Hey buddy, wanna buy a broadband connection?

[dougo]

Today I was visited by someone trying to sell me RCN cable TV/phone/Internet. Yes, a real live door-to-door salesman! How quaint! Still, I kind of resent what is essentially face-to-face spam, and even if I wanted to switch from Comcast, I'm not sure I'd want to condone that kind of aggressive sales tactic. He actually wanted to come in and sit down with me to go over the various plans, and when I said I'd rather do the research on the web on my own, he emphasized that if I did decide to switch, I should call him because he gets commission that way, and he has a family to feed. Hey, nice guilt trip.

Anyway, before I completely discard the idea of switching, does anyone have particularly good or bad experiences with RCN to share? The upload speed of 800 Kbps (vs. 300 with Comcast) is attractive, and it would be nice to get a cable box that my Tivo can control without using infrared. But I'm not sure those are good enough reasons to switch, especially since the price seems about the same or maybe even slightly more expensive.

Comments

[prog.livejournal.com]

I have been an RCN broadband & digital-cable customer since June 2003. I have not had any problems with them, except for a painful period last year when my house's physical connection up on the phone pole went screwy, and it took them more than one try to diagnose and fix the problem.

They block port 80, which implies they don't like services to be run by customers, but I hacked around that limitation and have been running stuff on a lot of other ports for months.

If a Mormon comes to your door...

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think I've had a salesman come to my door in years, but every so often I get Mormons. When we lived in the Bay Area, they seemed to always be out riding their bikes and bugging people. Anyway, Katie came up with the idea of telling them that we're Jewish. It works, too: they scram like you just told them that you worship Satan or something. I guess they figure a Jew isn't even worth their time. But an atheist, oh boy, they'd like to come in and visit for a while.

- Brad