Bill Roper's Journal

The Comcast tech showed up early today, checked the outside wiring, then came upstairs. He checked the wiring at the box end (apparently fine) and then asked which box he was supposed to plug in. When I told him it was the one in his truck, he went and got the correct (!) box, plugged it in, and everything is now working.

He took away the three non-working boxes and the wrong box. I have seen the credit for his visit arrive on my account to offset the charge and the problem is finally solved after three weeks.

It would have been solved much faster and with less effort on everyone's part if they sent me a working box in the first place, but QA needs to do some work on this, it seems. :)

Those of you who have been following my current woes with Comcast may recall that I got an email from the Customer Care team promising a phone call. It arrived this morning and I spoke with a nice young man who told me that the box that I need is available in the Xfinity stores. I allowed as to how I didn't believe this, because the last time I had tried to get one there, they swore that they didn't stock them, but he claimed that things have changed. Maybe they have.

In the meantime, I had yet another box scheduled to arrive today, so when I got home from my doctor's appointment (about which there will be more later), I found the box on the porch, took it upstairs, opened it up, found that it was the *right* box, installed it, and...

It didn't work. *This* box would boot up but could not deliver a consistent signal out of the HDMI port, so it would flash the correct screen, then a blue screen, then a green screen, then a black screen. It wouldn't respond to the remote control, possibly related to the malfunction in the screen display. I rebooted it, switched to a different HDMI port, changed out the (working until then) HDMI cable, but nothing changed the behavior.

I had promised to call the nice young man at Comcast back whether this worked or not and so I did, describing the array of entertaining symptoms that *this* box showed. I suggested that their QA on repack boxes was not very good.

At this point, he has scheduled a technician to come out and visit (with the charge for the visit waived). The technician should bring the correct box (maybe) and will install it and get it working. If the technician's boxes are coming from the same cache that they are sending to me, I hope that he brings a *lot* of them, because the failure rate here is becoming notable.

In the meantime, I have reinstalled the HD box so that I have cable upstairs for the next couple of days.

Oh, right. Doctor's visit.

I had the follow up exam with my urologist following my lithotripsy six months ago. The earlier ultrasound showed that the kidney stone that had been 1.6 cm was now 0.8 cm. This is progress. His feeling was that we could try smashing it again or just keep an eye on it. My feeling was that was how the stone got to be 1.6 cm in the first place and -- since I am not getting any younger -- we should smash it sooner, rather than later.

So next month, I have an appointment for another round of lithotripsy.

Wish me luck!

Comcast/Xfinity continues to defy all records for incompetence.

After I placed the order for the replacement set top box to replace the broken one that they sent me to replace my broken set top box, they didn't actually *ship* it. After waiting over a week for a shipment notice, I fought my way through the Comcast menus and got to talk to another agent. She did not know why my replacement box hadn't shipped, nor could she figure out how to *make* it ship. So she ordered another set top box to be sent to me. I once again emphasized that I needed a 4K wired set top box and she promised that was what would be shipped. (The *best* thing about Comcast's approval process for this sort of transaction is that it does not make it possible for you to *see* what has been ordered for you.)

The box finally arrived on Thursday night while I was on my way to Ball State with K. When I got back late on Friday night, I felt that the best thing to do was to try installing the replacement to see if it was the right thing.

It didn't *look* like the right thing. I tried looking up the model number on line, but the *best* thing about Comcast's page showing you the models of set top boxes is that it has absolutely no useful information about what the parameters for the box actually *are*. So let's set it up.

And after going through the lengthy setup process, I checked the resolution and found this was indeed an HD box, not a 4K box. Of course.

For those counting, we have the original failed box, the replacement failed box, the box that did not ship but which seems to be being counted against the boxes on my account, and the wrong box. There are also two working boxes for the other two TVs. This is a lot of boxes.

I tried going in through the chat bot, but it would do nothing for me because of a mysterious outage in my area. Since I was seeing cable (at the wrong resolution) on my TV, I was fairly confident that this was complete bull. Ok, let's try calling the phone number.

(By now, Gretchen was desperately trying to crawl off to sleep. I was not helping.)

After fighting with the phone tree to get it to connect me to an agent ("Wouldn't you like to use our chat bot?"), it eventually put me in the queue and I waited for several minutes to talk to someone who -- almost before we could get started -- pushed the wrong button and connected me to an internal Comcast number that could not help me at all, because it is for technicians. They connected me back to some other line, which then hung up on me because "The store is closed."

I called back, fought with the phone tree *again*, and was eventually placed into an even longer queue to connect to an agent. The first thing I did was give her my cellphone number to call back at. Happily, we were not disconnected, and let another 4K wired box has in theory been ordered.

Of course, it has not yet shipped. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't.

The next morning, they asked me to take a phone survey. So I told the bot what had happened.

