If you ask consumers about their interactions or experiences with Comcast, it’s not hard to find a deep vein of frustration, even outrage.

Take Hillary Murphy. In October — in the middle of the World Series and days before she was due to give birth — a Comcast technician came out to her Orinda house to move a telephone line to another room and to replace her set-top box with the latest version.

The technician had rescheduled the appointment twice. Then, hours after he finally arrived, Murphy’s Comcast services — phone, Internet, television — went down. They stayed down for some four days, meaning that her husband, a big Giants fan, couldn’t watch the team play in the World Series and stressing out the 34-year-old Murphy, who spent hours over the course of those days trying to get Comcast to fix the problem.

“It was panic-inducing,” said Murphy, who works in Yahoo’s corporate communications department. “I didn’t want to come home from the hospital to no Internet.”

Murphy’s sentiments are widespread among Comcast subscribers. Fremont resident Sangat Singh, 30, is frustrated that his Comcast Internet service goes down several times a week and he isn’t getting anything close to the 105 megabit per second speeds he was promised. Jim Busche, 48, of Campbell, remembers asking to have HBO removed from his service after a free promotional period ended only to be billed for it again three months later.

While I knew such feelings about Comcast were widespread, I didn’t share them, at least not until recently. I had Comcast service — first Internet, then a Triple Play package — for about four years and generally was pleased with it. I switched to AT&T’s U-Verse two years ago mainly because AT&T offered a better deal.

As I explained in a recent column, I recently decided to switch back to Comcast for Internet service, because after my AT&T deal expired I found I could get faster speeds at a lower price with Comcast. But I quickly started regretting that decision.

For one thing, it’s going to cost me more than I had been led to believe. Comcast refused to honor the second-year monthly rate a representative initially quoted me, even going so far as to deny — despite my notes and insistence — that the company ever discounts second-year rates on Internet access. What’s more, I found out in my second call that Comcast’s price to rent a modem was due to rise early next year, something the first company representative failed to disclose to me.

It was also a much bigger headache to install than it should have been. Comcast’s technicians postponed scheduled appointments twice because they were running late, leaving my wife and me to work around their schedule three different days. When a technician finally did come, it took him an extra 30 minutes to configure Comcast’s equipment so I could use my own router for Wi-Fi access, a change that shouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes.

Comcast representatives noted that the company frequently offers promotional rates for limited periods, and the initial price I was quoted may have been one of those. But they had no explanation for why the second representative denied that such discounts exist. And Byran Byrd, a company spokesman, acknowledged that twice rescheduling the service call was not an ideal way to treat customers.

“It sounds like we missed it on that one,” he said.

Comcast officials say the company is working hard to turn around its reputation, investing heavily in recent years to improve customer service. Instead of requiring users to stand by for hours on end waiting for a technician, Comcast now schedules appointments in two-hour windows. The company is testing technology that will allow subscribers to track the location of their service technician to get a better idea of when they’ll arrive. And Comcast has doubled the amount of training time for its customer service employees, said Tom Karinshak, the company’s senior vice president of customer service.

But Comcast obviously still has a long way to go. Of the 200 or so companies rated in this year’s American Customer Satisfaction Index, only two — United Airlines and Time Warner Cable — drew lower ratings for their services than Comcast. In Consumer Reports ratings earlier this year, Comcast ranked 15th out of 17 companies for pay-TV service and 10th out of 14 for bundled services.

Even J.D. Power, which Karinshak proudly notes has upped its rating for Comcast’s services in recent years, generally gives the company below average marks, despite that improvement.

From where I’m sitting, the key problem is competition — or a lack thereof. Customers like Murphy feel like they don’t have any real choice other than Comcast and are angered by what they have to endure because of that. And Comcast, because of that lack of perceived or real choice, doesn’t seem to feel much pressure to seriously address its problems.

I hope regulators keep that in mind as they evaluate moves that could further affect the competitive landscape, such as Comcast’s proposed merger with Time Warner and new net neutrality rules. The last thing the company needs is less pressure to change.

Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285 or twolverton@mercurynews.com. Follow him at www.mercurynews.com/troy-wolverton or Twitter.com/troywolv.