Comcast has experienced a lot of bad press and customer feedback the last few years; searching for “
Comcast” on YouTube still shows “A Comcast Technician Sleeping on my Couch” as the first result (ahead of all Comcast-produced videos). I have never experienced anything like that, but I thought I would still share my experience with Comcast trying to fix/improve my Internet connectivity at home.
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Internet connectivity at home became a problem, - sometimes it was down for minutes, other times for hours. I called Comcast support and they told me the wifi router may be bad since their systems showed no problems or interruptions on my line. They promised to send me a new wifi router in 4-5 business days, and there was no way to expedite this.
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Since the call, I haven’t experienced any problems with my connectivity, but I still decided to install the new router when it arrived as promised. Comcast Support told me that the installation CD works with Macs. Wrong - it asked me connect to the router and type in the address for the router.
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The router then asked me for username and password, which was not part of the documentation. No problem, I remembered from a few years ago that routers often use “Admin” and “Password” as default username and password, which was also the case for this router.
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A rich menu gave me lots of options; one was a Setup Wizard button. I pressed this, but on the second page was asked to manually enter the IP addresses…
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Tried to find another way to set this up with no success for 45 minutes; feeling like an idiot since there must be millions of users that have set this up before me with a MacBook or iMac! Decided to give up without calling Comcast since I still had my old router working fine, but wanted to return the new router to Comcast since they would probably invoice me for it (they have often messed up by bills the last few years…)
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Started a live chat on their website with Comcast customer support, but the analyst suddenly left the chat 10 seconds after starting it without answering any questions. (To any Comcast staff that reads this: please contact me if you want additional documentation and screen shots of this chat.)
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Ended up sending Comcast an email about where to return the new router since I could not get this one to work, and they asked to drop it off at the nearest service center.
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I went there yesterday afternoon and realized that I would have to wait in line for 45+ min to return the router – the line went out of the service center, down the hall, and around the corner…
Is there a lesson learnt here? Yes; from Apple, Google and a few other vendors. At home, we have a MacBook, iMac, iPad, iPod, and two iPhones (I used PCs until two years ago when trying a Mac for the first time in 12 years!). I also just bought an Apple Remote for $19 to use when giving keynotes and workshops. Do you know what it took to get the remote to work with my MacBook? Nothing!!! You just open the package and start using it. No on/off button, no drivers, no pairing of devices, etc. Nothing!
Why can’t Comcast and other vendors provide the same? Make it easy and smart. I am quite sure that Comcast can identify why I could not install the new router (probably a user error…), but this should not be necessary. Don’t do it like Comcast. Make it simple!
#AIIM #simplicity #iPad #comcast #Apple #Google #Simple