Miquel House

As I mentioned before, Comcast billed us for phone service even though we neither signed up for it nor did they give us any VOIP equipment to use their phone service.  I called Comast today to fix that.  Entered my phone number.  Selected 2 for billing inquiries, followed by 3 for phone service.  After several automated messages informing me they were trying to direct my call, they just gave up and told me they couldn’t do it.  Their automated phone system told me to go to their website or try again later, then it hung up on me.

Second try, same result.  I gave up and went to their website to do a live chat with one of their support people.

Transcript:

user Mathew_ has entered room

Mathew(11:55:32 GMT-0400)> My first bill included Comcast Digital Voice service, and I did not request that service.

analyst Analyn has entered room

Analyn(11:57:38 GMT-0400)> Hello Mathew_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Analyn. Please give me one moment to review your information.

Analyn(11:57:41 GMT-0400)> How are you today?

Mathew_(11:57:47 GMT-0400)> I’m fine

Analyn(11:57:50 GMT-0400)> I am glad to assist you.

Analyn(11:58:07 GMT-0400)> May I have your account number please so that I can check your account?

Mathew_(11:58:22 GMT-0400)> <removed>

Analyn(11:59:36 GMT-0400)> Thank you. Are you the account holder?

Mathew_(11:59:44 GMT-0400)> Yes

Analyn(12:00:03 GMT-0400)> Thank you. I am now pulling up your account.

Analyn(12:00:10 GMT-0400)> One moment please.

Analyn(12:01:41 GMT-0400)> Thank you for waiting.

Analyn(12:02:08 GMT-0400)> May I have the last four of your SSN please?

Mathew_(12:02:14 GMT-0400)> <removed>

Analyn(12:02:42 GMT-0400)> Thank you. I am checking it here now.

Analyn(12:04:22 GMT-0400)> It shows here that you have subscribed for the Bundeled Service which includes High Speed Internet and Comcast Digital Voice.

Analyn(12:04:49 GMT-0400)> No worries. I will help you with this.

Mathew_(12:04:56 GMT-0400)> Thanks.

Analyn(12:05:04 GMT-0400)> I will process the resolution for your issue.

Mathew_(12:05:47 GMT-0400)> Will I receive a credit for the amount you billed for 7/31-8/30?

Analyn(12:06:16 GMT-0400)> However, you will need to call 1-800-266-2278 to confirm your subscription. Please specify or state that you have only ordered High Speed Internet.

Mathew_(12:06:43 GMT-0400)> Yes, I only ordered high speed Internet and cable TV service.

Analyn(12:06:46 GMT-0400)> Yes. The amount charged for the Digital Voice service will be credited on your account.

Analyn(12:07:12 GMT-0400)> Anything else I can help you with?

Mathew_(12:07:34 GMT-0400)> I tried calling 1-800-266-2278 to deal with this, but it told me that it was unable to connect me to anyone, and it hung up on me.  It did that twice.  That is why I’m talking to you.

Mathew_(12:07:50 GMT-0400)> Is there a particular section of the menu that I need to go to?

Analyn(12:08:10 GMT-0400)> I apologize for the inconvenience it may have caused you.

Mathew_(12:08:35 GMT-0400)> Not a problem, but what do I do if I’m still not able to get through?

Mathew_(12:09:18 GMT-0400)> And is there a reference number you can give me for this issue resolution in case I have to deal with this again next month?

Analyn(12:09:21 GMT-0400)> Let me process it here for you. No worries. Please do call again. it is just for confirmation.

Analyn(12:09:35 GMT-0400)> One moment please.

Analyn(12:11:35 GMT-0400)> Thank you for patiently waiting.

Mathew_(12:11:46 GMT-0400)> No problem.

Analyn(12:11:47 GMT-0400)> I have already processed the resolution of your concern.

Mathew_(12:12:18 GMT-0400)> Thank you.  Can you give me a reference number for this resolution?

Analyn(12:12:35 GMT-0400)> Here is the ticket number for your reference: <removed>

Analyn(12:12:44 GMT-0400)> Please do not forget to answer 3 questions regarding how I assisted you with this issue. You can have that page by clicking on "End Session". Thank you very much.

Analyn(12:12:48 GMT-0400)> Would that be all?

Mathew_(12:12:55 GMT-0400)> Thank you.  I will call 1-800-COMCAST now.

