was OK, but I had seen what broadband was like at work. In February 2004 I saw the Best Buy offer for Comcast HSI at $19.99 for 3 months ($42.95 after), Motorola SB5100 (free with rebate), Comcast self install kit (free with rebate), and a $75 Best Buy Gift card. The gift card was good for a router and a few bucks more. This looked like a good deal so I took the plunge.
Self install was a snap (sort of). I already had Comcast Cable TV service so there was no need for a technician to come out. I spent about an hour cabling up and running the self install software. I ran the connection software and it wouldn't connect. I tried and tried. I finally called Comcast to register the modem MAC address. Best Buy supposedly registered the modem with Comcast when I bought it, but Comcast had no record of it. After a few calls to get the right MAC address installed and their database updated (twice!) everything worked fine. The Indian lady was very hard to understand tho. It was about 6 hours from opening the box to being on line.
The service is 3Mb down, 256Kb up. The DSLreports benchmark shows 3.1 Mb down, 240Kb up. This has been consistent for the 4 months I've had Comcast HSI. It is sometimes a bit pokey (down to 2Mb  ), but I've also seen 4.7Mb at times. I've only been down 3 times in 4 months and one of those times was during a storm where I lost power for 6 hours. The other 2 times were 10 to 45 minutes long. My area is a new installation for Comcast HSI so my mileage may be different than yours.
Tech support is terrible if you don't have a configuration question. I tried the on line chat help to ask about a port 123 (network time) network routing problem. It had been working then it stopped after a month. The chat guy was nasty and clueless. I called the 800 number and the first person I talked to was pleasant, but clueless. Neither knew what I was talking about and assumed I was stupid. I got to the next support level and finally talked to a knowledgeable person. It shouldn't take 3 hours to find someone who understands your question.
Overall I'm quite satisfied. As long as my service remains reliable and I don't have to call tech support I'll be very happy. I have other broadband choices (Millennium Cable and Verizon DSL), but Comcast seems to be the best available. I'm still thinking about the price difference from ATT Worldnet dial up ($16.95/mo) and Comcast, but I think I'm hooked on broadband.
4/15/2005 Update:
After 1 year with Comcast I'm truly hooked on broadband. My service suffered during the October 2004 through January 2005 speed upgrade. There were speed and modem sync problems during that time. Since they announced the upgrade complete in January 2005 I have had nothing but good, reliable service. I now have 4000/384 service with the upgrade. Speed tests consistently show 3700/350 or better.
They have had several bad DNS outages in April 2005, but I put an alternate DNS address in the router and never noticed the problem.
I haven't had to call tech support in a while (thank goodness), but I assume it's as abysmal as ever. I would go with someone else with comparable service and good tech support, but they don't exist.
11/15/2005 Update:
I'm still very satisfied with my Comcast HSI service. The Summer speed upgrades went well. I have been consistently getting 6Mbit/s down and 350Kbits up since August.
I had to call customer service (sigh) in July when a thunderstorm knocked the cable out. I called and found out it was a big outage. Two days later I called again (service rep was surprised I was still out) and got a truck roll 2 days later. The technician was very accommodating and spent about an hour troubleshooting. He determined the problem was in the distribution system. He put in a work order, but he couldn't confirm a completion date. Sigh. Not his fault, that's just the way it works. Late the next day my Internet connection came up.
I was without Internet service for 5 days. I can't blame them for the thunderstorm, but anything past a day or two (especially when it's in their distribution system) seems grossly inefficient to me. This outage also affected my neighbors so I would have expected a bit more alacrity in their response.
Besides this act of God, the service has been reasonably solid with only 3 outages in the last 6 months that lasted about an hour each. I don't think this is too bad.
Although I can't complain about the Internet connection, the price is still a bit high. I'll consider going to Verizon FIOS if the price is right.
