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Speak up about Comcast!

The cable giant will renew its Philly franchise. But not until the city hears from customers.

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MUCH AS I've enjoyed playing intermediary between screwed-over Comcast customers and Comcast bigwigs who might unscrew them, I'm looking forward to a break as the city takes over the gig for a week.

So if you're stuck in Comcast's seventh circle of customer hell, mark your calendars. Starting Tuesday, the city will be holding six public forums  you can dish about the telecommunications giant, which is looking to renew its franchise with Philadelphia.

It's a 15-year-deal, so speak now or forever hold your rage. From what I've heard, you have plenty to rage about.

Back in February, I wrote about a couple who'd been trying for months to get their cable and Internet services hooked up. They'd lost 13 days from work waiting for techs who never showed, and countless hours calling 1-800-JUST-KILL-ME to explain to yet another Comcast rep why they were so frustrated.

I wrote about the couple, and their impossible issue got resolved in a day. I felt like God. So I penned a follow-up column offering to contact Comcast on behalf of other customers who'd hit a wall with the company.

My email inbox ballooned with almost 200 nightmare tales about phantom technicians. Or monthly bills that swelled beyond what Comcast had promised in sales pitches. Or their phone numbers being changed - without warning. Or, in a truly bizarre case, a couple who were told they couldn't get Comcast activated in their new apartment until they'd made good on the unpaid Comcast bill of its prior tenant.

If I could have set these hair-pulling wails to music, it would have sounded like Bach's "Come, Sweet Death."

But I was late to the Comcast complaint game. Over the last year and a half, the city had been collecting feedback from about 4,000 Comcast customers in a survey conducted in preparation for the franchise-renewal negotiations

Two weeks ago, the findings were released in a 571-page report. Cue "Come, Sweet Death."

More than a quarter of Philly's Comcast cable subscribers were dissatisfied with their service; about half of their complaints had to do with billing. About those bills: Comcast services are more expensive in Philly than in other markets - which is a lousy thank-you for the enormous tax breaks this lovestruck city gives the company.

Of the 1,759 written comments on the survey, a staggering 99 percent of them were unfavorable.

Comcast argues with the numbers, of course, saying that some weren't as bad as the report indicated. But sources familiar with complaints to the city's Cable Franchise Authority say customer gripes about Comcast dwarf complaints about Verizon.

Granted, Comcast's Philly footprint is bigger than Verizon's. But even taking those numbers into account, the sources say, Comcast remains the bigger migraine maker by a huge margin.

So there's a lot for the mayor to chew on as he goes toe-to-toe with Comcast. He'll be looking for improvements in customer service; free broadband in under-served neighborhoods; high-speed broadband capacity and computing technology to support the City's KeySpots locations and libraries; and more.

The problem with these negotiations is that a resulting agreement won't expire until 2030. There's no way to predict what the media landscape will look like 15 years from now. How do we plan for what we don't know we'll need in a way that makes sure we'll get it, whatever the hell it is?

Who knew, when the current franchise agreement was crafted more than a decade ago, that so many of us would be telecommuting? Or trading so much of our network TV viewing for online video streaming from companies with cutesy names like Hulu? Or be able to get an instant message sent to our phone when the takeout order we texted to the pizza shop was ready for pickup?

Hell, back then we didn't know phones could be smart and that a Cloud could do anything more than tell us it was gonna rain.

All we can do, as we guess our way into the future, is to learn from past mistakes, demand accountability where there hasn't been much and try to stack the deck more in favor of the Little Guys than in favor of the rich people who will get richer off of them.

Because the rich guys always do just fine. Even the collapse last week of Comcast's hoped-for merger with Time-Warner will do nothing - nothing - to impact the daily lives of the richly rewarded executives and lobbyists who fought so hard to bring the companies together. Those folks will pay their bills with as much ease as they ever did.

Or, rather, the people hired to pay their bills for them will.

The least we should do is demand from them protections that will make it harder for the $150 billion company to get away with billing mistakes that - according to one of my hardworking reader's complaints - is destroying her credit. Not to mention limit its ability to raise prices endlessly.

So c'mon, Philly, share your insights, gripes and dreams about Comcast at one of the forums this week. The right people will be listening.

And I can play God for only so long.

Schedule for Comcast public forums this week:

Tuesday

Noon-2 p.m. at PCI Library, 1905 Locust St.

5-7 p.m. at South Philadelphia High School, 2101 South Broad St.

Wednesday

5-7 p.m. at MaST Charter School, 1800 East Byberry Road.

Thursday

Noon-2 p.m. at Community Center at Visitation, 2646 Kensington Ave.

5-7 p.m. at Martin Luther King High School, 6100 Stenton Ave.

Saturday

Noon-2 p.m. at Bibleway Baptist Church, 1323 North 52nd St.

Phone: 215-854-2217

On Twitter: @RonniePhilly

Blog: ph.ly/RonnieBlog