(He mentioned DSL providers, too, which are their own brand of fun.)
As silly and frustrating as that is, "I don't know" is a much better answer than, "Yes, absolutely" that turns out to be false.
"I don't know" would've saved OP tens of thousands of dollars that he will soon be paying to sell a house he just purchased.
Serviceability is a complicated question. There's engineering issues (how far from existing plant is the address?); there's legal issues (is servicing the address required under a franchise agreement?); there's logistical issues (is this a subdivision where the HOA won't let us dig up; is it a multi-dwelling unit where the property manager won't let us run wire)?
It's not like houses are built in a structured, systematic manner. In most of the country, property developers just put up subdivisions at random.
You're right though, "we don't know" is the right answer.
Sure, it could be a hard question to answer. It's also a question whose answer is part of their core business. If they can't obtain the answer somehow, why do they even exist?
I'd have been fine with "Because of X, Y, or Z, I have to pass this off to department Q and they'll get back to you in a day or two." But that's not what they said.
Edit: I should clarify that the local wiring was all in place. Verizon phone service was available (and I had had it at one point, although not at the time of the call). Nothing needed digging or drilling or any sort of wire running at all.
Your question needs to be handed off to someone so they can specifically research your situation and get back to you with the results.
It sounds like specifically in your case, their system allows the techs who take new cable signups to enter your data in the system, and then it will return weather your house is serviceable, not serviceable, and with what type of service options are available if you can in fact sign up. Doesn't sound like a very strenuous process from the customer side.
They told me the only way to find out was to actually sign up, then maybe it would work or maybe it wouldn't. There was no way to get an answer in advance.
I just expect companies to be able to tell me what kind of products they can offer. If it takes some work to get an answer, then I expect them to do that work. I don't think this is at all an unreasonable expectation.
You seem to have an issue with how I handled this situation but I have no idea why. What exactly do you think I should have done here?
You don't pay and I'm sure they don't expect you to pay (for what exactly? You've stated they don't even know if you are serviceable at this point).
Again, the two options I was presented with were: 1) stop and be left with a "I don't know" answer 2) start the process to install service. You seem to either think there must have been a 3) start the process to find out what kind of service I could get, or that 2 is a good enough equivalent to 3. Neither is true.
Sounds like this is being over complicated just to complain about how terrible ISP's are.
AT&T has a database of the line rate/quality that the last person who had service was able to achieve.
That doesn't mean it's accurate though. Quality can have gone down due to rotted shielding, new sources of interference, etc.