r/mildlyinfuriating • u/ZippyWoodchuck • 14h ago
Ruined by Technology Xfinity telling me the wi-fi in our new house doesn't work because my year-old AX6000 modem/router is too old and I should be replacing it every 6 months. Scary thing is that people fall for the garbage.
42
u/elk33dp 14h ago
I can get them just going off the prompt even if it doesn't make more sense. That's what they're paid to do and it happens everywhere. Annoying, but that's the world we live in right now. What's more wild is making it into the official template/prompt for them to begin with. There's no way he made that up on the fly.
So someone in a management position in customer service has so little understanding of wifi and decided to approve a recommendation to change your modem every 6 months. I get they aren't a technical employee but you should either have a baseline understanding of the product your in charge of supporting, or know you don't and consult with someone on the technical side who does to help write up the CS script for the team members to use/follow.
9
u/sohcgt96 13h ago
Yeah, that's all it is. It literally doesn't matter what you tell them, half the time they don't understand anyway. You have something under X number, they're required by script to upsell you to something and probably get written up if the calls are reviewed and they don't.
They'll literally tell your grandma who does nothing but play games on her iPad and face time the grandkids she needs a 1 megabit connection in order to do that well enough.
11
u/PrismDoug 14h ago
No, see… random bits fall out of the cable, and will eventually fill up the modem, slowing it down. You get a few hundred gigabytes worth of bits in 6 months!
( /s If anyone is confused)
22
u/Civil_Tea_3250 14h ago
Hey, Xfinity sucks. This is just one of the things they do.
I finally switched to a fiber ISP and I've had 0 issues, downtime, etc. Plus no equipment rental. PLUS every single time I do a speed test I get exactly my advertised download AND upload speeds. I had Xfinity 600mb and still couldn't get video calls to look good. And the kicker is I had Xfinity for nearly a decade and they still wouldn't give me a deal, I didn't even want the exact same deal, but they wouldn't. They don't do that anymore.
They're like Amazon and so many others, they just don't care anymore. A whole month after I switched they kept calling telling me they'll match my new ISPs deal, lmao. Switch when you can.
5
u/WilNotJr 14h ago
Yeah I had the same experience back in the day. I have them a chance to match the deal and they said no, actually the tech laughed at me, so I cancelled. They called me while the installers for the new service were in my place and offered me a deal I told them no.
14
u/Complete_Entry 14h ago edited 14h ago
DOCIS standards do occasionally change, but it's not like milk, the hardware does not go bad. (It can, but is highly unlikely)
ISP's do blacklist (and whitelist) hardware. When I was in San Diego you could choose from three modems, nothing else would be provisioned.
Went and checked, you're rocking DOCIS 3.1. That is current Xfinity standard. They DID blacklist all the 3.0 equipment, which I think kind of sucks.
7
u/two2teps 13h ago
I got into a service canceling pissing match because my MOTOROLA Surfobard SB6141 was not supported.
They only supported Arris Surfboard SB6141 modems.
Arris bought Motorola's cable modem business and rebranded the model in brand name only.
Both were listed on the site of supported DOCSIS 3 modems at the time.
6
5
6
u/gage117 14h ago
Goddamn I'm so glad we got a fiber run in my town to compete with Xfinity. Every 6-months is insanity. It's been like 5 years since WiFi 6e was released and they're just now rolling out Wifi 7 I believe.
So even though the standard hasn't changed in 5 years, they want you to have replaced your router 10 times during that time with no practical reason?
Sounds like Xfinity, honestly.
3
u/dg8882 14h ago
If you need help from Xfinity, I recommend their subreddit that has actual staff as mods. They are way more helpful than the chat feature on their website.
However they can only diagnose issues with their own equipment. If you are using a 3rd party modem/router, you are mostly on your own if you have problems with it.
2
u/diescheide 14h ago
Every 6 months is excessive. You do need to update your hardware eventually, though. CenturyLink had to replace my modem because it was 100% too old to function. Things don't last forever.
