As it is possible that Comcast, or Xfinity, or whatever the cable/Internet colossus is called, might actually be at our new home in Berwyn even as I type this column up, it will have to be our little secret that this company is the worst company ever on the planet Earth. Further, I can confirm from personal experience that every lame joke you have ever heard about cable service comes from a place of very deep pain.
Three days before we moved, I started making calls to change over newspaper subscriptions, gas, electric and cable/Internet/phone. It took me a collective 12 minutes to shift service for the first three and I quickly received the requisite emails confirming our shared success and warm wishes for continued happiness from the Times, Nicor and ComEd.
Not so with Comcast.
We have now lived in Berwyn for nine days. Perhaps when I arrive home this evening there will be service. Over the 12 days since I made my first call, I have devoted myself to this simple cable quest. I will not bore you, much, with my sad stories of repeated disconnections after spending 30 minutes on the line, or transfers and referrals to phone numbers no longer in service, of earnest promises made but not kept by Comcast employees named Kevin and Michelle and Laura and …
No, I will simply offer you this advice: The next time you buy a home, do not ask if the water pressure is good, if there is Radon (whatever Radon is anyhow) pooling in the basement. Don’t bother about termites or tax bills. Simply ask if the previous owners or tenants in your potential house ever stiffed Comcast. And if they did fail to pay the cable monstrosity, then quickly walk away from any deal.
As I mentioned in last week’s “So long Oak Park, here comes Berwyn” column, our new home spent a spell in foreclosure. We’re told it sat empty for three years before it got bought and flipped. Well it seems that there were a couple of nefarious cable boosters in our house before the foreclosure came. And when they skedaddled, they left $3,500 in unpaid debt to the $76 billion in Comcast’s annual revenues.
Not paying your bills is a very bad thing. And people who fail to pay their bills should be persecuted and prosecuted.
But what about us, the Haley family, the dopes who have been sending Comcast an outlandish check every month for 15 years? How in bloody hell is this our problem!
“Well, that house on Clinton has been blocked from service. You know we can do that under federal law,” said Kevin from Comcast.
“Yes, but …” I said.
“It might cost thousands of dollars to reconnect that house,” he said.
“No, but, you have a line going down my alley,” I said. “I live on a block with 25 houses, most of them are your customers.”
“You don’t know that,” said Kevin, just before yet another disconnection.
Now don’t tell anyone, but someone I know knows someone at Comcast, and they slipped me a number and that person connected me to a real person who happens to be a salesperson, and salespeople, God bless them, make money only when they sell things. This unnamed person said, “Dan, you are a new customer. Welcome to Comcast. We’re starting over.”
And that is why tonight I might go home and watch the White Sox play at Fenway from my new house in Berwyn.
OK, if the worst thing about moving is Comcast, I must tell you the best thing about moving, or even about staying but with less crap: MetroJunk. A locally owned company, (Hey, Marion) that comes to your house with a remarkably friendly crew and hauls out everything, anything you need removed. Furniture, torn up carpet, bags of junk. Some goes to the dump. What they can salvage for the Economy Shop or elsewhere, they do.
MetroJunk came to the old house three or four times. Complete lifesaver. And at a fair price.