You will not be surprised to hear that no one has contacted me about this and I am thinking that it is likely that no one will.

Because at Comcast, our incompetence and your frustration are our most important products!

One problem is solved. One problem is not. Let's see how it goes.

Let's start with Xfinity and the unresolved problem. Gretchen and I went upstairs on Thursday night and discovered that our Xfinity set top box was stuck in a boot loop. I tried unplugging it and restarting it without success. Then I went onto the Xfinity app and started the troubleshooting process where they eventually said that it would take an hour to run the automatic tests and that they'd text me when they were done. I figured that I'd love a text at 2 AM, so go ahead. Gretchen and I used the smart TV to stream some Hulu before going to bed.

There was no text in the morning. The text didn't show up until around 11:30 AM. At this point, I could now try to speak with a tech. After some time repeating all of the troubleshooting that I had already done with the tech, he agreed to send out a replacement box. I emphasized that I needed a wired 4K box, since they have a tendency to ship me wireless boxes (bad, when the TV is as far as possible from the modem in the basement) or HD boxes (bad, when the TV is 4K capable). And nigh miraculously, the correct replacement box arrived this afternoon.

I immediately unboxed the thing, took it upstairs, wired it up, and fired it up. It got past the boot loop problem that I'd had with the old box and then got to the screen with the language selection that you need to make with the remote control.

I grabbed my old remote control, pointed it at the screen, and nothing happened. Well, of course not. I would need to unpair the remote. I went to the Web, got the unpairing instructions, unpaired the remote, pointed it at the screen, and nothing happened.

Ok, I've got *another* *newer* remote in the drawer. Let's unpair that and try again.

Same result.

I asked K to run down and get me the remote that had shipped with the new box. She did and we noted that the batteries were already installed in the remote. This is unusual in my experience. Pointed it at the box and fired. Nothing happened. Unpaired it, pointed it at the box, and nothing happened.

I am *now* beginning to believe, given that the remote already had the batteries installed, that this is someone else's unit that went back to Xfinity after the user experienced a similar failure to the one that I am seeing right now. It was then plugged in, someone said "Hey, it works!", and then boxed it up to send it to me.

Back to the chatbot on the Xfinity app to try to get an agent so I can get a working box instead of the piece of crap that they have sent me. It wants to try troubleshooting (oh, joy!) but then announces that it can't troubleshoot anything because there is a service outage in my area.

I call downstairs to Gretchen, "Is the cable TV working?" Shortly thereafter, she has turned on the TV and announces, "Yes!" I try the chatbot again, get the same response, and when I try to look at the outage map, I am taken to a screen with a header, a footer, and no content.

I pull up the search engine on my phone to get a phone number to call. This, unsurprisingly, gets me a phone robot, which is *insistent* that it needs to text me a link to go to the non-working chatbot. I am, by this point, screaming at the phone, but nothing will get it to relent.

I hang up and call back and just start yelling "Agent" at the phone. It tells me how much simpler it would be to use the chatbot, but I can wait for someone or they can call me back when it's my turn in the queue. Given how well their systems are working today, I decide to stay on the line.

After some interminable number of minutes, a woman gets on the phone and starts running through her troubleshooting script. I am overjoyed. I explain to her how I have tried two different remotes with the TV, have run through the unpairing steps, and the TV does not respond to either. She tells me how the box reads as being fine on her software. Maybe it does, but I explain how nothing happens when using the remote. We restart the box and it still doesn't respond to the remote.

At this point, I ask K to go downstairs and get the new remote that came with the box. It is identical to the newer remote that I hate and -- interestingly and contrary to my previous experience! -- comes with the batteries preinstalled.

It does not work either.

The lady on the phone says that my batteries (the new ones in the new remote, apparently as well as all of the batteries in all of my other remotes) are showing up as weak, so could I please put some new batteries in? Of course, I have no spare batteries upstairs. I try to get K to run down and get some, but older child is now unresponsive, so I go down, fetch the batteries, install them, and the remote does not work and my batteries are still reading as weak.

(I have noticed on various of my TVs lately that the software is *always* convinced that the batteries are weak, leading me to believe that there is a problem with the software. That, or it has been calibrated with the belief that we have installed a Tesla Wall in the remote control.)

The tech continues to insist that the problem is with the remote control, despite the fact that we now have *three* remote controls that the box is not responding to. At this point, I tell her that I have a fourth, unopened remote control downstairs that I can try. I go get the *fourth* remote, *install* the batteries (because new remotes come with the batteries in a little sealed battery package in my previous experience), see that the remote fails.

She then starts trying to tell me how to unpair the older remote. I inform her that this is the newer remote and I have just unpaired it, but I'll try it again using the protocol for the *newer* remote that doesn't have a setup button, since that is the one that will work on this remote.

You may be unsurprised to hear that this did not help.

