In the annoying world of internet acronyms, I still marvel in the presence of “GFY”. And not the one that means “Good For You”!

Speaking of, I’d like to give a nice hearty GFY to Comcast Cable. Sure, their high-speed internet has been great, and really reliable, but their customer service blows goats. After all the trouble I had getting it set up, then getting the “jimmy rigged” wiring job through my apartment, and being billed full price for everything I was told I was getting for free, things had been going well. Now, in an effort to save some stamps and to not have to scratch out and re-write my new address on all my checks, I signed up for online bill payments with all my utilities. Gas company? Piece of cake. Electric company? I have to print a form and mail it in, but no problems there yet. Phone company? Well, I still have to get to the phone company. But then there’s Comcast. First, I had to register online with seperate information and such, just to get a peek and account information. No “signing in with your account number”, but that was a minor inconvenience. I find the automatic bill pay, sign up, get all the way to the end, putting in my checking account numbers, and it says it can’t find the routing number. Funny, all the other companies did so just fine. So I retype it and submit again. Same problem. And again. A different screen pops up.

Success!

Or… maybe not. Just a different way to say they can’t complete my registration and I need to call them to finish signing up.

Not freaking likely…or so I thought.

I decide that I’ll let that slide, try it another day, and in the meantime, while I’m looking at my bill, I’d cancel some of the channels that I was finally having to pay for. $37 a month is a little steep for the maybe 1 1/2 movies I catch on HBO a month. Besides, if I cancel now, surely I’ll get another “4 months for $5 a month” deal soon, right?

(Actually, they’ve already sent out a deal to keep the channels for “about half” what it is now. That’s nice, but A) it wasn’t reflected on my bill, and B) “about half” still makes for a good happy hour or at least most of a round of golf once the forty days and forty nights we’ve got going on here lets up.)

Next problem is, you can find 2,391 different ways to add service through their website, but NOTHING about cancelling. Not that I expect them to make it easy for you to cancel services, but the limit for jumping through hoops should be 1, maybe 2 if they’re not the “lit on fire” type hoops you see dogs jumping through on TV.

So, it comes right back to making the phone call to their customer “service”. Some of the people there have been great. Some of the others have been, well, either total jackasses or not even close to English. I swear, when I signed up for the service, I think I got HBO for free, two camels, a tent and might have to change my identity soon to avoid an arranged marriage.

So the next time I have to move, “do they use Comcast?” is easily one of the first questions on the list. Probably even before indoor plumbing.

On the bright side of the consumer world, the “free code” on the back of this week’s AOL trial CD in my mailbox was “Dills-Whole”. Frankly, I always thought the plural of that would be “dillholes”, but I guess I was wrong.