Jump on the Comcast Bandwagon or still with DSL

Zuhaib

Zuhaib

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San Francisco, CA
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So the last few days in the IRC chan i have been debating outloud If i should make the switch and I thought fuck it lets take it to the forum.
Right now i have DSLX 6mbps/756kbps which is great other then its slow compared to cable speeds. But they dont fuss as of yet anything I do which is great.

But things get messy with my other services like phone at Sat. Right now DirecTV is $85 :eek: and Phone is $75 and both are out of wack but calling ATT to try to get your service explain is like pulling teeth.
I can get both fixed with a call and lower them but...

I am seeing Triple Play being advertised for like $119 which is faster internet, unlimited calling, DVR, HBO etc etc. The only problem is I wonder how is the ISP aspect of it all. Do they still push the 250GB hard cap? What about Bit Torrent? Is just using the new BT ports all that is needed or would I be forced to use encrypting.
Thanks
Zuhaib
 
Fuck comcast.

Fuck them.

Heres a good outline of my experiences with Comcast (in the bay area):

Their commercials are flat out lies. They do NOT have more HD than DirecTV. And as a DirecTV customer moving to Comcast Bay Area I can assure you you WILL see a difference. They have 30 channels TOTAL in HD. Im a student and get about 25, the others are premium. At home with DirecTV (I believe we paid about $85/mo also) we got soo much more HD channels, about 50 or 60. And we didnt have any premium movie channels.

Comcast is NOT cheap. They say they dont charge a fee for HD (as Satellite does), but then for the life of me I cant figure out what that $7/mo "HD Fee" on my bill every month is. Again, lies.

Their customer service is filled with blundering idiots who do not know how to listen to teh customers. It took me and another guy 8 phone calls to them to get the account switched from him to me. DirecTVs customer service is extremely good compared to this,neverhad any problems in the 5 or 6 years ive had them. Infact theyve exceeded expectations, they even sent out replacement receivers w/ overnight shipping free of charge to us!.

Their cable service has a terrible connection, the TV goes blank at least 2 times a week and the internet dies at least 3 times a month.

As far as the bandwidth cap...I dont use torrents too much (usually direct downloads) but i havent had any problems using torrent software on private trackers...Dont know if the 250GB cap is true but ive heard of it. The ONLY positive thing I will say about COmcast is that when the internet is working, its pretty fast. I get ~8-15Mb/s down and 1-1.5Mb/s up depending on the time of day.

That tripple play package you mention is an introductory price. I am paying Comcast's full price. Last month I paid $128, and it is for 6mb/s internet and their lowest package of television (and HD). The TV package is much worse than DirecTV/s $40/mo package too, that package has about 20 channels I dont and its cheaper.

Whatever you get from DirecTV...trust me its well worth it over Comcast, especially in the Bay Area. The only thing id suggest is to see if ATT Uverse or Verizon FiOS is avaliable in your area. Fiber optic internet is better and cheaper than cable.
 
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swraman covered it pretty well.
 
swraman said:
Fuck comcast.

Fuck them.

Heres a good outline of my experiences with Comcast (in the bay area):

Their commercials are flat out lies. They do NOT have more HD than DirecTV. And as a DirecTV customer moving to Comcast Bay Area I can assure you you WILL see a difference. They have 30 channels TOTAL in HD. Im a student and get about 25, the others are premium. At home with DirecTV (I believe we paid about $85/mo also) we got soo much more HD channels, about 50 or 60. And we didnt have any premium movie channels.

Comcast is NOT cheap. They say they dont charge a fee for HD (as Satellite does), but then for the life of me I cant figure out what that $7/mo "HD Fee" on my bill every month is. Again, lies.

Their customer service is filled with blundering idiots who do not know how to listen to teh customers. It took me and another guy 8 phone calls to them to get the account switched from him to me. DirecTVs customer service is extremely good compared to this,neverhad any problems in the 5 or 6 years ive had them. Infact theyve exceeded expectations, they even sent out replacement receivers w/ overnight shipping free of charge to us!.

Their cable service has a terrible connection, the TV goes blank at least 2 times a week and the internet dies at least 3 times a month.

As far as the bandwidth cap...I dont use torrents too much (usually direct downloads) but i havent had any problems using torrent software on private trackers...Dont know if the 250GB cap is true but ive heard of it. The ONLY positive thing I will say about COmcast is that when the internet is working, its pretty fast. I get ~8-15Mb/s down and 1-1.5Mb/s up depending on the time of day.

That tripple play package you mention is an introductory price. I am paying Comcast's full price. Last month I paid $128, and it is for 6mb/s internet and their lowest package of television (and HD). The TV package is much worse than DirecTV/s $40/mo package too, that package has about 20 channels I dont and its cheaper.

