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Comcast Lying About Vonage
jehnx writes, "Apparently, Comcast is trying some new tricks to get people to sign up for its version of VoIP, 'Comcast Digital Voice,' according to Wang (of WangScript fame). From the blog post: 'Today my wife received a phone call from a Comcast representative who had called to promote their new "Comcast Digital Voice" service... Ordinarily, we don't mind Comcast calling us from time to time with new offers... [but this time] they proceeded to tell LIE after LIE in an attempt to convince us that Vonage was not as good as Comcast Digital Voice. Imagine how many people would be scared into using Comcast Digital Voice because Comcast makes them believe that Vonage is insecure and only works when your PC is turned on.' Is Comcast going a bit far in their techniques to lure in new customers?"
And when I compare our VOIP service with Vongage, I use the following facts.
"Vonage requires an internet connection, we do not"
"Vonage routes their calls over the public internet, which may result in poorer quality or dropped calls, we route calls over our private cable network"
"Vonage has a national 911 call center, we route 911 locally in your county"
"We are a local call center, where with Vonage, you may get routed to a call center in East India"
While I'm not exactly a fan of Comcast, its all too easy to get a lone CSR (in any company) who really doesnt know what he/she is talking about and will say just about anything to win back customers.
Heh, the confermation/security word I had to type to post this was "exploit".
In the US, it is _illegal_ to lie about a competitor's product.
IANAL, but _these guys are_
http://www.poznaklaw.com/articles/falsead.htm (horrid seersucker background, but they're spot on)
If this is true, then Comcast is _hosed_ and I would cheer on Vonage's lawsuit.
--
BMO
What's funny is that I've driven by Comcast facilities... They use multiple satellite dishes. Looks like they get their signals from Satellite and then send the signals over their own ground-based network...... In that context, they should be pretty careful about criticizing dish-based reception.....
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that a 12", $100 dish doesn't perform the same in the rain as the 100', multi-million dollar dishes Comcast uses.
This isn't news to me. On no fewer than three separate occasions in about four years with Comcast, I have had service outages long enough to cause me to brave their call center. Here's the record on this:
1) Called and was told they were doing work in my area; that service would be restored in "a couple hours." The next day it was still out. While heading out to the car I noticed that the line to the house had become disconnected. I got a ladder, plugged it back in, and it worked fine.
2) Called and was told, again, they were doing work in my area; that service would be restored in "a couple hours." Called again when service was still out the next day. Was told they would send a person out -- this entailed a ten day wait. When the service guy arrived, he told me that the line splitter on the street was not only corroded but had been installed backward. Not sure how that's possible, but there it is.
3) Called and was told, yet again, they were doing work in my area; that service would be restored in "a couple hours." Ten minutes later I reset all my equipment and everything worked fine.
Fact is, "work in my area" is apparently a lie common to call center vermin. And Comcast doesn't care that they do this. Lovely.
// This is not a sig.