Let's talk about Comcast

There’s been a glut of introspective, tangentially gamey moping around the site lately. Allow me to pile on!

Borrowed from failblog.org

As a newspaperman, I’m not destined for great wealth, but because I have no dependents, my salary is enough to cover a few luxuries. A paper snapped me up straight out of college, and for a while, I made enough to live and buy anything I needed from Pennsylvania. Which is to say, movies and videogames and books.

I quit that job to move to California in 2007 and soon found a similar position in Palo Alto, but fortune compelled me to quit that job, too. I was homesick, plain and simple, though I keep telling people that I ran out of money. I’ve told that lie so many times that I almost believe it, and I’ll probably tell it again and again, but that’s another issue.

Long story short — in March 2008, I was jobless and flat broke. I picked up a couple freelance gigs, which brought in enough to live for a few months, but videogames and cable and whatnot were out of the question.

Then the paper here mercifully hired me back, this time as a reporter, and I had disposable income again. For lack of a better metaphor, it was like taking a gigantically deep breath after spending a year underwater.

I say all of that by way of preamble to make sure you understand how important it was for me to become a cable subscriber. I’m a freak about TV who develops a serious backlog in the fall and winter months, and an HD lineup with a TiVo-like solution was precisely what I “needed” at the moment.

I signed up for a monthly package with Comcast that included digital cable, “high-speed” Internet (also known as “plain old fucking Internet, people”), a handful of HD channels, a DVR box for myself and a standard cable box for my roommate. That totaled to $105 a month — a little steep for cable and Internet, I thought, but something I could swing with the help of a roommate.

Well, that lasted a year. My monthly bill jumped in August 2009 from $105 to $170 because my “specials” expired, and the actual rate would climb to nearly $200 in a few more weeks.

I balked at my local Comcast office, hoping the right mix of determination and incredulity might persuade the customer service rep to a) take pity, b) shit his/her pants about not hitting his/her September quota or c) both.

The outcome: none of the above.

So I left the building having downgraded to regular cable with no boxes for $105, which I tolerated for a few more months.

But losing HD proved to be a dealbreaker, and I ended up watching most of my TV by piping the Internet into my PS3. I started wondering why I’m paying $60 a month (such was the split between TV and Internet in my bill) for something I don’t use.

On New Year’s Eve, I cancelled cable but kept my Internet service, which cut my bill to $57. Internet costs $40 when coupled with cable, but by its lonesome, it’s almost $60. Awesome.

Actually, not awesome. Terrible. It’s something I absolutely wouldn’t tolerate if there were any sort of broadband competition in our region, but aside from Verizon (which has yet to upgrade its terrible DSL lines here to FiOS), there is none. Zero.

And I simply require Internet access, so I am, for the time being, a Comcast slave.

But Comcast cares about its slaves! A few days ago, a company woman called to ask about my recent “service experience” — the one where I canceled the shit out of their outmoded, overpriced cable package.

I’m paraphrasing here, but this is how this conversation went.

Unbelievable. “Let’s get you signed up.” Really? I know these service techs have scripts and that the dirty work more than likely was outsourced to some call center in Ohio or Siberia or someplace, but in no way is clueless assertiveness a viable sales pitch. So I hung up on the poor bitch.

A couple days later, I’m at the gym. My phone rings. I’m running and don’t notice. Modern technology reroutes the call to this thing called “voicemail,” which stores messages from callers with whom you’re unable to connect. It’s a fabulously novel service.

AWESOME COMCAST VOICEMAIL

Nevermind that a technician never came to my home. I assume they’re talking about my exchange with the poor bitch over the phone from earlier. Or maybe they’re asking about the New Year’s Eve discussion at their York office. Who’s to know? And fuck them for asking me to grade the tech, who was just doing her job by reciting dialogue from their horrendous flowchart.

So, in the space of a few months, Comcast doubled my bill, bullied me when I downgraded and followed up by assuming my voicemail was a stubborn retard who can’t respond to prompts using a touchtone keypad. “Sorry you’re having trouble.” Yeah.

And until the company gets some real competition in the telecom marketplace, it’s the madness I’ll continue to pay for. Internet connectivity is officially a quality-of-life issue, and not just for me. There are federal initiatives designed to upgrade or introduce broadband service in remote areas across the country. The gaming industry assumes it exists by right for most people. Utilities beg customers monthly to go “paperless” and pay all bills online. Movie tickets are sold online. Groceries can be purchased online. Meals can be delivered online. Bank statements can be checked online. And so on.

It’s not yet the mess that the current shape of health care reform appears to be, inasmuch as we aren’t federally required to purchase Internet access from private companies. But there is a parallel. As connectivity becomes more essential and less optional, I think there’s room for debate about a government-run Internet provider. Whether that’s an optional subscriber-based thing or a free wireless mesh that everyone can use, I don’t know. But I hope the era of stiffing people for the privilege of bandwidth is on its way out.

Because I played UNCHARTED 2 co-op for three hours online yesterday, and it was awesome.

Bam! Gaming-related. Dunzo.