Whatever you get from DirecTV...trust me its well worth it over Comcast, especially in the Bay Area. The only thing id suggest is to see if ATT Uverse or Verizon FiOS is avaliable in your area. Fiber optic internet is better and cheaper than cable.
Click to expand...

This is the pith of it.

My version of this is similar. We had an apartment after 2nd year at Berkeley. Had to get internet and the only thing available was comcast.

I didn't know anything about 'em at first but since it's the only one avail to me without expensive up-front DSL setup costs, I decided to go with that.

There was the start of bad decisions.

First thing I noticed was that it was having some extreme cases of lag and downtime. The speed was good when it was up but it would have spurts and hiccups.

2nd thing was that we had some problem in the apartment with the way things were wired (it was like a pre WWII apt). So I asked for a tech to come in and sort the problem. Every single one of the 6 techs was some ghetto latino gang member from some place in Alameda or Alcatraz or what have you and they just came in and fondled some wires and never ever properly told me what the problem was. It wasn't until the 7th tech came in (a Nigerian guy) and found out that voltage in != voltage out, and so he corrected it.

The problem went away after that.

However when I called the customer support reps about the situation before the last tech came in to fix it, I was pulling my hair out and punching the wall.

I know computers, so I didn't ask the tech a stupid question. I explained the problems and possible sources for the problem and specifically asked if a tech could come and fix it. His response? "Did you try restarting your computer?"

Fuck comcast.

I'm so glad to be at home in SD with Time Warner. Believe it or not they are pretty good.

I'd stick with the DSL or try and see if you can get FIOS.

As for torrents and all that, I never had any trouble dl'ing stuff. So long as you use utorrent instead of azureus. I never hit the cap though, so I couldn't tell you about that.
 
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LurkerPatrol said:
This is the pith of it.

My version of this is similar. We had an apartment after 2nd year at Berkeley. Had to get internet and the only thing available was comcast.

I didn't know anything about 'em at first but since it's the only one avail to me without expensive up-front DSL setup costs, I decided to go with that.

There was the start of bad decisions.

First thing I noticed was that it was having some extreme cases of lag and downtime. The speed was good when it was up but it would have spurts and hiccups.

2nd thing was that we had some problem in the apartment with the way things were wired (it was like a pre WWII apt). So I asked for a tech to come in and sort the problem. Every single one of the 6 techs was some ghetto latino gang member from some place in Alameda or Alcatraz or what have you and they just came in and fondled some wires and never ever properly told me what the problem was. It wasn't until the 7th tech came in (a Nigerian guy) and found out that voltage in != voltage out, and so he corrected it.

The problem went away after that.

However when I called the customer support reps about the situation before the last tech came in to fix it, I was pulling my hair out and punching the wall.

I know computers, so I didn't ask the tech a stupid question. I explained the problems and possible sources for the problem and specifically asked if a tech could come and fix it. His response? "Did you try restarting your computer?"

Fuck comcast.

I'm so glad to be at home in SD with Time Warner. Believe it or not they are pretty good.

I'd stick with the DSL or try and see if you can get FIOS.

As for torrents and all that, I never had any trouble dl'ing stuff. So long as you use utorrent instead of azureus. I never hit the cap though, so I couldn't tell you about that.
Click to expand...

at home (Riverside CA) i have time warner also, which is just far better than comcast for internet and service. but comcast has a monopoly in berkeley, and no directv since we all live in apts here.
 
Fuck local monopolies. Fuck them so hard, and fuck anyone who feels otherwise.
 
swraman said:
at home (Riverside CA) i have time warner also, which is just far better than comcast for internet and service. but comcast has a monopoly in berkeley, and no directv since we all live in apts here.
Click to expand...

I had Time Warner at Syracuse (and will probably have them again, they have a monopoly in upstate NY) and they weren't bad, ended up with a free month of Internet because they missed their install date.
 
I use to ave comcast and agree with these guys. The internet was pretty shady for me as when they installed it was very fast, but then a month later it slowed down. They purposely make it fast when installing it, but then later slow it down.

I also have two computers in the house, one for me and one for my dad. My computer had internet connection, but my dad never had connection. They said the router was messed up, which was odd since I just bought it and worked in our last apartment. Four technicians came and could not figure it what was wrong, pretty much had no idea and just wanted to get out of there.

After the increasing fees, at one point it got to $150 a month, we decided to call it quits and switch to Dish/DSL.

When I switch the DSL, guess what? The guy looked at the connections and found one of the connection from outside the house was disconnected. The guys fixed it and my dad finally has internet.

But recently Dish increased the price of our package by 20 bucks, even tough the deal was for a fixed price and would never change. Well, turns out they void that deal and increased it without our knowledge. No way in hell I was going back to comcast tough, but I checked with Direct TV and their price were pretty similar to Dish. So we negotiated with Dish and agreed on just a $10 increase and free HBO and SHO for three months.