I tried calling again, same result.  Why, why, why must I call Comcast to confirm that a Comcast employee did what she said she did? 

I think I need to dig up that number for their Somerset office and see if anyone there deals with billing.

So now that we are experiencing “fall-like” weather this week, we finally got the new a/c and furnace installed. It’s been cooler outside so it hasn’t been running that much. The first day the a/c was on, it was pulling a lot of humidity out of the house, which is good. The drain pipe to the sub-pump was almost like a constant stream of water. The first night, we were not used to the air being “comfortable” that we were both cold and had to use blankets. We only had the air set to 78. LOL.

Recent dealings with Comcast:

• Jenni called to cancel our account at the old house. She gave the account number, and they transfered her to Cablevision
• After canceling our old account with Comcast, we received a postcard in the mail wishing us luck with our new provider, Cablevision. I really don’t know why Comcast wants us to be a Cablevision customer so badly. I haven’t had any experience with them, but I guess they couldn’t be worse than Comcast. Unfortunately our new house is in Comcast territory.
• We received our first Comcast bill. They charged us for their VOIP phone service, which we never requested. When Italian Joe was setting up our account, he asked me which services we wanted. I told him I wanted TV and Internet, and he quoted the correct promo price for those services, so I assume some other person screwed this up. They also never provided us with any VOIP equipment, so I don’t know how they got the idea that we were using their VOIP service. This means I have to call Comcast. This horrifies me.

Mark from Comcast (or whoever is on Google Blogsearch duty), if you want to talk about how much your company sucks, you can call me at 908 698 4851.

Carpet Update:
Lowes ordered the carpet “again”. Hopefully this time it will be right. The girl at Lowes mailed the sample we gave her to Mohawk today. She said it should get there in two days and Mohawk will test it to see what it is or if there was a problem during manufacturing. So we will see. So more waiting.

Jenni Update:
Last night, I decided to go for a walk and explore the neighborhood. So I put on my walking shoes, pumped up some tunes in my iShuffle and hit the pavement. I found a good route that is just 2 miles that is perfect for right now. I felt great when I got home. So great that I woke up “early” and did it again. My shins were a little sore today. The path is nice because we have some hills that make it more than just a flat walk. I wanted to go again tonight and Brandon even offered to go after Halo, but it seems that ran over and it is now dark. It is ok because I don’t want to overdo it. I am going to Wegmans tonight so I figure that is also good walking around the store. I am not so good with where everything is, so I end up walking up and down all the aisles. I will try again tomorrow for another walk. The weather has been perfect and I hope its stays that way.

Furniture:
A little more window shopping online. Here are some of my finds:

Kitchen Table

Coffee Table Desk

***This isn’t a normal coffee table. It has a top that raises up into a desk. Look at the picture below. This is a pic of a different coffee table.

Or this coffee table

I wrote this over several days and I kept forgetting to post it.

Friday: So today was the big day. The carpet installation. After weeks of debating over which carpet to select, it finally comes. We get everything all ready last night and finish up the last minute painting. Check. The carpet installers get here around 10 am with carpet and pad. I go to the truck to see if it is the carpet I ordered to make sure they didn’t bring me hot pink or polka dots. Check. However, when I feel the carpet, it doesn’t quite feel as soft as it did in the store. The guy said the scotchgaurd can make it feel that way… so I say ok, get moving. They liked the fact that we didn’t have any furniture or that they didn’t have to tear any carpet up. They installed another set of tack strip to the already existing strip to make it double wide (not totally sure why). They do that and get the pad down. Check.

They bring in the carpet and get it mostly cut and then mom arrives. The carpet is now on the pad and we go up and feel. Something doesn’t feel right. The carpet feels a lot less dense and not really soft at all. We feel the samples and start questioning whether this is really the carpet we ordered. Now most people might not pick on subtleties such as density without having the carpet samples to compare it to. However, since we spent about 4 weeks feeling different carpets, we knew what the one I ordered felt like, and this was not it. So we go out to the truck to see if they had the label that came on the roll. No dice. Since we had a runner made, they cut the carpet in the warehouse yesterday and threw out the packaging. So we couldn’t verify what they really sent to us. So mom takes some of the samples and hops in the car to go to Lowes. The first carpet salesmen she talks didn’t confirm or deny what the carpet was. Then mom went to talk to their manager and right away the person said that our sample was not the same carpet as what we ordered. Then she talked to another manager who actually has the same carpet in her home as one we ordered also knew immediately that the one we got was not what we ordered. So the guys install the carpet and we are planning to get it replaced by Lowes.