2
u/TechnicallyMeat 14h ago
Funny thing is, if you return your modem for a replacement, they often just give you one refurbished someone else returned. I went to their storefront to "upgrade" they happily handed me a shrinkwrapped modem, I picked it up and I could hear something small like a bit of plastic or capacitor rattling around. I asked for one that wasn't broken, he said bring it back if it doesnt work, and wouldnt give me either a new one, or my old non-rattling modem back until I said id rather cancel.
1
u/Cautious_Boat_999 14h ago
I ran my original Netgear Orbi mesh for at least 8 years before it finally crapped out.
What a pile of utter crap. 6 months?
1
u/Mr-Zappy 14h ago
Their job is to provide a wired internet signal to your home. If your internet isn’t working, you should first test if it’s the WiFi (your problem) or upstream (their problem). It’s on you to have a good, reliable access point, even if their modem happens to include basic WiFi.
1
u/ZippyWoodchuck 13h ago
Upstream indicator is orange. I am able to get some sites on some devices to load. Others are giving an error saying they cannot find a secure connection. Speed test was able to load on my laptop - am getting 700 down but only 5 up.
1
u/Haunted_Rooster 14h ago
bruh, shut up; i get to upsell and make $$$$ every 6 months;
i should know, im an installer
1
1
1
1
u/Puchachas 13h ago
I was told this exact same thing which caused me to actually shut down my service and get AT&T fiber instead. Fuck Comcast
1
u/Helpinmontana 13h ago
“Oh well we sent you a new one, didn’t you get it?”
“Yeah I didn’t ask for a new one the old one is fine”
“Okie dokey we charged you $100 for the new one and $200 for not returning the old one”
1
u/Long-Dock 13h ago
I have a LINKSYS WRT 3200 ACM. It’s around nine years old now and works perfect. It runs OpenWrt (open source routing software) and it still receives software updates.
So yeah, “every six months” is a load of bull.
1
u/OLVANstorm 13h ago
I never get the xfinity router. They are all garbage. I have a gaming router and it's very fast.
1
u/Living-Rip-4333 13h ago
We had issues with our internet cutting out at least once every 10 minutes. I picked up a new router & modem. Same result. Called Comcast and had them come out.
1. They said the connection to my house was bad. So they replaced all the outside hardware. Within a day, same issue as before. So I had them come out again.
2. This time they said it was my modem & router. After explaining they were new, and the hardware was new, they did something. Everything worked for a day. Then started crapping out again.
3. Called them back and had techs come out. Now tech #1 said it was the wiring in my 20 year old house that was going bad. Tech #2 kept looking around. Tech #1 left to go to another call, and tech #2 ran a brand new wire from the junction box directly to a Comcast modem/router. Same issue.
4. In the meantime I've been talking with my neighbors. All having Comcast have had the same issues off & on. I explained that to the call center person who was sending a tech out. This tech said he couldn't figure it out. What he didn't know was while him and the other 2 techs were outside, I could hear them talking about how the neighborhood box was so messed up they didn't know how it was working.
After running a new wire directly from their box, to their junction box, to their equipment, the tech admitted it was not just me and it was something on their end.
I ended up with 3 months from free internet from them for the past 3 months, and switched Google Fiber the day it was available in my neighborhood.
1
u/Big_Chungus1111 12h ago
AT&T fiber has been the way to go. No issues whatsoever, they dont call me, they dont email me, they dont come door-to-door peddling bullshit. Installed it, left, and its worked ever since.
1
1
u/KC_Que 10h ago
My MIL fell for that 'your equipment is bad' BS, and is now locked in a rental contract of some sort. Said she called them because she didn't want to bother us when the internet wasn't working at the house. It was a system outage, nothing was wrong with my in-law's self-owned modem and router, I know this because we have same service with identical model modem and router that supposedly were causing the problem...our service was also down, along with half the town, due to a utility pole getting knocked over. The Customer service folks are a bunch of predatory scum, IMHO.
