Three Wifi Pods

[Patrizia Leones]

Ireceived an email from Xfinity that my "Whole Home WiFi evaluation is complete" and that I have "Three xFi Pods are available to you at no extra cost". I followed the link in the email and I get to an Xfinity website that says Temporarily unavailable. I have been checking for over a month and I get the same message.

I'm going through this experience myself and have highlighted to the relevant teams the experience gaps I've encountered. I'm not the product owner or expert of xFi Complete / Pods. Your best bet on your individal status is to chat/call in.

I've been stuck in exactly the same state for weeks. Called xFinity support last week and they told me my case was being escalated and I would recieve a call back the next day (since "the Pods group already went home today"). No call back for days now, no ability to order, and no ability to even call xfinity again and get an agent (evidently when there's a network problem in your area, the voice-response system just tells you to sit tight, and won't let you get to an agent). So, I'm paying for extra service that they advertised comes with free Pods, but they refuse to hold up their end of the deal. I want a refund for this month's extra fees, and next month's too assuming they don't get them to me.

And, by the way, why do I have to "order" them? Why don't they just arrive without me doing anything special at all? I'm already paying for the service. There was nothing in the offer about "You also have to keep logging in and pushing the button, day after day, until it happens to work. Ha ha ha."

And, also by the way, why does it seem that people who want to pay $110 for the Pods have no problem entering their orders? I already paid, and xFinity is prioritizing other orders in front of mine? Something is rotten in Denmark.

It has now been over 40 days since my order, and I'm still unable to even ask for, never mind recieve, my "Free xFi Pods". I want a refund for the month. I want the call-back I was promissed. I want the Free xFi Pods I'm entitled to. I want Comcast held responsible for "bait and switch".

We need to take this out of xfinity forum to an open social media platform. All of us are having this problem. All of us get the same run around with customer service. The one person who got theirs shipped went to Twitter.

OK! Today, the ordering link worked! More than a month later than receiving the "Your Home WiFi Evaluation is complete" email, but it looks like the landing page has changed, and the Pods pictured appear different, and in fact are labelled as "New and Improved!"

Just to answer your post. the ones you recieved actually will cover the same amount as 3. You got the ones that support the higher speed up to 500mbps rather than the older ones that max out at 200mbps. They go with the new modem the XB7 thats for Extremepro and higher. meaning with the new Wifi protocal Wifi 6 and they have 2 ethernet ports. @drf57

Thanks for your reply. My confirmation email from Comcast explicitly says "Your Whole Home WiFi evaluation is complete. Our results show that your home WiFi coverage will benefit from xFi Pods. Three xFi Pods are available to you at no extra cost" (bolding Comcast's). So, they said I should expect three. There's absolutely nothing on the packaging, or in the box, or in any follow-on email to indicate that they were just kidding and that things had changed during the month between the confirmation email and when they shipped the Pod. But, a look through the current xFi Pod marketing pages indicates that you are correct about the new-generation xFi Pods. Thanks, that saves me a bunch of undoubtedly-frustrating calling.

I have been on a call with a rep for an hour. After I signed up for your xFi Complete service (which clearly includes pods), he's telling me I can't get pods. Supposedly my house has excellent coverage without need for pods. I don't know how Comcast can make that determination remotely without seeing my house and equipment setup first. I currently have a 3 unit google mesh network that can't seem to manage good connections in a 3-level, 3500 sq ft house. I know I will need 3 pods to get good 500 Mbps coverage if they work as advertised. As a loyal 15 year customer, I don't understand why I can't get what was advertised. I'm willing to pay for xFi complete, but I want the pods...... Please!

Hello @ComcastMorgan. We have not received our free xfi pods. I was told now that this is because we aren't renting the modem. Which is completely not true. We have two modems, andour internet is handled by your modem, which comcast recently installed and charges us monthly for. But for some reason, even though both modems show up inour account, with the internet through the xfi rented one, when I go to order the recommended xfi pods, it says we dont qualify because we dont have the xfinity modem and we are using our own! There appears to be no way to edit this in our account. So we have a download speed of 3 GB in half of our house without the pods and were told they would be provided. Please help!!

