The story begins on a rainy day (like any other rainy day in Olympia, Washington), when I’m told by my soon-to-be-former roommate that, in order to retain ownership of the Comcast high-speed cable connection for my apartment, I need to go down to the Comcast offices in Olympia and present photo ID at their counters.

First reaction: bullshit. That’s so completely counterintuitive that it’s just not funny. After several hours worth of volleying e-mails back and forth trying to get online access to the Comcast account — “humor me and let me try online” (since my roommate has the passwords) — I give up and decide to go in today. “But I reserve the right to yell at someone,” I tell Amanda, “this is incredibly stupid.”

So I go to an appointment with a Writing Center tutor this morning, then help Amanda bring stuff back to the apartment. After that, we decide to catch friendly Intercity Transit’s route 47, going through Capital Medical Center and presumably right past Comcast’s customer service offices on Yauger Way SW. We get off a stop earlier than we had to and walk down the road to the Comcast offices, then walk in and wait for a couple minutes for a counter to clear up.

“Hi, I was told by a Comcast support representative that I needed to come down here and present photo I.D. in order to transfer ownership of a Comcast account.”

“What’s your phone number?” I give it to the woman at the counter. “We don’t have a record of that phone number.” Well, of course you don’t, my roommate opened the account. “Do you know that phone number?” No, he recently changed that phone number. “Do you have the address?” Yeah. Here you go. “Where’s your roommate?”

Well, at this point, I felt like perhaps I should be shoved into a back room with one light over a table and have Comcast support techs screaming questions in my face, just like a real interrogation.

“He’s not here.”

“Well, we can’t do that without the roommate here. We can call him.”

“We don’t know that phone number.”

A couple minutes pass with conversation going roughly in the same direction.

“Well, we can’t transfer your account because you have Comcast high-speed internet and we can’t transfer those.”

WHY COULDN’T YOU SAY THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?

“Well, we can start you with a new Comcast account, but you’ll have to pay fees. Oh, and you’ll have to return the modem.”

“Why do we have to return the modem?”

“It’s leased.” Oh. “If you promise to bring back the modem, we’ll give you a new install kit and a new modem right now.”

Well, it’s not my problem to return the old modem, so.. “Yeah, okay.”

After about another five minutes of exchanging information and waiting for the woman to give us the modem and wish us a happy holidays, we catch the bus back.

Part II: Installing the Freaking Modem

We get home and I try to check my e-mail, only to find that, in order to start my account, they shut the current one down immediately. Okay, no problem, I was going to have to unplug the modem after I checked my e-mail anyway, so that just made me skip a step. With Amanda’s help, we install a cable splicer, plug in the modem, reboot my laptop into Windows XP Professional, and put in the Comcast install CD. After a few false starts, everything starts alright and goes through the setup, right up until we need to select a user name.

“System Error . . .”

Apparently, the service for initializing user names was unavailable. Okay, no problem. We restart the install, go through the process again, and get right back to that error.

Argh.

Now I restart the install again, and, lo and behold, I can’t even start the install anymore — the install CD can’t contact Comcast’s registration servers.

Now I’m getting a little annoyed, Amanda picks up the phone and calls Comcast, and after being passed around a bit, we get a technician who knows something about our situation.

“Plug in these proxy settings into Internet Explorer. Now, go to this internet address and try to register that way.” We do, and we get to the same user name screen and the same error we had on the CD. “Hold on,” I can imagine the tech saying as she puts Amanda on hold. Some conversation ensues, and a few minutes later the tech picks up again.

“Does this user name ring a bell?”

“Why, yes, yes it does.” Apparently, our original user name request went through, but the install system didn’t want to tell us about it. After a couple more minutes, a modem restart, a system restart, and another internet test, it works fine and we hang up with Comcast.

But now I had to deal with the router. I switch cables around, turn on my wireless connection, clone the MAC address with the router, and retry the internet. Whoops, I cloned the wrong address. I go back, type in the correct MAC address, then restart the modem again.

And that’s how I’m now paying setup fees and monthly fees for Comcast.