berkeleying Comcast.

Anybody else have their internet go out? Near as I can tell it spreads across all of Illinois, I don't know about anywhere else though. It all seems to be Comcast too. Really annoying to have to walk to the library at 10:00PM in 15* weather to do easy stuff that I could be doing from my couch. If nothing else I hope to be able to complain enough to get a free upgrade in my crappy cable package.

And I also realize that nobody can post or read this without the internet, so it would have to be after its fixed or from a different location. But I'm curious to see how many are/were affected.

My comcast internet is out too. I'm in the far northwest suburbs of Chicago. Posting this from my phone.

It (Comcast) is out in DeKalb, Champaign, Bloomington/Normal, and at least the rest of the NW/Northern suburbs as well--Gurnee, Libertyville, and Arlington Heights are my points of reference for that claim. I really am pissed at them, I hate going to our library when I know its going to be crowded.

I wonder if it's a Comcast issue or if it's a pissing match between Level 3 and Comcast. Is your interwebs completely down or are you still able to hit some sites?

No comcast interwebz. Using my phone

Most of the Northeast was having trouble with them last week; I sent an email to a friend with comcast today: he never got it here in Ct.

They are hiding behind the lame "we are experiencing temporary problems with out service" . The second week of this problems starts tomorrow.

This is why I don't bundle services.

Its fixed right now, don't know how far and for how long. And during the whole thing, my comcast TV still worked. Go figure. When it was out, it was completely out. Kaput. No GRM, no Youtube, no Google, no Nexus, no porno no nothin.

I bundle TV and intertubes. Works fine for me. I also have tethering on my phone that Sprint knows nothing about. My home internet goes down, and I still have a 1.5 meg connection to the interwebs.

Always have a back up. I will not ever live without one.

The only thing that keeps me around as a Comcast customer is the fact that their service, in this area at least, is dead nuts reliable. Too damn expensive, IMO, but it always works.

It went out for us last night, too- SE MI.

I work for Comcast and I spent a 15 minutes last night going through all my diagnosis prodcedures when I realized that the phone was still working (cause my wife was yacking on it ). I live in the south suburbs of Chicago and I called my coworker who lives in a different system. When he told me his was out too, I knew right then and there it was a DNS server issue.

I found out unfortunately that it was out in the Entire Illinois Market, along with Indiana and Michigan.

I know a lot of people complain about how bad Comcast is and have heard every complaint there is, but I have only had one outage and one box go bad in the 4 years I've had it. That's pretty good in my book. It's alot better than the damn satellite going out every time there was a storm. This issue is also the first issue I have had with the internet.

I'm not promoting the company, I just think that people hover too much around the negative.

In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid: When you charge a premium price, one expects premium service. Could they explain why they dropped Bravo, CMT, and TV Guide channel, while not lowering my rates, no: "Part of our on-going upgrade," was the reply.

Do I get credit when FX is full of snow, and three other channels virtually drop out? "Weather conditions are causing problems with our satellite feed..." It was simply raining, lightly.

Then there's the late night freezing of video images on half the channels for hours at a time.....

Sorry you work for them, you must have to wear a flak jacket at times.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: I work for Comcast...

Can you answer a couple of questions for me?

If I only get Comcast internet, will the local Clear QAM channels come through, or is there a video trap that even blocks the Clear QAM on internet only customers? I'm in the Atlanta market if that matters.

I thought it was just me...my Comcast internet went out last night as well here in Minneapolis. The modem lights were all blinking normally so I figured it was my computer, but this morning it was back on again. Cable TV was uninterrupted.

To their credit, this is the first Internet outage I can remember in all the years I've had them.

edit: found this new item this morning.

(CNN) -- For the second time in a week, Comcast customers found themselves offline -- this time, in the Midwest.

On Sunday evening, internet service outages affected Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana and Michigan, according to a Twitter account for Comcast customer service.

"I apologize for the down time," representative Bill Gerth said via Twitter late Sunday, adding that crews were working as quickly as possible to resolve the domain name system outage.

At about 1 a.m. ET Monday, Gerth tweeted, "Everyone should be just about back online, if not should be very shortly."

Last weekend, customers on the East Coast also experienced outages. The disruption affected the Boston and Washington, D.C., areas, a Comcast spokesman said. The outage came on the eve of Cyber Monday, the annual online equivalent of Black Friday when internet retailers roll out their bargains for holiday shoppers.

In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid:

I've been wanting to hate Comcast for years. But their service keeps getting better.

Like you said, what happened last night was the first time in many years.

Bastards...

DILYSI Dave wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: I work for Comcast...

Can you answer a couple of questions for me? If I only get Comcast internet, will the local Clear QAM channels come through, or is there a video trap that even blocks the Clear QAM on internet only customers? I'm in the Atlanta market if that matters.

They do have a very basic cable level where you just get the local stations plus a couple others (CNN, TBS.) Here, it's channels 2-23.

DILYSI Dave wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: I work for Comcast...

Can you answer a couple of questions for me? If I only get Comcast internet, will the local Clear QAM channels come through, or is there a video trap that even blocks the Clear QAM on internet only customers? I'm in the Atlanta market if that matters.

I'm not sure what Atlanta does, but in the Chicago market for internet only customers, you would only get what we call Antenna basic channels. There also is a filter that only allows the internet frequency to pass and no analog TV.

It's also up to the discretion of the technician if he wants to put on the filter.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid: I've been wanting to hate Comcast for years. But their service keeps getting better.

