Having Comcast trouble tonight? No, it's not just you

Steph May 2, 2015 (8:32 pm)

I was wondering. Thanks for letting us know!

Joanne May 2, 2015 (8:38 pm)

Several news channels are unavailable.

WSB May 2, 2015 (8:39 pm)

The first link we found was to KING, but there’s a Times link with a bit more info, so I’m adding that too. Haven’t found a direct Comcast statement yet.

trickycoolj May 2, 2015 (8:39 pm)

It’s the entire state of Washington. Sounds suspiciously like they turned off the cable channels to boost the signal to their $100 PPV fight tonight.

Twobottles May 2, 2015 (8:41 pm)

Of course, Comcast will reduce all our bills for the inconvenience (LOL, I crack me up!)

trickycoolj May 2, 2015 (8:41 pm)

Here’s a 3rd party map: https://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity/map/

Anne May 2, 2015 (8:43 pm)

Almost every channel from 30 up are out. If you sign in to your Comcast/Xfinity account it says there’s an outage that should be fixed by 11 pm. On Twitter there’s a map that shows a pretty big W Washington outage.

S May 2, 2015 (8:44 pm)

The Comcast My Account app says “we should have this fixed by 11pm,” whether or not that’s an accurate guess is a different story though. Poo.

Joe Szilagyi May 2, 2015 (8:47 pm)

Any claim by Comcast that they don’t know the cause of the outage is flaming horse crap. This is IT, not theoretical physics. It’s the medicine of technology. They know what’s up. Either something broke in titanic fashion, they’re hacked, OR it’s capacity issues from the Mayweather/Paqueo fight.
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In scenario #1, it’s Comcast’s fault for it happening. Scenario #2, it’s Comcast’s fault for not protecting/defending against it (no apologism, it’s THEIR fault, source: I’m in IT). Scenario #3, it’s their fault and outright negligence.
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The City Council and Mayor Murray need to put the kill order in on any renewal of exclusive franchise rights to them. Enough already.

West Seattle Hipster May 2, 2015 (8:48 pm)

I agree with trickycoolj, sounds like something Comcast would do.
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I am glad I stopped watching TV a long time ago (except for Seahawks games), this affects me in no way at all.

Brewmeister May 2, 2015 (8:53 pm)

Outage my arse. Huh, let’s see. The fight (undercards) start and normal Comcast cable goes down pretty much nationwide.

I can get about 5 channels.

This should be criminal. I hope Comcast gets sued via class action over this. Such a crock. They are intentionally screwing over customers to preserve bandwidth.

ETA for a fix is 11pm. Just happens to be around the time the fight coverage ends.

Just FYI, this is happening with other carriers. People are reporting problems all over the country with Direct TV and other cable providers.

Anne May 2, 2015 (8:53 pm)

Comcast website no longer says hope to have it fixed by 11- says ” as soon as possible”
If you were planning on recording anything on DVR or TiVo tonight- probably won’t happen.

Chris Bast May 2, 2015 (8:54 pm)

Turns out it has everything to do with the fight. Ha, consider this not a delay, but an intervention!

Brewmeister May 2, 2015 (9:04 pm)

“as soon as possible” – Translation, “as soon as the fight is over”

kb May 2, 2015 (9:10 pm)

Curse you Comcast. But…thanks for not effing up our internet connection right now so we could still stream supercross finals live.

AMD May 2, 2015 (9:15 pm)

My husband called Comcast and actually sat on hold long enough to talk to a human. They said they did know about the outage (as of 7:30), it would be back up by 10:30, and gave us a $4.82 credit for the outage (where that number came from is anyone’s guess).

For what it’s worth, On Demand and DVR still work, just not live TV so if there was a show you wanted to catch up on, now’s your chance.

Cait May 2, 2015 (9:17 pm)

Funny that phone and Internet aren’t affected. Something’s fishy…

K'lo May 2, 2015 (9:20 pm)

thank you WSB – on top of things once again!
Appreciate it . . . .

Seattle May 2, 2015 (9:30 pm)

It’s weird because around 6:30pm until present I lost the cable channels. Then I called my neighbor 2 houses up from me around 8pm and he said that he did not lose cable at any time.

WSborn&bred May 2, 2015 (9:43 pm)

Our Comcast Cable is completely out. Black screen. Not even basic channels or On Demand. Nice excuse for me to finish reading Mink River and hubby is watching a documentary on his phone. :)

Steph May 2, 2015 (9:44 pm)

Mine seems to be working now. Low HD and higher HD channels. Weird.

Anne May 2, 2015 (9:50 pm)

9:45 all channels back- hmm- fight is over ???

