Is that what they mean by “Comcastic?”

I just moved to Cambridge from Somerville, and after a week of being offline, I had my Comcast setup appointment this afternoon. The guy showed up and brought me a cable box that was exactly the same as my RCN cable box from Somerville, only it doesn’t have HDMI outputs and doesn’t offer the channels I like in HD. He also gave me a setup CD for a “self-install” for my internet connection.

The setup program asked for my account number, which it said was available on my bill (which I haven’t gotten yet) or through the Comcast website, which I could reach by clicking a link further on in the message. A link which didn’t exist, and which wouldn’t have worked, because I didn’t have internet access set up. Classic.

I had to call and spend a few minutes on hold being regaled by Ben Stein about the glories of Comcast before I could get an account rep to tell me my account number. Then I finished the setup process, rebooted, and… was asked to set up again. I did it twice more, gave up, and found that it worked when I came back to it several hours later.

So far, this is a lot more expensive and less convenient than RCN. But since there’s no competition – no, I’m not willing to go satellite+DSL, and there’s no FiOS here yet – it’s what I’m stuck with. Monopolies must be a pretty comcastic business to be in, I guess.