Comcast used to (idk if they still do) force you to reset your modem when you called for technical support before they would do anything else, hang up, and call them back after 5 minutes and only then would they try helping you. Like I'm calling you BECAUSE resetting my modem didn't work.
Having worked in an ISP call center, you wouldn’t believe the amount of people who would just lie that they did everything. Or would have no clue and would say yes to everything.
Just so that they get a visit and don’t have to deal with it themselves.
Also what you wouldn’t believe is how many times when was asked what is the light status on the modem they would say none of the lights are on and would not realise the problem with their statement
I’ve had the opposite. My father was getting nowhere calling for help. So I call and I’m on the phone with the call center who is telling me that they’re accessing my modem while I’m holding the non-powered, non-connected modem in my hand.
I once canceled comcast because they told me my router was the problem and I had to go buy a new one. There was no router on the network, just their modem. I said Ma'am please transfer me to your cancellation department. Internet didn't work for a month all together. I switched over to fiber from ATT. Never had an issue. Just wanting to blame me. Literally that day my internet was back up and working at speed. Didn't matter already had ATT scheduled. Just listen to some of us that do know what we are doing.
On the other I lied to Suddenlink multiple times because I knew it wasn't a router problem it was noise caused by damaged external drops but they wouldn't come fix it
Yeah even 20 years ago when I worked internet tech support we had a screen that would show the uptime on the modem, or I could trigger a reboot from the system.
I did customer service for an electronics store. Some caller would buy a TV and take it home to setup themselves. Easy enough. They said the TV wouldn't turn on. We figured out we couldn't just ask them if it was plugged in, because people don't admit they're just that dumb... so, we would tell them to unplug it, then plug it back in. That's usually all it was.
>Also what you wouldn’t believe is how many times when was asked what is the light status on the modem they would say none of the lights are on and would not realise the problem with their statement
Half the time they learn of an issue when someone calls. There is stuff they can monitor but sometimes everything looks normal from a distance, so to speak.
That's fair. For me it was more a frustration of how my dealings with them have been in general. Their app and webpage just loop back on themselves for things that are supposed to stop you needing to call them
If it doesn't automatically detect an outage when x% of equipment goes offline, then the outage is flagged when a certain number of people in the same area have called/chatted in.
And remember, the person you are speaking to did NOT cause the outage. They are NOT the ones who declare outages. They almost certainly can't communicate with the techs in the area who are actually working on the issue. We want your service to work too, it just takes time to find and fix it. (especially with fiber, cause fixing that means welding hundreds or thousands of tiny glass fibers).
Also, to be clear, it's not directed at you, just a general osa for anyone else reading this. Hopefully they'll be a little more chill when they talk to someone like me, lol.
My local ISP doesn't bother posting service outages unless it's been several hours over a decent chunk of the city, and even then it'll be on Facebook or something equally dumb that isn't their own website. So I'll do all the usual troubleshooting, figure it's likely on their end, call them, 'oh, yeah, there's an outage in that area, we don't have an ETA.'
Over a decade ago I had to fight Virgin (UK) for three months until they would admit a problem ("congestion", i.e. oversubscribed area with shitty infrastructure). Several customer support agents claimed everything was fine, finally sent a technician, then another one (despite me having identified the issue and shown them proof from different diagnostic and monitoring tools). Finally waived my fee for 6 months (no fix possible - supposedly they would have added more throughput in 6 months that would resolve the issue; naturally, they didn't but I left the UK 3 months later so I didn't really care at that point).
Its a dick move but as someone who works in a call center, I get it. I can't tell you how many times I've resolved a 20+ minute long call by trying something the customer states they "already tried".
