In addition to tax time, this must be our month for repairs. Here’s to hoping you are not having any breakdowns this month like we are experiencing.

Our dryer heating element went out, forcing us to go into Little House on the Prairie mode (drying clothes on a clothes line) and using the laundromat until the repair man can come out and replace. Perhaps an oxymoron but there aren’t any clean laundromats in our area.

On Tuesday I mentioned that one of our Xbox 360 consoles died and that has since been shipped off to Texas for replacement and yesterday I replaced our cable modem and had the Comcast repair guy out to fix cabling and the wall outlet in an attempt to run down a problem we’re having with intermittent dropped signal.

I could have replaced the wall outlet but the original Comcast guy who laid the cable didn’t leave enough play in the cord, plus we have the 99 cents a month repair plan which means it doesn’t cost any extra to have them come out. Here’s something that bugs me about Comcast and sadly they aren’t the only company who does this to their customers.

They hide their support phone number. Instead offering an array of other options like talk to some automated robot or use their Live Chat. I tried using their live chat for help with the cable modem. After some back and forth, including entering in the world’s longest account number 139653943353050530985335038 (that’s not my real account number, it’s just an example, why so many digits?) because even with my name, address and phone number they can’t verify anything about my account (what’s the point of entering in all that personal information if they still need the account number? They should just ask for the account number), the Live Chat person told me I had to call to get my new modem registered because they couldn’t help me do that.

Argh.

I called and am told my wait would be at least 10-13 minutes. Why didn’t I just call to begin with? Take a look at the Comcast.net help page. Why isn’t their phone number staring you back in gigantic font? Here I’ll do it for them:

1-800-Comcast (266-2278)

Ahhh, that’s better. Why doesn’t Comcast — and many other guilty companies — do that? Could it be that phone support is expensive? That they feel they are helping their customers by creating mazes to find support numbers? I don’t know about you, friendly reader, but I’d rather talk to a human being than a machine or use some handicapped Live Chat option just to be told I need to call them anyway.

Should have gone old school and just looked in the Yellow Pages. The Yellow Pages online has that information with a quick, easy search by business name and zip code: comcast 98375.

Comcast Repair guy part 1
After the repair guy came out yesterday afternoon — and props to them for sending somebody out within a couple hours of when I called — he indicated they had connectivity problems in our area yesterday. Didn’t take him long to fix the new wall outlet and cabling and to return the modem we had been renting for $3 a month (and here I thought we owned our cable box, doh!). Saved us a trip to return the modem.

A couple hours after he left the connection dropped again. Twice.

I called Comcast support back again and they are coming back out today to check the lines outside. I’m trying to listen to the MLB games and then the connection cuts out, annoying stuff. Also we use VoIP and dropped connections disconnect calls. It’s an intolerable situation.

Dissed by MLB
Speaking of MLB.com, they are also on the repair list today because they double banged my credit card for their Gameday subscription and I’ve been trying on and off for the last week to get their attention. I tried emailing support about the issue and heard nothing back. If I don’t get an answer from them one last time today my credit card company will be the next call (chargeback).

I’ve called them a couple different times and been left in a holding pattern that results in the system hanging up on me after about 20 minutes or so (don’t you love phone systems like that?), listening to their lousy music. Somebody needs to let the callers on hold program their own music. Give me some Black Sabbath. Yeah, yeah, I know licensing issues (sigh). I know the perfect song for companies who do secure the rights.

Heaven and Hell.

• Comcast offers Cable TV, VoIP and Internet bundle for $99/month
• After 14 months, OnStar hardware errors
• Checking out the Xtreme Gaming Router DGL-4500
• Lockergnome locked out of Comcast business cable
• Comcast cable doubles download bandwith
• Earthlink rep tried to scam me