I once was having problems with my Charter DVR. This was back when it was new tech and you could only watch/record two shows at a time. I had a splitter installed so I could turn the TV to another analog cable channel in case I didn't want to watch either of the two shows that were recording (my ex-wife liked to record a whole bunch of stupid junk).
Anyway, we were having issues with pixelated pictures and intermittent loss of signal in the evening hours (7-9pm). While self-troubleshooting the issue, the first thing I did was to remove that splitter, just to make sure. When that didn't fix it I put it back in. A tech came out to fix the problem while I was at work, immediately saw the splitter and blindly ASSUMED that was the issue. He removed it and called it a day. I came home from work and found out the problem was not in fact fixed. My ex-wife told me he was there maybe five minutes, and never even bothered to hook up any testing equipment. A few days later they sent out another tech who really knew what he was doing and he took the time to run some tests and told me the splitter could NOT have been the problem and ended up correcting things by running a new main from the house to the pole.
The funny thing is that I found out later that that first tech had later been arrested after a customer had complained about missing some underwear from her dresser and a search of his company van revealed about two dozen pairs of panties laying around. Pretty crazy stuff!
And even funnier is the fact that my ex-wife actually WORKED FOR CHARTER at the time! She actually got the splitter that I was using from an installer, and was the same thing the installers would use! Anyway, that second tech actually gave me his cell phone problem to use if I ever had a problem later on, and it only took them two days to come out and bury the new main! Funny thing is, I never had a problem after that!
On a semi-related note the vice president of Enterprise Rent-A-Car once moved to the St. Louis area and built an 8 million dollar house. A company contracted by Charter (called Sparks Communications) came out to install the cable and drilled through the wall right into the circuit breaker on the other side, burning the entire house down. THANK GOD the family hadn't fully moved in yet as no one was inside the building when it happened, but most of the furnishings and some personal property had already been moved in! I'm sure that ended up being a huge mess!
My point is.. it's not just Comcast.. they all pretty much suck. The good news is that there are almost always options these days. For TV you can go DISH or DirecTV for cable, and for internet there may be DSL options available to you. Also cell phone internet keeps improving. Luckily Aces High still works well enough with a dial-up connection.
