Comcast Xfinity Review

I've been wanting to get off of SmartZone for some time. There are many reasons why, but the primary ones are: 1) They have lost my mail. I logged in one morning and most of the mail in an important personal folder was gone. All of my folders except for deleted items is set to never delete. I called into tech support and they told me that currently they cannot recover mail that is in a user-created subfolder. First, they said they don't back up mail. I just laughed.

Then the "advanced" tech support said they are only be able to recover mail that was in the inbox and not a personal folder. That's great. Where did my mail go in the first place?; 2) Advertising in my mail client. I'm amazed at how long I've put up with it. Typical, high-handed, Comcast-monopoly jamming advertising down my throat whether TV or email.

I could live with this lame webmail client if not for the two problems above. But, there are many more reasons I don't like Smartzone. Here are the ones I can remember: 1) Slow as all get out. This could almost be listed as a primary reason that I hate Smartzone. I'm sure too that some of this slowness is due to having to build the advertising web page. How pathetic. This is an email client, not a billboard; 2) Only view or manipulate 100 messages at a time.
3) Cannot specify what folder to search in. It just searches everything; 4) Can't search by date or any other criteria. 5) Right-click mouse button has no copy / paste function like the rest of the standardized world.

6) Auto-save constantly interrupts me. Even when in another application, pig-faced Comcast switches windows on me if I happen to have a partially composed mail open. I mean, why not do the auto-save in the background instead of interrupting what I'm doing in another window?; 7) No reasonable ability to backup mail. Just try moving your mail somewhere. And that brings me to my last point - the best way to do that. I'm doing it right now and since I'm waiting for the mail to be forwarded to my new mail client, I thought I'd write this review of Smartzone and Comcast email and suggest the most reasonable way I could think of to lose this awful thing.

HOW TO FORWARD MAIL FROM SMARTZONE TO A NEW EMAIL CLIENT: When asked how to migrate mail from SmartZone to a new mail client, I've read suggestions by Comcast Support to just forward your emails to yourself. Just imagine if you have ten thousand emails. Sure, that would work if I were in prison and had six months of spare time.

That's the worst thing you could do is to try to forward individually or even in bundles (which all become attachments to a single mail and can be too large to send). You can't just forward a 100 emails. You could try, but they'd be sent out as one email with 100 attachments.

THE BETTER WAY: All you have to do is use Outlook Express or what I just installed which is Mozilla Thunderbird email client (free download). If you set either to leave a copy of mail on the server and to synchronize their inbox with the server then all of your "unread" mail will automatically forward out of the SmartZone inbox to your new email client. Just go through each page of email, unfortunately only 100 messages at a time.

Click on the square box that is above all of your messages at the top left so that 100 messages all get selected at a time. Then right click on the selected area and choose "mark as unread". Do that for every page of emails that you want forwarded to your new email client. As long as they are set to "unread", they will be copied to your new client. Some might have a select to synchronize with the server, in which case, select that.

That's the fairly easy part. But, what if you have lots of mail in personal folders in SmartZone? Or, what if like me, you really need your sent mail? There might be a better way to do this but I haven't found it. Here's what I did though. Once all my inbox mail was transferred to my new email client, I created a personal folder in Thunderbird. You can do the same in Outlook Express. Then I moved all of my transferred mail to a personal folder called SAVED_MAIL. I like to do that now and again anyway just to keep my inbox manageable. So now my inbox is completely empty in my new email client.

What I did then is to select all of the mail in my sent mail folder in SmartZone and mark it as unread just like I did with my inbox. I then moved that mail to my SmartZone Inbox. That's the only way to have it get automatically transferred to my new email client. Since my inbox is empty at this point, any or at least most of the mail arriving there will be the mail that was originally in my sent mail folder from SmartZone. That way I don't get my inbox mail mixed up with my sent mail.

As each 100 messages was transferred in Smartmail from the sent mail folder to the SmartZone inbox, I'd hit "get mail" in Thunderbird and it would grab those new unread messages from Smartzone which are really my sent mail in SmartZone. So, each 100 messages that I move in Smartzone from the sent mail folder to the inbox, I then switch to Thunderbird and hit the "get mail" button and it goes and gets that next 100 messages. I kept doing that simultaneously to save time.

Once all of my SmartZone sent mail was transferred to the inbox of my new mail client inbox, I created another local folder in Thunderbird called SAVED_SENT_MAIL and moved all of the mail from my Thunderbird inbox to that new folder. That takes almost no time at all because it's all on the local hard disk at that point.

