Once again, I turn to the lazyweb for help.
Got a solicitation for Comcast digital voice the other day… and I was seriously considering giving it a try, as I’ve never been too thrilled with Qwest, and I suffer from a bit of line noise from time to time here.
Anyone have any experience with this? Sound quality okay? Better or worse or the same as a normal phone line?
At least one of my colleagues in Florida has serious reliability issues with Comcast, but I haven’t really had any major problem in that regard. Any advice or info would be appreciated.
I have had nothing but PROBLEMS with Comcast digital voice. Constant dropped calls, I can hear the caller but they can’t hear me, no dial tone. The response from Comcast has been too ridiculous and maddening to discuss. Finally I was told that their modems are “incompatible” with both Uniden and GE phones. I have no idea if this is true. If anyone reading this is a Comcast employee and has any insight into the problem, feel free to respond. In the last of about 25 various conversations with Comcast supervisors, I was told that they were sorry I was not informed, but that I needed to go out and buy one of the following phones: Sony, Panasonic, and V-Tech. I refuse to spend more money on another new phone- which will likely result in them saying, “Oh, we also forgot to tell you that Sony, Panasonic and V-Tech are also incompatible with our modem…
I have panasonic phones. We continually have the problem where we are talking and the other side can’t hear us. Then after 10 or 15 seconds….it comes back. Local calls and long distance doesn’t matter. And obiviously…..the phone brand doesn’t either.
PS has anyone in the Chicago area had Comcast issues as mentioned in my previous post? If so, any solutions? Thank you.
Michelle,
I’m in Chicago and having these issues. When I call my house phone (from my cell), I am unable to hear my wife most of the time. It goes in and out…I hear for a second, then I do not. Apparently she can hear me the whole time. Very frustrating – I’ve had the service for less than a week. Did you ever resolve your issue?
We bundled our cable, internet and phone last Aug. What a mistake. We’ve had nothing but problems…beginning within 1 hour of installation (had no phone and internet). The past two months have been HELL. Phone calls now drop almost with every call, internet access often drops after 1-2 minutes…my favorite (ha) issue is when I pick-up the handset to call out… and I GET A BUSY TONE! We’ve had techs out almost every 10days since April. They can’t fix it! (they even had us take out a chunk of drywall in our garage to get to a “splitter” that had already been check and replaced last summer… he was sure that was the problem …NOT! Now we’re left with a hole in the wall.) We’re going back to our local phone carrier next week!
Problem is worse early in the morning in after 5 pm. Have to come home at lunch and pay the bills as I can usually get 30 min of internet time in the middle of the day.
Michelle—don’t go buy new phones. One tech unplugged our phones and left us with a Comcast portable phone…thinking it was a phone issue…NOT. Again, within an hour we had no phone and no internet.
ingress is the number one killer for VOIP and internet reliability. For example, you can hear the person on the line, but they can’t hear you… that is really common if you have ingress on your line. something is back feeding from the home, it can be a bad tv back feeding, bad splitter, radioshack cabling and splitters, loose/ improper fittings, cable that has water damage, dog chews and/or a bad drop. Its kinda funny because i hear when speaking with customers, that they have nothing but trouble with Qwest, or Dish, or Direct or ADT or with Comcast, and its like well lets just take a look and see what we find. Basically you need a competent person to troubleshoot. i always leave my number with the customer because i feel how everything works at my house, it should also work the same at yours. Some tickets/troublecalls take awhile especially if i am the third tech there in 2 months, but some houses do need the special attention to detail. i am always shocked to read some of these comments people leave., sometimes when you arrive at a person’s house, they tell you a horror story of their experience with my company, and i take it personally, and i am like, after i leave if you have any more troubles just call me.