AlexDex May 2, 2015 (9:52 pm)

Funny how everything came back on once the fight was over. “)

Brewmeister May 2, 2015 (9:52 pm)

Fight is over, cable back on. Huh?

Friend O'Dinghus May 2, 2015 (9:53 pm)

Comcast television just returned to normal for me three minutes ago….exactly at the end of the fight….(sigh)……

evergreen May 2, 2015 (9:53 pm)

We closed our cable account with Comcast a few months ago & now have Roku. No regrets. Standard channels come in with an antenna. Amazon Prime and Netflix cover movie and special channel needs.

Raven May 2, 2015 (10:10 pm)

Comcast used so much bandwidth to broadcast the fight ($100 ppv) that as a result, the rest of us paid the price (no service). I’ll call tomorrow and get credit for the day. We missed the basketball game, too. Comcast stinks. All the more reason why net neutrality is so important.

trickycoolj May 2, 2015 (10:11 pm)

Fight over cable on, seriously the state AG should get on this.

Lori May 2, 2015 (10:32 pm)

I’ve been thinking of leaving Comcast for a few months now, one more GREAT reason to leave!!!
I will be calling Comcast for a refund and they should refund more than 1 day for all customers that lost cable channels.

This was so obviously something Comcast and other companies should/could have planned for in a much better way. (not taking away viewing of other cable channels for those that did not want to watch the ridiculous “fight”). All we could get on our tv was Channel 8, so at least we had some Deadliest Catch episodes to watch. But that wasn’t my plan for the evening.

Eric1 May 2, 2015 (10:43 pm)

In with evergreen. Just closed my Comcast internet account last month and went to fiber optic. Haven’t had cable TV in 10 years. Everything on TV is over the air or internet.
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Believe me. Cut the cable cord and you won’t regret it. Now if I can just kick the internet addiction. LOL

Lori May 2, 2015 (11:10 pm)

Ok, thank you Eric1, for the encouragement to cut Comcast cord (cable and internet) and that things are just fine on the other side without it. I really dislike the fact I’m paying this corp. my hard earned money for “free” entertainment in my home.

trickycoolj May 2, 2015 (11:17 pm)

It’s funny I’ve been a huge cord cutting advocate but after 2.5 years I plugged back in a week ago. Stand alone services add up, and I was about to add Sling ($20) and HBO Now ($15) when Comcast offered me full premium TV and HBO for 2 years with free equipment for $20 more than I was paying for Internet. It was a no brainier. DSL in my neighborhood isn’t even 1/10th the speed. Sling couldn’t keep their stream up during March madness. So even if you are a cord cutter pay attention to the offers you get in the mail. I’ve been surprised how much easier the X1 box has been to use compared to the old equipment my friends all have from Directv and TiVo. And for the first time in 3 years I’m back down to one remote. I finally conceded, cord cutting is frustrating as all get out. In 2 years maybe I’ll cut it again to avoid the full price for everything they’re basically giving me for free but that’s 2 years for a’la carte services to finally get their act together.

JTB May 3, 2015 (8:33 am)

Here’s the information about requesting a credit. Looks like it’s calculated as one free day based on your monthly charge. Comcast credit

Classic Mumm May 3, 2015 (9:19 am)

I agree with trickycoolj comments. Comcast made a deliberate decision to reallocate bandwidth to support pay-per-view customers. Monday I will call and demand $100 credit on my account (the amount they received for a pay-per-view customer) for this deliberate act of bullying from Comcast. These broadband companies are holding us hostage while they make decisions regarding what to transmit in order to support their own greed. This needs attention from Attorney General’s office and the FCC. Write letters people.

Ray West May 3, 2015 (9:35 am)

For a moment I thought I’d forgotten to pay my bill. Trickycoolj, the more you keep threatening to “cut” Comcast, the more deals they will offer you. Just keep threatening. I still hate Comcast.

Judith Highgate May 3, 2015 (9:47 am)

There is no doubt that comcast chose to screw over their customers to give the best service to those that paid to watch that fight. The minute and I mean the minute that fight was over, all of our cable came back. I hate comcast, I think they are lousey and do not care about their customers, just the bottom dollar which was money, money, money. I called and told them so, i left feedback to them last night, and I got credit for a day of service from them and I suggest that everyone that lost service do exactly the same.

sam-c May 3, 2015 (12:55 pm)

Eric1 (or others)- what do you use for internet if not comcast? (I need to switch my internet (Clearwire) to something else and I would like to avoid Comcast if at all possible).

Worm May 3, 2015 (1:24 pm)

Nor could me & my boo could watch MTV Hits.

miws May 3, 2015 (2:15 pm)

It would be interesting to see if there’s some way to research if there have been any other instances of major cable outage, coinciding with a major PPV event.

