The reason I wrote this article, in full detail: I hope Comcast reads this. I hope it’s passed around in their halls quietly. I hope they look at this and it gets slipped under each and every VP’s office door. I hope they all see that these are the systemic problems plaguing their customer service perception. If they don’t, they’re destined to replace Sprint in the halls of companies with permanently-poor customer service opinions amongst consumers…

I had a fun 79 minutes on the phone with Comcast today. No, that hour and nineteen minutes of my life wasted is no exaggeration.

For months now, seven in fact, I have been trying to get Comcast to activate my modem in the Silicon Valley. Brace yourself, I own my own cable modem. Not shocked? Well, the folks at Comcast seem to think I’m from another planet.

Here’s the issue, in a nutshell. I bought a DOCSIS 2.0 modem, and used it with service in the Sacramento Valley. I then moved to Silicon Valley, where I tried to activate the modem. Enter the disaster…

Comcast, from day one of my relocation was unable to put the modem on my account. Comcast first claimed that my modem was leased. Uh, no. Then they claimed it was on another active account. My old “active” account. I told them to check the old account. Sure enough, the modem wasn’t leased and the account was closed and paid in full.

Then Comcast blamed (Comcast) Sacramento’s billing market for not releasing the MAC ID of the modem. Okay, fine right? Hand me a leased modem and waive the lease fee for the couple of days to get the issue fixed? And, to their credit they did. The problem is, they didn’t fix the issue.

Every month, I would call in and ask for an update on the issue. Nobody would know there was an issue. They would then just issue a leased modem credit for the next month and say “we’ll handle it.”

Well, nobody has handled it. Lather, rinse, repeat the next month. I tried all the paths, even going so far as to have the store manager put his hands in his face and apologize for Sacramento’s market not doing their job.

Eventually, after getting a leased modem credit month after month (all six months of my reduced service rate), I cancelled and switched to U-Verse.

Much with other dysfunctional-company deployment issues, every department or team has a different name for similar processes. Some say the Billing Department, some say “another system”, and others say “the warehouse.” In reality, it’s all the same location, but when people in your own company can’t understand the terminology of another department… that has me running for the sell button on my portfolio. And no, I don’t and never have owned shares of Comcast.

Now, four months later Comcast came back with a new offer: They’re finally discounting a tier above the entry 6 or 12 mbps tier (that speed depends on if your market has gone DOCSIS 3.0 yet) and they offered me 16 mbps (pre-PowerBoost) for $34.99/month, for a full year. So, I cancelled U-Verse and switched back.

And, that brings us to today’s Comcastic debacle. I tried desperately to get someone at technical support to “own” the issue. Basically, the tech was sympathetic, going as close as he could to admitting this was a disaster, knowing he was being recorded. Finally, his supervisor (after many pestering, and being put back on hold after getting refusals) did indeed agree to own an issue. I had to dig deep, call them drones, stuff I don’t like to do to other people to get their attention.

Still, seven failures in a row shame on you. Eight failures in a row, shame on me. I expect them to fail at this effort yet again, at which point I’ll wrangle another store manager to fall flat on his/her face. My next final step is an FCC complaint. I am no fan of the FCC telling companies how to be capitalistic… but Comcast has a monopoly on the cable lines, and I’m more than fine with the FCC forcing a company to resolve internal company issues.

The fact that two billing departments, over seven months, can’t talk to one another, is about as insane as having regional billing departments in the first place.

I hate to be crass here, but please, if you work for Comcast, don’t post here telling me how bad you feel, and how you see this all the time. I’ve stopped caring. If you do really care, contact me and either own the issue, or get someone in Comcast to own the issue.

As you may know, OnLive promises lag free gaming from your web browser. I’m not going to poke holes here in OnLive (though I did that quite nicely over there). But it’s safe to say that it is a massive bandwidth hog. While the developers claim it doesn’t always demand 5 mbps per second, that really depends on what games you’re playing. Either way, at most you’re going to get 3.8 hours per day on Comcast (or, about 114 hours per month… not factoring in any other data usage). Any more and you hit their 250 GB bandwidth cap.

And don’t even think about AT&T’s pending 150 GB bandwidth cap. You won’t be able to finish one major game per month with that…

My first warning is simple: This is going to cause ISPs to lower their bandwidth caps, or charge for more bandwidth. That’s really not a shocker, if OnLive hadn’t provoked it, I’m sure some other platform would (and really, Mozy and Carbonite likely started that process already).

But my second warning is more specific. OnLive has said that they are looking to score preferential treatment deals with the ISPs. I would advise ISPs to stay as far away as possible from those deals. Even the Bush administration FCC mandated net neutrality (and the Obama FCC is going to be even more net neutral).

Giving preferntial bandwidth allotments to OnLive is just as bad filtering BitTorrent traffic. It’s an anti-competitive business practice that is against the public interest. But, that’s not me talking, that’s the existing mandate of the FCC. And you can rest assured, if any ISP gives OnLive preferntial treatment… we’ll be the first to stand up against it.

The reason is simple. If everyone just drops Comcast in protest of the 250 GB bandwidth cap, Comcast can easily use statistics to say that the cap is only affecting .1% of their customer base. Thus, I am tweaking my advice a little, and suggesting that customers leave Comcast (like I did before), but only after they get kicked off by the 250 GB bandwidth cap. And yes, that means I’m encouraging you to use as much bandwidth as your content demands… all HD, all the time, all over the web.

So, I locked in a $19.99/month rate for the first 3 months at 12 mbps down and 1 mbps up (not including PowerBoost). We’ll see if I can hit it starting next week.