i do just the same. i hand out my number after a service call and even onform them if they have to call me back, i will certainly not charge a penny to come back and troubleshoot. I make myself available 24/7 by insisting they simply leave me a voicemail at any time. I usually listen to the voicemail very quickly and respond thereafter and set up the fastest most convenient time with that customer. In some cases if it is a line problem, i have had to send 3-5 different line techs out before they get it fixed right. Those customers who remain calm and work with me to get through the problem are certainly credited for their inconvenience. Others choose not to stay in touch with me, schedule a repeat call and then the next tech out has no idea what has already been done and starts from scratch which potentially delays the resolution even more. Then you have several people who don’t call me, they call and put in a repeat call, not because they have a problem, but because they simply think it’s a game to get a credit. FYI i have been doing the job long enough to usually see right through their crap and a repeat call will result in me CHARGING you for the call, not crediting. It’s people who cause their own problems, people who are too foolish to resolve common sense problems, and people who report false problems that tie us technicians up more and more to where the person who has a legitimate problem has to wait 3 days for us to arrive to their home and at that end up an hour or two late. Read the fine print people!! YOU, the customer, are not authorized to relocate, rewire, or change ANYTHING regarding the company’s equipment. This includes as posted above: wiring, splitters, amplifiers, connectors, powerstrips, jumpers, boxes, emtas, modems, etc…SO many people tamper with one thing and voila, they have a problem that is all of the sudden OUR fault. There’s a quote “Stupidity should either be painful or expensive.” When in my hands, you will see the expensive side, especially if you want to moan and complain and grumble and argue about WHY the issue is occuring. If you know better than me, then WHY am I out at your home??????
If everyone who has had problems with Comcast VOIP had tampered with the company’s equipment I could understand your argument, but that’s not the case. I, for one, have never tampered with my installation and I am experiencing all the same problems with the service that people across the country are reporting. It used to be reliable and worked well for years, lately it has been intermittant as hell. SInce you pride yourself on being so knowledgeable about the technology, answer this question for me…what causes the announcement “We’re sorry, your call could not be completed at this time. Please try again later” to be played when I try to call my non-functioning Comcast home phone from my cell phone? Every time I have no dial tone on my Comcast line I will get that message when I call my home from my cell phone.
I’ve been given that “ingress” argument for the case where I can hear the caller but they can’t hear me, it must be something you are told to use on customers to shut them up and make them feel technically inferior. If it’s really “ingress” then get someone with a spectrum analyzer out here and tell me what frequencies the “ingress” is on so I can determine what the source is and work to eliminate it.
You’re right about one thing…STUPIDITY SHOULD be painful or expensive, that goes for Comcast as well as their customers. When a customer is given some STUPID explanation like incompatibility with certain makes of telephones it should be both EXPENSIVE and PAINFUL for Comcast to lose that customer to an alternate provider.
We have successfully transitioned back to our previous phone carrier for phone and internet. There are no problems with dropped computer access or phone service. Interesting, when we started, the phone transfer occurred first. The internet was supposed to be cx’d on the same day, but was not. And interesting enough with the Comcast internet still working ….there was not one single incidence of interrupted service. Obvious to us now that the issue lies in the Comcast digital phone service… Too bad they couldn’t figure that out. They lost a phone and internet customer.
I’m in the midwest and have had comcast internet and cable tv for a number of years. My problems began when I added Digital Voice. I also have dropped calls etc., and also now have poor internet and television service. Tech have told me they plan to monitor the whole system in the neighborhood since they can find no problem with the house. It’s a newer house with excellent wiring. I took the time to write down when most problems occurr and it is obvious the the phone cutting out and tiling on the television happens during primetime viewing between 7pm and 11pm. They think it’s too much noise on the main cable lines but I can’t get them to call me back and let me know what they found. Frustrating!!!!!
I’ve had two problems with Comcast Digital Voice for about 2 years or more. Ever since we got it, we hear an occasional clicking that sounds like our phone is tapped. When people call, particularly if they call back quickly after hanging up, like if you’re not sure you got the right number or you’re trying to talk rather than leave a message, we get a FAX machine sound. Too loud to talk over. Everybody thinks it’s a fax machine. It’s BLOODY COMCAST PHONE!!! The last couple of months it has become intolerable, as the fax machine sound has become more frequent and now incoming calls frequent just sieze up. The phone stops ringing, but it does not go to the answering service. I’m leaving Comcast!
We began subscribing to Comcast Digital Voice in March and have had nothing but problems since. We began having the “I can hear the caller but they can’t hear me, no dial tone” issues immediately. The service techs have been out here so many times and have never solved the problem. We never had this issue with Qwest, and plan to go back to their reliable service. Comcast does not take ownership of the issue, and tries repeatedly to charge us for their problematic technology.
