Comcast Email Woes – Part One (Probably)
For about a week now, I haven’t been able to send emails to my wife, Melanie. We’re both using the same email addresses we’ve used for at least a couple of years, so nothing’s changed on our end. It finally annoyed me enough to try to do something about it today.
I logged into my wife’s Comcast account (yes, she allowed me to do this) and started a chat with a rep at Comcast. I snipped out the text of the chat session and it’s below. In the chat, I’m Melanie. I haven’t fixed any of my typos or “Roselyn”‘s, but I did blur out my wife’s email address and the email subject.
I didn’t find the chat all that comforting or knowledgeable. I know this is just one little issue for a giant company. But it’s an instance where Melanie’s husband is considered guilty before he is considered innocent.
The link that “Roselyn” sent Melanie to is http://www.comcastsupport.com/Forms/NET/blockedprovider.asp. This is a page where an email provider or administrator would report a blocked IP to Comcast. It’s not a very intuitive form (do you *really* know the IP address of your outbound email server?) and it seems like a shunting of the problem.
I filled out the form, but I’m not very hopeful about a positive outcome anytime soon. In the meantime, I have to send my wife emails from another account, being careful not to reply directly when she emails me. (It takes about 4-5 hours before my email bounces back and I realize I made the mistake.)
As the real Melanie just said in an email to me (which I can’t reply to), “It’s just ridiculous that in this day and age they can’t figure this out real time.” Yup, I agree.
Boy I feel your pain. Roselyn was very gracious in her responses but the effort to resolve it seemed archaic. I eventualy got fed up with Comcast here in Pittsburgh and moved to Verizon FIOS. Been happy ever since.
1. I stopped using IP email addresses once I moved off of the Verizon account I had for 6 or 7 years. I now use gmail for my basic email, hotmail for my junk mail (you know the websites that require an email address. I made the mistake of using my gmail account for the Nov SharePoint meeting and now I’m hounded w/ all sorts of SharePoint spam.
2. I tried to call Comcast to consider moving away from RCN as my IP. I needed info not on their website. A summary of my phone experience:
thank you for calling Comcast. Please provide your home phone number where you would like service (I dont’ have a home phone # and I’m not giving out my cell for an inquiry). After me shouting into the phone 3 times that I didn’t have a home phone #, I was then asked to provide the phone number of the account to which I was calling about (I don’ t have an account…I was considering one…but was starting to have second thoughts). Then it asked me if I was from the Bay…I was confused…the Bay City or the Bay State (yes). Unable to answer the question, I started shouting things like “let me speak to an operator” and “let me speak to a human” (I think that one worked), I got someone very nice in tech support. Who very politely told me he needed to transfer me to sales (made sense to me). The sales person, upon hearing I was from Mass, abruptly transferred me…back to the menu asking me for my phone #. I hung up, and then called RCN, who (after threatening to leave and go to Comcast…ha ha ha!) gave me twice the modem speed, and extra cable box and will save $2/month over my old deal. Very helpful…a lot less stress. Makes me wonder how Comcast stays in business.