Internet Service - Nothing to Do with Shaving at All

OK, another addendum, in which I have to admit to marked carelessness, if not outright stupidity: after cancelling the Comcast/Xfinity internet service, we took the equipment yesterday to their local store and came home. Then last evening, when we got ready to watch a DVD movie from the library, I picked up the remote and stared blankly at where the Blu-ray player was supposed to be. No Blu-ray player. Nothing. And the realization struck that when I had been bundling up the Xfinity gear I had accidentally also unplugged and packed the Blu-ray player and its power cord and HDMI cable into the same paper grocery bag.

First thing this morning we went back to the store and explained the mistake. The young lady there looked around for no more than 30 seconds on a racked cart full of electronic parts, found one paper sack, and said, 'This is all there is.' The sack obviously was not the one I had left. I asked if I could look through the parts, and she shrugged and said, 'Sure.' I looked through the large bins full of gear but did not find my stuff. I asked her if it might have been put somewhere else, and she first said no, but then said reluctantly that she would look in a back room. She went back into another room but came back in another 30 seconds to say it wasn't there. At that point, very frustrated, I searched again through the big cart without finding the player. I was about to give up and ask to talk to a manager when a young man came out of the back room holding my player. He gave it to me and said he hadn't seen the power cord or cable. When he saw my irritated facial expression, he went back and looked again, coming back almost immediately with both the power plug-in and the cable.

I guess the morals of the story are:
1. When you're getting old and your little gray cells are failing, BE CAREFUL. Double check.
2. Always be persistent when asking for service or assistance at a store where some of the employees clearly don't give a damn about actually helping.

We have had the T-Mobile service activated for a week now, and it seems to be working well. Initially I was concerned because its tower showed 'weak' connection wherever I walked it around our apartment, but then I read online that someone else had that experience but then actually got good internet connection anyway. So I hooked it up, with the tower near a window, and we have been able to do our usual activities, including my wife doing her work and streaming, without any glitches or apparent slowness. I have used online speed tests, and the download speed is variably 100-170 Mbps, while the upload speed is 2.5-3 Mbps. These are less than what Comcast provided but seem to be adequate for our needs, so I think we'll probably keep the T-Mobile service.

100-170Mbps download is pretty damn good for the price...2.5-3Mbps upload is pretty miserable though. I wonder what bands your router is connecting to. for the router we have, if you type in 192.168.12.1 in the browser, it'll load the router config page where it'll list some metrics, which towers its connecting to and such.

sometimes even rotating the router slightly where it's at can get it to lock onto a better signal.

oddly enough, our set up at work gets us anywhere from 30-70Mbps down and almost always in the 40-60Mbps upload range, which is pretty rare for this set up, I think. We're connecting to B66 as our primary, N71 at the secondary.

the speeds I mentioned above are plenty fine for our needs and so far it has been reliable for the 3 weeks we've had it connected. one of the companies we support at work recently purchased their own t-mobile set up. I'll be curious to see if they got the same router as us and how their speeds do.

OK, another addendum, in which I have to admit to marked carelessness, if not outright stupidity: after cancelling the Comcast/Xfinity internet service, we took the equipment yesterday to their local store and came home. Then last evening, when we got ready to watch a DVD movie from the library, I picked up the remote and stared blankly at where the Blu-ray player was supposed to be. No Blu-ray player. Nothing. And the realization struck that when I had been bundling up the Xfinity gear I had accidentally also unplugged and packed the Blu-ray player and its power cord and HDMI cable into the same paper grocery bag.

First thing this morning we went back to the store and explained the mistake. The young lady there looked around for no more than 30 seconds on a racked cart full of electronic parts, found one paper sack, and said, 'This is all there is.' The sack obviously was not the one I had left. I asked if I could look through the parts, and she shrugged and said, 'Sure.' I looked through the large bins full of gear but did not find my stuff. I asked her if it might have been put somewhere else, and she first said no, but then said reluctantly that she would look in a back room. She went back into another room but came back in another 30 seconds to say it wasn't there. At that point, very frustrated, I searched again through the big cart without finding the player. I was about to give up and ask to talk to a manager when a young man came out of the back room holding my player. He gave it to me and said he hadn't seen the power cord or cable. When he saw my irritated facial expression, he went back and looked again, coming back almost immediately with both the power plug-in and the cable.

I guess the morals of the story are:
1. When you're getting old and your little gray cells are failing, BE CAREFUL. Double check.
2. Always be persistent when asking for service or assistance at a store where some of the employees clearly don't give a damn about actually helping.

Unbelievable bad service! Sounds like neither rep wanted to be bothered to be thorough. But I am glad you persisted and recovered your stuff!

When I cancelled my Comcast cable tv service, I had to return my set top box as well as a couple of converters I used with analog TV back in the day. I still have my Comcast Internet service, but I own my own cable modem and router.

When I returned my Comcast equipment, they scanned the bar codes on each piece of equipment and gave me a receipt to prove I had returned it. If they scanned the equipment upon return, I do not see how your including the BluRay player in the bag was not caught immediately at the time of return. If they did not inventory the equipment when you returned it, that was a mistake on their part. If you left the store without a receipt, that was a mistake on your part.

When I cancelled my Comcast cable tv service, I had to return my set top box as well as a couple of converters I used with analog TV back in the day. I still have my Comcast Internet service, but I own my own cable modem and router.

When I returned my Comcast equipment, they scanned the bar codes on each piece of equipment and gave me a receipt to prove I had returned it. If they scanned the equipment upon return, I do not see how your including the BluRay player in the bag was not caught immediately at the time of return. If they did not inventory the equipment when you returned it, that was a mistake on their part. If you left the store without a receipt, that was a mistake on your part.

They scanned, but the player was missed. (She said they couldn't print the receipt because the machine was not working right.)

Sounds like your Comcast store needs some improvements in both personnel and equipment.

After 6-7 weeks with the T-Mobile service, we are generally quite happy with it. Speeds are adequate for our needs, and the only minor glitch is that about every 10 days or so we lose the connection and have to reboot the router, which takes about 60 seconds.