Software developer says Comcast mistake might cost him his home

When software developer Seth Morabito decided to move from the Bay Area to Seattle, he had one absolute deal breaker. His new home had to have good, solid, dependable broadband for his work.

Morabito rejected a number of candidates until he found his dream home in rural Poulsbo.

He called Comcast and was assured the house had the cable service he needed.

“This one they said absolutely, so you’re good to go,” Morabito said. He looked at an online map that confirmed he had service in the area, and even asked for confirmation in writing, but was told Comcast doesn’t do that.

Still, he felt comfortable with the assurances. He bought the house, moved in January, and called Comcast for installation.

“They came out and gave us the bad news. They said, ‘Well it looks like we don’t actually have a box on your house, so we don’t know where it is. It shows that you have a cable here so it must be here somewhere. We’ll send out another tech and see if we can find it.'”

That started what would become a months long saga. The Comcast techs would keep coming and they’d keep telling him the same thing. Each tech failed to report there was no cable, so each subsequent visit became a replay of what he already knew.

“We finally started to lose hope that we thought, well there’s no service here actually, but it must be on the street somewhere. They can run a cable from the street. Turns out, no there was no service on the street. I think that was the fourth tech visit,” he said.

He kept calling and kept getting the runaround. Twice the company simply canceled the order, claiming it had “timed out.”

He finally got an engineer who came out to survey the site and said he’d call back within 24 hours. When he didn’t, Morabito called back

“They said ‘Oh yeah, it looks like it’s all done, you’re ready to go, it’s all installed,'” he said.

But nothing had actually been done. He even got a call from a separate sales person, asking why he’d cancelled his installation.

Flabbergasted, he took to Twitter to vent his outrage, and one of his followers who works at Comcast happened to see it and forwarded it inside the company.

He soon got a call and an apology, and the engineers came out to figure out what it would take to run cable to the house.

He waited for a month – no one would return his messages until he finally got a call from the engineer who came out.

“He was the one who broke the news to me and said there’s just nothing we’re going to do for you,” Morabito said. “I was devastated, I was very depressed because I thought, ‘That’s it, I’m going to have to sell.'”

Morabito blogged about his experience, and his story went viral. That prompted another call from Comcast. The company was extremely apologetic, calling it a “complete breakdown” in their system, he said. And the company promised to work up an estimated cost to bring the cable to his house.

When the bid came in, Morabito’s jaw dropped. The company wanted $57,000 to run the cable approximately 2,500 feet from the nearest terminal.

Needless to say, Morabito passed. Now, he’s trying to decide if he has to sell. Thanks to his blog post, he’s received a number of suggestions. Because he’s in a unique, semi-rural spot, so far everything from wireless to satellite have proven either unworkable, unreliable, or simply too expensive.

He’s angry and frustrated with Comcast, and hopes others learn from his own experience.

“The number one lesson I learned dealing with Comcast: get it in writing,” he said. “I’m not just going to throw the word ‘lie’ around like it’s going out of style. But in this case, I would say there were lies. Absolutely. It was a really horrible experience from start to finish.”

Comcast issued the following statement in response:

“We regret the inconvenience this is causing Mr. Morabito. A mapping error originally showed his home as being closer to our network than it was. We have presented him with an estimate for extending service to his home and would be happy to work with him if he would like to become a customer.”

In the meantime, Morabito is accessing the Internet with a portable 4G hot spot from Verizon, but he said the data cost is astronomical and he can’t get the speed he needs for his larger, data-intensive work. For that, he’s been spending a lot of time taking advantage of Starbucks’ free WiFi.