I vote for Comcast- after seeing the first episode of Game of Thrones on vacation, my wife and I decided we absolutely had to get HBO. I figured no problem, we already have Comcast digital service, so all I need to do is go online and add HBO for a few bucks more.
The first warning sign was their website- impossibly flaky, hard to navigate, and totally unstable. Six or seven times I tried looking at the deals offered on the website, would click on a package that looked promising, try to go back to the previous page to compare it to a different plan, only to find that sometimes several buttons wouldn't reappear, and more than once there were a completely different set of options when I reloaded the page.
After much swearing and complaining, I finally found the deal I wanted (which admittedly, was a good deal- double the channels AND HBO for pretty much what we'd been paying for basic cable). I clicked the "update my service button"...only to be dropped into a customer service chat window to "complete my order". After a few minutes of waiting for a customer service rep to come on, I suddenly got a message that the customer service system was down, and I should try again another time.
As I'm staring at the screen in disbelief, up pops a window asking "would you like to fill out a brief survey about your experience on the Comcast website?". You bet I did- I spent the next 20 minutes documenting the entire frustrating experience, suggesting ways to improve the web site, and venting a bit of pent-up rage. You're probably not surprised that pressing "submit" only resulted in a MySQL error page, but somehow I was.
After I recovered from the screaming fit that followed, my ever-practical wife convinced me to just call Comcast and order the service over the phone. I did, and talked to a perfectly nice operator who took my order, then quoted me a higher price. When I mentioned that the web site had offered a better deal, she told me "Oh, that's only on the web- I can't offer you that price"!
So the next day, I go back to the web site, go through all the bizarreness of finding the deal I want again, and clicked "Update my service"- only to discover the system had helpfully signed me up automatically for a bunch of hardware I didn't need, like two extra DVR boxes and some digital converters, all for an additional monthly fee.
I got those taken off, got dropped into the customer service chat window again, this time actually got someone (or a bot, it was hard to tell) who spent the next twenty minutes trying politely to upsell me on more services I didn't want, before finally the order went through. I was told my new channels would appear within an hour or so, and I logged off, excited that we'd finally be able to watch Game of Thrones from the beginning.
Sure enough, an hour later, all my channels appear- but no HBO. I dig down on the site to find my order, only to see the customer service rep didn't add HBO.
So I went through it all AGAIN on the website, got HBO added, and the next day we sat down to watch season 1 of Game of Thrones- but now we discover that Comcast on-demand only offers season 3. A bit more research uncovers the HBOGo app, which we can put on the Roku, that allows access to everything HBO has ever offered, including Game of Thrones, and it's all free if you subscribe to HBO.
Unless you do it through Comcast.
Turns out Comcast won't validate your HBOgo account on the Roku, because nobody knows why the hell not. Some forum digging uncovers the fact that the HBOGo app works through Comcast on the XBox360- I dig mine up from the basement, spend another evening setting up an XBox Live account, and seven nights after we decided to give Comcast an extra $10 a month for HBO, we were finally able to watch Game of Thrones from the beginning.
Maddening- (but totally worth it- Game of Thrones is insanely great!)
The first warning sign was their website- impossibly flaky, hard to navigate, and totally unstable. Six or seven times I tried looking at the deals offered on the website, would click on a package that looked promising, try to go back to the previous page to compare it to a different plan, only to find that sometimes several buttons wouldn't reappear, and more than once there were a completely different set of options when I reloaded the page.
After much swearing and complaining, I finally found the deal I wanted (which admittedly, was a good deal- double the channels AND HBO for pretty much what we'd been paying for basic cable). I clicked the "update my service button"...only to be dropped into a customer service chat window to "complete my order". After a few minutes of waiting for a customer service rep to come on, I suddenly got a message that the customer service system was down, and I should try again another time.
As I'm staring at the screen in disbelief, up pops a window asking "would you like to fill out a brief survey about your experience on the Comcast website?". You bet I did- I spent the next 20 minutes documenting the entire frustrating experience, suggesting ways to improve the web site, and venting a bit of pent-up rage. You're probably not surprised that pressing "submit" only resulted in a MySQL error page, but somehow I was.
After I recovered from the screaming fit that followed, my ever-practical wife convinced me to just call Comcast and order the service over the phone. I did, and talked to a perfectly nice operator who took my order, then quoted me a higher price. When I mentioned that the web site had offered a better deal, she told me "Oh, that's only on the web- I can't offer you that price"!
So the next day, I go back to the web site, go through all the bizarreness of finding the deal I want again, and clicked "Update my service"- only to discover the system had helpfully signed me up automatically for a bunch of hardware I didn't need, like two extra DVR boxes and some digital converters, all for an additional monthly fee.
I got those taken off, got dropped into the customer service chat window again, this time actually got someone (or a bot, it was hard to tell) who spent the next twenty minutes trying politely to upsell me on more services I didn't want, before finally the order went through. I was told my new channels would appear within an hour or so, and I logged off, excited that we'd finally be able to watch Game of Thrones from the beginning.
Sure enough, an hour later, all my channels appear- but no HBO. I dig down on the site to find my order, only to see the customer service rep didn't add HBO.
So I went through it all AGAIN on the website, got HBO added, and the next day we sat down to watch season 1 of Game of Thrones- but now we discover that Comcast on-demand only offers season 3. A bit more research uncovers the HBOGo app, which we can put on the Roku, that allows access to everything HBO has ever offered, including Game of Thrones, and it's all free if you subscribe to HBO.
Unless you do it through Comcast.
Turns out Comcast won't validate your HBOgo account on the Roku, because nobody knows why the hell not. Some forum digging uncovers the fact that the HBOGo app works through Comcast on the XBox360- I dig mine up from the basement, spend another evening setting up an XBox Live account, and seven nights after we decided to give Comcast an extra $10 a month for HBO, we were finally able to watch Game of Thrones from the beginning.
Maddening- (but totally worth it- Game of Thrones is insanely great!)