4/15/2007 Update:
I still can't complain. My ratings remain the same. Service since my last update has been pretty solid. Download speed is very close to the advertised 6 Mb/s and I'm seeing 640Kb/s upload with the upgrade a few months ago. Power Boost works fine. There were a couple of short down times, but I guess they have to do maintenance sometime They didn't bother me in any event.
I haven't needed to call them for anything recently, but my previous opinions about tech support remain. I'm still biased and they haven't done anything to change that. (Not necessarily their fault, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth.)
Verizon finally put a connection box in front of my house, so I'm definitely FIOS ready at the curb. Verizon prices are commensurate with Comcast prices so I'm not ready to explore new ground by changing (yet). It's good to know I have a viable alternative to Comcast if they get unreliable or more expensive than Verizon. Comcast is making waves about ditching analog cable. If they try to charge me for the digital TV box(es) that may be my clue to go FIOS. I'm hanging tough for now.
5/25/2008 Update:
My opinion remains unchanged. The network has been reliable except for when Mother Nature causes problems. These outages were taken care of quickly. I made 1 service call during the last rating period. I asked for a line tech and got an installer. When he got here he told me I should have asked for a line tech...sigh. I fixed the problem myself (corroded connector). The installer magnanimously said he wouldn't charge me.
I'm still quite satisfied although tech support still needs a lot of work (but you already knew that!)
3/27/2009 Update:
I'm still quite pleased with the Comcast service and reliability. My service was upgraded to 12Mbit/1Mbit in December with no price increase (still $42.95). This upgrade is working very well. I am still using my original SB5100 modem (I'm glad I didn't rent it!).
The 250GB cap doesn't affect me yet so there's no reason to complain. I am concerned that if I use more streaming video that this could be a problem in the future. I was lucky to not need to call tech support in the past year so I avoided that frustration.
I received a Christmas gift of an HD TV. This has got me thinking again. Comcast HD choices are severely limited in my area despite advertising to the contrary. So far it's OK, but my choice of TV providers could affect my choice of ISP.
10/28/2009 Update:
Comcast has been very reliable since the last update. Because I haven't needed to call customer support I'm still quite happy.
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Review by revolverfm
UPDATED: 30 days ago
member for 30 days, 0 visits, last login: 30 days ago
Atlanta,Fulton,GA
$39 per month (24 month contract)
about 15 days
"When the sun is out, connection is great"
"30 minutes of rain, no internet for two hours or more"
"Tier 1 tech support horrible. Constant outages due to rain."
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I have been with Comcast for about 10 weeks and my internet service has already been down more than it was in the four years that I was with Newnan Utilities in the small town of Newnan Ga. The problem is on the street, not in my home, but Comcast kept insisting that I stay home from work so they could send a tech to do an outdoor repair. When they finally got me to a tier two tech, somebody came out and acknowledged that water was getting into their equipment on the street and said it would be turned in to maintenance. No maintenance ticket was ever created.
Last night they acknowledged there was an outage, and said someone would be out while it was still raining so they could inspect the equipment. This morning, no internet.
Would NOT recommend Comcast service to anyone.
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 Review by shadowshark
UPDATED: 31 days ago
member for 7.7 years, 1907 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Lake Orion,Oakland,MI
$60 per month
about 14 days
"lot fast than dialup"
"two year wait to update node in area two weeks to install"
"lot fast than dialup"
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My Other Reviews ·MSN
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down graded the cable to limited basic (local channels plus HGTV, Travel, HSN, local government + school) now cost $63 ( it would be $62 with out the cable (15 surcharge)
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 Review by onebadmofo
UPDATED: 31 days ago
member for 7.6 years, 2989 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Reading,Berks,PA
Contract price not specified.
"Stable, reliable, it works."
"Can be pricey."
"In my area, it's prety much flawless. It's not cheap, but it friggin works."
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People say they're customer service sucks. Well, the actual service is so good I never have to call them for anything...so I wouldn't know if the customer service sucks or not.
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