Saturday update: We went to lowes to see if the manager was there, but she wasn’t there. I felt the carpet again and I noticed the difference. I left my name and number so the manager could call me back. It’s a real hassle that we have to get installed again, but after spending weeks picking it out, I want the stuff I want. Also, we don’t exactly know what is on our floors so who knows how long it will last (what the warranty is, what protective coatings/scotchgaurd it has).

On a lighter note, the color looks great and house really looks like a house now.

Some pics.

Sunday: Things that surprise me about the new house:
1. I wake up early and it’s kind of nice. I finally got the blinds up last night because the past two weeks I have been getting up around 5:30. The sun shines right in the window and into my face. So today I woke up at 8:30 instead of 5:30 which was nice.
2. Doing laundry. Ever since we got the new washer and dryer, we have been doing laundry every day. Its so easy, especially having it on the first floor. No more walking outside and in a grungy basement.

Jeremy and I played some Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 tonight for the first time in weeks.  It’s probably been two months since we spent any significant time playing, but we managed to tear it up in Halo 3 despite Jeremy’s best efforts to make us lose (burn).  Didn’t win a single game of CoD 4 despite my best efforts to compensate for Jeremy (double burn). 

This is something you really don’t want to see when you look up:

The guns, they do nothing!

But a well-timed sticky-grenade…

Evens the score

(that’s my body on the left, and he’s exploding)

Couldn’t do that again if I wanted to.

And then I sang B-B-Benny and the Jets:

Last night was our first night with Internet at the new house.  Didn’t spend much time on it, because we were getting ready for the carpets to be installed (more on that later), but around 11:30 I sat on my lawn chair in the 1/6th of our family room that isn’t filled with boxes and did a bit of browsing.  Suddenly I lost the connection to the router.  Since Jenni wasn’t making me a sandwich at the time, and because I’m a lazy jerk, I sent her downstairs to unplug the router and plug it back in.

She went down into the basement, and the router started working again.  She came upstairs and said that the modem had disconnected, but it had reconnected without her doing anything.  I explained to her that the modem disconnecting wouldn’t make the router ssid not show up.  Sure enough the router disappeared again.  She went down, unplugged it, plugged it back in, and it worked.  She came back upstairs and it stopped working.

I went down to investigate myself.  Unplugged it, plugged it back in.  Lots of flashing lights.  Everything looked fine.  Went back upstairs - it didn’t work.  I brought my laptop downstairs and had no trouble connecting in the basement.  I dorked around down there for a few minutes until I was satisfied that it was working consistently, then went back upstairs.  It stopped working again! 

Moral of the story - don’t plug your router/modem/switch/etc into an outlet that is controlled by a lightswitch.

~brandon

******* added by Jenni
I was laughing out loud when I realized it. I was working upstairs at the table and mom asked to turn off the basement light. I said sure. Then immediately, the internet went down. I finally made the connection. Who knows how long we would have gone without realizing it. We pulled a good ole’ Clark Griswald move.

I know Comcast is reading this, because they use Google Blogsearch (which I didn’t even know existed) to search for people complaining about them on their blogs.  Last time I complained about them, they looked up my domain registration information and called my parents - twice.  I guess I should update my contact information.  One call was from their "corporate" office, and the other was from their "executive" office.  Mark from Comcast, pay attention please. 

You see, this is Comcast’s idea of "going above and beyond" and providing excellent customer service.  And that is their problem.  They’re trying to treat a chainsaw wound with a band-aid.  For every person who writes about their bad Comcast experience on their blog, there are hundreds of unsatisfied Comcast customers who aren’t heard.  You don’t fix your company by appeasing the complainers, you fix the problems that make them complain.

Comcast was recently the runner-up in The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America competition.  That’s impressive.  In recent memory we’ve had the following happen -

• A company sold children’s toys coated in poisonous paint
• A company sold poisonous pet food that killed animals
• A company was caught abusing cows in a slaughterhouse, then had to issue the largest meat recall in US history because of inadequate inspections. 

