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How physical is this job? Do tech have to be able to climb up into attics and or under houses? Or is that more like the contractors job? From what I see it looks like there work on the outside and where the boxes hook up to. Don't see a lot of woman doing this work so wondered is there some heavy work involved.
Contractors do the same install/service work as the regular employees, not just the crap/heavy work. Comcast uses contractors because they won't hire enough of their own techs to control costs. They can bring on and let go contractors as needed.
Yes, you have to crawl in hot/cold attics, under houses and trailers, and crawl around in filthy houses, as there are a LOT of people who live like pigs and are not ashamed enough to clean up when we go in.
Entry level techs are working crap hours and weekends in most divisions. I suspect you would start working 1pm to 9pm Tuesday thru Sunday with Monday off. It varies by location and job. No bucket truck for junior techs...you'll climb.
Expect to climb poles with hooks when you can't get a ladder to it in right-of-way or there is a car parked in front of the pole you need to climb, because you can't get to it with your 80 lb ladder which you'll load and unload from the truck what seems like 100 times a day.
Installs and service is carried out 24 hrs a day (emergencies) and you'll work in any kind of weather from 100 degrees burning up in the sun in summer, to freezing cold/high wind and snow/rain etc in the winter. Winter is my most unfavorite time of year.
If you don't like winter weather and the thought of being out in the cold working 8+ hours a day (most of the time without gloves because you can't work with fittings etc with gloves on) then this is not the job for you. Oh....and you better like dealing with customers who are always pissed because they have been waiting for their install or service for longer than they were told because we are all overworked and can't get the jobs done when promised.
The only good thing about the job is that it pays fairly well as the other guys have said, but the job is not for people who don't like working hard in all kinds of weather and can't handle a lot of stress.
I just hope one day that Comcast has competition here in MD. I HATE Comcast! Their customer service sucks and so do their Techs. Idiots all of them! Can you tell I HATE Comcast. I lived in FL for a year and had Bright House, I think that's what they were called, and I loved them. No hassles, no excuses, great customer service.
I work for Comcast in the Tri County are ( Lanham MD to be exact ). When I started I made 12.80 for training ( which is around 4 months ) but once I was done I got bumped up to 15.20. I love working for Comcast it is a way better fit for me then contracting. Benefits are AMAZING, pay is decent & you get free PREMIUM CABLE ( all channels, HD, Movie channels & 50% off PPV ) Free internet with power boost & discounted phone ( 4.99 - 15.00$ depending on what you get ) Plus they supply you with more work uniforms then you will ever use ( shirts, polos, long sleeves, jackets, hoodies, jeans ( black or blue ), dickies, hats, beanies & ontop of all that a 200$ vocher every 2 years for NEW REDWING work boots ) They just passed in are area taking the trucks home... So ontop of all this I spend NO GAS! You can move to Comm tech 4 training 6 months after your out of new hire traning.. Just WAAAAAY to much to name!!!
So my girlfriend father claims he makes 95k per year working for Comcast. I heard he watch and support pay per view covering certain channels. one example was him supporting the Pay per view of the Pacquio fight for California, Nevada and Oregon. My girlfriend wants to know of this is possible she's suspect the father deal drugs. The father brings home Comcast trucks though
Contractors do the same install/service work as the regular employees, not just the crap/heavy work. Comcast uses contractors because they won't hire enough of their own techs to control costs. They can bring on and let go contractors as needed.
Yes, you have to crawl in hot/cold attics, under houses and trailers, and crawl around in filthy houses, as there are a LOT of people who live like pigs and are not ashamed enough to clean up when we go in.
Entry level techs are working crap hours and weekends in most divisions. I suspect you would start working 1pm to 9pm Tuesday thru Sunday with Monday off. It varies by location and job. No bucket truck for junior techs...you'll climb.
Expect to climb poles with hooks when you can't get a ladder to it in right-of-way or there is a car parked in front of the pole you need to climb, because you can't get to it with your 80 lb ladder which you'll load and unload from the truck what seems like 100 times a day.
Installs and service is carried out 24 hrs a day (emergencies) and you'll work in any kind of weather from 100 degrees burning up in the sun in summer, to freezing cold/high wind and snow/rain etc in the winter. Winter is my most unfavorite time of year.
If you don't like winter weather and the thought of being out in the cold working 8+ hours a day (most of the time without gloves because you can't work with fittings etc with gloves on) then this is not the job for you. Oh....and you better like dealing with customers who are always pissed because they have been waiting for their install or service for longer than they were told because we are all overworked and can't get the jobs done when promised.
