Less than ideal situation

I recently purchased a new home (well, new to me) in a location that offers 2gbps internet service. I was so excited I shared it on social media as the real reason we're moving, not to enroll my daughter in a better school system (hah).

but...

It has been kind of a nightmare ever since. I tried to start my account online but it kept bringing me to a page that would spin/spin and never proceed. I finally went to the Xfinity store in Edina, MN to start my service. They actually experienced the same issue and said it was something on the backend. They created the account for me and we later switched it to my email to get around the problem. Thats fine, its whatever. The store was cool and everyone was super friendly.

I get home and realize that my recently remodeled home, while ethernet + coax run to every room including outside, didn't have the primary coax line hooked up to the box outside. Tech dispatched a few days later. He came, hooked it up, yay, internet!

I move into my house 2 weeks later and finally do an actual speed test. ~900mbps down, ~200-300 up. Thats not exactly what I'm paying for but its better than nothing for now. Its identical to what I had at my Condo so I'm good for a minute. We'll figure out the rest after we unpack for a few days.

I decide to try hooking up my old modem from my account at my condo, my Arris SB8200, because historically bringing my own modem has been better for me. Less monthly fees, usually better latency for games, and ultimately I'm not a fan of broadcasting wireless for others to connect to. The online tech activates it to my account, but now I'm getting ~800mbps consistently down, and around 40mbps up. Uh oh. I decide to call in the following day and they inform me that the modem I hooked up isn't capable of multi-gig speeds. Oh cool! Honestly I had no idea. 

I travel to Best Buy and pick up an Arris S33 per their feedback and bring it home. The phone technician (Victoria from Denver, she was super nice) helps me activate the new modem. Now I'm seeing ~700mbps down consistently and around 6mbps up. 

She informs me that I'll need to have a technician dispatched to assist, so we set up the appointment.

A few days later a technician shows up at my door and is one of the rudest individuals I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. He walks through my front door and immediately says "ok why are we even here?". I inform him that I'm paying for 2gbps but only getting the speeds mentioned, and he corrects me and says "actually you're only paying for 1gbps". I tell him that is incorrect and he argues with me. Finally his partner asks him to check, he checks his phone, and goes "oh, you are on the Gigabit x2 plan. Ok."

To which he follows up "why do you even need that speed? What could you possibly need it for?" and makes me feel defensive for wanting to sign up for a premium service with Comcast.

The rest of the visit went about as you'd expect. He went down to my setup, told me my entire setup was the problem. He hooked his portable modem/box/satchel up and showed I'm getting 2100mbps down, 400ish up at the line. He said the problem was my Arris S33 and the fact that I have no devices with a direct ethernet hookup. (I have all macbook pros, a ubiquiti dream wall network setup with a cat6 connected between the two 2.5gbps ports, and multiple trendnet ethernet->USB C 2.5gbps dongles). He says, and I quote, "call your friends, find someone with a real computer to test, and then call us back" despite me showing a direct connect to the modem, swapping out multiple dongles/cat6/cat5e cables, pulling the same. He never once looked at the modem, its config.

I get frustrated and ask him if we should hook up the original Comcast modem that came with my account? [Edited: "Language/Inflammatory"]. Then when he saw my laptop, sitting next to my wireless router, only pulling ~350mbps down, he said "oh look your wireless is bad. The problem is your setup, not comcast". I was going to explain that I have a quality of service setup that limits what each device can pull to ensure all of my wireless devices have a healthy setup... and between my wall + APs I can handle hundreds of devices.. but I decide that I'd simply be doing so to feed my own pride, not solving the issue that ultimately is all I really cared about. I remove my setup from the equation and focus on just laptop, modem. So I keep my mouth shut and let him continue to spew his hateful words towards my setup, the company he works for, and everything in between.

He tells me to "call my friends and find a real laptop with an ethernet port".

Finally him and his partner leave. His partner was actually pretty nice, quiet, and kept trying to "urge" this guy to change course. I get a feeling he was being trained in or something. (The quiet nice one, not the [Edited: "Language"] loud mouth). On the way out he asks "you'll get a survey, please give us a 10 thank you". Lol ok buddy.

I'm just going to assume I caught him on the worst day of his life and give him some grace. Moving on.

The one benefit of him coming is that he proved I'm getting the speeds at the line. So I figure why not see if he was right about the S33 being a bad modem despite what the internet told me, and I return it to Best Buy and pick up a NetGear CM2000. I hook it up. Identical speeds as the S33. ~700 down, ~6 up. I like the look of the CM2000 better so I'm going to keep that hah.

I've since spent a few hours on the phone with different techs who all have different ideas of what the issue is. They said I have a default boot file on my modem. They said I'm in a "limbo" because of hooking the SB8200 up, and that because the system recognized I had a modem that didn't work with my purchased speeds, it set my account into some "mode". They created tickets for the advanced escalation department. They said I'd be resolved in 24, 48, 72 hours. 

Still seeing 700/6 despite already paying my first month for 2000/400. This 700/6 is with my ubiquiti networking gear hooked up (which can handle multigig easily), or directly connected to my laptops. I even took the techs idea and hooked it up to an intel nuc I have laying around which has a direct ethernet jack on it. 700/6.

This is with speedtest.net, this is with xfinity's online speed test. Consistent performance.

They have a tech coming out on Wednesday from 3-5pm. It better not be the same guy or I might lose my patience. Today I got a call from the advanced troubleshooting team who said they want to resolve it over the phone. They rebooted my modem, asked me to test. Same speeds. They said "ok we've done what we can, wait for tech! Its not your modem, its the signals on the line".

I'm a week and a half away from paying my second bill, 150/month, for an internet I still haven't gotten to enjoy the most of with hours of my life wasted so far.

The one thing I will say is that every single person on the phone has been polite and patient. I realize this is some kind of weird issue that is outside the realm of what they can fix and I place no blame at their feet. They've all been awesome, sweet, and I've given them all 10/10 survey results because of this.  Except the tech. I gave him a 0 and when it responded and asked "why", I said "because -5 wasn't an option". I was going to extend grace until I imagined him helping my mom and trying to bully her the way he tried to bully me. Good day or bad day, no excuse to treat anyone that way.

I'm not sure why I'm sharing this. I'm just annoyed and wanted to vent on the internet as we all do. I have no misconceptions that this post will result in it being "fixed". Hopefully Wednesday comes and this issue is behind me? My confidence is pretty low at this point. I'll let you know how it goes!