"Free At Last"

While I am in no way comparing my current situation with the one that the Great Dr. King was talking about with those infamous and dramatic words, I still feel very liberated...from crappy Comcast cable!

Ever since I have been living on my own/with my awesome past roomies/with my hubster, I have always had Comcast cable. I felt no particular affinity towards them, but the company is everywhere and usually offering some great sign-up promo. Ever since we got our HD box almost a year and half ago, our service has steadily declined as our bill simultaneously increased. Our cable would freeze usually right around the climax of the show we were watching. This has been an everyday occurrence too.

Well yesterday was the straw that broke the camel's back. Back in September we ordered the NHL Center Ice package so I could watch all the Red Wings games. This is no cheapy thing either. It costs about $180 for the season. As we all know, playoff hockey is the best sort of hockey there is. No true fan misses a playoff game. So I was searching for which station the game would be on yesterday. and searching. and still searching. Where is my hockey game??? Finally I see that it is only playing on NHL tv. Do I get NHL tv? NO. Grrr.

I decide to call Comcast to see what is up. The lady I am talking to double checks to make sure that the game isn't playing on any other station. It isn't. I ask her why it isn't playing on the Center Ice channels. Apparently this particular game was not authorized to play on them, only NHL tv had the rights. Okay. So I am getting a little frustrated and I ask her why I paid so much money to watch my hockey team when I cannot even watch them? I also ask if as a courtesy to a paying and loyal customer if they could unblock the NHL channel for like a day so I can watch the game. She says no and I ask to speak to a manager.

Here comes the manager. I fill him in and he treats me as a nuisance. I let him know that I have been a customer for over 5 years, we paid almost $200 for the NHL package and we also pay over $100 a month for cable that is less than stellar. The least they could do was try to keep their loyal customers satisfied. He is still not being very nice to me so I must admit that I started to yell and cry. The yelling was all me, the crying was all pregnancy hormones. After about 1-2 minutes of this, I tell him that we are done with Comcast and I want to cancel our cable. He says that I cannot do that over the phone and I must bring in my cable box. I yelled fine and hung up the phone.

I am usually very nice to customer service representatives, because I have been one before and I know how crappy it can be. However, I do not feel bad about this incident. Nobody comes between a pregnant Red Wings fan and her Game 5 of the Western Conference Semi-Finals. I mean NO ONE! So my dear, loving and loyal husband promptly gets on the phone with Direct TV and they are currently at my house installing our new dish and cable boxes. We are getting a DVR with each box AND the NHL channel comes standard with our package. We will soon also be switching our Internet provider and I will wash my hands of Comcast.

Comcast does not care about their customers. Whenever you call their customer service department you get the run around. Once Dave was given 5, yes FIVE, different phone numbers to call and none of them were able to answer our questions. They charge their "loyal" customers an arm and a leg for their services and their HD cable really isn't that great. I will not be recommending Comcast to anyone and I will in fact be encouraging people to seek out better companies in which to do their business with.

Down with Comcast!