Edit: Updated
for July 8th visit!
This thread is my diatribe about attempting to get
Comcast service installed at my new home in Goose Creek, SC. It's been a long, arduous road which has yet to be fully traveled. I'll keep updating this thread as we go, but to date, it's been three and a half weeks of pain and suffering in an attempt to just get digital TV at my home. I'm posting this thread here instead of some anti-Comcast sites because, well, most of the problems have been associated with
Comcast getting CableCards to work properly (Thus, the Three C's).
Grab a chair and gather 'round the fire. This is a tall tale of
Comcast and CableCards.
The Setup - Tuesday, June 9th
I stopped by our new home to check the mail and found a really neat flyer indicating some pretty competitive cable packages through moveupcable or some other similar website. They had a great
Comcast package of both Internet and Digital Starter
for $66/mo
for 12 months, which is twice the amount of time that the package is normally good
for through the local office. I signed up and asked if I could pickup my CableCard at the local office
for a self install, and they said "no problem, just drop on by to get your card."
Received a nice email notification with my order number confirming everything. They assured me that everything should be working at the house and my Internet would be working when I arrived. This was very important, as my wife has been telecommuting
for years and any significant disruption of Internet service would be a major pain.
The beauty of this mechanism is that no truck roll would be required, and my installation fees completely minimized. Awesome, or so I thought. I prepared my wife
for a long battle with
Comcast based on my understanding of how painful things can be. I jetted off home to Alabama to pack up the family and move things to Goose Creek and arrived in town on Tuesday, June 17th.
Prologue - Wednesday, June 18th
I stopped by the local office at 8:30am just as the movers were arriving at my home with the rest of our possessions. I knew I was in
for a bad day when I got to the storefront and saw a sign, handwritten that said:
We have no digital cable boxes. Try next week.
Great, this was going to be a good one. When I arrived to the desk, I gave them my order number provided on the email and they completely dismissed my self installation.
"Self installation? Oh we don't do that because CableCard installations are very difficult. We don't have any CableCards here, and we never have! We'll have to schedule you
for a truck roll. Oh, and the rate package you have - we simply can't do that package. Our two service package is good
for only 6 months."
After much battling, they managed to get my package set back
for 12 months after completely rebuilding my account. The earliest I could get someone to come out to the house was Sunday, June 22nd. When I asked about the Internet at the house, they said that it was completely disconnected and the only way to fix it was have the technician come onsite. Great - my wife had to spend two days at Starbucks in order to do her work.
Chapter I - The Sunday Housecall - Sunday, June 22
I was pleasantly surprised when the technician arrived on Sunday; I simply have never had a cable company that worked on the weekend!
"Uh, I just got a page 20 minutes ago to come to this job, but I don't have any CableCards, but I can get your Internet working. I'll have to reschedule you to get the CableCard portion done."
That's better than nothing, so we let him do his business. He found a bunch of really shoddy cabling and cleaned up jack wiring, removed splitters, and added one behind the TV
for the hook up of our router. All said and done, he was here
for an hour. Reschedule date: Thursday, June 26th.
Chapter II - CableCard Newb - Thursday, June 26
The nicest tech so far arrived on Thursday the 26th. He had a stack of 4 cards, all Scientific American M-cards since he did his homework and someone told him to take 4 times as much gear as he thinks he needs
for the job. Great! At least he did his homework! Unfortunately, one of the cards was mashed in.
He installed the first card and called in the serial and CableCard numbers. After about 20 minutes, we started getting in some channels, although just the analog ones. Most of the channels in the 2-99 range were coming in without problems, and one digital channel 110 (Discovery Science). Stumped, we swapped out to another card and called it in again. Same deal.
The tech called in to have a hit sent to the equipment but the "driver box" was down with no ETA to repair. Dispatch told the tech to get hold of his supervisor and get instructions on what to do. The tech apologized profusely and tried to call his manager. Unable to get hold of him, I let the tech go to his next two jobs and he promised to call me back with an update before the end of his shift.
Total time onsite: 2.5 hours.
He called back about an hour later after his other two jobs and said he got hold of his manager, who said that the tech had to go collect the card since it was an incomplete installation with no ETA on repair. The tech apologized and came by and retrieved the card.
He rescheduled me with dispatch
for Wednesday, July 2nd which was the earliest available slot.
Chapter III - Even More Newbness, Tuesday, July 2
A different tech arrived this time to do even more CableCard swapping. The tech called the last tech in advance that said to bring 4 cards again. The tech scrounged a bunch of cards from other guys, and came by.
Put in a new card, and called it in. Same deal as before: channels 2-99, with getting one digital channel 110. Dispatch offered little explanation other than "it takes up to 2 hours to get the card to sync up." The tech relayed this and left. Note, this was an incomplete installation (AGAIN), but at least we were allowed to keep the card.
Total time onsite: 45 minutes
Late that evening, after still not getting channels, I rebooted the Tivo and started digging through the menus to see what was happening. Seeing that the card was
Waiting for CP Auth, I called into the tech support line.
