Fios, Comcast, or forget it and just get the $40 box? (Economy: live, costs)

[Tinare]

Before you switch -- if you are happy with what you have -- try calling Comcast and saying that you want to cancel because of price. I did that several years ago and they offered me a deal I could live with. It was a short term (year or so) deal, but then I called back to cancel at the of that year and got another offer. It's always worth a shot. With all the competition they don't want to lose customers.

[Blackbeauty212]

That is one good thing Fios brought to the table some Fierce Competition in cable wars.....the retention offers being made to keep customers today were unheard of just 3 years ago.....Comcast and others were very arrogant....because they had a monopoly on the market Directv and other dish offerings were not the competitor to cable that fios has become....

Now everyone has to set up their game

[hornet67]

I've had FIOS for just over 2 years, and have been very pleased with it. I was stuck with Comcast previously, and was soooo glad to get rid of them. They kept eliminating cable channels, yet raising the price.

[fleetiebelle]

I switched to Fios earlier this year, and I'm still getting calls from Comcast wanting me to come back (I answered the first time, and the number keeps popping up on the caller ID.) If Comcast had cared about my business that much when I was a customer, I wouldn't have switched.

[jay5835]

Originally Posted by Blackbeauty212

I hear that Verizon Fios Customer Service is pretty bad.

I say a little prayer of gratitude from time to time that I now have Comcast. SNL could not invent a more perfect parody of 21st century customer service than the actuality of dealing with Verizon's.

[robrobrob]

I really don't have any problem with Comcast but it is pretty pricey. We pay about 180 after all the fees. We have the bundle. I doubt I can get it back to 99 a month but something close. Anyway care to share what they were offered to stay with Comcast?

[youngabe]

I've been a Comcast customer since 2003 when everything switched over from the horrid AT&T Broadband. I personally have never really had an issue and anytime I do need customer service, it's not an issue. To my knowledge, when you call Comcast locally in the Greater Pittsburgh area, you get a person either in their West End or Robinson facilities. That's huge to me.

The Verizon customer service horror stories couldn't be any more true. I personally have friends that jumped on the Fios bandwagon as soon as it was available and switched right back to Comcast. On the other hand, I have friends that love Fios. To each their own--that's why there are choices, you have to find what service is best for you and your home.

[SammyKhalifa]

I TRIED to get Verizon service when I moved here. The Customer Service was so bad that I canceled before they even installed it. Basically, THEY NEVER SHOWED UP TO INSTALL IT. I had taken a day off to meet them from 8-12 AM, which was fine. By the time 2PM came, I called wondering what was going on, and they said they would have to reschedule for 12-4 (?). Then at 4:30 I called them to say ask where they were, they said that something had come up and I would have to take the day off again the next day. At which point I told them not to bother. Of course, a few days later my landlord mentioned to me that some guy from Verizon was there the other day trying to install lines to my house.

I know delays happen, but they knew about them and waited for me to call them because it's "not their policy" to contact customers about delays. The contractor (and I'm sure it's not their fault) did not have my contact information either? Every time I called them, I was put on hold for about 15 minutes because they could not find me in their computers (I guess they were floored when I didn't have an account number to give them). And they had no record that I had called them before--of course, somehow that didn't stop them from trying to sell me more things.


I know these kind of things happen with every company, but the issues were to such a comical extreme for me. I can't even think of all of the issues that came up in those phone calls--it was a few years ago but still makes me angry just thinking about it.

[greg42]

Personally I'm in the skip it altogether box, choice number 4. I technically have TV service from Comcast, but only the limited basic $12 service, and I don't even have it plugged in. I don't know if it's still the case, but generally has been that if you only get internet service from Comcast it costs $15 more than if you have any TV service. $12 is less than $15. Plus I have it for emergencies, like watching channel 4 (I can't pick up any ABC channels where I am).

You have to be a certain type of watcher for this to work, though. In our place, we already NEVER flipped the TV on for background. Heck, our normal lounging room is upstairs, and the one TV is downstairs. We even got a new HD unit a few years ago, but making it the centerpiece of our life is not what we're interested in. We watch Netflix movies, mainly via actual DVD/Blu-Ray sent in the mail. We're not watching quite as many though so I dialed the service back to only DVDs and the 2 per month limited program. That's about how many movies we can get through in a month. We could always supplement with RedBox, but sending/receiving in the mail is easier. And we watch a few TV shows. Sometimes we'll bother to watch them at the time they air, using an antenna. More often now, though, we watch them by streaming on the computer. I can plug the computer into the TV for this to have the larger screen. During the summer we basically watch zilch so it's highly likely that early episodes of shows we watch (or any new ones we want to pick up) will be watched by streaming for sure. We usually stream these directly from the TV network sites vs Hulu. Sometimes that's the only way to get the show, which is why I haven't bothered to pick up any TV boxes that can stream Hulu Plus or whatever. There's always going to be a limitation there, although maybe Boxee Box fixes this, not sure. Ideally you have a dedicated computer on the TV but that just costs too much for anything that's ideally designed.

Where all this falls down is if you just want to sit down and flip at the TV. Relegating yourself to over the air and internet streaming isn't conducive to this at all. But if you know the shows you want to seek out, I think it can be fine. BTW, I've never resorted to the bootleg stuff, LOL. I think there's plenty out there without it, but if you must have, say, HBO shows or something, that's the only way I think to get them without actual cable. This will change eventually, I think it has to, but right now the cable networks are still beholden to the cable companies I guess. Get more of their revenue that way than elsewhere, so they have to bow to the cable company wishes. If HBO started putting shows online, presumably they couldn't charge as much to the cable companies for the network feed.

I've never been able to have Verizon Fios so can't say anything specific, but Verizon customer service also sucks for everything else, even business customers. Nothing but lame excuses and separate business units that are unable to work with each other. (At least when I deal with ATT Wireless for work I get to call a special group which appears thus far in my experience to be staffed only with really good people who can handle anything I've had to deal with. We have about 30 phones, nothing especially huge.) Comcast, well, I never have to call them, that may be the best service of all! My internet service has been dead reliable for years.

[trotter_rej]

I have FIOS internet and phone and DirecTV for television. My only problems with FIOS occurred at or near installation time. As with Sammy above, our installation tech never showed up. I did get a good customer service rep on the phone who helped me determine that the FIOS internet was never actually shut off from the previous owners. It took Verizon about a week to work out the telephone transfer (we kept getting calls for the previous owners). And we did have one billing error, but it was quickly corrected.

I've had mostly good luck with DirecTV (since 2000) and had more good customer service agents than bad. There is a Verizon FIOS bundle that includes DirecTV on your bill and gives you a small discount on DirecTV. They don't advertise it much since it directly competes with their own TV service, but it exists. DirecTV was more vital to me when we lived in TX because of the NFL package, but not so much now. I've been tempted to switch to the FIOS bundle that includes TV and it would be quite a bit cheaper (for the initial 2 year special), but I tend to be brand loyal past the time where it makes sense financially when I like a company or service.