It’s been approximately 8 months since my On Demand has been broken with my Digital Cable. Every time I’ve called for service in the past I’ve had such a horrible experience. Since we have TiVo, we haven’t really missed On Demand that much until recently.

Dinko’s been reading the Harry Potter series getting ready for the 7th book. Over the past few weekends we’ve been renting a Harry Potter movie to be ready to watch the 5th one that comes out next week. We still have to see 3 and 4. We’ve TiVo’d #4, but #3 was not on air, but it’s On Demand.

This weekend I decided to finally call Comcast to get my On Demand fixed. The first call was brief. The guy on the phone sent two signals to the box. The first signal failed, but the second one reached the box and shut it off. He told me I might need a new box but that I should wait at least 20 minutes until the box is “refreshed” before making a decision.

So, I waited and 20 minutes later I had no picture at all. Smart me has another dvr digital cable box that I figured I’d try before calling again. The dvr box works, but I can’t get the TiVo to work with it. Online searches reveal that my dvr box is cheap and terrible and is difficult to get working with TiVo, so I revert back to the old box.

Second call to Comcast. I get a woman who says she has no record of my previous call that day. She is not as nice as the first guy and basically performs the same process he did. Both signals she sent failed. She said she couldn’t send anymore signals because she’s not allowed and that I just have to get a new box. Fortunately I can drive to the local office and not try to set up an appointment with a technician.

Sad that I have no cable and no On Demand, only recorded TiVo programs and DVDs, I decide to hop on to the Internet for some troubleshooting. Internet’s now busted.

Third call to Comcast required a few attempts to get through the automated system to finally get a guy for High Speed Internet. Fortunately that experience was much better and I’m not writing this post.

I just can’t understand why getting cable to work is so complicated and why support is unable to help resulting in the answer always being to send a technician. Who has time for that? I’m regretting messing with the service in the first place. Now what was supposed to be an hour or so on Sunday afternoon is now a frustrating multi-day ordeal involving travel.