Complaint Review: Comcast

on 10/23/13 cable service in this area went down. on 10/24 service was up again but i did not have service.  called comcast was told that the modem i had been using for the past four + years was now out dated and i needed to exchange it for a new xfinity wireless gateway model.  the other modem and my linksys wireless router which had worked fine until 10/23 was now no longer working. i was told that i was eligable for a special promotion which would give me the internet plus 80 channels of tv for $39.99 a month which was less then what i had been paying. i had her repeat this three times since it was less then my current bill i wanted to make sure i was hearing her right.  so i went into my local customer service center with modem in hand.  I was given a new modem and a cable box with remote.  when i asked to confirm about the deal i was going to get i was told there was no such promotion and now it was going to cost me extra for the internet and 80 channels. but i could keep that low rate for 6 months.  OK bait and switch i knew it was too good to be true.  when i told the rep. that i had a 32 minute conversation with the woman she looked up my account and said there was no record of the call.  but she did find that someone had gained access to my account at the time i stated the call was made.  this person who lied is only known to me as x).c.  i made it home with the new boxes ready to set things up at a higher cost to me.  the cable box was not receiving power... at all.  i called back and was asked to try another outlet i informed the person that with my higher education i had already thought of that.  not only did i check that outlet with another plug in device which worked, i also pluged the cable box into another outlet that i knew worked and it did not work.  all before making the call.  it was finally determined after an hour that the box was defective.  imagin that.  now to the new "xfinity wireless gateway" modem.  got it hooked up my desk top came online but none of our apple devices could use the wireless feature.  called comcast again because each feature is a different department you cant go to just one person to resolve all issues.  i was now being told that it was going to cost me $80.00 for a level 2 tech to re-configure the router to accept the apple devices.  i said i wasnt going to pay for tech support to get this system working the way it should.  i was then told that i could disconnect the wifi in the exfinity and go back to using my linksys which did work up until the outage on the 23.  once that was done i lost internet to my desk top witch does not have wifi and still had no internet to my apple products.  that was when i was told that it would cost me $80.00 to get a level 2 tech to re-configure my linksys to the xfinity modem which was blocking the signal.  during this whole process i was told the charge was wrong.  and they were sorry that someone was giving me incorrect information.  until i hit level 2 tech support and was told that the others were giving me incorrect information.  my phone calls (cell phone died) had me routed to "offshore east Asia", Columbia, Philipians, Michigan, Illinois, Mississippi and back to the Philipians.  I was told that if i wished to talk to someone that was actually here in the united states that i needed to call the 800 comcast number and keep hanging up and dialing again until by random chance i was routed to an American.  and even though i did manage to talk to a few people in this country they ended up being as usless as the rest. the FCC does not control them and local government doesn't care we are at their mercy and thier illegal practices.  it also doesn't seem to afford a large enough payoff for legal action so there are no lawyers to help fight.  2013-10-3017:05:57