Home telephone service through Comcast

[STEVIE]

Hi,
I just received a call from Comcast, offering me a "bundle" package. I already have cable and internet service through them. The bundle would also include phone service. The price they quoted me would be quite a bit of savings, over what I know pay AT&T. Has anyone used Comcast for phone service? Were there any problems? The woman is calling me back tomorrow, and if I have positive feedback, I think I will switch. Thank you, Sue

 

[tomandrobin]

We have it and have had no problems at all. One more benefit is no long distance calls, so you can even cancel that service.

The only snag is if you have a monitored alarm system. Your monitoring company will need to be informed and may need to have a tech come out to tweak the new install.

We even got some fee movies channels thrown in with our contract and we are saving around $50 a month.

 

[skinsfan]

There phone service is pretty good, I used and it for years and my girlfriend has it and likes it. If it saves cash I would say go for it, it's better than vonage!

Hi,
I just received a call from Comcast, offering me a "bundle" package. I already have cable and internet service through them. The bundle would also include phone service. The price they quoted me would be quite a bit of savings, over what I know pay AT&T. Has anyone used Comcast for phone service? Were there any problems? The woman is calling me back tomorrow, and if I have positive feedback, I think I will switch. Thank you, Sue

 

[STEVIE]

Thank you for the replys. I was a little nervous to switch, after all I have had AT&T for so many years. But the thought of saving about $50.00 a month would be very helpful, it will help with the increased gas ond oil bills. Sue

 

[Karen G]

Another satisfied Comcast bundle customer here--we had the service in the Seattle area last year and it was fine. I liked not having to think about whether I was calling long distance or local, and just being able to talk as long as I wanted to.

 

[Kal]

Check prices with other major VOIP providers. Comcast has almost the highest cost of anyone. For the quality providers, there's little if any difference in voice quality.

 

[xzhan02]

the $99 bundle price comcast advertise is only for the first year, correct ? What will it be after the first year ?

 

[Kal]

Also, look at the hidden Comcast charges such as installation and equipment rental.

 

[Jennie]

We switched using our local cable company--not Comcast.

There was an extra charge of approx. $50. for retaining our "old" number (called a "porting" charge, I believe). But it would have cost nothing if we wished to accept a new phone number.

Also, there were some echos and some "crossed lines" initially i.e. we could hear a conversation of other people but they could not hear us. I did some research on the Internet and found that this is often a problem when the phone service is in a home that has wi fi. The propsed solution was to buy a newer phone 6.0 (not 5.8). We purchased a Panasonic phone with 3 separate handsets for about $70. on Amazon. It works fine and is the best cordless phone we've ever owned.

We've had the cable company phone service for a year now and are 100% satisfied. Information calls are free. When you dial "411" a live person answers almost instantly and searches several different ways until they find what you need. There are several other features that can be set from the company's web site. If you don't want to miss a call but don't want to give out your cell phone number, you can set the "Find me" feature and if you don't answer your home phone within the number of rings you set, the call will be automatically transferred to your cell phone, and up to two more numbers you program in.

At the web site, or with the help of a Customer Service rep by phone, you can set up a long distance plan which has very competitive prices e.g. .06 per minute to most of Mexico. You can start with a minimum $10. credit card payment. You can set it up to "recharge" your account in $10. or $20. increments automatically as you are about to run out of minutes (with no interruption in your conversation). Or you can just add money to your account as needed. You dial an "800" access number and then enter your home number plus the 4 digit PIN you have chosen (and can change very easily). You can do this from your home phone or any other phone so it is like having a calling card. It does not require any on-going committment. You can access any other long distance calling plan from your home phone despite having this one set up.

There's many other features like conference calls, automatic redial if a number you are trying to reach is busy, tracing back to a number from which a call came, caller I.D. etc...And there are no extra charges for any of these features.

Our comapany also guaranteed to change us back to our old service at no cost within 30 days if we were not satisfied.

We are so glad we made the switch. There have been no rate increases so far.

 

[pcgirl54]

We have had it two months and it's fine. Before that we had Comcast Digital Phone and AT & T for years. Prior Comcast plan limited long distance calls and was a seperate bill which irked me. We also have internet and cable with them for years and we have Panasonic phones.

Now I can call anywhere without worrying about long distance charges. It was seemless and they waived the installation fee. We also upgraded the to a HD receiver for cable. It was cheaper than what we had. Yes, the reduced fee is for a year but that is fine. A install fee was on our bill and after calling it was waived. I do not know if this was due to the HD box or the phones so make sure you get the name of who you speak with and have them put notes in your file about fees.


Just learned in our area that we can get Tivo through now if you have the right HD receiver for an additional $3 a month. If not it's $15.95. It is not the same as having your own TIVO since we can move things from the computer to Tivo box now and can't if we stopped our TIVo service but it is a major savings if you don't care about being able to do this.

 

[Kal]

Go HERE to compare providers.

 

[geekette]

Interesting. I've never trusted Comcast but since we cannot get DSL or satellite in our area, we've considered turning it all over to them.

Those of you that have had it for some time, have you not had any outages? Or, were they minor and quickly rectified? That's my biggest problem with them - continuity of service. It would suck rocks to be out of tv, phone and internet when electricity has not gone out.

