VOIP Telephony

I like the word; telephony. It might actually apply literally in this story, a combination of telephone and phony.

Again, I have gone through an almost hilarious string of bungles on the part of a company in the "service" business" who really deserves to fail if they treat customers like they treated me. But because they are in the driver's seat, they get away with it. In times like these, I also wish I had Dad to tell the story to, because he could re-tell it with emphasis, like he did his Honda buying expedition to Virgina, for example, in a way that would have us all chuckling. He told me that story, so entertaining that I found myself thinking, "Gee,I wish I had been there", and then realized I had been there!

We have had telephone service through ATT, Beebes never changed since "Ma Bell". And for a couple of years DSL for internet because it was the only broadband available, and the combo was cheaper than what we were paying for phone and dial-up. Now it seemed to me to be at another point logical to change, because COMCAST started bombarding us with mailers, TV ads, etc. offering Cable TV, broadband cable internet, and VOIP phone at a combo rate.

My plan was to get Comcast's cheapest cable and broadband service, and use Vonage for phone, which I helped a friend of mine set up his , and he loves it for $24 a month for unlimited phone service. All the best feature of voice mail, records, and you keep your same number.

Before I got going, I called Comcast twice to make sure it was available at our house, since it had not been there previously, and they said yes, which turned out not to be true. Of course they told me after I had ordered and received my Vonage package, and called to set them up. Nice.

So I sent my Vonage pack back, and mused about what I could do to still have VOIP. I persisted and called Comcast to ask them when they thought the internet would reach my house and they looked it up again and found they made a mistake, and it WAS available to me after all.

So to get going, I ordered Digital Cable, Internet and "Comcast Voice", their version of VOIP, for what seemed to be a good bundle. During this process I quizzed them on what programming I would get on the TV, and they basically used mumbo-jumbo and jargon, to avoid telling you anything specific. Needless to say, things we might like are not there, and many useless things are "part of the package."

Installation: The guy tromped in with loose combat boots with the laces trailing farther back than his dreadlocks. He started yanking out old cables, splicing in new ones, and asked me where my computer was for the "modem". I told him what I wanted, and how I wanted it to be behind my own router and firewall, and share the internet with my wireless network, like I have it now. His eyes glazed over, said he cold not do that , just for one computer, and left that for me to do later, which I did. I guess that's fair.

But, he put the cable TV box that is supposed to be beside a TV . . . in the basement! Meaning I would have had to run down there to change the channel - convenient huh? He also left the splitters and cables all hanging down in festoons (that's another great word) from the ceiling, not even fastened up. I didn't realize this at the time, I had to take a little time to figure out what he had done, and had to call service after he left. They did send someone back out to re-do it.

On top of this, and this seems to be SOP, there is no Comcast owners book, no channel listing, no descriptive information for the complex remote, the phone system, or anything. Just a service bill, and wham bam! It turns out that all of your phone mail and call tracking and options are handled on the internet, but nothing tells you that, nor the URL to go to, and when I figured that out, I found out that you can't access your account until 72 hours after installation. How so I know? I tried to go in, got error message 2#&6%43, called Comcast and after another half hour wait, they told me that.

So for now, I do have cable broadband, actually a couple of times faster than the DSL, Digital Cable, which "came with the deal" but has so many things we will never use, and - what I wanted in the first place, VOIP phone service, which is so far working fine. I'm not exactly an early adopter, but at least not a late adopter. In the future I might drop back to Vonage if Comcast raises its fee on me or doesn't work out, or just go to cell only like so many people are doing these days.