I was going to swith to digital voice phone service by comcast in two days. since reading these remarks, i have changed my mind about switching. Bob
I have the Comcast triple play/ Xfinity… whatever. I
found this post tonight because I have been having issues with my
digital voice service – crackles, clicks, and I hear them but they
can’t hear me. I have has several service calls over the past ten
months and none of them have been productive. The issue will arise,
then it will go away. Then I got started thinking about how CDV is
a VoIP service. That means it needs bandwidth with the Internet
access. This is a big problem since the Comcast feed is a
neighborhood shared feed. Comcast obviously knows they have
bandwidth issues; otherwise, they would not be throttling down the
connection speed of customers maintaining a high frequency of
transfer, like torrents or FTP use. Additionally, they have
implemented a 250GB/ month limit. Tonight, I decided to do a little
test. My phone was functioning properly and I made several test
calls to confirm this status. I then went to vodo.net and
downloaded the torrents for indy films I thought were interesting.
I loaded them into uTorrent and waited until I had a good stream of
incoming and outgoing data. I then had me daughter call my cell.
The CDV service sounded like a stethoscope pressed onto a bowl of
rice crispies – snap, crackle, pop. I then exited uTorrent and
waited less than 2 minutes. My daughter repeated the call and the
noise was gone. It certainly will be inconvenient to suspend my
Internet activity so the person on the other end of the phone can
hear me; further, what am I supposed to do when the neighbors are
the bandwidth issue? I think Comcast is fully aware of the cause
for this problem. Which leads me to believe they are maintaining
excessive profit taking while neglecting the need to update their
infrastructure. Perhaps my issue is not the same as others here but
I thought I would share my experience. I hope Comcast does improve
their infrastructure as my only other landline option here is
Windstream. They were twice the money and half the features as I
get with Comcast but the service was always perfect for the 18
months I used them.
I also was considering digital voice. Vonage doesn’t work. So I thought I’d go back to Qwest. Then found out they don’t want to be bothered porting my existing number over to them. Also, they missed two appt’s in the same day to install the line and service. So I thought I’d try Digital Voice. Not after these comments. I doubt if there is a VoIP carrier out there that doesn’t have problems.
I have had vonage then comcast digital voice and had nothing but problems with them. Dropped calls, fading in an out, trashed internet. They have been out here so many times that they have replaced the house wiring twice, splitters and bought a new GE phone. It has made no difference. I really don’t want to go to ATT/SBC because SBC sucks. I had ATT before they were bought out and it was great no problems but I just don’t have any faith in the SBC portion of th phone co.
I’m sure glad that I decided to do a little web research before signing up for Comcast digital voice. I hadn’t bothered to do that with Vonage which could have saved us from making that mistake. Thanks for all your input. You saved us from making another stupid decision!
I have had nothing but trouble with digital voice. I am “glad” to find out that this residence doesn’t have some oddball ideosyncratic problem. …Numerous incidents with no dialtone. Couple of days ago, out almost the entire day. Problem with the other caller not being able to hear me while I can hear them. Busy signal when I pick up the phone. Feedback. Numerous service calls..yesterday three Comcast trucks here to “diagnose the neighborhood”. Claimed they finally detected that it had “something to do with the neighbor” – like lines crossed. Said the problem would not recurr. Well, it did, last night. Now today, caller ID malfunctioning. I have had it!
Any phone service that says “Digital” on it is VoIP service. So, if you don’t want to mess with VoIP phone service, stay away from those offers. I personally think that VoIP products work fine for people who have a good internet connection, and make sure they plug their VoIP adapter into the system in front of their computers. That way, your phone service gets access to the bandwidth first, and your calls tend to be cl3earer and dropped less often.
I’m in Atlanta and use Comcast DV. I have had zero problems and love a phone bill that’s one third of what I was paying.
I am about to get rid of Comcast Digital Voice and cannot believe I didn’t do it two years ago. No matter how, when why or what, service calls, bs, heck even their best try … their service does not work. Dropped calls. Dead lines. Crackling. Echoing. They are ripping off consumers because they sell something that does not work.
We just had two Comcast guys out at our house for a couple of hours. They once again announced that everything works. Said it was a problem “at the pole”. I made the service manager put that IN WRITING after he said he would “call it in” that we would not have to pay for this service call. HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA because I know from past experience they WILL bill even when they say they won’t bill.
