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Have you ever seen those commercials advertising Xfinity cable and how great their services are? If you are like me you probably have and that means you’ve seen them rave about how you can watch any TV show or movie you want on any device.

That sounds like a great thing, right? But just how great is it really?

Yes there is an app that you can download on your phone and pull up most episodes of any TV show for the current season that you can view on TV. If for example your cable plan doesn’t include BBC America, then you won’t be able to watch any shows from BBC America on your phone or iPad.

I missed the last few episodes of the popular Fox TV show called Lucifer so I decided to download the Xfinity app for my phone and watch one of the missed episodes.

If you were to catch it on TV, it will span 1 hour on TV but the show itself will actually only be about 52 minutes long. That means you’ll get 8 minutes of commercials. That’s usually spread out about 2 minutes long, during 4 different breaks.

You will get several of the same commercial breaks with the xfinity mobile app but even worse.

During the 52 minute long episode you will get about 6 to 10 commercial breaks during which time you’ll have to watch between 4 and 16 commercials each. Yes, you heard me right – I said 16 commercials in a row.

If that in itself wasn’t bad enough, I should point out that they aren’t different commercials, they are the same 4 or 5 commercials replayed over and over and over and over again.

Just imagine how bad it is to have to sit through the exact same United Healthcare commercial 6 times in a row.

If that wasn’t bad enough. When I went to watch the second episode of Lucifer I got about half way through. It played 4 commercials and then stopped playing. I pushed the play button and that triggered a new commercial cycle as if it didn’t realize I just sat through one. Only this time I had to sit through 16 new commercials. I finally got through it and it stopped playing again!

I finally just had to turn the app off before I threw my phone out the window.

The annoying commercials aren’t the only problem with Xfinity. They also have a horrible DVR functionality. You can only record one thing and that is the channel you are currently watching. If you change the channel while recording it will cancel the recording.

And as with all the people who tried to record the Superbowl this year learned the hard way, there is no “record show +30 minutes” feature. If a show is scheduled for say 1 to 2 pm, it will record that channel from 1 to 2 pm but that means a lot of people missed the last 5 minutes of the Superbowl – the overtime, arguably the best part of the game.

Now let’s talk about their customer service.

In addition to cable TV, I also have internet service through Xfinity. On January 11th I received a notification that I had gone over my data limit. Somehow in the previous 11 days my data usage had gone up ten times above normal.

I called tech support and they couldn’t figure it out either. They said they would escalate the ticket and get back with me within 24 hours.  Today is February 8th and I’m still waiting on them to get back with me.

Another thing I want to let you know about is their on time guarantee. They used to have a commercial, not sure if they play this one anymore but they used to advertise that you don’t have to sit around and wait for them to show up all day. They will give you an appointment or be there on time or you get a $20 credit.

In the 3 times during the last year I’ve had to have them out to my house, not a single time have they ever actually made it on time. They will make an appointment for say Monday from 2 to 5 pm. You sit around and wait and they don’t show up. They don’t call. Nothing. You have to call and file a complaint to get a new appointment and then demand the promised $20 credit.

This happened to me not once, not twice but three times now.

So next time you are thinking about getting cable TV or using Xfinity for internet service, just remember this post.