Comcast sucks.
You’ll find this to be a recurring theme here at Chez Fred, as their suckitude (and by extention, the suckitude that existed before they took over AT&T Broadband Internet) is directly visible on this site. Ya see, when I first started up this Blogger thing, my cable modem was handled by @Home. They did right by me, Blogger worked like a champ, and all was well.
Then the whole AT&T / @Home thing went down, AT&T took their customers hostage, and ATTBI.com was born. At the same time, talking heads started showing up on my TV screen, assuring me I would enjoy “the same great service from AT&T” that I had with @Home.
Well, if by “the same great service”, they meant “We’re gonna throttle the hell out of your download speeds, raise your rates, and implement totally asinine restrictions on network access, including access to our POP3 server through Hotmail” then they certainly succeeded. Oh, and by the way, they also closed off all access to their Web servers from outside of their network. Which meant that Blogger couldn’t publish to my site anymore. And I have YET to get hold of an egghead at ATTBI who can give me a satisfactory reason for keeping Blogger out. Thanks, guys. ‘Preciate it.
Fortunately, Blogger has a service called BlogSpot for people in my predicament. But unless I pay them money, they slap ad banners at the top of the pages they host. And I wouldn’t have to even host them there if AT&T weren’t such idiots.
Long story short, this is why the blog takes forever to load sometimes, and why there’s an ad banner on top. At least I figured out how to anchor past it.
But this isn’t why I rant about Comcast today.
I have digital cable. I noticed that with Comcast taking over the cable side of things from AT&T as well, that there were new cable packages available. I also knew there was a second tier of digital channels I don’t get, which mostly include 47 different niche Discovery Channels that I could give a rip about, but also include VH1 Classic Rock (said to be excellent for an 80’s music geek like me) and TechTV. And I want these but I couldn’t justify paying another $10 a month for them.
So I call Comcast and ask what’s up. She explains to me that woih the Digital Plus package, I would “basically get every channel but the movie ones like HBO and Showtime.” And it would cost me $2.96 a month more than I’m paying now. Well, hell yeah, sign me up, I say. TechTV, here I come! Woo!
So I get home last night, and plop down in front of the TV to tell my TiVo of the wonderous new programming options it has before it. And lo, there are a lot of new channels out there. And TechTV is still turned off. Well, this must just be a mistake, let’s call the cable company and tell ’em to turn on all of my new channels.
“Ah. Sir, you have the Digital Plus package?” “Yes, that’s correct, just got it today!” “Well, um, TechTV and some other channels aren’t in the Digital Plus package, those are part of the Digital Extra service, and those will cost another $5.95.”
What. The. Fuck.
Digital Plus, Digital Extra, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had an obscure package called Digital Extended Remix With A Twist Of Lime Served Up By A Struggling Gay Waiter, that you had to order to get the 24-hour all-Chihuahua channel.
So we sorted it out, I told them I basically didn’t want anything if they couldn’t give me the channels I wanted in one package, and they set my cable back the way it was.
But still. Digital Extra. And there is NO mention of this on the website, by the way.
Comcast sucks.