Anywho, one day. Exactly one day later: incoming calls don’t ring. Or they ring once then dead. Or no dialtone. And no, I do not own any phones some say are “incompatible”…what a farce that is. Phones are now INCOMPATIBLE with… effing phone jacks. Yeah, that’s progress. I have AT&T and Panasonic phones.
We are running out of reasons to own any sort of landline. I was getting effed for $73.00 a month for two lines of non performing “Comcast Digitial Voice”.
What a %^$#ing I recieved.
I just found this blog. I’ve had Comcast’s triple play for a couple years now. In May, when I connected my first set top box (due to digital transition), I wasn’t able to get a signal (to TV) and it also compromised internet and phone. Comcast ran new cable from the street pedestal to box on side of house, resulting in a little better TV reception, but I have disconnected the set top box for now because I would still get intermittent pixelation and/or loss of signal. EXTREME problems with the digital voice began Aug 2: dropped calls; other party couldn’t hear me but I could hear them; dead/no dial tone. Any call that went out or came in would be affected, usually within the first minute; maximum time before drop or sound loss was about 6 or 7 minutes. I have spend an exorbinant amount of time and energy attempting to communicate with Comcast customer service. They are the “poster child” for what customer service should NOT be. Some highlights include: Two service appointments for which they simply did not show up, nor did they contact me to cancel. After each time window expired without a service person showing up, I called (both times) to see what the problem was and was told that there was an outage in the area that they had worked on, so they assumed that my problem was fixed. (There had been no incidences of inclement weather, nor had any of my neighbors lost their service.) Then, when a tech finally did come out, he spent about an hour measuring the signal strength at different places, switched a couple splitters on the outside box, then told me that he needed to come back out with a second technician, so they could spend more time working with the wiring in my house. (My home/wiring is relatively new!) He said he would be informing his supervisor of the problem and they would be calling me in a couple days to schedule the return visit. After a week went by without a call, I sent an email to customer service regarding the issue, hoping to have someone contact me to set up the appointment. The reply email said in order to schedule the appointment, I must log on to live chat. I did so, and engaged in the most non-productive time waste imaginable. I had given the chat tech the “case number” as instructed in the reply email. But, it took over 30 minutes for the chat tech to tell me that she was putting in the request for me to be called, and I could “rest assured that someone would call me within 24 hours.” That was 4 days ago. No call from Comcast. Of course, as many of you have had to do, I’m wasting call minutes handling all these service issue phone calls from my cell phone. And, I’ve continued to have to pay for non-working phone service from Comcast. If there were better alternatives, I would have left Comcast by now. I’m in an area where they’re “the only game in town.” I noticed one of you is from the Chicago area; I’m downstate in Peoria. Some people have suggested that Comcast’s increase in problems (such as this) is due to the demands that the digital conversion has created. (Incidentally, my “demand” consists of one desktop computer, one laptop, two NON HDTVs and the nonworking digital voice service.) If digital communications is Comcast’s business, why are they so horribly bad at it? Anybody else have any ideas?? (sorry for the rant…)
I have ongoing problems with my Comcast digital phone. When I talk to people sometimes I can hear them but they can’t hear me. Then after a minute or so the reception is fine and again the problem starts after another minute or so. When I call Comcast you seem to always get the run-around with representatives giving you different answers to the problem. My best guess is to drop the Comcast phone because it is not worth the aggravation for the poor service.
I’ve had comcast for years and it was great. I have Voice, Internet and their HD DVR set up. Now I’m starting to get pissed. About two months ago my internet and phone started acting up. Intermittent connection problems where I couldnt even do anything on the internet, and if I picked up the phone, I’d get nothing. Or when I’m on the phone, I can hear people talking but they can’t hear me. I’ve wasted over 50 dollars in minutes trying to get them to fix it. They came out once and said it was a transmitter in the local ‘node’ and they fixed it and were going to ‘monitor’ it. Well it started working beautifully again for about 2 weeks and now we’re back at the beginning. So fed up with Comcast.
got comcast triple play 3 months ago… nothing but trouble. 15 different techs came out in 90 days. caznt be fixed–plus they screwed up our embark (century link) outside lines.
