The Cable Guy - Round 2

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, as part of the service call from yesterday, We (Comcast technician and myself) forgot to test the signal coming from the cable box located out on the street by our house and as happens these days, we lost our Internet connection around 9 in the morning. So we called Comcast and arranged for another service call. This time between noon and 3:00. Since someone here, either Ann or myself, works from home on any given day, the Internet is not a luxury. It's something we need in order to work from home.

While we waited the phone rang and much to our surprise it was a Comcast representative calling from Philadelphia. He mentioned that he had read my blog post and wanted to make sure everything was taken care of to our satisfaction. That sound you heard this morning was my jaw dropping. First off, my blog has no real regular readership other than the two daughters. People that happen upon my blog usually come via searches for white bean chili recipes or searching for the Eagles Nest restaurant, which by the way has changed ownership and is now called something else or people searching on erg topics. Anyway we told him of the problems we were still having and he promised to call the local office and make sure things got done on time and correctly. So score one for Comcast. Although you have to wonder who is taking the time to scour the Internet for Comcast postings. Around Noon we got a call from the local office saying that they too had read the blog entry (I think maybe the Philly people made them read it, but whatever), that they had one of their top technicians on the call and he would be out when promised and the would also give me a $35 courtesy refund. Ok. Score another point for Comcast.

As it got to be 2:30, I was wondering if indeed the technician would show up on time. He did indeed. He introduced himself (Jaime), shook hands all around and petted our dog. We showed him to the computer and he confirmed that there was no Internet and also made the comment that out Comcast provided Gateway (Netgear) was an antique and he would replace it. I wonder if he would also replace the Linksys USB wireless antennas we have on our other computers as they are even older than the Gateway. After he checked our computer, he went outside to check the signal. He was gone only a short while before reporting back. It was indeed a bad signal. According to Jaime, the signal strength reaching the Gateway INSIDE the house should be at least 50. The signal coming out of the cable box on the street coming to the house was only at 46. By the time the signal routed through the house to the Gateway, he estimated that the signal strength was practically nil and hence our lack of Internet connectivity. He placed a work order for someone to come fix the cable box out on the street to get the signal up to snuff. He thought they would either be out later today or no later than tomorrow. He left his number and advised us to call him if the problem was not corrected by tomorrow afternoon. So the problem has been identified and, hopefully, will be resolved quickly. The last time we had signal problems it took about a month before the cable box on the street was actually fixed despite at least two separate work orders for the repair being put in by the Internet techs (the second request obviously corrected the problem, but he knew there was an outstanding work order when he came to the house). So I'll give Comcast high marks for the follow-up, the refund and the promise of a new Gateway (Jaime didn't install it since there would have been no way to test it to see that it was working properly). Now we'll see how they do with the follow through. (To be continued).