Oh, and I also locked in $10/month for limited basic cable (for one year), thanks to their barely-promoted DTV Transition offer. But, the installer forgot to insert the filter, and I’m getting expanded basic cable for free. That won’t last, as my market is going to be digitally rebanded for all analog cable channels, but it is a nice perk while it lasts. Keeping with my goal to not watch anything but over-the-air stuff, I’m giving my TiVo HD strict instructions to only look at OTA channels for the rest of the 30 days.

I did that a few months back (first taking a speed hit with AT&T DSL, and then a massive speed boost with local SureWest fiber), and haven’t looked back since. I really could only suggest Comcast at this point, if it’s your only broadband option.

And, I’d also suggest you start to move away from Comcast as your TV provider… vote with your wallet. I will move away just as soon as DirecTV launches either HD TiVo (as in, a modern one with home networking) or Windows Media Center support.

Send a message to internet providers that caps are bad, and will hurt them (much more than us) in the long run.

The results? Not good…

Traffic ticked up much better than when the filtering was in place, my 1:1 ratio broke 384k for the first time in a long, long time. In fact, speed on BitTorrent was actually quite quick.

The problem is what happens to all my other bandwidth. Even with only a few hundred kilobits of BitTorrent traffic… it’s as if I’m at 100% bandwidth utilization. The best thing I can come up with, is that Comcast’s filtering servers are still preventing data from flowing fully… just not at a “hard cap” of limiting upload rates to a fixed speed.

I’ll do more testing with a QoS router when I can (though admittely, that won’t happen until June probably). Which reminds me… hey Apple, why in the world does AirPort Extreme not have any QoS controls? The most expensive routers shouldn’t have the least features… and I don’t see any reason why QoS shouldn’t be in the firmware settings.

With 802.11n finally panning out in terms of hardware interoperability… my testing with QoS (in June) will probably be a permanent change.

What Comcast was doing, was counting each offering of an HD On Demand program as counting as a “channel”. Since satellite On Demand programming is not as expansive as cable (due to the inherent limitations of satellite technology), Comcast turned a molehill of comparison into a mountain.

Worse, Comcast didn’t even advertise On Demand programming as separate channels. Instead, On Demand is billed as “Channel 1″, a singular channel. So, recently Comcast changed their tune. Now they claim to offer “More HD Choices” than satellite providers.

The truth is, cable is catching up, but still behind satellite. Satellite providers aren’t fully in the clear, as DirecTV downsamples HD content (what’s known as HD Lite) in order to push more channels to customers.

I personally don’t know who to chose when I pick providers for my new house. I may wind up going with DirecTV if their Windows Media Center integration doesn’t DRM everything (a la CableCARD)… I’m not holding my breath though.

Image source: Reuters

So, what is the magical upgrade? First, you have to pay extra, about $6 $3/month to get the TiVo update pushed to your device. Yes, you’re perpetually paying for a software update installed once. If it’s any consolation… Comcast will send you a TiVo-style remote which simply adds the classic TiVo button.

So, why should you avoid it? Well, let’s count the reasons:

1) You’re not actually getting the TiVo operating system. Much like Verizon Wireless’s Malware User Interface, you are getting the Motorola DVR OS (Linux) with a Java application running on top of it. And, from what I’ve heard, like the VZW UI, there’s added friction as the OS passes each menu command and item along.

2) You can’t remove it, there’s no uninstall option. The only way to stop paying the TiVo surcharge is to return your DVR and have them re-issue you a new/refurbished one.

3) All the advanced TiVo services are not available. No TiVoToGo, no media sharing, no eSATA (yes, despite the Motorola DVRs now carrying an eSATA port, even the TiVo update doesn’t enable them). In short, if you were thinking this software renovation was actually going to add features, sit back, and take a moment of silence.

4) TiVo Applications are not available. No Amazon Unbox. No Real Rhapsody.

5) All your favorite TiVo hacks aren’t going to work on the device. You probably figured this out already.

6) Existing functionality that makes the Motorola HD DVR stand out… may wind up being disabled. Like using that FireWire port to capture video? There’s no guarantees yet it will keep working… sources haven’t responded on it. While it may keep working with TVs, the firmware may illegally enable 5C on all channels (much like Comcast illegally did in the past, and quietly removed the illegal restriction).

7) Like your USB and Ethernet ports not working on your Motorola HD DVR from Comcast? You’re going to keep liking them, the service doesn’t use TiVo to connect or communicate with, instead opting for Comcast’s existing guide. Will Comcast ever remove those firmware hinderances? Well, like with TiVo, as soon as they figure out a profit structure (per seat, per user, and per port… of course).

Bottom line… If you like the TiVo interface at $6/month (that’s $72/year for those of you in Reston, VA), then sign up for the service. Otherwise, I’d strongly suggest telling TiVo and Comcast to put up or shut up. And, the best way you can do that is with your wallet… by avoiding the service.

What can Comcast and TiVo do to fix this? Address those seven things listed above. If Comcast/TiVo added TiVoToGo and Media Sharing… it might start to be worth the money… if they cut the cost in half.

Those of you that bought lifetime memberships and a TiVo HD may just break even before all that happens, hopefully I’m wrong on that.

Update: As commenters have pointed out, Comcast is offering TiVo for $3/month, not $6/month. Unfortunately, pricing varies by market, and the $6 was what I was briefed on previously (nor is TiVo available in my market… or I would have bit the bullet and installed it to save you the time). However, it is still a perpetual monthly charge you will be paying for until either Comcast drops the charge… or you drop your Comcast TiVo.