We have Comcast cable television service (74 channels, and still not a damned thing worth watching!), and when I finally got fed-up with the dial-up internet connection (continental drift is brisk by comparison!), I shifted our internet connection to Comcast cable and went wireless. Very tidy. Much faster. Only one bill.
I don't make all that may long-distance phone calls, but Barbara talks to her cousins in Kansas and Nebraska with some frequency. Comcast offered a deal where we could combine television, internet, and telephone service through cable, and there would be no more long-distance phone charges. The whole package for an attractive price. We popped for it.
But then the fun began. After the technician came out and cobbled the system together, the fire alarm in our apartment building went bananas. It seems that the connection to both the fire alarm company (who periodically tests the system through the phone lines) and the Seattle Fire Department piggy-backs on our telephone line, and goes through Qwest, to which we were no longer connected. To save a lot of strife, expense, and the hassle of rewiring the system, we cancelled the telephone service with Comcast and went back to Qwest, as we had been before.
This was several months back. Since then, I get two or three phone calls and two or three letters a week from Comcast, begging us to come back to their "full communication service" package, and no matter how many times I explain to them that, due to our particular circumstances the system will not work for us, they persist in begging and whining.
In the meantime, I get two or three phone calls and two or three letters a week from Qwest, some begging us to come back to them (which we have done), and some thanking us for signing up with them (as if we were new customers).
Now Qwest is a communications company. One would think that the various departments within the company would communicate with each other. But apparently not!