Critcisms from the Highly Connected

Comcast Corp. has gained another high-profile critic in the blogosphere: Howard Anderson, the founder of The Yankee Group, a prominent research firm, who’s now the managing director of Yankeetek, a Cambridge, Mass. "venture incubator."

Anderson, who’s also a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, knows his way around a good cable connection, and he told me that for more than three months, he hasn’t gotten one. Channels fall out, others are unwatchable and the company has, at times, blamed him and his wife for the problems, he told me.

"Anecdotally, my wife’s ready to kill the sons of b******s," he said. The situation is "certainly laughable. I knew (Comcast’s controlling Roberts family) way back when." It seems the bigger a cable company’s ads, the poorer the execution, he opined.

Anderson lives in a condo in Boston and he said his problem began when the provider notified him that it wouldn’t support analog anymore and the Andersons got digital service.

"Boston’s an old city with old wiring. It just doesn’t work," he said of his conversion. The signal’s been unreliable ever since. The "same untrained technician" has serviced repair requests, he said. When Anderson asked for a supervisor, he claims he was told he’d have to have three unsuccessful repair calls before he’d qualify for a supervisor’s visit.

His wife stayed home one whole day to meet a technician that didn’t come. When they called later to see when their problem would be fixed, they were told the database indicated the problem had been resolved in the missed appointment.

Anderson tried retaliating by refusing to pay for service he hadn’t received. Then he couldn’t get help because he hadn’t paid his bill, although he claims he told Comcast he’d be withholding payment. It was suggested he pay his bill in full and Comcast would refund $42, the amount the company assessed was the value of three months of unreliability, he said.

Anderson has considered Verizon FiOS video service, but the telco is deploying its competitive product in newer developments.

"Perhaps because there’s no competition, response is so poor," he said of Comcast.

The Andersons have a second home in Vermont, he said, located 2 ½ miles down a country road. His DirecTV service there works better than his cable in downtown Boston, he complains.

Cable’s done as little as possible in terms of service, for as long as possible, in Anderson’s view.

But finger’s crossed, he said this week his service has stabilized.

"A guy finally came out and tightened a few things in the basement," he said. ‘Now it seems to work but we’ll see for how long."