Broadstripe Tech Support Laughed At Me

WOW – I wish I would have recorded the call now – my internet has been s-l-o-w all week, making my vonage phone service sputter out and my page load times stretch into 30 seconds – I call my cable company, Broadstripe, whom I believe is a Comcast Affiliate or Associate. First the guy has me go to speedtest.net, something I’ve done already, and my speed is back up to 3688 download, 367 upload. Well, now it’s back up, so he has me hook my PC directly up to the cable modem and go to speedtest.net again, and it’s 4686 down and 388 upload – he then asks me if I run an antivirus on my PC, and I replied no, they bog my system down too much, and the guy laughed at me. I choose to protect my computer by behavior. My email is virus-scanned by Yahoo & GMail, and I don’t go to questionable websites. I repair and service computers for a living and I’m not the only techie that doesn’t run an antivirus. My hardware firewall protects me, and when I get a call about a virus infection, usually the infectee is also running an antivirus and it doesn’t stop it! It lets you know when you have one, and I can accomplish that with a free weekly Norton system scan. That laugh has just sent me to their competition, AT&T DSL, which I will be switching to. The strange thing was I had plenty of speed until I switched from Broadstripe’s Voip service back to Vonage because it was 50 bucks cheaper a month. They had me paying $200 a month for cable tv, internet and phone service. I switched back to Vonage for 30$ a month and my cable bill dropped to $124.00 – I think they’re interfering with my vonage – it worked fine before, now it doesn’t. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.

Saying Goodbye to Comcast Anti-Tivo Cable Boxes

Yes, Comcast decided last month to disable the serial port on their cable boxes so Tivo can’t change channels, so I turned in all three of them and my three Tivos now serve up basic cable which is channels 2-99. I’ve decided to download whatever premium content my wife and I want to see. Next year I plan to buy a Tivo HD which I can slide a cable card into or two to get the digital channels. We only have one cable company here in Albion, Michigan, and that’s Broadstripe (formerly Millennium Digital Media) which gets its programming from Comcast. I thought about going to satellite tv but, again, my Tivo won’t work with that. Most of the people here in town don’t even know what a DVR is, but my wife and I love our Tivo so we’re not giving it up. I like to play my music on my tivo – can’t do that with Comcast. I like to transfer shows from one Tivo to another – can’t do that with Comcast. I like to send shows to my PC and burn them to DVD – can’t do that with Comcast. I like to have all my Tivos on my network along with my PCs – can’t do that with Comcast. I like to download content to my PC and transfer it to my Tivos to watch on a big screen – can’t do that with Comcast. I apologize for so many posts about Tivo & Comcast, but the whole thing has me really worked up. Next time I promise to do something different – really – hopefully!