You'd do the same thing with mail that you saved in any personal folders in SmartZone. To get that mail to your new mail client more or less automatically, you have to move it to your SmartZone inbox. The more mail you have in personal folders on SmartZone, the longer this is going to take you. If you have most or all of your mail in your inbox, then this whole deal goes pretty quickly. If not and depending on how much mail you're trying to forward to your new mail client using this "synchronization method", the longer it will take.

But, the method above is far better than trying to forward every piece of mail separately to yourself. If you select multiple messages to forward at the same time, SmartZone bundles them all up as attachments into one mail and sends like that instead of separately.

So, depending on how many you decide to forward at once, the single message might be too large to send and it will bounce back. In any case, I would not like my email all bundled into attachments of ten or twenty emails. I want them to remain individual messages as they were intended to be. I hope this helps anyone trying to escape SmartZone. It is absolutely a horrible webmail client and I am now free of it. Thank God.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA -- I don't know why Comcast switched to SmartZone. I am pretty computer savvy but to me, SmartZone is complicated and not efficient. It is also VERY slow to download, despite your connection speed. I am not happy at all. I will have to switch emails soon.

MOUNTVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA -- I said GOODBYE to Comcast last April 2008, both for TV and Internet. I could write a book about price increases, no customer service, having to get their converter box to view channels they moved that were included in my package etc. But now I am being plagued by Comcast again. Friends of mine that are "still" using Comcast send me emails. They arrive in my Inbox and I can open them open up, BUT I HAVE TO SCROLL DOWN AND DOWN AND DOWN AND DOWN TO READ THESE EMAILS.

I have not admitted to my friends but it is so annoying that sometimes it is not worth it to scroll down what seems like forever. I have been told Comcast is working on it just like they are working at improving their customer service. The ONLY solution would be for them to dump Comcast like I did.

VIRGINIA -- Comcast SmartZone e-mail has numerous issues and they have been known to Comcast for months. For example, it is impossible to forward an embedded picture to someone and have that picture show up at the other end. Comcast offers "workarounds" such as forwarding as an attachment. Naturally you cannot delete previous addresses doing that. Numerous phone calls, chats, etc demonstrate to me that Comcast has no intention of fixing these problems. This isn't rocket science.

Since the previous version of Comcast email did not have this issue, one has to wonder what their motivation really is. They state "our people are working on this but we have no date when it will be fixed." I recommend to anyone considering e-mail providers that you look elsewhere. The cost of high-speed internet at Comcast doesn't come close to providing even the most basic service. The solution to Comcast's problems is to replace the senior management and I mean the most senior management.

BELCAMP, MARYLAND -- I was away and when I came back SmartZone was on my computer. I do not want it! How do I get it off? I will use Yahoo or some other engine if I can't get it off!!

MASSACHUSETTS, MASSACHUSETTS -- I am writing this review for three reasons. First I want to know if there is anyone else out there that finds the advertising banner on the side of the email screen intrusive and aggravating. Secondly, I want to encourage others to report this problem to the proper governmental authority. I am in the process of following through with this and when I find the right place to complain I will come back here and leave the address.

Lastly, I just want to vent. I contacted Comcast to ask if there was a way to permanently block or hide this banner and they said no. This kind of advertising is new because it comes up on the side of my email (my personal space!) that I pay for and interferes with the peace of mind that I need to read my emails. The distraction of the flashing advertisement is not only very annoying but I also think it's flat out wrong for Comcast to have allowed advertisers to do this. It's the same kind of tactics that the telemarketers used and now they are legally limited to what they can do because of their overly aggressive practices.

I also feel that I have a right to privacy with my email and I think that these advertisements in my private space are intrusive and take away my right to privacy. Besides, I know that I can go to Hotmail or Gmail to set up another account but why should I be put through that aggravation.

So the big question here is: what is my space and who can interfere with it legally? My right to privacy is at issue here and if you also feel the same then please leave a note telling me so. We can stop this intrusion on our privacy like we did with the telemarketers and soon to be spammers. We can stop it by socking it to them in their pocketbooks, legally! Thanks for listening :)

ATLANTA, GEORGIA -- I've been with Comcast now for 7 years. They just switched their email program to SMARTZONE, it's horrible. The screen is now very small and it's so confusing that I can't even use it anymore. I am in the process to changing all my email to another program such as Gmail or Hotmail. Stay away from Comcast email!!! Right now it's not working again!!!