Welcome to the Word of Rod

Dear Comcast,

Ever since our shotgun wedding in 2003, I’ve put up with your $@^# and suffered along silently. (Well, not so silent that we didn’t talk every three months to review my bill line-by-line. By the way, “Additional Fee” was almost vague enough that I could have missed it, but I didn’t.)

I always knew you were cheating me. But I thought it didn’t matter. You let me surf the web, and I could still get SciFi Channel (before they changed the spelling and demonstrated how far we had strayed as a society). I thought we had an understanding.

The real depth of your deprativy wasn’t apparent to me until I moved in 2010. First you failed to “remember” to connect service at my new home but didn’t “forget” to bill me for it. In the course of this little Comcastic spat, you accused me of having two additional “secret” Comcast accounts. Somehow, you believed I had three Comcast service accounts (cable & Internet no less) going on at the same address. Scandal!

You also had no problem finding balances on all three accounts, and combined them for one big Jerry Springer “Who’s Your Cable-Daddy”-style surprise. Epic!

This digital kerfuffle took me three months and more than half a dozen long phone calls to straighten out. You were wrong, and you gave me HBO for six months as a consolation prize. That didn’t take away the sting of the accusation or the hours lost trying to prove my innocence.

Comcast, if you want to know what finally killed our hostage-style relationship, it was that you stopped caring … and your Enron-esque billing practices.

When I wrapped up the final bills on the townhouse before making the move to the new house this summer, you told me I over paid you. You said there was a $200 credit that would be applied at the new house. Wow. I was finally feeling the love.

After a lot of unpacking I thought we’d have a quiet night together. We’d get a movie On Demand and spend some quality time together. But Comcast, you rejected my advances with an error code I’d never seen. I wanted to work it out. I was ready to chalk the whole thing up to never having “Demanded” anything before in the new house. Then you dropped a bomb on me, Comcast.

You said I owed you just shy of $700 after less than 30 days in the new place together. After all those years of supporting you and putting aside the petty billing slights and service glitches – and let’s not forget the major attitude – you wanted me to pay you $700? It felt so dirty, Comcast. So wrong.

You claimed I never returned any of your stuff from the last place. In fact, you even added a few things to the list you and I never shared together at the townhouse (how many DVRs do you give someone anyway?).

We fought it out for weeks. On my umteenth call to you, you casually mentioned you found your stuff (where is “processing” that it took so long to find? Is it like Reno, where you hear about it but no one ever really goes unless they have no choice?). Not only did you find the stuff you insisted for weeks I was keeping from you, but it wasn’t until I called that you decided to take them off my bill. Clearly, we were in crisis.

Instead of working it out, you doubled down to see how much more money you could get from me. After clearing up the “Gimme back my stuff” argument, you lost that $200 credit from the move. Comcast, not only did you try to extort several pieces of expensive electronics from me, you were conveniently “forgetting” you were paid.

After waiting a month for you to make us OK again, I had to call you to get a status update. You were cold, Comcast. You said I never paid you $200. In fact, you said I walked out of the last place owing you $33. But you did note, several times in fact, that you credited me for the stuff you said I had kept. Comcast, telling me you fixed a problem you created and that I should be glad isn’t what makes a healthy relationship. You don’t create huge problems only to later reluctantly fix them and then try to claim you saved us from ourselves. Come on, Comcast. I thought you cared?

Did you still want me, Comcast? I asked you to prove it. I asked you to show me the last nine and a half years weren’t a waste; that we still had a little high speed Internet between us to go the distance.

And what did you say to me Comcast? What did you say?

“Sorry, but there is nothing I can do for you.”

I’m sorry too, Comcast.

I’m sorry I didn’t leave you sooner. I’m sorry I showered you with so much money over the years. I’m sorry I didn’t shout from the roof tops that you were screwing me over at every opportunity and daring me to spend my time and energy catching you in the act. I’m sorry I ever let you into my computer, my flat screen TV and into my home. I’m sorry we ever shared On Demand together, and that I didn’t save myself for some cable and Internet provider who would appreciate me.

I’m leaving you, Comcast. Not because I didn’t like what you had to offer. I did.

I’m leaving because the price I had to pay for your fiber-optic charms was too high, with too many gross errors and with too little appreciation for what I brought to the relationship.

Go ahead and call yourself Xfinity now. Try to reinvent yourself. Others can have you, because despite what I learned to love about you, I love myself more.

We’re done.

- The Customer Who Finally Got Away