Maybe in the future if Dish increases their prices, I'll try out Direct TV as I heard good things about it. Right now, I'm just tired of switching companies.

P.S. To be honest I hardly watch TV as most of the show I can get it online for free. The TV is just for my parents, because they don't have the patience or knowledge to watch stuff online. If I get my own apartment, I don't think I'll get TV service, I'll just hook my laptop to my TV.
 
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Comcast cut my friends cable in high school when they were late on the bill, by sending a guy onto her property and LITERALLY CUTTING the cable. She had to have all the wires redone because they chopped them.
 
Oh one more thing: Comcast murdered my father, and raped my mother. Bastards.
 
I hate Comcast with a passion but there is no denying their internet speeds and reliability for the money. 12MBs package is standard now for $50/month in my area. I get consistent 17k down/7k up with that package according to speedtest.net.

That triple play offer is only for the first year so too isn't it? And then they begin to rape you and you won't leave because of the internet speed.

I am pretty happy right now with Comcast internet, DirecTV, and ATT wireless for my cell phone. No home phone as I haven't needed one since Cable internet. I just couldn't imagine going back to DSL. Once you got cable you never go back unless you are moving to Fiber-optics. U-verse isn't available in my area nor is FIOS so that option isn't there plus I hear it is quite pricey still.

For reference sake, I used to be with Comcast for internet and TV and was paying $160 with no HD. When I bought my new HD capable TV, I switched to DirecTV for TV and I am getting more channels w/ Showtime + HD, and 2 HD boxes for $30 less a month total than I was paying with Comcast total. It is insane how much Comcast tacks on over the years and then one day you realize how much money you are spending for old technology because you are still paying the introductory rate. Got 4MB/s speeds with cable internet as soon as it was available ages ago for $50 a month. 2 years later there lowest speed was 6MB/s for $30/month...they gave me the 6MB/s speed but I was still paying $50/month that new customers were getting 12MB/s speed.
 
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swraman said:
Dont know if the 250GB cap is true but ive heard of it
Click to expand...


250Gb is actually pretty generous compared to the 60Gb/month other ISP's enforce. At 250Gb a month, that means you must average around 8Gb/day in order to hit that ceiling - in which case, you must be a filthy pirate!

I've Comcast at home. As far as internet in concerned, I'm satisfied with their service. Just pray that you won't come across an issue that requires a call to customer service. The people there are some of the rudest mofos who barely squeaked by with a GED you will encounter. My best guess is that they come from New Jersey! It's one of those rare instances where you'd rather wish to speak with a gentleman from Culcutta.
 
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I must be the only person who hasn't been screwed over by Comcast. My parents have had Comcast Internet (no cable TV) for years now (they're way outside DSL range), and I've never heard them complain about it. I was still living there when it was first installed, and it went fine (I didn't let them do anything except for bring the cable into the wiring closet). The half-a-dozen or so times a year the internet went out, it was usually during the middle of the night that I noticed, and the techs then didn't seem too bad, although the day techs were useless. A few times storms brought down the lines, and they were always fast to fix them. At least back then, there were no caps and they didn't block any ports, but things may well have changed. We routinely got 10Mbit down and 1-2Mbit up.

Still, when I moved to Davis, I stuck with a small local company, rather than risk it with Comcast (or AT&T). I'll gladly take less speed and higher prices for knowledgeable techs, phones that get answered by a real (human) tech right away, and advanced features like static IP and custom reverse DNS. The only way I'd switch back to one of the big players is if FIOS became available.
 
And to answer the torrent question:

I upped my first torrent on Comcast (used to use Time Warner) and almost instantly my IP was changed and my internet connection dropped.

I was uploading a torrent remotley so after tehy changed my IP I couldnt log back in to try and fix the problem.

Fuck Comcast.
 
I hate comcast with a passion. But mostly their tv service.

I did get a call complaining about my bandwith usage, that was prior to them coming up with the quotas. I'm still a pretty heavy user but haven't heard anything since. Lot's of downloads, wi-fi usage on a few smart phones, plus I monitor 4 security cameras.

As far as phone service is concerned, i've been using Ooma and it's pretty good so far (the premier service is 100 bucks a year, but has some good features...like blacklists).
 
I actually enjoy Comcast. The TV service is good in our house, aside from it being built in the 60s and the last owner wiring the coax in odd ways that kill the transmission. This isn't helped by the fact that the cable literally hangs about 150 feet from the main feed across a road and some trees to our house, which when it was taken down by a wind storm Comcast politely sent out 3 trucks and 4 techs all at once to fix for free. And aside from one MPAA copyright complaint warning letter, I'm yet to have a problem with torrents. Phone service has been spot on too.
 
Actually I found out that my torrent problems weer casued by my router reseting...not by comcast. I read up about it and they say they dont throttle torrents anymore. Im seeding fine now after coming home and reconfiguring my router.

But I still hate Comcast.
 
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