Today I came home, checked my mail, and like most days, found nothing but ads and flyers. I was throwing it all away when this blue door hanger from Comcast caught my eye, barely saving itself from being dumped in the trash can.



During recent routine maintenance work in your neighborhood our technicians detected cable television signals inadvertently coming from your home. This is typically caused by poor cable connections and/or cable wiring. This condition may also be causing reception problems on some or all of your cable channels and may cause interference to local radio frequencies.

The Federal Communications Commission requires us to monitor our network signals and repair any discrepancies.

Please call us at 651-222-3333 to set up an appointment for a technician to visit your home and make the necessary repairs as soon as possible. We offer two-hour time window appointments and On-Time Guarantee. If we are not at your scheduled appointment within the allotted time we will credit your account $20.

Thank you for being a Comcast customer.

Note the red arrow indicating I should turn it over. Alrighty.



Tech ops -
rogue carrier @
25 MHZ.
Please call 755 2389
when removing(???) pad
Thx

Uhhh... yeah, Comcast tech. What the fuck is that? Is that for me? Am I supposed to remove a pad, insert a tampon? Keep this note to give to the tech who shows up to make the repair? Tell the support rep on the phone? A little context and direction would be nice. Thx

So being a law-abiding citizen wanting to keep in compliance with FCC regulations (or rather a guy whose curiosity as been irreversibly piqued), I called Comcast, waded through their menu system, and waited on hold for a few moments before I was patched through to a rep. I explained the note to her, and she said outright that she'd never heard of anything like that. "I'm going to have to look into that." Followed by several minutes of alternating silence and keyboard clacking. I was about to ask if she'd found anything when I was unceremoniously dumped on hold without any announcement. That was all I needed. Fuck this. End of call.

Comcast, you leave a note in my mailbox (keep in mind that putting unstamped material in a mailbox is illegal), asking me to call you to set up an appointment to fix an issue you detected. An appointment where I'll have to sit around my fucking house for who knows how long waiting for the truck to show up. And what if it's something with the wiring inside my house? Are you going to charge me to fix it? I dutifully call, waste several minutes listing to someone typing, and then am rudely put on hold without warning. Fuck you, Comcast. If you want to fix your shit, you call me, and I'll give you a window of time when I'm available -- 9 am to suck my dick pm.

UPDATE: At least my notice wasn't as draconian as this one.

UPDATE #2: Wednesday -- I'm not terribly surprised, as Comcast has a reputation for monitoring Twitter and blog activity for mentions of their name, but believe it or not, they did call me to schedule that repair appointment. And based on the apologetic tone of the call and specific details of my concerns mentioned by the rep, they read this blog post specifically. Color me equally impressed and creeped out.