"Sorry sir, dispatch has gone home
for the evening. There's nothing we can do. We'll have to send a tech out."
I indicated that the problem was NOT with the card, but it was a configuration issue on their end. The CSR said that she sent hits to the equipment while we were talking and that's all she could do. She recommended I call back in the AM to try to get a CSR to forward me to dispatch to troubleshoot, but she said that it was unlikely that someone would forward me. She recommended that we schedule another tech to visit. Earliest appointment was 8-11am on July the 4th.
I told her that I was going to keep the tech hostage until the problem was fixed.
Sigh.
Chapter IV - How to Navigate Phone Menus - Wednesday July 3
Calling
Comcast is painful. When you have a problem with residential service, you have to select the sub service. When you select digital cable, and then select a problem, it pops you into a queue where the system plays back common fixes to your problems. Great, but finding out how to TALK to someone is as crazy as pressing 1 - 2 - 5 - 2 and then 2 again. Grrr.
Called
Comcast in the morning of July 3rd. The CSR indicated that they HAD to send a tech to work on ANY CableCard problems. No ifs, ands, or buts.
I resigned to make someone else suffer on July 4th at my home at 8am.
Now I'm getting crap from people at work about my Tivo pains:
Them: "Why don't you just get the
Comcast DVR box?"
Me: "Because I already have a Tivo HD with lifetime service and I hate giving any more money that needed to these idiots!"
Time on phone: 45 minutes
Chapter V - Independence (from Sanity) - July 4th
Got up at 7:30am to await their arrival. Got a phone call at 10am.
Comcast: "Sorry - we don't have any cards that will work with your Tivo in stock. Only single stream cards will work and you'll need two of them. The truck normally comes in on Friday, but we rescheduled until Monday because of the holiday."
Me: "*NO* multistream cards work with the Tivo? I know of many people that have the SA cards working just fine?"
Comcast: "Well, *We* have troubles with them. You'll have to have singlestream cards. We'll reschedule you
for next week when we have cards."
ARGH. So we're scheduled
for yet another visit
for single stream card install this time. Tuesday at 5-7pm.
Time on phone: 20 minutes
Chapter VI - The Desperate Hero - July 8
The next onsite day rolled around, and the latest tech to arrive, Fred, was truly a desperate hero. Fred called me before he went to my home and I filled him in with the whole story and he realized he was in
for a good time. While this was his first CableCard install ever, he was an extremely dedicated individual and really wanted to get us working properly and took every step possible to make it happen.
I indicated to him the history, technical issues, and all of the fun stuff, the authorization problem and he understood. Expressing a desire to avoid further CableCard dancing, he called into the dispatch (Gabe) to try to have them hit the card again. It magically worked and removed the
Waiting for CP Auth error. Success!
Although we still didn't get digital channels. Or HD.
So, more calls to Customer Service to ensure the proper rate codes (incorrect) and verify the right equipment is on the billing (had an HD box too??), we got all of the billing stuff cleaned up. Maybe. Well, they may have added a second entry
for the multistream card since "it has two tuners". Ugh, we'll address that later if we can get this working.
So, the CableCard dancing began, and after a few more dances, we have a few HD channels. Success! But still nowhere near 100%. Fred was joking that, given the whole year, I may have all of the channels I'm paying
for!
Fred tightened all the connections and verified that I actually had the capability to receive all channels (with an HD DVR box). He reran the feedline from the small box at the corner of the property to the side of my house. He did everything in his power.
Fred even called the guy at the head end (finally!) but it turns out it was the gentleman's cell phone (doh!) and he wasn't on shift yet (double doh!). So, waking up the head end tech 3 hours before his shift was to start at midnight, Fred plowed forward trying to diagnose my problem with them. While the tech was in a fog, Fred wrangled the dispatch folks to send an email to the head end to have them look at it at midnight when they get on duty! Incredible!
Fred even told me to call him in the AM to give him an update since he wants to make sure I'm working, even though it's his day off. Luckily his supervisor is the same as the gent that did my initial CC install, so he'll be filling him in tomorrow, even though he doesn't have to! I hope that, should I need ANOTHER tech visit, Fred comes.
Although Fred put in many hours at our home tonight, we fed him, had a few laughs, but still no resolve. Maybe next time. Failure was certainly not representative of Fred's efforts tonight.
Total time at the house: 4 hours, 45 minutes!!!!
I am going to go nuts on a CSR if I get billed
for these truck rolls. At this point, I'm ready to ditch
Comcast for TV and go back to DirecTV, sell my TivoHD with lifetime, and give my money back to DirectTV just out of principle rather than pay
Comcast an extra 6.50
for a DVR!
Anyone have any success dealing with the "Waiting
for CP Auth" issue? I indicated to the CSR that it just requires a tweak on the headend, but they refuse to believe it. I'll update this thread as my saga continues, but I figured that some of you would find solace in my misery with
Comcast and CableCards.
Our unique mess
