Recently, I ordered Comcast’s WiFi Pro system with 4G LTE backup — a product with real practical value for my household. I have a severely autistic son, and we rely heavily on our internet connection for his safety. We use WiFi-based alarms so that when he opens a window or a door in the middle of the night, every Echo device in the house announces which door or window was opened. Losing internet means losing that safety net. But I also ordered this product because I wanted to review it for Cord Cutters News. For cord cutters, the ability to keep streaming television even when the main internet goes out is exactly the kind of feature worth covering.
At Cord Cutters News, we prefer to review products without the company knowing a review is underway. We do accept and review units sent directly by companies, and we always disclose that to our readers. But this time, I ordered the WiFi Pro extender with 4G Internet Backup on my own without telling Comcast it was for a review. I want to be clear that this story is not that review — I will still write the full product review at a later point. What I want to talk about right now is the nightmare it took to simply get the device working.
Placing the order online was easy. Comcast mailed me the device without any trouble. I didn’t expect much difficulty with the setup. I had just helped configure a comparable product from Spectrum — which offers 5G backup — and that took me less than an hour. I figured Comcast’s version would be similarly straightforward. Instead, what followed was days of problems, more than three hours across three separate support calls, and two technician visits to my house.
When the system arrived, which included a new modem, I scanned the QR code and followed the instructions in the Comcast app. The initial setup seemed easy enough. But problems surfaced quickly. The new Comcast modem began rebooting randomly and dropping my internet connection. The WiFi Pro extender with 4G kept displaying an error in the app saying the 4G network setup had failed and to contact support. I messaged Comcast and spent over an hour working through it with them. The solution they offered was simply switching back to my old Comcast modem, which did work without issue. They told me the 4G network would start working within a few hours.
The 4G LTE network sadly did not work. About three hours later I came back to check and the same error messages were still there. I messaged Comcast again, spent another hour going back and forth, and was eventually told they would send me a new extender with 4G and dispatch a technician to my house. These calls included multiple attempts by Comcast to get me to upgrade and spend more money with Comcast.
This is where things really started to go wrong. Without asking me whether the time worked, Comcast scheduled the technician appointment for a time when I had an important prior commitment that I could not change. I asked for a different time and they offered one three days out, which I accepted. They also said they would mail me a replacement device.
The next day, things went further downhill. I received a text to confirm my appointment, only to discover that the agent I had spoken with had never actually changed the appointment time as promised. I had to go in and reschedule it myself. Once I sorted out a new appointment time — which was not the time I had hoped for — I shortly received a call from a Comcast agent who spent a considerable amount of time trying to talk me out of having a technician come to my house at all. They tried to convince me that everything was working fine, while I sat there staring at the Comcast WiFi Pro extender with a solid red error light on the front of it.
At that point, I reached out to a contact I have at Comcast to see if they could help, because it was becoming clear that I was not going to get anywhere through normal support channels. Every interaction seemed to end with agents trying to upsell me on new products — cellular service, faster speeds — rather than actually fixing my problem. I want to be transparent that reaching out to a contact is not something I like to do when reviewing a product, because it means I am getting treatment that the average Comcast customer would never receive. And yet even with that, it still took two technician visits to resolve.
The first technician confirmed that the new modem was defective and swapped it out with a new one — making that the third Comcast modem in 48 hours — and replaced it. But he did not have a WiFi Pro with 4G on his truck. He told me to text him when the replacement unit arrived in the mail and he would come back to finish the job.
The next day a package arrived from Comcast. I opened it and found they had shipped me the wrong item entirely — a standard WiFi extender with no 4G LTE backup whatsoever. After contacting Comcast again, a technician came out the following day, now four days into this ordeal, and brought the correct device. It took nearly two more hours to complete the setup. All of this was finished before my original appointment would have even taken place. Even with all of that, it was still done faster than what my original appointment was meant to be.
After all of that, I was left feeling deeply frustrated — and with a much clearer understanding of why Comcast has been losing internet customers quarter after quarter. This should not have been this hard. The majority of my time with Comcast support was not spent getting help. It was spent being upsold, being told I was wrong while staring at a red error light, and being talked out of getting the technician visit that ultimately turned out to be absolutely necessary.
Many customers may be able to set up their devices without ever needing support. But when something goes wrong — and things do go wrong — Comcast’s support system seems almost designed to avoid solving the problem. I have spent nearly 12 years covering the world of television and the internet, and I even had to spend about three hours with agents and fight off a call from a supervisor trying to convince me not to get help.
In a statement to Cord Cutters News a Comcast Spokesperson said: “We apologize for an experience that not only fell short of expectations but is unacceptable. We are committed to WiFi that is easy to install and consistently excellent and reliable every day. We will use this opportunity to train and fix anything that needs to be addressed to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
When we talk with cord cutters, one thing we hear often is that they would gladly spend more money on TV and internet if it meant they never had to deal with their cable company again. Bad customer service like this is a key reason why. Rolling out a new pricing plan, a new device, or new streaming channels will not stop the bleeding if the support experience remains this broken. If Comcast wants to survive the cord-cutting era, fixing the product is not enough. They have to fix how they treat customers when something goes wrong.
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