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Also, wonder if this happened to any great extent i other Comcast markets? A few casual glances at CC’s FB Page show comments from several unhappy customers in regards to this, who apparently live in WA State, sometimes only determinable by a “12th Man” profile, and/or header pic

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Mike

DJ Allyn May 3, 2015 (3:06 pm)

This wasn’t just Comcrap. All the major cable companies anticipated a huge payday over the fight, so they purposely cut back on the bandwidth for the standard cable transmission in order to open up more bandwidth for the people who spent $100 on the fight.

In the long run, it is cheaper for them to credit $5 (to those who complain) than lose out on a potential $100-per-view income.

They couldn’t take that bandwidth from the internet side of things since more and more of their television content is being delivered over the internet on their X-1 Platform.

The future of television cable — whether it is Comcast, Time Warner, or whoever — is dying. More and more people are “cutting the cord” and opting for online streaming over the internet. Cable stations and even a broadcast network (CBS) is now starting to break away from being exclusively on cable and are streaming their content online.

HBOGo is going to morph into a standalone streaming service within a couple of months, and Showtime is right around that corner.

With a Roku box and a decent internet connection, you not only have access to Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Vudu, and about two thousand other channels, there is also a fairly new service called “Sling TV” which for $20 a month will give you many of the cable stations you enjoy on cable including the ESPN sports channels. For an additional $15 per month, you can have HBO, a cloud-based DVR, and On Demand.

This addressed many of the problems that cable TV customers have had for a long time: a better choice of channel line-up that didn’t mean you had to buy the larger 500 or 750 channel line-up just to see an additional channel or two that you wanted to watch.

Today I pay roughly $230 a month for a Comcrap Triple Play bundle. (I say “roughly”, because it seems that my Comcrap bill is always rising month after month for no reason at all.)

There is always something going on with my Comcrap service and every now and then I finally steel myself enough to call them and try and get things straightened out. The problem is, I KNOW that calling them one time on the issue isn’t enough, because if I look closely on the next bill, they have ADDED another cost. (last month there was this mysterious item — “Internet Install Kit QTY 4 @ $15 each)

Now compare this $230 per month Comcast bill with another set up that I have been running for the past month:

Internet: $50.00
Netflix Streaming: $8.99
Amazon Prime Streaming: $8.25
Hulu Plus Streaming: $8.75
Sling TV streaming: $35.00

Total monthly cost: $110.99

Since I already own my Roku boxes, and an HDTV antenna for local channels, I only have to pay for the modem rental. I can drop the worthless Comcrap phone service because I can use Google Voice online with my cell phone number. I also don’t have to pay for all of the taxes, fees, and tributes that seem to account for a large portion of my Comcrap bill.

$110 vs $230. It’s a no-brainer. I am the customer that Comcast fears. Unlike most of the current Comcrap customers who think that they don’t have any viable choices and will continue to take the Comcrap abuse, I am the one who has found that the alternative to Comcrap isn’t being locked into an equally abusive contract with satellite TV, it is being able to watch TV on my own terms, for substantially less money, and not have to put up with all of the BS.

Unfortunately, I am still stuck with Comcast when it comes to my internet connection, because CenturyLink hasn’t come out their new upgrade yet. And thanks to the clowns in the Seattle City government, they literally drove away the Google Internet expansion because they wanted Google to pay for the new poles that Seattle City Light was already putting in.

evergreen May 3, 2015 (8:06 pm)

I have found that Netflix and Amazon prime are more than enough. We purchase Amazon prime annually anyway for the free and fast shipping during Christmas, so the tv and movies on prime are just a bonus for us. I spend $50/month for Internet and Netflix. Way more than enough options for the kids and adults in our house. On top of that, lots of free documentaries, educational shows, Ted talks, PBS, cartoons and kids shows galore…cable is a major rip off!

Eric1 May 3, 2015 (8:44 pm)

Unfortunately you can’t get away from some kind of monopoly if you want internet in the city and I now use Century Link. They put in fiber about a month or two ago in my neighborhood. Seems to work well. Price is a bit cheaper than Comcast but I was mostly tired of Comcast nickle and dime charge BS over the years with no Ala Carte cable.
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Century Link is definitely the lesser of two evils. Century link customer service is pretty good and I have never been dissatisfied with them so that is a lot better than Comcast. I am still a dark ages guy with a land line so the bundle is like $70 with tax. I think my neighbor has something like $45 or so for 40 Mbps without the phone bundle.

Tom May 5, 2015 (3:12 pm)

I agree with Joe Szilagyi, if we had any true news reporters anymore, maybe we could find out the truth as to why our politicos let this monopoly continue! CUT THE CORD AND DUMP THE POLITICOS