Comcastic or Comcrappy? Well, both . . .
Written: Feb 11 '06 (Updated Feb 11 '06)
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Pros: Offers high definition and on-demand service, and customer support is generally good.
Cons: Bugs in their digital/HD offerings; their internet speeds aren't consistently as good as advertised.
The Bottom Line: Better than DirecTV re HD and on-demand.
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| LSMillers's Full Review: Comcast |
We've used Comcast for several years, with the Digital Silver package (HBO/Show/Encore/etc), High Definition receiver, digital video recorder and cable internet. We've threatened to drop them on several occasions, and each time they've always come back with a better deal, so using this strategy is probably our best advice to you. However, don't bluff: each time we called we were quite sincere about planning to drop the service.
We had DirecTV before Comcast, and were happy with that service. However, for HD and On-Demand DirecTV isn't competitive.
Our Biggest Complaint
. . . is the their "price creep" strategy, wherein their fantastic initial offers insidiously become ridiculously high monthly bills over time. Like the frog in the pot of water that is slowly heating up, they're counting on you to get cooked into accepting the subtly increasing bills instead of trying to jump out after getting a single price shock. We had combined cable/internet bills that started out at under $50 per month and slowly inched up to over $140. We're now paying around $80 (including internet) after getting rid of HBO, the DVR and a second box that we rarely used.
Quality of the Service
The analog TV service has been consistently reliable for us. However, there are some notable "bugs" with the digital and High Definition service, as follows:
1. Occasional 'pixelization' of the the imge, wherein it will break up into large pixels. This happens maybe once a week or more, and is most evident on the high definition channels (we have a 50" Pioneer plasma set).
2. Cut-off of the audio component after a commercial. Only with the high definition shows, especially those that have 5.1 channel sound - and happens about 25% of the time. We thought that this may be due to the HD cable box and got a new one -- but it's still happening and Comcast has no remedy for it. It's fixed by changing channels quickly.
3. Pixelization and image cut-off when viewing the On-Demand movies. They're still working out the bugs on this, but the convenience is worth these occasional crashes, which happen in varying degrees on all the movies we've watched. The HD movies are much more susceptible to this malfunction.
The internet service has been robust and is usually fast, although occasional visits to websites that clock speeds suggest that they're more often delivering download speeds of around 300-500 kb/sec rather than the touted 5-8 mb/sec.
Customer Service
Unlike some of the other reviewers, this hasn't been an issue with us. Whenever we've gone ballistic over the price they've worked with us, and when we've had technical issues they've done what they could to help. Their tech expert was most helpful with internet set-up configuration, and with the items cited in the last section they did what they could to help, cheerfully and considerately.
To Summarize
Comcast is (or can be) overpriced and a little "buggy" technically re their service. However, as long as they'll work with us re price we'll likely stay with them. Re their on-demand movies, we should add that the free titles are so pathetically outdated that we recently decided to subscribe to NetFlix.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 80
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Epinions.com ID:
LSMillers
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Location: California
Reviews written: 43
Trusted by: 26 members
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