If you want to hate Comcast just work for them :)

I was with them for 5 years. I still have their service, as you said it keeps getting better and there are no alternatives in my area, but as an employee, it suxxored.

Not related to this outage....but 2 months ago before we put an offer on our house we called around to all the local providers to see what internet access we could find. The friendly comcast rep assured us the triple play package was available at the address, and we could get high speed internet.

This past week we called them 3 different times and each time we were told the exact opposite, that we were in an unservicable area at this time and whoever told us different definately did not punch in our address. All we can get is dialup at our new home.

berkeley comcast.

triumph5 wrote: In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid: When you charge a premium price, one expects premium service. Could they explain why they dropped Bravo, CMT, and TV Guide channel, while not lowering my rates, no: "Part of our on-going upgrade," was the reply. Do I get credit when FX is full of snow, and three other channels virtually drop out? "Weather conditions are causing problems with our satellite feed..." It was simply raining, lightly. Then there's the late night freezing of video images on half the channels for hours at a time..... Sorry you work for them, you must have to wear a flak jacket at times.

I'm going to let this be known now, before anyone else gives me guff, I am not standing up for the company. Like any other major corporation, there are flaws.

Do you know how many customers I have had switch from AT&T, Direct TV, and Dish because they were unhappy for the service? Not just from the physical service in their home, but from customer service, price, or something else. I hear the same things from our customers who switch to a different service when I come to pick up equipment.

When I used to have AT&T, I had to pay $120 for internet and phone. They wouldn't help me get a better price, they wouldn't give me a credit when my internet was down for 12 hours every two weeks, and they wanted to charge me $80 just for a guy to come take a look at the modem. That's supposed to be a premium service too and I wasn't happy; luckily for myself, I had started working for Comcast and I actually haven't had and issues since. Does this sound familiar? Any person can say that "I went from "Company Y" to "Company Z" and have never had a problem since" or "Ever since I went from "Company A" to "Company B", all I've had is problems".

If you are continuously having issues with your service, then keep calling whatever company you have for service. It doesn't matter if you have to wait on hold for 15 minutes, talk to a rep. and ask for a supervisor. If that doesn't get you anywhere, call back again and be a jerk and demand a supervisor. You aren't going to get the same person twice.

Comcast isn't the only Service Provider that has issues.

I had Comcast twice (at two different residences), and the product wasn't bad. In some ways, it was better than the competition. However, their customer service was the absolute worst disaster of a clusterfock I've ever experienced. Even worse than Bank of America. I'll never, ever give Comcast a dollar of my money again.

berkeley Comcast.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote:

DILYSI Dave wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: I work for Comcast...

Can you answer a couple of questions for me? If I only get Comcast internet, will the local Clear QAM channels come through, or is there a video trap that even blocks the Clear QAM on internet only customers? I'm in the Atlanta market if that matters.

I'm not sure what Atlanta does, but in the Chicago market for internet only customers, you would only get what we call Antenna basic channels. There also is a filter that only allows the internet frequency to pass and no analog TV. It's also up to the discretion of the technician if he wants to put on the filter.

Yeah, all I want are the Antenna basic channels. If there is no video filter, I should get those over the internet cable. If there is, then I need to order local basic, but that adds cost and I probably won't order either - just stick with DSL.

Just received a postcard from Comcast informing me they're "changing" prices in the Denver market effective January. They claim an average increase of 4%. When I added up the services we use (internet and VERY basic cable, the one they don't even like to advertise), our bill will be increasing by 22%.

OTOH, this has finally motivated me to buy a stupid cable modem and stop renting one. Ours is old enough that Motorola no longer supports it, (it's gotta be at least 8 years old) but has been 100% reliable. If I believe Comcast, "Increasing costs of business" mean that it will now cost me $7/month to rent a modem that has been pure profit for Comcast for years now. They appear to cost about $20 on eBay.

dimeadozen wrote: Just received a postcard from Comcast informing me they're "changing" prices in the Denver market effective January. They claim an average increase of 4%. When I added up the services we use (internet and VERY basic cable, the one they don't even like to advertise), our bill will be increasing by 22%. OTOH, this has finally motivated me to buy a stupid cable modem and stop renting one. Ours is old enough that Motorola no longer supports it, (it's gotta be at least 8 years old) but has been 100% reliable. If I believe Comcast, "Increasing costs of business" mean that it will now cost me $7/month to rent a modem that has been pure profit for Comcast for years now. They appear to cost about $20 on eBay.

If you do choose to purchase your own modem, you are better off purchasing a new one in the box. Ones you get from ebay or craigslist that are used, can actually be ones that the cable company owns or personnaly owned modems that have been already linked to a customer, which will get you nowhere and you will waste your money.

Just a heads up.

DILYSI Dave wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote:

DILYSI Dave wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: I work for Comcast...

Can you answer a couple of questions for me? If I only get Comcast internet, will the local Clear QAM channels come through, or is there a video trap that even blocks the Clear QAM on internet only customers? I'm in the Atlanta market if that matters.

I'm not sure what Atlanta does, but in the Chicago market for internet only customers, you would only get what we call Antenna basic channels. There also is a filter that only allows the internet frequency to pass and no analog TV. It's also up to the discretion of the technician if he wants to put on the filter.

Yeah, all I want are the Antenna basic channels. If there is no video filter, I should get those over the internet cable. If there is, then I need to order local basic, but that adds cost and I probably won't order either - just stick with DSL.

If you were to add basic, from what I know here in the Chicago area, it's only $17, just so you have an idea. Costs will be different in different areas.