So today I get home and find no TV / Internet / telephone service.

I rang cablecom and was totally disappointed.

Based on what the media reports, I expected to be on the phone forever and face incompetence.

But I got exactly the opposite.

Within the 10m 50s that I was on the phone cablecom managed to

a) give me some tests to confirm I had a technical problem
b) check the modem status of other users in my building - all were offline
c) check their systems and report that the system in our town has a faulty unit affecting multiple users, and it is being worked on
d) tell me that the expected outage will run untill approx 18:00
e) encourage me to report further if the outage continues longer than 18:30
f) do all of the above in a friendly, competent manner

I'm so disappointed that my experience has been tainted by the media.
I didn't get what the media primed me to get - instead I got friendliness, competence, and prompt service.

Well done, cablecom

__________________
Warning: may contain traces of nuts.

They've probably been reading your posts here and gave you special service...

You were lucky, their service is in general absolutely diabolical. Diagnosing a fault is easy for them, especially when its an entire building... it's when you give them something complicated like changing your address when moving into a new apartment that the fun begins. They are bloody useless for the most part.

I thought their tech support closes at 1800?

thanks for the mail, you've given me hope!
i need to phone them, because for the past 6 months my computer looses internet connection after an hour - it's really frustrating, and then i have to reboot the whole shebang to get it going again...maybe i should just phone and try!!!

To be fair, they rewired my entire building when I reported a load of channels getting 'E20 - no signal' and their engineer who checked my set up here spent ages tweaking it till he was happy with the picture quality. I'm going 'it's okay really' (or think I was, we were speaking French) and he kept insisting 'it's not good enough'!

That's what makes their general incompetence so much more frustrating - when they want to be, they can be exemplary in terms of customer service.

I read many bad experience with Cablecom, but I decided to give a try because on paper their offer is the best ( chf 63.30/month for Internet + TV, no telephone, as of 2011).
Note that I do not want the fixed telephone.
They got my language wrong, so I received all mailing in German (the only Swiss language that I do not understand).
They got my address wrong, so the shipping took longer than usual but eventually I got the box with the decoder, the router, etc.
I installed everything by my self (I am an electrical engineer .
A couple of things were not clear on the instructions but I managed to got everything working.
Also registering on their web site was not clear, but eventually I did it, and their web site is informative.
So now I got good TV and internet as I want.
A bad surprise was that when I received the bill I got an unexpected bill of 227.85 chf/year, not mentioned on their offers. They say it is a basic connectivity fee, needed for any other service.
So my average monthly costis now about 80 chf, still less than the cheapest Swisscom package (99chf/month).
So in my case, this choise make sense, but I would reccomend Cablecom only to people that have patience, technical knowledge and various language skills.

They are not serious. A couple of frineds of mine have had problems too... A couple of days without internet or telephone or both... One of them has now green.ch (i think) and he says, its better. But it's very expensive for me...

I have nothing but praise for cablecom.

I ordered online on a Wednesday and by Friday it arrived. Installed it all and the set top box was faulty I called them up and they sent a techniker round to check it for me, this was Friday 4pm.

He said the box was faulty and he made a call and my new box arrived the next day 7am!

Even their bill came for the month no extra charges everything how it should be.

I don't work for them btw....

I called them recently to ask for a change to my package. After 10 minutes discussion where I pushed many times to get them to tell me the FULL cost I would pay and was repeatedly told only parts of it, they finally announced another charge after I had agreed to make the change, so I told them to cancel. They seem to have a deliberate policy to mislead customers about their costs.

Dear XXX,

On Friday afternoon, 13 Mai 11, one of upc cablecom's fibre optic cables was damaged by the actions of a third party. This led to a service failure (CATV, Digital TV, Internet, fixed network telephony) in several areas around Lake Zurich.

We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused.

Yours sincerely,

Oliver F
upc cablecom

FWIW, the service was down for 8 hours and the email came in two days later.

Not minimizing anyone's anger towards Cablecom, but I have nothing bad to say about them. Service has been impeccable since beginning, they know we are foreigners so they keep sending other contract possibilities that allow cheap calling to our home countries, internet is extremely fast, top phone quality, help centre has always been very competent and friendly, and the only time we had no internet (for 24 hours) was when we changed contract and they apologized when we called and got it fixed soon enough.


The only thing that angered my IT better half is the fact that the modem *has* to be the one from cablecom, and they wanted to charge a ridiculous amount to plug the thing, but we didn't let the cablecom guy get inside the house


Everytime I hear people screaming at Cablecom I wonder if we are talking about the same company

That’s so true. I recently moved to a new flat and informed cablecom about this, and asked them to move my internet contract I have with them. Surprisingly I ended up with a full new package (internet, TV and Phone) which I did not order (I only need interned). Thus I called them and complained. They where telling me I ordered the package online on March 20th at around 1 pm. But this is exactly the day I moved, I did not hat any internet connection available (as I moved from one flat to the other, and fore sure internet is not the fist thing I install) on this day, thus I could not have ordered it.

I remembered I called them on this day though, to check if they had everything done for the moving. Thus I asked them if perhaps the call center agent incorrectly ordered it for me on this date as I had a call with him (perhaps it was misunderstanding). They replied I did not call them on this date. They log and record all calls and there was no call from me on this date, they said.

Now I was curious, as I perfectly remembered I called them on this date. Thus I asked my mobile phone carrier to give me the call log when I called the cablecom customer service hotline. Lo and behold, I called them on exactly this date from 1.25 pm to 1.30 pm.

I confronted them with my investigations but they still claimed I ordered it online. But I can cancel the contracts for TV and phone on their goodwill.

Amusingly I had to send in the notice of cancellation in a written and signed letter. It’s for my safety; they told me; thus no one can cancel my contract. But obviously some could order it for me, without difficulties.

Long story short, this is a very dodgy business practice.

You mean between 11 AM (according to CC themselves) and 5 AM the next morning...

11 in their email denotes 2011 the downtime was from 7am

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Dont worry, your time will come!

My experience with cablecom is pretty good. I´ve also heard bad things about them but I decided to try them anyway for my internet connection. I called them up one Sunday evening to order internet and on Tuesday I got my modem and was online, that was very quick. After a few weeks I had some issues with internet going down and up several times in one day. I called them and the next day there was a guy measuring the whole building to find out that the termination was wrong and changed it so it was working. Very quick service!

Usually you have to sign up for 12 month subscription but however if you leave Switzerland you only have 1 month notice time.