And Comcast was judged a worse company!  In light of these incidents, maybe we should be glad that all Comcast can screw up is our TV and Internet?

Comcast has a corporate culture of striving for mediocrity and failing to achieve it.  And the guy who gets all of the credit (and compensation) for a company’s success deserves the same for its failures. 

As CEO of the second worst company in the US, Brian Roberts receives the 34th highest compensation of all CEOs.  His 2007 total compensation of $39 million could have been spent on letters of apology to the 24 million Comcast customers who are still waiting for Verizon FiOS or AT&T’s U-Verse service to be available in their area.  Your company may succeed at making money thanks to its geographic monopoly, but what happens when you have real competition from companies that don’t suck?

Brian Roberts, you have brought shame on your family.  Seppuku is the only way to restore your family’s honor.

Since I last complained about Comcast on 7/22, there has been some progress. 

7/23 - I got a call from Italian Joe, who I quickly realized was the most competent person I’ve dealt with at Comcast.  I’m guessing he worked for Patriot Media prior to the merger.  I’m using the pseudonym Italian Joe to protect his identity; if word got out that this guy is competent, his job at Comcast might be in jeopardy.  Joe submitted our address to be added to their database and promised to call me back within 48 hours to schedule the installation.  Thanks to Italian Joe and caller ID, I can now call Comcast’s Somerset office directly.

7/25 - Joe called to set up the appointment.  We scheduled it for 7/30 between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.

7/30 - I left work early to be home by 2 p.m.  I waited until 5 p.m., then called Comcast.  I was told that my installer was on the appointment before mine, but they assured me that he would still come.  I declined their offer to have him call me with an ETA.  I’m a laid back guy, I don’t need to nag.  The installer called me anyway and said that he wouldn’t be at my house until 7:30 p.m.  No big deal.  Then he called me again at 6:30 and told me his truck broke down.  How convenient.  He offered to schedule another appointment for tomorrow, but wasn’t able to promise anything better than a 3 hour window.  Hey, it’s not like my time is important, right?  I honestly wouldn’t fault the guy if he just didn’t want to come to my house at 7:30 p.m. - I wouldn’t want to if I were in his shoes.   He shouldn’t have been in that position to begin with.

7/31 - The installer who came to our house was not the guy who was scheduled for the day before.  He was a nice guy, seemed knowledgeable and competent.  The only hitch was with the modem.  We have our own modem that we were going to use, but their computer system gave an unspecified error when they tried to enter the serial number.  The girl on the phone said she had never seen this error in all of the years she had worked there.  That made me feel special.  The installer tried one of their rental modems with the same result.  I don’t know how they worked it out in the end, but we ended up with a rental modem.  C’est la vie, que sera sera.  We have TV, we have Internet.

The 26th Annual Quick Chek New Jersey Festival of Ballooning was last weekend.  Being just a few miles from the airport where it’s held, we should in theory have a pretty good view of the balloons. 

 

Friday night I got a good view of them as I was driving home.  They flew right over our neighborhood and toward Bridgewater.  Jenni had the cameras down the shore with her, so I wasn’t able to take any pictures.  No big deal, it’s a 3 day festival.  Unfortunately on Saturday the wind blew the balloons to the north, and we didn’t even see them.  I guess they didn’t fly very high; they were pretty high on Friday night, so we just kept waiting and watching until we realized we had missed it.  Sunday it rained pretty hard all day, and we weren’t sure if they even launched the balloons.  They definitely didn’t fly in our direction.  So unfortunately we didn’t get to take any pictures of the balloons, but this is what it may have looked like if the Darth Vader balloon had flown past our house:

Today I took the day off to go down the shore for something fun, although I was still “working” I guess. I had a photo session on the beach with a family that I did a wedding for in 2006. It was a large group of about 10 adults and 10 kids, 4 of which were under 4, which made it a little challenging. I am still learning how to handle and pose large groups, especially with small children. But I took a lot of pictures so hopefully I got some good expressions out of the little ones. The weather and lighting were perfect which helped ease my fears of doing the large group.

Back to work tomorrow. The plumber is coming so hopefully we will have hot water again. The balloon festival is this weekend and I am excited to see the balloons take off. Brandon said it looked cool tonight, so we will see. I will try to snap a few pics.