Update: Well, I guess Comcast monitor the search engines! I got a comment to this post as well as email and telephone follow-up on the issue. The post below was written out of frustration; and in no small part, concern for what this type of advice could have on inexperienced users. I know it's a small chip against a huge edifice of a company but hey, they took notice, it cost real time and money to follow up on this...which I thank them for doing. I know what it's like dealing with pissed off customers, it's not pleasant but most of the biggest lessons I've learnt over the years have been as the result of trying to solve customer's problems (whether I caused them or not).
Grr...I've never had as many problems with a company as I do with Comcast. I've written before about the forgetful DVR box...latest issue left me without Internet access for 3 days. *Something* messed up and I was getting slower and slower speeds then finally I got no connection at all. I did all the usual stuff, reset everything, uninstall any new software etc...but nothing helped. Finally I resigned myself to having to call customer service. First thing they always do is reset your modem...this didn't work at first...then suddenly it just started working after they told me to connect the modem direct to my laptop (I usually connect through a router) and they did a reset again. The instruction of the woman on the line was that my router must be broken. After much fiddling I realize what really happened; they reset the MAC address my cable modem will accept. Comcast have a delightful habit of locking down your cable modem to the MAC address the installer finds on your PC when they first install your service...looks like they somehow lost my registration and 'helpfully' fixed it by resetting the service to the MAC address of my laptop...which of course broke my router. So long story short, cloned my laptop MAC on to my router and everything works again.
I have no idea what users who don't get this would do...probably end up buying a new router which still wouldn't work...grr...
Sorry, boring post but I hate when companies do this shit!