It's not often that I get really angry, and I usually calm down before telling the world about it when I do. So it was a few days ago when Comcast disconnected my cable (including high speed internet and thus my Vonage telephone) four and a half days earlier at my old address than they were scheduled to hook it up at my new address. I was about as mad as I ever remember being. But I calmed down before posting about it (though had I been able to go online and post immediately, I probably would have). I may not have posted about it at all if they hadn't made another stupid move this morning. But let's go back to the beginning...

Last month, I called Comcast to schedule the transition from my old home to my new one. The soonest they could get the new place hooked up was September 10th. No problem. I didn't have to be out of my old place till the 15th. The schedule was set. On the afternoon of the 10th, I'd take the cable modem from the old place to the new place and wait for them to come and get it up and running.

Well, on the morning of the 6th, my internet connection went out. I checked my Vonage phone, and sure enough, it was out too. Fine, an interruption or two here and there isn't a big deal--outages have been few an far between since Comcast took over from AT&T. But then I saw a guy walking out of my back yard, and realized that it wasn't an outage--I'd been disconnected. I ran out to talk to him and he said that disconnection was scheduled for that day. Had I been thinking more quickly, I would have thought to borrow a neighbors phone to call and get someone to tell him to hook me back up before he left, but alas, that idea came too late.

So I called Comcast a little later and explained the situation. They verified that I was indeed scheduled for hookup on the 10th and disconnection on the 6th. The lady said that the disconnection day should have been confirmed with me when I scheduled the hookup. Sorry Comcast, that's not how it happened. Nobody said a word about the disconnection date during that call. Why anybody would have scheduled that gap in service is beyond me--especially considering the email I got in response to my inquiry about moving service:

Reader Comment:
DJTEEL said:
glad youy're still a comcast user friendly...i've had comcast for only two weeks and am in love with it.funny though,there's all kinds of bad vibes on the internet about comcast.alot of complaints from people.mostly because of a recent blackout.it di...
(join the conversation below)

"I understand you are moving, and need to transfer your service. Transferring Comcast High-Speed Internet service to a new address can be a seamless process with some advance planning. It requires a call to your local Customer Call Center at least 2 weeks in advance of the desired connection date at the new address to ensure a timely appointment without creating a lapse in service from address to address."

Sorry guys, a four and a half day gap does not qualify as "seamless" or "without creating a lapse in service."

The lady told me that by the time they could run through the required bureaucracy and get someone out to hook me back up, it would probably be the 10th, so there wasn't anything they could do. I'm not a mean or foul enough person to the shouting and swearing that would have been required to change that, so I took the free month she offered and went on my way--very angrily, as I've said.

The interruption didn't turn out to be nearly as bad as expected, no thanks to Comcast. My new upstairs neighbors have high speed internet, and were kind enough to let me put my Vonage box in their place and run a phone line and ethernet cable down to my place till Comcast gets me hooked up.

So all was going well till I turned my computer on this morning and discovered that all of my email accounts had been deactivated. I called Comcast again, and the lady explained that during transitions from one account to another, they temporarily disable email accounts. Unbelievable! Since when does a seamless transition include the loss of a day and a half's worth of email? To be fair (?), they may have been planning to activate the new account and reactivate my email before physically hooking me back up...but who knows. Maybe not.

I logged in and got my email, and unless they were sending a temporary error to anyone who tried to email me during that time, it looks like I lost about four and a half hours worth. What is it with Comcast and four and a half? I'm almost afraid to think about what's going to happen four and a half minutes before they get me hooked up again.

Oh well, it would have been mostly spam anyway.

Comcast, we've hit a rock in the road of our relationship, but there's still time to patch it up. Please, just make sure the rest of the process fits my definition of "seamless".