The Saga of A Digital Cable TV Upgrade

[Jimaz]

I don't usually rag on Comcast because we rarely have any problem with them. Honest. The problem we're having now though has turned into a rather amusing story.

They said we'd have to connect "free" digital boxes to our TVs or we'd lose some channels. Okay. No prob. I ordered them via the Comcast website. That was easy! "Allow 3 - 5 business days for delivery." Sixteen days later they arrived. There must be a lot of non-business days in March of which I was unaware.

I unwrapped everything [[great -- yet two more remotes -- as if we don't have enough of those laying around) and followed the directions to connect it all together. They insist you prepare all your TVs before "activating" them. You can activate them by phone through either an automated or human operator or by a web page. The web page has "check status of order" and "activate" buttons.

The "activate" web page listed only one of our devices. Hmm. They both need activation. The "check status" web page listed both devices. This must be one of those right-hand-doesn't-know-what-the-left-hand-is-doing situations. Oh well. At least I can activate one of the TVs so I did and it worked pretty quickly. New channels! [[As if we don't have enough of those laying around.) I planned to call a human operator the next day for the other TV.

The human operator could only find a record of the device I had activated. I suggested he check the "check status" web page which showed both. It seemed like he had no access to that information. I don't think he believed me. He ended up putting me on hold twice and then hung up on me. LOL! I refuse to let these things get under my skin. I really dislike being angry so I laugh instead.

Then we lost our Comcast internet connection.

Okay two problems. Reset modem. No luck. Called Comcast. The helpful operator got me back online. She suggested I try that activation web page again. This time it showed both devices! Yea! I thanked her and said I'll take it from here. I activated it and channels appeared! Yea! But only some channels. Boo! While assessing which channels were missing, they all vanished except ... get this ... CSPAN. But at least that proved the TV was set up correctly.

And here's why I went to the trouble of writing this long, sad tale. At that very moment on CSPAN they were discussing the problem of cable companies monopolizing the set-top cable box market. My set-top cable box was exactly what I had been grappling with for two days and because of that problem, the only thing I could receive on that TV was this CSPAN discussion about monopolized set-top cable boxes causing problems! What are the odds?!

No, I'm not superstitious. I see it as an incredible fluke. Either that or some brilliant, disgruntled Comcast hacker playing a prank to create just this effect. LOL!

End on a positive note: Congratulations to Comcast for handling a really big roll-out as well as they did.

Any related stories out there?