The only good thing about the job is that it pays fairly well as the other guys have said, but the job is not for people who don't like working hard in all kinds of weather and can't handle a lot of stress.
Scapegoatpa is right. All the installers I have talked to have said the same thing. But one suggested using gloves with the fingers cut off so you can at least keep the rest of your hands warm. From what I've heard though being a contractor is the worst. You get paid by the job, hence all the rushed sloppy jobs you see out there, work long ass hours from 6 in the morning to 7, 8 or 9 at night, have no life, and get treated like crap. Better to get a job in house working directly for comcast and get paid by the hour. On second though read my next post. Lol.
Here's a post by a cable worker I just read on another site.
This is really getting out of control!
The expectations on all of us are greater than they were several years ago and yet the rate of pay stays the same.
We have become phone technicians without the proper increase of pay (ever see what AT&T or Verizon techs make with a far lesser work load?).
You'd be surprised just how much better they are compensated. I knoew a tech who went to Verizon from being a cable installer/service tech making about $19.00 per hour at the time. He started off making $17.50 with Verizon and within 3 months he was up to $22.00 and in a year he was almost to $27.00.
We get a workload that in the majority of the cases does not give us the proper lunch break required by law. They say that if we get stuck on an AM job that runs us late and then have a full slate of PM work that we should take our break while at the customer's home. Tell me how that would look to a customer if they see us sitting out on their front lawn eating a sandwich.
I hope that this class action suit that is being brought gets some results because Comcast has gone way too far with the demands they put on their employees.
I really don't know who gets surveyed when we see some of the results that say "Comcast is a great place to work", I think it only managers and office people who are questioned, not the front line so-called "faces of the company".
I hope I get called to testify in this suit since myself and my co-workers are not sending back out little envelopes opting out of it.
Where the hell is the IBEW? Its time people, we need to wake up and have a voice. I have been doing this line of work for over 15 years now and have pretty much seen it all and this is the time that we all must rise up and "get er done".
I worked for Comcast in the Call Center in Orlando. As a IP Tech Support Rep. My brother is a Supervisor in Atlanata in the field. He loves Comcast. I loved Comcast as a company. Pay (at the time) was competitve, they havent raised there starting pay since I worked there in 2007. Good Benefits, Free Cable. Good Promotional opportunites.
I hate the service Comcast has to offer. I had 3 techs come out to check out programming issues that kept reoccurring from time to time (usually when it rained). First time he told me it was the box, fine, swapped it out. It still appeared again, so the second time he told me I needed to buy an amplifier because the lines running to my room were too long. So I did that, it didn't fix the issue. I got charged $33 for that visit because the issue was with my "install" not with anything that was under comcast's control. The third time the tech came out he told me there was nothing I could do except deal with it. I picked up the phone and called a competitor to hook me up with cable and internet and dropped Comcast.
The competitor came out to install service and told me that they ran 1 line from the box to my house and had an indoor splitter exposed to the elements outside to split cable between the second floor and first floor apartments. I was fairly angry to say the least that 3 techs could have missed this, especially when I told them it mostly happened when it rained. Anyway, I do NOT like the new cable box, controllers, and the On Demand sucks. But my new company is cheaper, they have better internet service, and I refuse to give my money to Comcast so I really have no other choice.
Long story short, if Comcast stepped up their customer service, hired some good techs who cared about the customer, and stopped charging service fees, they would own the competition.
I work for Comcast in the Tri County are ( Lanham MD to be exact ). When I started I made 12.80 for training ( which is around 4 months ) but once I was done I got bumped up to 15.20. I love working for Comcast it is a way better fit for me then contracting. Benefits are AMAZING, pay is decent & you get free PREMIUM CABLE ( all channels, HD, Movie channels & 50% off PPV ) Free internet with power boost & discounted phone ( 4.99 - 15.00$ depending on what you get ) Plus they supply you with more work uniforms then you will ever use ( shirts, polos, long sleeves, jackets, hoodies, jeans ( black or blue ), dickies, hats, beanies & ontop of all that a 200$ vocher every 2 years for NEW REDWING work boots ) They just passed in are area taking the trucks home... So ontop of all this I spend NO GAS! You can move to Comm tech 4 training 6 months after your out of new hire traning.. Just WAAAAAY to much to name!!!
I was wondering where my money went
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