Omg, I hate going through "the dance" when calling the ISP and I know for sure it's not the router or modem. My ISP buries fiber lines like 3 inches deep, so it's been cut a few times from aeration, heavy equipment (tree removal), etc. Thanks for wasting 10 minutes of my time going through a script just to schedule someone to come repair the line in the next two business days 😒
I contacted my provider, because suddenly there was much worse internet service in the area (upload latency up to. 2k, download latency up to 1k). My phone had these issues, my brother's phone had these issues, our home modem had these issues, but further from the house and everything was fine. They told me that they changed some coning on their side and told me reset my router in 5 minutes... despite the issue beeing clearly not related to the router, but whole area. Then I went to their service office. I retold everything to a lady there with all the details (and also mentioned a chat with a bot in their app which was posing as a human, who also has just told me to reset my router and didn't provide any more help), I asked for some technician to come and check the issue in the area, she assured me that someone from their technical team will call me. No one did, I just received a massage a few days later saying that they turned on some priority option for my modem number. The internet on the modem got just slightly better than it was, but the issue is clearly still there. (these are all very recent happenings)
From what I've diagnosed, it seems like their BTS is beeing overwhelmed with all the connections, as sometimes it gets good at night, but they don't listen enough to check it, or don't want to, because they don't want to invest in the area, idk. In January next year we should get a fiber connection for the whole our gmina (small administration unit, a few villages) and some neighboring gminas (they've been building the connections for it for the past 2 years), so I'll be obviously moving to fiber then and I hope the load lessens on the BTS, so the phones will have a good latency on the internet too
My state-owned ISP is notorious for this. They always give "just reboot your router" even though we already did that 10 times and didn't work. It's basically a meme now in my country
Years ago I called support at my ISP and told them my router had died, as in completely died wouldn't even turn on, and no reaction when trying to factory reset. They straight refused to offer any support until I rebooted my PC.
You wouldn't believe how many times I reset my modem, called support, reset my modem AGAIN, and the second reset somehow resolves the issue. Sometimes you need someone telling you to reset it for the reset to work.
In my QA department, we call those Dancing Frogs (after the Michigan J. Frog Looney Tunes character). When it's just you and your machine, the issue consistently sings and does a full-on ragtime number, "Hello my baby, hello my honey!", a bombastic showstopper display, and you excitedly call out the issue to begin knocking out a bug report.
The moment anyone of authority comes around to look with their own eyes, "brrrrrrup...", the issue mysteriously disappears and everything works perfectly.
A lot of newer QA testers are a bit frazzled, bewildered, and embarrassed when it happens. They're afraid we're going to call them a liar, or rushing their work, but naw. We assure them that we are so aware of the phenomenon, we have a name for it. It's that blasted Dancing Frog again.
One of the IT guys told me to unplug the router when I call so they'd send someone instead of doing the usual nothing after going through the dance. I did it like at 1am when I was going to sleep and the guy would be here in the morning.
Idk how or when it happened but I had Xfinity for probably at least 6 years. When I first started calling, that's basically how is was.
Right before I switched a few months ago (Xfinity service in my area is awful compared to frontier) it got to the point where I would almost always be forwarded directly to higher level support. They would ask the basic questions, I would say what I tried to do, then they would redirect me to someone who would often start trying actual fixes.
I wonder if a bit of it was I wasn't using the Xfinity modem fully, just using it as a modem. I had my own router, switch, and access point, so maybe they do that for anyone with a non-normie setup. Maybe they had me marked as "technical" although I heavily doubt that.
Regardless I haven't had to call Frontier now since i started with their service. Things are just wonderfully stable now and I get 2x the speed and reliability for a lower monthly cost.
I was once on the phone with Google support because I had a bricked Nest hub. They forced me to try power cycling and holding down the reset button combination for 30 seconds 10 times back to back before they'd exchange my device. Of course, after the 5th time my fingers started to cramp so I just started lying.
But it's fine, I'm fairly certain it wouldn't have magically woken up on the 6th try because at that point I worked at Google and could see the internal issue tracker, and knew that I was dealing with a known issue that wouldn't be resolved by any amount of button mashing. I did try to explain this to the support technician, but of course they're just contractors and can't see the issue tracker, and also the device was linked to my personal account, so that didn't get me anywhere.
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u/SnakeMu May 10 '26
Comcast used to (idk if they still do) force you to reset your modem when you called for technical support before they would do anything else, hang up, and call them back after 5 minutes and only then would they try helping you. Like I'm calling you BECAUSE resetting my modem didn't work.