The Consumerist brings us a story today from consumer advocate Chris Elliott in which a Comcast agent, after having some trouble with a customer on the phone, decided to change the person’s first name to “A$$hole” in the billing system.
So when the customer, Lisa Brown, got her next paper bill from Comcast, the name on the account was listed as “A$$hole Brown.” The account was in her husband, Ricardo’s name, so it was he who suffered the indignity.
Although some custimers could be a real pain in the rear. I heard that one veterinary clinic (not my sister’s!) used a certain code system for the patient files. If the pet’s owner behaved like a jerk, did not like to pay, argued and complained constantly, they drew a small circle in a black marker on the file, which - yup, you guessed it - “codified” the owner as an a-hole.
^^^ and that’s the problem. Where they are, they are a monopoly and they use that power to bully everyone. We still have a Netflix subscription that we don’t use that much because I want to support them since Comcast tried to squash them into the dust.
I must say that was very unprofessional, but I did chuckle when I read the post.
Comcast needs to understand that by the time someone actually calls them and then gets connected that their frustration levels are already quite high. It is soar impossible for me to understand what my current plan is so this is not the time to try to sell me on a new package. To keep myself from snapping, I now do the online chat. It seems more efficient.
I don’t love Comcast but I had it when I was in high school and college and I have Charter now, and I can say undoubtedly, Comcast was better. Never really had to talk with customer service but some of the crap I have to deal with Charter that I didn’t with Comcast are:
Once a month or so Charter calls me trying to sell me cable service. I constantly tell them I don't want it and to stop calling me. They never do, they keep calling me.
Charter internet goes down. All the time. Usually just for 5 minutes or something but every few days there's some interruption. Comcast would go down sometimes but they'd compensate with some bill credit when it happened. Charter doesn't.
Charter promises some particular speed and just doesn't deliver. From 5pm until around midnight you only get like 1/2 to 1/3 the "promised" speed (and I tested with Speedtest.net hooked by ethernet to the modem directly, no other internet stuff going on in the background or anything).
I have Charter now…but just for cable TV. I can’t stand them either, and we are preparing to ditch them. I’m sick of them raising my monthly rate and cutting my service.
But I think all of the cable companies are the same…lousy.
This has happened before – and not just at Comcast. I happen to have worked for a TV provider where this happened some 15 years ago. An angry customer service agent did it. And got fired for it.
Charter is my only option for consumer internet here. There’s some company which offers business internet but it’s much more expensive (like $150 a month or higher) that I could get but it’s not really appropriate for home use.
Where I lived in high school and college we had at least Comcast and AT&T as options (maybe even more), but we never had a problem with Comcast so we just went with it. I could believe their customer service is bad but there was nothing else that I noticed that was really bad about their service.
I don’t know if that’s even an option for me. I live in an apartment, when we signed the lease they gave us 2 options for internet, one was Charter, and the other was that business one.
We have DSL, too, and it is fast enough to stream videos without a snag. No way I’m bundling this with Comcast since we are thinking about ditching them.
Agreed. We plan to ditch the cable company entirely. So…our internet is with the phone company via DSL. And it works just fine.
But back to Comcast…I don’t know anyone who likes them. Folks are stuck with them. Their sales people sell you products that you either can’t access or don’t need (in terms of needed internet). Their TV bundles are ridiculous.
But in our state…if you are in a Comcast area…that is your only cable company choice.
If we could get UVerse, we might do that. But it’s not available where we live.
Nearly everyone I’ve known who has had comcast has had serious technical and customer service issues with them. I’ve helped out some friends in the Boston area for interceding on their behalf after they were at their wits end.
Unfortunately, all of them are stuck with comcast or as we’d sometimes dub it…comcrap as their neighborhoods/areas are monopolized by them.
I’m fortunate that my provider while not perfect, has been pretty responsive, speeds at/above advertised levels, and provided pro-rated refunds whenever there was an outage. It’s one reason why I hope their plans to merge with comcast doesn’t go through.
Oldfort,
Very interesting as I wasn’t aware Comcast has actually penetrated the market in NYC proper. In NYC, it’s usually TWC, Optimum, or Verizon DSL/FIOS.
I DESPISE Comcast but it was, when we moved in, the only company that could get us decent internet speeds where we live. It’s been nothing but problems.
Ugh. We used to have comcast years ago and changed because of the problems discussed here. However, we’ve recently thought about changing back for two reasons. First is our bill right now for telephone, internet and tv is $210 a month which I think is outrageous. Secondly, we have no channels in Spanish whereas Comcast has quite a few. We have wowway now.
I have a very close family member who works in Comcast HQ. He admits that there are real issues with customer service (not his area at all) but this is true across the whole industry. He even had trouble with his own set-up a couple of years ago, and he has some pretty good pull there. That said, despite all the hate, it’s an extremely successful company and there is a lot of stuff that we as consumers don’t see that is going on in terms of product development and sound business strategy.
We are happy with our Comcast service and set up in Tennessee and have had no issues. We switched from ATT DSL and DirectTV to straight Comcast and it is a better product thus far (about 8 months into it).