Taking a Whack Against Comcast

[onehandle]

Source: Washington Post

This was after the company had scheduled installation of its much ballyhooed "Triple Play" service, which combines phone, cable and Internet services, in Shaw's brick home in nearby Bristow. But Shaw said they failed to show up on the appointed day, Monday, Aug. 13. They came two days later but left with the job half done. On Friday morning, they cut off all service.

snip...

Hammer time: Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone!

"They cuffed me right then," she says.

Her take on Comcast: "What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007101702359_2.html

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Comcast is the worst.

[harpboy_ak]

1. This should happen more often

If we stop being sheeple, maybe the Congressional Leadersheep would learn something.

More power to folks like this lady, mad as hell & not going to take it any more.

Thank goodness my phone/internet/cable provider is better than this, but I've always been afraid that they'll sell out to one of the majors.

[mikeytherat]

2. Kinda funny, until you're the customer service rep. Then, not at all funny.

Been there, done that. Worked at MediaOne (which became AT&T and then Comcast) on MediaOne's original broadband project. Although I was IT and not Customer Service, I was present for more than a few instances of customers "going off" in the lobby and/or attacking Customer Service reps. The guy swinging a golf club, the woman who pulled a handgun; ah yes, great memories. Once, I had to help Security tackle and hold one suspect who tried to charge his way into Customer Service. If I had been there when Mrs. "Whack-O" came at me with a hammer, her elevated blood pressure would have been the least of her worries.

mikey_the_rat

[tkmorris]

3. Maybe you should have quit

Why the hell would you want to be a customer service rep for a company that doesn't believe in customer service? It's a lot like agreeing to be an accountant for a Mafia kingpin.

[mikeytherat]

5. Deep breath, and read more closely - I was I.T., NOT Customer Service

And I quit many, many years ago (before MediaOne was bought by AT&T). Finally, what I saw in my three years at MediaOne, was that the Customer Service reps were great - but the COMPANY MANAGEMENT sucked. Antiquated equipment, poorly-trained field techs, and overselling a product (broadband) that they could not deliver efficiently (at least back in the late '90s).

mikey_the_rat

[Tab]

4. I'm not a fan of bit media, but Comcast has been okay for me

I've had Adelphia (sucked!) get my cell phone service from Verizon (sucks!) but Comcast's triple service - cable TV, high-speed Internet, and phone service - and I can call anywhere in the country for free, has been just fine and the few times I've had to call them, they've been responsive, or at least as much as the other companies.

So I can't bash them. They haven't been as bad as Verizon (boy, do I have some comments for them) or Adelphia (we won't even go there). They're not perfect, but they're okay.

[Tesha]

6. You obviously haven't tried to talk to a customer service rep lately.

It now costs $4.00 to talk to a CSR about your bill.

Tesha

[EV_Ares]

14. Yeah, same here, have had good service from them overall. We have

their high speed, digital & phone service. One time they failed to show up & had arranged to be home but they were real apologetic about it & gave us $20 credit on our bill so I accepted that & they got there the next day early. So far so good.

[radfringe]

7. we have comcast - our recent experience

previously it was Adelphia.. :eyes:

this past saturday we upgraded to the 'digital intro' package, which includes Movies on Demand ($2 more per month)

We were told by local office they would 'switch it on' from their location.

We installed the box, plugged in all the wires/cables, followed the directions in the booklet. Waited the alotted time for signal to be sent and initialize the box per direction booklet

Nada

By this time our local office was closed for the day - so we called the help desk (CAll#1) Signal was sent - in a few minutes we had cable. We got sidetracked for about an hour - my partner then decides to try the Movies On Demand - nada

Call#2 - different help desk person - oh it may take anywhere from 3-24 hours for the signal to come through... supposedly she resends the signal, periodically after the "3hr" we check on-demand - nada, but she did say up to 24 hours

Sunday Morning - flip on the TV - nothing - no cable channels, no on-demand - just static. Grrrrrrrrrrr....

Call#3 - yet another help-desker - resends signal -- YEA!!!! cable and on-demand movies.. Great we say (silly us) - no problem on Sunday watching cable channels or on-demand movies...