I am having issues with my CDV service. I would not have found this thread, or any others like it, if I were not having issues. People reading threads like this should take that into consideration, people usually will only find threads like this if they are having problems. The people on here do not represent the majority of Comcast customers, not even close. I have had Qwest, Verizon, and Vonage….All were horrible compared to Comcast. Qwest and Verizon were ripping me off for years, because I had no other choice, and they knew that. Vonage is just a joke, worst quality ever. Comcast has been great, much cheaper, far better customer service, both times I have needed help they sent a tech the same day. One of those times was today, a Sunday, I called around 12:20 and they had an in house tech out here by 2:30. You won’t get that ANYWHERE else. Like I said, I found this site looking for info on my issue with my CDV line. It looks like “everyone” seems to have problems with Comcast, but in reality most people will not come to this site unless they are having some sort of problem in the first place.
We had the same issues as all of above. House wiring can sometimes be the culprit. Here is an easy possible solution: Connect your digital wireless phone/answering machine directly into the cable box. Anotherwards take your house wiring out of the equation. You will notice a huge improvement. You can buy 4-8 pack wireless phones sets so you can have a digital phone in every room. Most home wiring is usually just not that good for digital signals. But wireless phone technology has really advanced in terms of having a great wireless phone experience. So with this setup you will be going directly from your cable box to you handset with no cheap twisted pair (in house) in the mix. Hope that helps.
Two days with Comcast, I have both digital voice and internet, they are not reliable. Phone service won’t work and and has so much static when does work, you can’ hear who calling. AT&T nickel and dimes you to death and Comcast with it’s triple pay does not deliver. Maybe going to wireless phone tech is the answer? The last Comcast tech seemed to know what he was doing and talking about and suggested going wireless in the house.
I have had two varieties of COMCAST phone. The first was called “digital phone”. It wasn’t bad, but not the same voice quality as my line from the telco. A couple of years ago, they changed to “digital voice’ which is better voice quality and has been very reliable. I have two modems in my home. The Arris modem (telephone) is in the basement and captures the cable right as it comes into the house. The Motorola data modem is on the second floor and was installed several years earlier.
Voice, TV and data have been really reliable. I wonder if its really due to the TWO modems. One is being used strictly for voice and the other strictly for data. The voice is at the beginning of the line.
Anyoone else have this setup? How’s your reliability?
Yes, I have both the EMTA and a modem, only because the installer couldn’t get the EMTA close to a phone line where the modem is located. I don’t think that’s the solution. And they’re also charging me $7 per device even though the install tech told them it couldn’t be done with a single device.
We have had a lot of internet drops for quite a few months. Mostly in the afternoons, every 10-15 minutes it goes off for a minute or so. Same problems with the phone service, dropping several times per day, busy signal instead of dial tone. I was calling their customer support about the ‘I can hear you but you can’t hear me’ drop when the exact thing happened, twice. And I’m only two weeks into our VoIP agreement.
Is there a solution?
I love how everyone is so quick to “blame” it on the company that provides the service..Im a 12 year experience tech and now a supervisor..Im the one that has to follow up to all the complaints i see above and deal with customers like yourselves.
If you think we are not out there to fix it and are sooooo incompetent to fix it…be my guest to try and figure it out yourself..
Fact: 85-90% is customers wiring 5-10% is the providers fault
Read up on how the service works before you judge who provides it. then youll understand why some problems take a little longer to resolve then others.
A good start would be digital voice VS. p.o.t.s. service…
The clarity of the line is excellent, but people tell me all the time “we can’t hear you now”, and they think the line has dropped or I hung up, but I can hear them! And then 10/15 secs later they can hear me. I never had this problem when I had Verizon phone service. If anyone has a fix for the problem I would love to hear as this is the only irritant since I bundled the service. Tx.
I signed up for Comcast phone service about 4 days ago. About 3 minutes and change into every call, the line goes dead. I hang up and then can’t get a dial tone when I hit the call button. I have a Uniden wireless phone, which I’ve been using for years with a Verizon land line and never had a problem. A tech is supposed to be coming tomorrow morning to check it out. Anyone else have this problem and is there any chance it will be fixed, or am I just wasting my time?
I have the “they cant hear me/I can hear them issue (midcall)
It can drive you insane. Third tech visit happened 4 hours ago and he did many changes and promised to “stick with me” by giving me his cellphone number.
Its obviously a more common issue than they let on to !
Id go back to ATT but it wpuld cost me 1200 dollars a month more (why I switched 7 months ago). No idea whats next. Its maddening when you have a dental issue concurrently requiring the same # of help attempts ! Ingress eh..