Talk of The Villages Florida - DirecTV vs Comcast

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- - DirecTV vs Comcast (https://www.talkofthevillages.com/forums/villages-florida-general-discussion-73/directv-vs-comcast-181811/)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bonsai Golfer (Post 1189426)

A couple of posts asked for an email contact "via PM." What the heck is PM and how do you send an email when you don't have an address to send it to?

I have had DirecTV for 8 years. I recently asked them to provide me with an upgraded box (Genie?) given how long I've been with them. They absolutely refused claiming I'm not eligible for any promotion. They said their system would not allow it. I asked to talk to a supervisor and got the same answer from that person. When I asked who else I could talk to the answer was, "no one"!

I then went to the Century Link store on 441 near Target. I asked about Prism and was told that since the Prism TV service is carried over the same line as the DSL which carries the internet service, my internet service would have to be reduced from it's current 25Mbps to 10Mbps. My cost for the 25 Mbps is about $45, tax and fees included.

I'm also curious about the folks who report they are getting 75Mbps service from Century Link. I live in Duval and I just confirmed that 25Mbsp is the fastest speed offered in this area.

Maybe I'll try Dish. I'm not convinced about Comcast. I've heard too many bad things about them, some of the recent posts to this thread not withstanding.

PM is a private message. If you click on a posters name in the upper left corner of the post, you will see the option to send a private message.

I think your conversations with DirecTV confirms what I have been saying about their customer service going downhill recently. Last year (pre AT&T) they would have been much more accommodating. I know they were great about upgrading me to Genie a couple of years ago after I had been with them for about 3 years at that time.

The 75 Mbps is through Comcast. Interestingly, days after I posted getting this speed on this forum for $40 per month, Comcast sent me a letter saying they reviewed my account and determined I wasn't paying enough. Now they are going to drop my speed down to 3 Mbps. Looks like I'm going to have to find a new internet provider.

The folks who have Century Link with fiber optic to the house can get the higher speeds such as 40, 100, and 1000 Mbits/sec.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bonsai Golfer (Post 1189426)

Typically, promotional rates are only for new accounts. The sales rep has no leeway on this, and just wants to get you off the phone so they can handle a commission caller. You should pressure the rep to transfer you to the customer retention department, where they have some negotiating ability. You may not get the full promotional rate, but a decent partial discount. Even that might only be good for a year. One time I tried this, and went from a 2 channel DVR to a 5 channel Genie for $50 instead of $250. It can't hurt to try.

Comcast is deceptive. They do rate increases without informing you in advance and they bill you for late charges even when you are on automatic pay. It is hard to understand their agents who have foreign accents and the agents lack the knowledge to handle corrections. It took 4 hours and three agents to correct a billing error. They also dropped channels that were originally assigned.We have had to deal with Comcast several times due to their errors.Beware!

Quote:

Originally Posted by cvannage@yahoo.com (Post 1190524)

We've had Comcast almost a year and are extremely happy with them. Our bill has not changed one cent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by photo1902 (Post 1190529)

We've had Comcast almost a year and are extremely happy with them. Our bill has not changed one cent.

Have had Comcast since October of last year, and so far it has been great!
Only had one initial billing problem, but that was handled very quickly!
Also the internet has been flawless.
I want to mention the Comcast installers were right on time,
and very knowledgeable!
Up north we have Dish and have had a lot of weather related outages.
So I find it hard to believe that satellite outages aren't
much of a problem here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fredster (Post 1190537)

You're right. I have had Dish for about 3-4 years, and during rainy storms, I lose signal. But it usually only last for a few minutes. Of course, if you are recording something, and watch it later, it can be a nuisance to find out you lost the signal in the middle of the recording. Still, I like the pros of Dish vs the cons. Just upgraded to their new Hopper 3 with 16 tuners and 2 terabytes of storage! They have the best DVR in the business, imo. The Comcast DVR was the deal breaker for me; less than 400 Gbytes internal; not even close.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Villages Audio Video (Post 1189472)

Do you realize that this is piracy? 5 years in a federal prison and a $250,000+ fine should be enough of a deterrent.

piracy? It looks the same as roku

We switched from Comcast to Direct TV recently because Comcast was getting very expensive like over $200/month. We had internet and Prism. We have a reasonable rate with Direct TV and Century Link (internet) for one year then we go up to about $190. We do not have any complaints with Direct TV.