Monday Morning - we have cable channels, but on-demand is not working.

Call#4 - different help-desker - this one gets snippy. my partner has had it - we unplug the box and she storms over the the cable office, returns with everything and says they are sending cable guy over to check the lines, box everything. Cable guy shows up (surprisingly) an hour later - puts in new cables, splitters, checks box/connections and everything works!!! YEA!!!!!

Tuesday - on-demand gone again... another phone call, signal is resent - it works

Wednesday - so far so good

-------------

regarding the cable/phone/internet package - my parents have it and frequently their phone cuts out in the middle of a conversation or when I call I get a message saying the number is not in service or similar

[onyourleft]

9. This is just too funny because...

...I could have written the entire comment. This was almost exactly our experience. However, when the switch was made from Adelphia to Comcast, I lost my E-mail for six (yes 6) weeks. It took them that long to figure out the problem. Hang in there Rad. :)

[Tab]

27. I will say that Movies on Demand sucks

I get really spotty service, and I know it's the streaming server. I called Customer Service about this, when we paid $3.99 for some kind of movie on demand, which had wicked crappy playback, and Customer Service was trying to convince me it was my connection - like in the basement - was faulty. Lady, I do this shit for a living. I'm pretty aware that when everything about a connection works except when you do a movie on demand, it's not the physical connection, it's the frickin' server. We had to argue for the second refund for the movie we never watched, and have never ordered for movies on demand since.

I don't care, because they have a crap selection and we use NetFlix anyway, but I do have to say thats their downside.

- t

[City Lights]

8. We've been waiting almost two months to have a new cable buried.

The update we received yesterday after checking on the status of the open work order is that our order has "no status." :wtf: does that mean? It means that there is an open work order sitting in their system that everyone is ignoring. :mad:

It's most definitely not comcastic. :puke:

[LiberalEsto]

10. We switched to DirectTV

After suffering 16 years with Comcrap and its lousy service combined with huge and frequent price increases, we switched to DirectTV this past winter. Thank heaven we had an alternative. The essential problem with Comcrap is that it has hardly any competition.

[radfringe]

16. we will be looking into direct tv this weekend n/t

[melm00se]

17. make sure that

you check into their website...they sometimes have better deals there than in the local big blue box retailer.

(direct tv subscriber for almost 8 years)

[radfringe]

22. we're looking for information

at this point, not ready to buy

but yes, I have looked at their website and they do have better deals there

[BrklynLib at work]

11. What a woman!! Love her T-shirt!!!

Anyone remember this???
"I'm older than you, and I have better insurance!!!"
:rofl: :applause:

[JTFrog]

12. From one of my favorite movies.

That was one of the best scenes ever, lol. Tawanda!

[BrklynLib at work]

15. Also one of my favorite movies....it was so good in so many different ways.

[DKRC]

18. Secret's in the sauce...

:evilgrin:

[melm00se]

13. the problem with

cable companies is that in many areas of the country, due to very old laws (based off cable size, utility pole space and visual aesthetics), cable companies were granted de facto monopolies via the franchise model. While this model has/had some benefits, one of the things that suffers is customer service (except in the year or so running up to the franchise renewal, then there are a flurry of activity - system upgrades and niceties) as the areas can't break the franchise easily or without a drawn out and expensive court fight.

Of course the franchise term could be shortened up but if it is too short, cable companies will pass on bidding as their profits will not be able to support the expenditures necessary for upgrades and the like.

Before you go thinking that the localities can always "nationalize" (for want of a better term) them and provide the service themselves, there are similar examples of that happening with other utilities (Wake Forest, NC is one with their electrical service, they have been in the business since the early 1900's) but the service ends up costing significantly more than other neighboring services (in Wake Forest the electrical rates are approximately 50% higher than the surrounding providers). This is because a locality loses the economies of scale that companies like Comcast, Time Warner and the like have. Unfortunately, they can negotiate with certain "premium" providers with the power of millions of homes/subscribers whereas a city, even metropolises, does not have the same clout.

