"Activate a jack" ... what does this mean?

[dhtroy]

I called COMCAST the other day to schedule an appointment to have their Digital Cable service "installed" in my home. My house is already wired for cable (i.e., cable is run from pole to house and is run in several rooms inside). There are a couple of rooms I've not yet run cable to, but figured I would go ahead and get service now. I want 3 boxes, yet I currently only have one (1) room set-up and ready to go where one of those 3 boxes would "live".

I was told by COMCAST customer service that their technican would have to "activate" each jack in each room where I would want service. They said that if I did not have a jack "activated" that it "would not receive a signal with or without a box". I have never heard of such a thing before ...

Has anyone ever heard this before? Is this true or did I speak with a rep that was "jacking with me" (pun intended). They want to charge me $15.25 PER Jack to "activate" it ... and I have 7 jacks that I would want service on. That's $100 just in these activation fees (which is just dumb - the house is wired, they shouldn't have to do anything).

What I want is to have them come out with three boxes, set up the 1 (one) T.V. I have ready now, leave the other boxes with me, and I'll hook them up once I have the other rooms ready. Rooms without a box, should get just basic service.

Can't they do this? I don't even have their service yet, and already I'm frustrated with the process.

TIA for any advise/information.

 

[NYRANGERS]

I understand it as, yes the wire is run to the house but is not getting any signal from Comcast in the rooms yet. The Comcast guy probably has to hook something up to each jack to send a signal back to the office so the office can activate the cable signal going to that jack. This is sorta like when he had to set up my HD-DVR box. He had to hook it up and go into the diagnostics of the box and then call up to have them send a signal to get it up and running. I think this is so Comcast knows how many TVs you have in your house since each jack is more money. This is them trying to make sure you don't just split off the main cable and get the cale boxes off ebay or something like that.

 

[glenn z]

I think it's b.s. for the basic cable jacks. I just had cable installed and the guy ran a 2 way splitter to get it to the televisions downstairs. One basic, one digital. A few days later I decided I wanted basic in my upstairs gameroom so I replaced the 2 way with a 3 way splitter and the 'new' outlet worked fine for basic.