I just got ignite internet and decided to get ignite pods. My first batch of three came and I was able to get the first pod online which was maybe 6 feet away from the modem and it showed up in my app and I got a device to use the wifi from that pod. I went to another outlet upstairs which is the problem area for Rogers wifi signal in all rooms. I placed the next ignite pod and did not work it would not locate the first pod. I tried the other pod same issue. I tried different outlets upstairs same issue. I think made my way downstairs and found another outlet maybe another 5 feet from the first pod, it wouldn't work.

I spoke to tech support they decided it was faulty pods and sent me three new ones today. Same issue again! One pod comes online that is in the outlet closest to the modem and all the other outlets in my house whether downstairs or upstairs the message comes up can not find first pod. I am puzzled.

I ordered a wifi pod the other day with the hope of having better coverage in some areas of our house where the signal can be weak and somewhat inconsistent, even if usable all told. The pod was delivered earlier and I was expecting a quick, plug and play experience consistent with installing additional nodes for a mesh router. Was I ever wrong.

I currently have my Giga Hub set-up to broadcast separate SSIDs for the three wifi frequencies, as recommended by a Bell tech that had come to my home to replace a defective modem, as having a single SSID for all the bands was resulting in some devices frequently switching between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies resulting in connection instability and latencies. In that configuration I have the encryption type set to WPA2 for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and for the 6 GHz band, the only option is WPA3, which is neither here nor there as I don't have any wifi 6e compatible devices on my network. In our home we have about 50 devices connected to wifi.

Now, when installing the pod, the only option is to install it via the app which then resets the modem to have a single SSID across all bands along with the encryption type set to WPA3. As a result, a significant number of the devices on my network were unable to connect as they only support WPA / WPA2 and not WPA3, which is a problem. A conversation with Tech Support agent confirmed that with the pod, no separate SSID naming by band or configuration of encryption type to WPA2 is possible.

My only solution then was to remove the pod, go back to being able to connect all of my devices, and live with some coverage challenges, which I may look to address by connecting up a second wifi router to my modem with a different SSID.

I find that really interesting. I have a Giga Hub modem and the 4 smaller (older?) pods. I have had them for two years and been very, very satisfied. I have 22 devices connected, wired and wireless. All wireless connections are WPA/WPA2. WPA3 is only for 6 Ghz. I have no such devices, either. I have found no reason to separate the WiFi nets. The device negotiates it's fastest speed using the most appropriate protocol. Unless there is compelling reason I have yet to find for using separate SSID's, one SSID does work well. Sorry it didn't work out for you.

Thanks for your reply and very interesting as well. I had tried the pod with one SSID as well but the problem was that there was no way to set the encryption type on the Giga Hub with that set-up. Had it defaulted to WPA2, as seems to have been your case, then it wouldn't have been an issue.

That's even more curious. I wonder if the firmware version on the Giga Hub might matter? I am using 1.15.1. The most recent is 1.15.2, I believe. Did the Bell techs offer updated Giga Hub firmware? And were the Plume pods the small ones in a set of four?

It was effectively "it is what it is and if that's the issue that you're having, then the pod won't work for you so return it." I definitely got the sense that the techs that I interacted with were a bit out of their depth and weren't quite sure how to proceed to attempt to resolve the issue.

Thanks for chiming in @BellPatricia and although I made no mention of it in my posts, I did turn on Whole Home Wi-Fi in the GUI when setting up my Wi-Fi pod. The modem would not otherwise connect up to the pod without Whole Home Wi-Fi turned on.

We have been using Sonos for 8 years now. We started with Play 1 and Play 5. At the moment we have about 10 Sonos devices, Move and play one mostly. Last year has been awful, disconnects, app wont see all devices etc. For the last two months it seems updates fails and need to be tried three to four times before they applies.

We have a solid Wifi with two Unifi APs. Three sonos play one are connected using ethernet, rest is wifi.

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