I’ve been a DISH Network customer for nearly 10 years, but over the past few months, I tried both Comcast and AT&T.  Because of that, I’ve had a number of friends who are currently subscribed to one of these services ask me

But my experience with Comcast was miles away from the advertising.

Back in early April, a Comcast sales person came to my door offering me a “win-back deal” on their service — cable, internet and phone — no contract, guaranteed pricing for a year.

I’ve been a DISHNetwork subscriber for nearly 10 years, and  in general am happy with their service.  But, the savings over what I was currently paying to DISH, and AT&T (for landline and DSL), coupled with the assurances of the salesperson that Comcast was re-vamping their entire business and wanted the chance to show customers that they had changed, lured me  in.  After all, it couldn’t be that bad, right?

Wrong!

I understood that it would take a week or two to get service installed, so it was expected that an installation appointment would be a week and a half later.

So, the day of installation comes, and my wife is home during the installation. I come home from work, excited to see how the new service is.

For starters, the cable box was connected directly to my TV, instead of through my Onkyo home theater receiver (HTR). No biggie … I didn’t really expect that they would connect to that — I could do that myself. Next, I start to check out the HD channels. Quite a bit of pixelation in channels. Thinking it might be solved through some upscaling through my HTR, I decide to hook it up.

It was a little trickier because the tech had hooked up via component cables instead of HDMI (I’d had DISH DVR VIP722 connected to my HTR this way), but I got it worked out. Yet, I still didn’t have Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, even on channels that normally were broadcasting it. This led me to search around a little, and I thought maybe connected via HDMI would yield better results in the audio and video.

Problem: No HDMI out on the cable box.

I decided to contact Comcast, which led them to tell me that the boxes that had been hooked up were regular digital boxes, not HD. (Further investigation discovered that these boxes were also 5 years old.)

I was pretty ticked — especially considering that this was their “win back offer”.

“Ok”, I said, “when can someone bring out the right boxes?”

“Apr 23rd.”

April 23rd was two weeks away. “April 23rd? No, I want this corrected within the next 24-47 hours.”

The tech gave me a number to call the next morning to try to get an earlier date. Calling the next morning did no good … that was “the earliest date available”, but I had the option of going to a service center in another town to exchange the boxes — although “there was no guarantee they had such boxes available.”

Unbelievable!  After the call, I thought about this more … why was I being expected to correct their mistake?  This was exactly a reason why I left cable, and laughed at people who shared similar stories of poor customer service from cable but still stuck with them.

I quickly researched AT&T, and less that 48 hours after I had cable TV, phone and internet installed … I had ordered AT&T U-verse — to be installed a day BEFORE Comcast said they could come out to do a simply exchange of cable boxes and correct their mistake.

I’ll describe the AT&T installation and service in a later entry, but after AT&T finished the installation, I called Comcast to cancel my service.  THEN, the rep asked if they were able to get someone out sooner, would I reconsider cancelling?  I said, you could have corrected your mistake two weeks ago.  I order AT&T U-verse less than 2 days after your installer was here, and I’ve got AT&T service now.

Comcast said they could have someone out the next day(!) to pickup the equipment.   So, they must have plenty of employees available to get out to get equipment when they lose a customer … but no one available to keep a customer.  Amazing!

My experience with Comcast was absolutely horrible.  Their customer service was some of the worst I’ve ever encountered.  Many of my friends and family have had poor customer service experiences with Comcast (or other cable providers) as well, yet most of them put up with it.

It’ll definitely be longer than 15+ years before I even think of trying cable again.

(Check back … part 2 will be coming around soon)

With the reduced season ticket pricing for 2010, we were excited about enjoying another summer of many days spent at Great America and Hurricane Harbor; as well as visiting Six Flags, St. Louis. In fact, we were so excited that we purchased our season tickets in January!

My wife and I decided earlier in the week that we would surprise our son and daughter with our first trip of the season to Great America last Sunday. When we told them that morning, they were very excited and couldn’t wait to get to the park.

But, that excitement quickly dwindled.

First, were the changes in parking. In years past, there was “VIP parking” that got you into a special section of the parking lot, very close to the entrance. But, this year, the main parking lot rate was $10 higher than parking in what used to be the “overflow parking” (which is more than a quarter mile from the park entrance). There were no tram stops or regular shuttles even provided to take guests to the entrance from this more remote lot. There is no alternative but walking to the gate, unless you want to pay the extra $10 to park an eighth of a mile or so closer.

The next issue was when we arrived at the gate. As on our past visits to the parks, we threw a bottle of water and a granola bar for each of us into a backpack. But, when we went through security, we were told we were not allowed to bring them in. We were given the choice to toss them in the trash, go outside the gates and eat them, or take them back to our car. We opted to eat them just outside the gates, and then re-enter.

Back in the park, having gotten our season pass photos taken, we headed to our first ride. As we were entering the line, two teenage girls asked us if we knew where the $1 ride lockers were. We were a bit confused, so they explained that they had just come off of two rides where they had to pay $1 each for a locker to put their bag in while they rode the ride.

That was appalling!

A family carrying a backpack to keep together several things needed during the day (sunscreen, kleenex, hand sanitizer, etc) is now forced to pay, in addition to the gate price, to be able to ride rides together. Charging one dollar per ride is just plain wrong. If the park is trying to deal with problems of theft, etc, then these lockers should be complimentary … or cost a maximum of $0.25.

My family and I opted not to pay the fee … which contributed to dampening our fun because at least one member of our party had to skip the ride to hold the bag. But, the curious question on our minds was, why wasn’t this at all the rides? A number of other rides still had bins to put your stuff in … why not all?!

Six Flags could make more money, and attract more visitors to their parks — particularly Great America — if they were more family-friendly. My family and I have visited Six Flags over Georgia and Six Flags, St Louis in the past, and these were more family-friendly. I wonder if and how they’ve changed (I’ll have a chance to find out when we visit St. Louis later this summer).

There is not the “experience” at Six Flags Great America any longer. There isn’t much to see, even while spending “forever” standing in lines waiting for your next ride.

While I don’t think or expect that Six Flags should try to copycat Disney, there is a lot that they could learn from the “Disney experience” that people have visiting their parks, etc. There, people really seem to forget about “the outside world” because of what they are experiencing at the park … and, in turn, they stay longer and spend more — because they enjoy it, not because they have nothing better to do.

This year, because of the recession no doubt, Six Flags is trying to get more people to their parks by making season passes only about $10-15 more than a one-day admission. That has some effect, but people will still feel they got their money’s worth after only 2 or 3 days in the park. Likely only a small percentage would spend 20+ days (even 10+?) this summer at Six Flags’ parks.

But if Six Flags gave them the experience that makes they yearn to come back again and again … they’d improve their reputation, and make the money they seem to so desperately want and need.