At this point, she suggested that the problem was with the remote control and that she needed to send me a new remote control.

Dear God.

We now have *four* different -- and two *new*! -- remote controls, none of which will cause the TV to advance to the next setup screen, all of which have successfully finished the unpairing procedure, and I am supposed to believe that a *fifth* remote is the solution to the problem? I explained to her that I did not care what her troubleshooting script says, if *four* different remotes fail to communicate with the set top box successfully, then the problem is with the box being unable to process signals from the remote, *not* with the *four* remotes (two known working) that are all failing to talk to it.

She now agrees to send me a new box.

I emphasize that we need to send me a wired 4K box. We finally complete the complicated dance to approve the order -- as I note to her that there is no way to tell from the information I am given exactly *what* they are shipping to me, which seems like an additional flaw in the process. She says she will attempt to get me a credit against my bill for the afternoon's entertainment, tries to sell me cellphone service which will be more expensive than what I have now, and I finally get off this call.

At some point, we will get another box and we will see if that works.

This is another fine example of the rotten service that you get from Xfinity. Sadly, there are no good alternatives here.

However, the rotten customer service that you get from Xfinity is *light years* better than the customer service that you get from OptumRX.

But that is another story...

The problem with dealing with Comcast is that the chances are good that whenever you need to get support whoever you are working with will do the wrong thing so that you get to repeat the process. This is bad for the people working for Comcast, because the person that you are dealing with will now have to put up with your frustration over the previous person having done the wrong thing. Let's head off to today's example.

Several months ago (I forget exactly how many), we went through a series of miserable chats and phone calls with Comcast support because the cable box in the bedroom was misbehaving. This resulted in me being sent *multiple* wrong cable boxes, all of which had to be returned, making a trip to the Comcast store to try to get the correct box (which I was told would be available in the store by the support rep I spoke to, but it isn't. The stores don't have the box that I need.), and generally wasting a whole lot of time and aggravation on my end trying to get things fixed.

Now the new cable box in the bedroom is misbehaving. It loses its little mind and forgets the entire setup so that it has to reboot itself and completely reload all of the information, repair the remote (which requires first unpairing the remote, because the remote is convinced that it ought to be able to talk to the cable box), and generally waste a whole bunch of time usually late in the evening when we would like to watch something and then go to bed.

Two weeks ago, I decided that I had had quite enough of this and contacted Comcast support via chat while waiting for the box to reboot itself. The person there said that they were updating the box and that I shouldn't experience this problem again.

Well, they were right in that I *shouldn't* experience this problem again, but of course I did, exactly one week later. This time, I spoke to an agent on the phone and explained that it was now time to send me a replacement box, specifically a *wired* 4K cable box, because the wireless box will not do, since it is sitting exactly as far as it is possible to be from the location of the cable modem in the basement *and* the software on the box will not let me connect to any of the wireless repeaters that I have arranged to extend the Wi-fi signal. I was told that I would in fact be shipped a wired 4K cable box and that it would arrive it two to three business days.

You will not be surprised (nor was I) to find out that no package arrived last week. Having a few spare moments today, I decided it was time to go to the Comcast website and look for information on my order. It turns out that is impossible. You'd think that wouldn't be difficult, but you would be oh so wrong. Instead I was told that I needed to call the Comcast number.

The Comcast phone robot that I had been told to call kept trying to get me to go to my cellphone and get on chat with someone (because, of course, I would want to go to chat when I had been told to *call*), but I stubbornly persisted and was eventually connected to the next poor victim who has the misfortune to be working for Comcast. I explained to him that I had been told that I should be receiving the replacement cable box in two to three business days and that time had more than elapsed, so he would now need to figure out what had happened to my order.

He reported that the order had been marked as "pickup in store". I suggested to him that was both wrong and impossible, because I had been told that my box would be shipped *and* the store does not in fact have the particular cable box (wired 4K) that I need, because they *do not stock it*. He agreed that was true and after doing the Comcast order verification dance (again), I have been assured that my replacement cable box will arrive in three to five business days.

We will see whether that's correct.

We will also see if the cable box in the bedroom decides that it needs to reset itself again tonight...

*sheesh*

Those of you who have been reading along may recall that I have been having an excess of excitement getting my Xfinity cable box replaced. The fun continued.

The support person that I was working with sent me a wireless cable box to replace the wired cable box in my bedroom. After a couple of days, J was in the basement sopping up some of the wi-fi connection down there and the picture in the bedroom (about as far away as you can get from the cable modem in the basement) starting pixilating. I figured I would try switching the wi-fi connection from the cable modem's wi-fi to the wi-fi in the office (one room away), but there is no way to do that with the Comcast cable boxes, which we managed to determine during another interminable chat session.

At this point, the support person set out to send me another *wired* cable box. Unfortunately, before that was completed, the chat dropped due to an Internet glitch. Of course.

