In November of 2014, we started getting intermittent dropouts. They'd happen a few times a day and were really becoming a nuisance because I often need to utilize my connection to upload photos for my job on deadline (I'm a photojournalist). Technically they weren't full dropouts, but functionally they were - my 50mbps down line would be rendered to 2kbps down and choke on any sort of upload for 15 minutes or more multiple times a day.

I lived with it a while, trying to troubleshoot as much as I could on my end before contacting Comcast to no avail. Finally got into contact with a rep and was referred to a tech who tried to troubleshoot, failed, and then asked that I send traceroutes, pings, speedtests, and whatever pertinent information that I could to her and that she'd forward the info higher up the chain after a week of data. A week of me sending all of that information (plus modem logs) intermittently came and went with no response. So did the Christmas season.

Finally, after a massive amount of annoyance and even getting a new router (unrelated - it was on sale and I wanted an upgrade), I contacted Comcast again via Twitter - this time I was able to get a tech call scheduled.

Tech came out, he was nice and knowledgeable. Checked the speed inside and checked diagnostics on his phone to no avail (obviously, as the problem was intermittent). Went outside for a few minutes then came inside, having solved the problem. A line tech had put a filter on my line to trigger a support call months back, apparently without making a note at HQ. They're usually used to combat noise coming out of a household and usually block a connection completely. Unfortunately, in this case, it only intermittently shut down the connection (the tech was completely puzzled - he said that by all measures it should have shut us down totally.) He measured no noise coming from our house, so he tells us that either the problem corrected itself or the line tech messed up and put it on the wrong line.

Happy that the problem was solved, I said thanks to the guy about 100 times and let him head out.

Considering the pain in the ass this all has been, I figured it would be prudent to give Comcast a call and see if I could get kicked over to an introductory rate or get some sort of credit for how flaky our connection had been for the few months we'd dealt with it. Ended up talking to a lady at the call center who not only told me that my current plan goes up in price every six months (even though I've been on it at the same price since my triple play expired in 2009 or something), but tried to upsell me to a temporary twelve month plan in which I'd end up paying a bit more to tack television onto my plan, which I don't at all want.

I'm already paying $77 a month for 50mbps down/20mbps up internet and have no use for cable television, regardless of if it's tacked onto my plan cheaply. I politely declined (after all, I know it's her job to sell packages) and here I am now.

What are my options? Is that plan really my only possible choice?

TLDR: Was having intermittent internet dropouts twice a day or more, talked to support and even sent them logs by their request, never heard back, had to call again for a tech to come out, he discovered a filter on our line usually used for noise feedback that should have completely knocked out our connection but didn't. He found no noise coming from our house. When I called Comcast for some type of compensation, all I could get was a 12 month plan that would have been slightly more expensive for me in the long run that tacks TV, which I don't want, onto my current internet only plan.