 

[Kal]

Interesting. I've never trusted Comcast but since we cannot get DSL or satellite in our area, we've considered turning it all over to them.

Those of you that have had it for some time, have you not had any outages? Or, were they minor and quickly rectified? That's my biggest problem with them - continuity of service. It would suck rocks to be out of tv, phone and internet when electricity has not gone out.

I'm not sure which service you question; however, I have lots of Comcast services but NOT VOIP. The cable phone is thru another provider but the service is excellent. With regard to continuity of [cable] service rarely if ever are there any interruptions. Those that do occur probably last less than 1-2 minutes.

In the event of a power outage, I just switch to the cell phone.

 

[Poobah]

Comcast

We have had Comcast for VOIP and it has worked fine. We first had a bundle that did not include Comcast VOIP. When they announced that they were going to drop all phone plans to subscribers except VOIP, we switched over to VOIP.

We have not had any problems, there have been only a couple of outages. Most of our area has underground utilities so we are very seldom affected by outages. It is true that if you lose power you lose phone service.

We have not had any customer service problems.

Cheers,

Paul

 

[grupp]

I really do hate Comcast!

I have the Comcast Bundle with internet, phone and TV. When we originally signed up, it took them 3 trips to get the phone service to work correctly and they drilled a hole in my wall where there was not supposed to be a hole.

Now they are discontinuing our digital phone service and changing us over to digital voice or something like that. Has a low introductory rate and then a very high rate. They are not contining the old service so you either need to switch over or find another phone carrier. Wish I had found another carrioer.

Spent the morning today waiting for the tech to arrive. He was there for about an hour and said everything worked find and was on his way. I should have check all the phones before he left because after he was gone I discovered only one of the phones in the house worked. The others were all dead. Now I am trying to get them to come back out and take care of it, but not having much luck.

Might be moving in a few months and am not likely to continure comcast for anything after I move. I just hate spending as much as I do with a company that has horrible customer service and inept technicians.

Gary

 

[pcgirl54]

Our neigbors switched to DSL bundle, price was right $99 and they did not like Comcast. After a few months they hated DSL so much they switched back.

To clarify it was not just the slower DLS speed that caused disatisfaction. The OP posted about phone service and bundle $99 prices. Our neighbors were disatisfied with the entire package and company for many reasons.

We have a network in our house so DH was concerned about it. The first three Comcast reps could not answer his technical questions but finally he was connected to someone who understood what he was asking. We have had no issues with Comcast at all.

 

[Kal]

Our neigbors switched to DSL bundle, price was right and they did not like Comcast. After a few months they hated DSL so much they switched back.

Isn't that an apples and beets comparison? They probably realized that DSL is quite inferior to cable. It doesn't necessarily speak to VOIP.

 

[Icarus]

They probably realized that DSL is quite inferior to cable.

That's news to me.

-David

 

[Kal]

Cable is SIGNIFICANTLY faster than DSL.

 

[geekette]

I just hate spending as much as I do with a company that has horrible customer service and inept technicians.

OK, that's the kind of thing I was thinking. This is the long-standing impression I have of Comcast in our state, and what feeds my bias.

Problem is, where we live, it's Comcast or nothing. grrrrr

 

[Icarus]

Cable is SIGNIFICANTLY faster than DSL.

Originally that was true, but hi-speed DSL which is what most people including me have is basically the same throughput as cable these days. Some cable is getting faster, I'll grant you that, but the overall throughput for DSL is more than adequate, and they have higher speeds available as well. And fiber channel is just as fast.

The main thing for me, is that our cable service is basically unreliable, and I'd much rather deal with the phone company than the cable company when there are problems. Cable uptime isn't anywhere close to the phone companies uptime.

The phone companies have 100 years of experience at providing reliable service. Most cable companies don't know how to provide reliable service.

I had cable modem here. Last year, I was having problems with it, and the cable company offered to come out and look at in 4 weeks. In 2 weeks, I had DSL provisioned, installed and working, so I simply returned the cable modem to the cable company.

At least where I am, DSL is also cheaper than cable modem. I pay $30 a month for hi-speed DSL. Cable modem was closer to $50 a month.

-David

 

[bogey21]

If you have a cell phone, why not just drop the land line? That's what I did about 3 years ago and haven't missed it at all.

GEORGE

 

[Kal]

If you have a cell phone, why not just drop the land line? That's what I did about 3 years ago and haven't missed it at all.

GEORGE

Does that mean you have cell phones at various locations in the home? Kitchen, Office, Bedrooms, Entertainment Room, Workshop..... Probably would need a speaker on the cell phone ringer too.

 

[geekette]

Does that mean you have cell phones at various locations in the home? Kitchen, Office, Bedrooms, Entertainment Room, Workshop..... Probably would need a speaker on the cell phone ringer too.

ick. even worse, keeping it strapped to you at all times. yikes, no way.

 

[Kal]

Originally that was true, but hi-speed DSL which is what most people including me have is basically the same throughput as cable these days. Some cable is getting faster, I'll grant you that, but the overall throughput for DSL is more than adequate, and they have higher speeds available as well. And fiber channel is just as fast...

I just checked my cable download speed and am at 15,476 kbps. I don't know how anyone could live with dial-up at 3900 kbps.