So I started a new chat session. The new support person confirmed that nothing was shipping from the previous session and ordered me up *another* wired cable box.

Two days later, it arrived. I wired it in and it seems to be working fine.

The day after that, *another* wired cable box arrived. I have not bothered opening it. Maybe it is the one that was originally delivered to "Eddie". Who knows?

So now I have three cable boxes to take to the UPS store and return. They should go there tomorrow.

And we'll see what happens next.

(The TV picture remains pixelated which -- given that it is occurring on two different televisions with only one common connection in the basement -- is almost certainly due to a signal problem outside the house. I'm just not sure that I have the stamina to try to get them to fix it right now. Maybe someone else in the neighborhood will call and complain...)

First, let me say thanks for all the good wishes. I'm feeling much better and hoping it stays that way. :)

So let me tell you about the latest episode of the Comcast follies. We have a 4K TV in our bedroom and a matching Comcast box that is capable of providing 4K signals. Unfortunately, the box has been glitching and requires us to complete all of the setup process every few weeks, usually when we are getting ready to watch something before going to bed, which results in a good 20 minutes of non-entertainment.

On Friday night, the setup process hung. I went on-line with the Comcast chat, "spoke" to a Comcast representative, and was assured that I could exchange my 4K box for a new one immediately by going to the Comcast store in Morton Grove. And so that's where I went on Saturday morning to discover that this statement was *entirely* untrue. They don't stock 4K boxes at *any* Comcast store; they all have to be shipped. They would be happy to take care of me after they took care of the five customers ahead of me, which would have been entirely a waste of time that I didn't have, since I had tickets to take Julie to a movie in about an hour. I was quite justifiably upset, because I had now wasted 45 minutes that I didn't really have to waste, because Comcast had provided another fine example of their consequence-free (to them) lousy support.

On the way home, I called the Comcast support number, eventually got a call back, explaining the situation (calmly) to the poor guy on the other end, and he arranged to ship out a replacement box. All of this was accomplished before we had to leave for the movie.

The new box was scheduled to arrive Tuesday via UPS. I am set up to get UPS tracking messages on my phone and was pleasantly surprised when I got one indicating that the new cable box had arrived about 11:30 this morning. I hustled downstairs to get it, but there was no package on the porch.

Ok. Maybe they had left it at one of our neighbors. But there was no package on their porches either.

I pulled up the tracking information on the phone. Apparently, they had handed the package to a resident of our house named "Eddie". If you are familiar with our family, you have probably realized that there is no "Eddie" residing here.

Sadly, there is nothing UPS can do to help the recipient of a package that has been delivered to the wrong address. Only the shipper can initiate a claim.

So I called Comcast. This was a mistake, because there is absolutely *no* way to navigate through their phone tree to someone who knows how to do something about a missing package. After the idiot phone tree got stuck in a loop offering to reboot my cable modem, I gave up shouting at it and hung up.

It turns out that if you go to their chat window online, you can request a callback from an agent. I did and happily got one shortly thereafter. I have been assured that I will not be charged for the package that "Eddie" has absconded with and that Comcast will ship yet another box in my direction.

My UPS tracking claims that the box will arrive tomorrow.

I wonder who will sign for this one.

Comcast went down for several hours tonight, greatly annoying the children. I managed to use my cellphone's data connection to order pizza for dinner, so that was helpful.

Comcast came back eventually and I have now come upstairs to try to list some more Cubs tickets for sale. The connection between the Cubs website and the StubHub website has been problematic all year, to the point where I can't actually list more than one game at a time if I want things to work.

StubHub went down for maintenance last week, so I had some hope that things would improve. Unsurprisingly, it got worse instead. Now, the Cubs website and the StubHub website are failing to communicate correctly when I try to list a single game.

This is a bit of a problem.

I am hoping it is better tomorrow.

My current Comcast modem is around two years old and has been a touch flaky, so when they offered to swap it for a newer one that is supposed to be about 20% faster, I figured why not?

I went down to hook things up tonight and the automated system completely failed to activate the new modem or copy the settings from my old one. After a 40 minute call to tech support, the modem now works. The associated phone line, not so much, but he's still working on it and is supposed to call back.

Meanwhile, Julie has been complaining that I have violated the SLA for the house. (No, that's not what she said, but the SLA is "Nothing should break, *ever*." Voluntarily taking down the Internet to swap out a working modem, well, that's just beyond the pale...)

The good news is that the Comcast installer who arrived at my door this morning was able to ask the right questions to determine that my work order was completely screwed up in two different ways. The work order is now fixed so that the right things should happen after he spent some substantial time on the phone. And I should be able to keep my existing home phone number, which is very important to me.

The bad news is that the install will be done late next week by a different installer, because he is not an installer who migrates existing alarm systems.

But, happily, he recognized all of the red flags as we chatted and they should now be fixed...