This increased cost can have a couple of impacts:

1) as an additive reason, it can make an area less attractive to outside investment.
2) it would drive folks to other service providers (satellite is one and the burgeoning telephone TV providers is another) exacerbating the low subscriber driven costs.

Its a tough nut to crack...

as to the hammer wielding woman, I don't blame them cuffing her and having her taken away...she was damaging private property with a potentially deadly weapon. If she walked in their with a gun and shot up the place, instead of complaints about cable companies' customer service there would be a gun control debate going on.

[Oak2004]

20. We in Burlington VT have Burlington Electric and Burlington Telecom

(BT is just getting started, and unfortunately isn't yet available to me. Don't even get me started on Comcast).

BT's prices are substantially cheaper than Comcast for the same services, and we have the cheapest electrical bills in the area. It can work.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. I spent seven years in an Oregon town that a municipal power company

Portland residents were always astounded at how low my electric bills were, and in that whole seven years, we had TWO blackouts.

I moved up to Portland, where PGE/Enron ruled, and in one year, we had FIVE blackouts, one of them lasting 23 hours.

[LeftyMom]

25. You're wrong about municipal utilities

Our electricity here is municipal (Sacramento Municipal Utilities District) and it's much cheaper, greener and more reliable than the neighboring for-profit utility. Also, the customer service is a million times better.

[melm00se]

28. my source on more expensive municipal power

http://www.newsobserver.com/974/story/734379.html

[goclark]

19. I've had comcast, time warner is worse

Hard to believe right?

[sendero]

23. I understand.

... that package deals are attractive, but when it comes to tv I don't know why anyone would pick cable over satellite. Better picture, less downtime - hell I've had Directv for 8 years and I've not had to call them ONCE.

Screw cable, horse and buggy technology with it's attendant weaknesses.

[ovidsen]

24. Comcast doesn't care. They don't have to care

When I moved to Atlanta months ago, I could have chosen DSL. But in my last domicile in South Carolina, I had been disappointed at the relative sluggishness of my DSL service, compared to the (seemingly) faster access speed enjoyed by friends who opted for a cable internet connection.

So when I moved to Atlanta, and Comcast offered a 3 for one deal (phone with unlimited domestic long distance, basic cable (75 analog channels) and a cable modem, I jumped.

What a disappointment. The cable modem is often slower than my South Carolina DSL. A nifty feature on either my new Acer laptop or Bill Gate's Vista operating system revealed why. It seems Comcast employs a "rolling blackout" feature on its cable internet system. I know this because a little box on the lower right hand corner of my screen tells me when I'm connected to the web, and when I'm not. This isn't so bad if I've already loaded a page and can peruse it at my leisure, but if I try to open up a new page or link, as often as not that little sign saying "not connected to Internet" pops up. That comes about the same time as Internet Explorer or Firefox tells me my connection attempt has "timed out",and I have to go back to square one.

Clearly, Comcast has, at least in my Atlanta neighborhood, underestimated the bandwidth needed to service its customers. Okay, it's not as bad as the rolling electricity blackouts endured by folks in southern California and Baghdad, but it's clearly "bait and switch". When I signed on to cable broadband, I expected a solid, unbreakable high speed link to the Web. And since Comcast has a monopoly on cable in the Atlanta, I don't have any real alternatives, except for sometimes cranky and constantly slower DSL or (God forbid) dialup. By the way, does anyone here remember 300 baud modems? 2400 baud modems? Gosh, we thought they were SO fast. But I digress.

Silly me. Comcast sold me a pig in a poke and I'm stuck with it.

[ShortnFiery]

26. Yes, I remember late 1980s - having a Hayes 1200 baud modem and connecting to

the university computer. I thought this was so sh*t hot ... running BMDP and concurrently printing off the results on my printer in my apartment. That and purchasing a 60 MB hard drive and having many intelligent people glance at me as if I were crazy and comment, "You're never going to need all that space." :rofl: Times have changed perspectives dramatically.

In a bizarre way, the Comcast commercial "Slow-venskys" are pushing me to return to DSL and accept it's lesser than ideal speed. There's far too many outages with Comcast. Further, because of consolidation, there's also NO OTHER cable company that can compete with Comcast. Yep, we're screwed. :evilgrin: