Service transfer nightmare.

We moved to a new home on August 1st. Our new home is eight tenths of a mile from our old house. We called Comcast to initiate transfer of service and were told we could take our existing equipment with us to the new house since it was so close geographically. A Comcast rep was scheduled to come out and turn on service at our new house 7/31. We were offered the same service at a lower price and took that offer. This required pre-paying the first month on the new account. We were told we would be billed $98 to close out our old account. Comcast no-showed for the appointment on the 31st. We called them on the first and they scheduled an emergency appointment to turn on the service. My husband hooked up our cable boxes and modem and everything worked fine until the morning of 8/4. Suddenly we had no cable or internet. We called customer service and were told the equipment was not transferred in the system. The equipment no longer worked in the new house because cable service at our old house was stopped. Customer service managed to turn on cable and unblock modem quickly. We were told our email addresses and storage accounts had not been transferred correctly either. The customer service person said she was putting through a request for the emails/storage to be transferred properly. She said it might take a few days or a week for that process to finish. (???)
A few days ago I received a $700 bill for unreturned equipment. Supposedly that will be credited on the next bill. We'll see. We called tonight to see why our email and storage was still not working. We were told tonight they didn't transfer the addresses because there was a balance on the account. (Yes, the one we will get a $98, or $700, bill for later). Well, those accounts have been dissolved...they are gone and we are told there is no way to retrieve them. We've been Comcast customers for 9 years. They are offering a 2 month credit now. My old email addresses will not be available to me for 90 days or more. So much for customer appreciation. Lessons learned... 1. Customer service is a misnomer when dealing with this company. I will never get back the 4 hours of my life spent on the phone dealing with this. 2. Backup online storage on some form of hard media. 3. Don't be so quick to get off of the phone the next time Bellsouth or DirectTV calls. I can't wait to see my next bill.