Poop by gtmcknight
Today was my day off. Like any day off, I slept in. When I (finally) awoke, I thought about what I should do today. Among the things that came to mind was to finally go and purchase and set up a new Tivo HD DVR. I know, at this point you’re saying, “but I already know how bad that DVR is, this is nothing new.” If you thought that and left the article, then you missed the punchline. It’s true, the Comcast HD DVR really is the be all end all of shitty DVRs. It crashes, it’s slow, it’s dumb (literally, it doesn’t understand when I say “only record new shows” that I mean I don’t want it to record reruns) and frequently needs a swift kick in the power plug. It’s also goddamn expensive at $16/month on your monthly bill. Tivo’s monthly service costs less than that, so I figured I could save some money (yes, not yet since I have to recoup the $300 for the Tivo hardware first) while having a superior DVR experience.
In order to use the Tivo HD DVR with your Comcast service, you’re going to need a cable card. The cable card handles all of the signal decryption stuff going on in the Comcast supplied DVR. In order to get one, you have to either go into a Comcast office or have them send a technician out to you. Since getting a technician would take days and I’m impatient, I opted to visit a nearby Comcast office to pick one up. That’s where the first problem occurred. I went to the Comcast website and tried to find local offices where I can get equipment. Unfortunately, you can’t find those offices on the Comcast website. You can however find “Payment Centers“. That didn’t sound like what I wanted, still…I decided to check them out. Maybe a local Payment Center doubled as an equipment place. Searching turned up three nearby offices. According to the website, the only equipment available for pickup at the offices was Cable Modems. So…I called 1-800-COMCAST. After faking out the phone system (hit zero twice to immediately go to customer service) I was routed to someone who informed me that the nearby Milpitas office could give me a cable card (even though the web site doesn’t say that they can, evidently Comcast doesn’t want you to know about cable cards). So began my journey.
I drove over to the Milpitas office, which is hidden way in the back of a shopping center. I walked in and a woman at the counter (with a freshly pierced hand, ouch!!!) asked if she could help me. I informed her that I was in the market for a cable card. She took my phone number and looked up the account. She asked if it was under my wife’s name, which it is, and I said yes. She then told me that because the first cable card is only free to people who don’t already have the HD DVR, it would cost an additional $7 (roughly) and that Lisa (my wife) would have to authorize Ryan Kennedy (me) to pick up the cable card for our account. She would have to call 1-800-COMCAST and give them her authorization over the phone. Stunned, I asked the woman if Lisa were to call in the next 15 minutes, could I just turn around and walk back in the office and get my cable card. She told me that I could.
So I walked outside, shaking my head, and tried to call Lisa. Busy. Must be on a conference call. No worries, I had other errands to run including the grocery store and Best Buy (to get the Tivo). I’ll just hit those to kill some time and then try calling Lisa again. So I drove over to the Milpitas Nob Hill, where I discovered just how much one store can completely screw up store layout. Seriously, who puts the peanut butter way over by the milk in the refrigerated section? Half an hour later, I emerged victorious from Nob Hill. I stowed the groceries in the trunk, got in the car and dialed Lisa again. Still busy. Well, off to Best Buy I suppose.
It was on my way to Best Buy that I started having a self-rant. I wondered (out loud) why it is that I can call up on the phone and order pay-per-view on my wife’s cable account but they won’t let me walk into the store and pick up a cable card. That’s when inspiration struck. I thought to myself, “what would Kevin Mitnick do?” When I arrived at Best Buy, I parked and got out my phone and dialed 1-800-COMCAST. Once again, I wielded the double-zero to great effect, immediately putting me in touch with a live person. I informed them that I needed to authorize someone to pick up a cable card for my account. They asked for my account number and I told them I didn’t know it. They asked for my phone number, which I supplied. They asked if the account was in my wife’s name and I responded that it was, so they asked me to verify with the last four digits of her social security number. I gave the operator the numbers and she asked who I’d like to authorize to pick up the cable card. I gave them my name and she told me I was all set.
I ran into Best Buy and purchased the Tivo HD DVR (this is another story entirely), put it in the trunk and headed back to the Comcast office. I walked up to the desk with the same lady I had talked with maybe 45 minutes earlier. “Welcome to Comcast, how can I help you?” Seriously? Did you have THAT many people in here since I was here last? I responded, “I’d like to get a cable card for my Tivo.” She asks for my phone number, which I give her, and she again brings up that the account is in my wife’s name, to which I respond “yes.” She then tells me, “you have a zero balance on your account”. We stare at each other for a minute and I, finally, respond “uh…okay.” She continues to stare blankly at me so I say “what’s the problem?” She tells me “there’s nothing to pay on this account.” At this point I figure she’s fucking with me, so I remind her that I just want to get a cable card. “Oh, I thought you said you want to pay your bill.” In my mind all I can think is, “holy crap…finally something to blog about after a few dry months.”
At this point she goes into the back, procures a cable card and brings it out and verifies that I’ve been authorized to pick up a cable card for my wife’s account. With cable card in hand, I leave the building, shaking my head all the way back to the car.
The moral of the story is (Comcast, you ought to be taking notes by this point), don’t be lame. The lady in the office could have saved me a lot of time if she had simply done exactly what the person on the phone did and ask me to verify the last four digits of Lisa’s social. Instead she completely passed the buck to their 1-800 phone operators, either because she didn’t know that she could ask for my wife’s social or because she didn’t want to be bothered with work on a Friday. Either way, Comcast you look like clowns.
UPDATE #1!!! (November 2, 2008): After activating my cable card, my internet access went down. Unfortunately, Lisa happened to be working from home at the time, forcing her to go into the office on Saturday because she had some pressing work to finish up. I called Comcast and ended up with the most clueless representative I’ve ever had to talk to. She scheduled a truck to come the next day (I’m not sure why they can’t remotely fix a something that they remotely broke). Anyway, the technician showed up the next day and found out that they’d somehow added a second cable modem to my account. As a result, no internet access for Ryan. After an hour of futzing around with their system, they finally got everything working.
UPDATE #2!!! (November 15, 2008): Today I went to return the HD DVR, making the transition to the HD TiVo complete. I took it back to the Comcast office in Milpitas and explained to the guy there why I was returning it, explaining that I was going to be using the HD TiVo from then on. He took it, scanned it, gave me a receipt and told me I was all set. Thinking Comcast got something right for once, I left for home.
When I got home, however, I noticed that all of my cable channels were…black. No Comedy Central. No Cartoon Network. No BBC America. No HD HBO. I went to their online help and started chatting with a support representative. They informed me that my cable card had been deactivated and that I would have to call on the phone to get it reactivated. At this point I was convinced Comcast had put me on a “make sure to completely fuck this guy over when he tries to do anything” list. I called 1-800-COMCAST and, after some fighting the automated answering machine, managed to get to a live person. I explained what had happened and asked if they wouldn’t mind reactivating my cable card WITHOUT taking out my internet access this time.
The technician took my account information and seconds later the channels sprung back to life. She asked me to check my internet access and I verified that it was still functioning properly. We have no idea what happened to deactivate the cable card, however I was just happy to have finally found someone at that company with half a brain.
I don’t get how Comcast stays in business given how much money they must be pouring into support to offset the low quality of their remaining workforce. Then again, people are dumb enough to pay $16/mo just to have their awful HD DVR.
