Comcast is still picking pockets...it's Comcastic!

With so many people out of work, Comcast seems to think that it should get paid for not working. For not fixing problems. For just being Comcastic.

January 14 our Internet goes out. Surprised? No, it's Comcastic.

I call. I've called Comcast so many times for problems I actually have them in my cell's address book. And no, I don't have Comcast as a telephone provider. Good God, no. Back when, when I switched to just a cell phone, the people at Comcastic couldn't give me a reason to keep my land line. I swear my question was met with what could only have been slack-jawed stupor. You could almost hear the drool dripping down the customer service reps chin as she tried to pull a reason out of the recesses of her brain. I didn't see it; all I heard was the dead air as the Comcastic rep furiously rifled through her prepared script. No answers there? Well, it looks like it's adios to the Comcast land line.

I wish, oh God do I wish I could say good-bye to Comcast for the Internet, but you know how it is. The email address I have with them is so entrenched in my life, if I changed it, I'd disappear like I had just joined the Federal Witness Protection Plan.

Instead I still have to put up with what I put up with tonight.

Like I said, the Internet goes out around January 14th. I could be wrong about that date. I remember thinking when they scheduled a technician to come out on the 16th that the wait wasn't that long. Usually it's close to a week. They don't care that we now use the Internet for everything, some things trivial, some things important. I've blogged about this more than once. They don't care how important the Internet has become in our life.

So a technician is scheduled to come on the 16th. And lo and behold, what happens on the 16th but, just on a lark, I check and I can log on. I decide not to cancel the appointment with the technician, my appointment with destiny, because maybe there is something wrong.

The technician shows up, I tell him the Internet is working, he looks around, can't find anything wrong, goes outside, comes back inside and says the connection outside was a little loose, maybe that was the problem, and tells me the next time I have this problem to plug the Ethernet cable directly in the computer to make sure there's a signal.

No prob.

So, I get the bill, and see that I have a charge for $24.99, for the service call. For what? He didn't fix anything. The Internet was working, and even if he tightened the connection outside, that's still Comcast's territory. So I call to complain, and I'm told that the tech wrote on his report that he actually did something inside the apartment (liar!) and that because we had the same kind of problem back in October and Comcast waived the service charge, they can't do it again, EVEN THOUGH AGAIN, JUST LIKE IN OCTOBER, THEY DIDN'T DO ANYTHING.

So I bitch some more, and the supervisor I'm talking to--well, she's really not a supervisor; she came on the line saying she was covering for the supervisors, which could mean she was just the customer service rep's girlfriend, for all I know--says she'll investigate and ask the technician what the deal is.

To which I have two questions: 1) Do you think he's really going to remember one call out of all the calls he did in January; and 2) If he does remember what the f**k do you think he's going to say?--oh yeah, sorry about that, I lied on the report?

The supervisor-in-waiting said if he sticks to what he says on his report I have to pay the charge. Talk about the effing fox guarding the chicken coop. And this young woman says all of this to me without flinching, without realizing just how idiotic the process is (better, she probably does, she just doesn't give a shit; she's working, paying her rent; it's not her problem.)

So here we go. I'm laid off. I'm not working, and no one's paying me any money. But Comcast doesn't do any work either, and they want $24.95. It's Comcastic! You don't do anything but you want to get paid for it, that to me is just out-and-out stealing. But that's Comcast for you.