HOUSTON—Three weeks after Hurricane Ike, some Houston-area residents are still without Comcast cable service.

Karen Ricks is among those unsatisfied customers. 

“I’m kind of at my wit’s end. What do you do?” she said.

Ricks has MS, works out of a wheelchair and takes college classes online.

She said she’s getting tired of the same answer every time she asks Comcast about her TV and Internet: There’s an outage in her area.

Out of 750,000 customers, Comcast said 96 percent have had their service restored.

They also said 300 additional technicians have joined the 1,500 who are already at work on the problem.

In a statement, Comcast promised to “continue to work day and night until service is restored to every customer.”

Still, for Ricks and thousands of others, it’s not just the aggravation of the problem itself, it’s the aggravation of trying to get a local answer to a very local problem.

Ricks’ calls – and many others – have been redirected to overflow call centers far away from Houston.

Comcast said Ike made that necessary.

Ricks just wants a local estimate she can count on.