Comcast Sucks

Quick Sunday night Comcast update.

We have cancelled our service. From installation on Wednesday August 1 to cancellation on Sunday August 5th -- I'd say Comcast made pretty short work of a couple of new customers.

The wife returned from from Sunnyvale last night and this morning she began work on setting up a wireless network in the new apartment. Well, the modem Comcast gave us, unlike the modem we had with BellSouth (now AT&T), has no wireless capability. So either we'd have to buy a wireless router OR we could pay Comcast another $150 to get one of their modems with wireless capability. On top of which we'd have to pay another $5 a month. My wife began her call this afternoon shortly before her parents dropped by. I was sitting in the living room chatting with them while the wife was in my office, door closed, talking to Comcast about wireless. Twenty minutes go by and she opens the door and tells us we've just canceled with Comcast.

She said the guy she talked to that prompted her to end our brief but passionate affair with Comcast was straight out of "Idiocracy". His apology for the Nintendo DS imbroglio (referred to in the last post) was so stupid and insincere ("I'm really sorry that happened to you. I know I would hate it if someone said I was going to get a DS and I didn't get one, but there's nothing I can do" -- only imagine this spoken by someone with an IQ of 80 who thought parting one's lips to form a syllable was a hardship he wasn't going to inflict upon himself), that she felt she had no choice but to cancel. When she told the guy, "I'm going to go ahead and cancel." The customer service rep's response was a quick, "Okay." No "What can I do to address the problems you're having?" or "I'm sorry to hear that. What if I gave you three months for free, would that be of interest to you?" Just "okay". It's a wonder anyone stays with them. Did I mention Comcast sucks?

Thanks, all, by the way, for your comments on the last post. I guess it shows how easily influenced I am that, for as long as I was reading each comment, I was convinced I should to do what each commenter said, but then, gnat-like, I changed my mind as soon as I got to an opposing point of view. I am a vacillator, what can I say? I guess I needed my MBA wife to come home and make the right call. (sigh) Hang on one sec -- I think I left something in my wife's purse. Okay. Got 'em.

Also: Bubba Burgers. Good, huh?

Also: did anyone else watch the Republican debate this morning on ABC? My God. A scarier crew of politicians I never did meet. The scariest one of them all, and a real embarrassment to the Republican Party (and Jesus Christ is that saying something) is Tom Tancredo. He actually said the following, and though I'm paraphrasing, it's scarily close to what he said: "My job as Chief Executive is not to insure the nation's poor or educate the nation' children, it is to protect the nation's people from outside attack." Can you believe it? Leave it to a party that demonizes taxes, prefers faith to reason (and believes them to be mutually exclusive) and vilifies anyone who believes in the idea of a common national welfare to produce a character that virulently wrongheaded. I know the Democrats are embarrassed to have an elderly stoner like Mike Gravel in the debate, but the Republicans should be ashamed Tancredo can be counted as one of their number.

All in all, it was a thoroughly depressing exercise. Yeah, they're Republicans and anytime you watch a bunch of Republicans talk it's going to make a sane person feel down in the dumps, but these particular Republicans are so absolutely trapped by their craziest constituencies that it's as astonishing as it is demoralizing. For example, they can't say anything good about a strong separation of church and state or they'll offend their Jesus Camp constituency. And they can't be in favor of protecting civil liberties because they'll offend the screaming meemies who think the sky will fall if the NSA isn't listening to everyone's phone calls and reading everyone's emails and torturing all suspects without due process. And you can't say the obvious and announce to the whole world that the Bush administration has been nothing but a disaster for this country because you'll offend the mental ward residents who still approve of the job the President is doing. And with the groundrules thusly set, you hear statements like, "Say what you will about this administration but they've kept us safe for the last six years!" (Romney). "It took me 30 years before I realized Jesus Christ is my personal savior." (Tancredo). Or that to help insure our nation's children, we need to rely on "more market-based solutions" (Brownback). Or that in order to raise enough revenue to restore our crumbling infrastructure, we should cut taxes. (Giuliani). Bizarre.

And do we really need Presidents who think "strengthening families in America" should be a major priority of their administrations, as both Romney and Tancredo do? It's almost like these guys wish it was the '92 campaign all over again, back when Dan Quayle and George Bush lamented Murphy Brown's "child born out of wedlock" or whined nonsensically that the "nation needs to be closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons". Unfortunately, we have more pressing issues now than we did then, like the threat of terrorism and a failed war predicated on a lie, but mostly what these have in response to our new and sad reality is Romney's call to "triple Guantanmo!" or Tancredo's threat to bomb Mecca and Medina if we're attacked again, or McCain's view, untainted by reality, that democracy is beginning to take hold in Iraq. I guess what I'm having trouble with is after two terms of Bush, how can anyone in this country take seriously any candidate who still calls themselves a Republican? Hasn't Bush proven that those who despise government can't actually run the thing? Why should we give them another shot?