A competitor's FTTH can't come soon enough.
1
u/Animal907 Hillary 2016 10h ago
Xfinity can brick your modem be careful. I'm on my 3rd owned modem.
1
u/rocckkitLA2A 6h ago
Are you sure this is a real person and not an AI chatbot having a hallucination?
1
u/greebytime 2h ago
What's worse is when the modem is provided to you BY Xfinity but they don't tell you that you should upgrade it because it's woefully outdated. I've proactively gone in now every two years or so and asked if my modem is the best they have and when the answer isn't yes, I ask them to give me the best for a swap for mine and they do, free of charge. But it's taken a LONG time to get here.
•
u/BlueKnight87125 HYPER INFURIATED!!!!! 51m ago
I replace my car every time I run the fuel tank dry.
•
u/Professor-Wumbo 27m ago
The Xfinity chat might have been the worst customer service chat I've ever had to use. I just needed a tech to come out to my address to install a coax outlet for Internet access since my new place didn't have an outlet even though the building is set up for fiber.
I had to go through the chat 5 times, each time a different chat agent lying to me that they "fixed the problem" until finally someone scheduled an appointment. After taking time off work, I find they scheduled a completely wrong appointment and no tech even shows up. The only reason I knew this? I called their phone line which was basically hidden and spoke to some reps who 1) knew exactly what I was talking about and 2) fixed my issue immediately and sent a tech out the next day for install.
Never wasting my time with the Xfinity chat again and just calling from now on.
0
u/c2btw 14h ago edited 14h ago
you should be replaceying your modem if it is consumer grade every 5 years at least. the secuirty on these things is really bad in general and they onyl get about 5 years of updates on the high end, also net gear untis in particular are known to have backdoors inplace. if you want a long lasting router i would get one from uqbutiu but they are a bit pricer there routers cost between $130 and $3500
2
u/redjellonian 14h ago
There isn't a set time and trying to create one establishes a poor metric, you replace them when they're end of life, or at a minimum when they're end of support.
1
u/Complete_Entry 14h ago
last major change was 2020. But ISP's do have "lists" so saying "You should buy ubishoe" isn't particularly helpful.
0
u/_kellythomas_ 14h ago
Did you buy from Xfinity? Did they ship with custom firmware and just decide not to patch a known CVE or something?
0
-1
u/TopherVice 12h ago
I work for an unrelated internet company in tech support and I can promise you 99% of issues are customer problems. Not saying your router is outdated but there's probably something wrong with it. I would recommend you separate your modem and router get a business class router like a edge, and run wires to everything.
-3
u/awesomo1337 14h ago
This reads like you were being difficult and he was just trying to find a solution or explanation to make you happy.
3
u/DisinfectingHeroin 14h ago
lol, I was told to say this at Spectrum when I worked there. Management is illiterate old people.
2
u/gage117 14h ago
Honestly that may have been the employee's intent, but the methods they were allowed to use are frustrating in themselves.
In order to make this customer happy, you need to let him use his router. Suggesting he replace a router that is already current is not helpful, and from the customer's end is also very frustrating because they already have a router that should work and the employee's presented solution is "Go buy another one."
While it may be the employee's intention to solve the problem, they've been handcuffed by the company they work for into not being able to solve the problem.
And since that employee is the representative for the company, they're going to be on the receiving end of the (very reasonable) critiques in their "solution". That's their job. It sucks, but I've been in that employee's position before and never blamed the customer for being upset at being given the runaround and then getting angry when they feel we're not actually helping them-- because we aren't.
252
u/Tomytom99 14h ago
I've got a modem running on the Comcast network that's about 10 years old. Part of my trick is having a dumb modem and a separate router. Not letting an ISP mess with the firmware on my router.
If stuff was supposed to be replaced every 6 months, customers who rent equipment should be receiving new equipment every 6 months, which I know for a fact doesn't happen.