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Little Old Lady Hammers Comcast
WheezyJoe writes "The Washington Post reports that a little old lady took a hammer to Comcast.
Apparently fed up with the lousy service she received from a botched Comcast installation of "triple-play", and a completely humiliating experience at a customer service center, 75-year-old Mona "The Hammer" Shaw took her claw hammer back to the customer service center and bludgeoned the office equipment into tiny plastic pieces."
If Comcast thinks an "overwhelming majority" of their 25 million customers are very satisfied with their service, they'got their heads in the sand. I'll bet you most of them have gripes enough to be dissatisfied, just not enough to switch to DirecTV or Dish Network.
For example, we've got a 30+ mile per hour windstorm going. My cable's still on. Don't know how a dish would be faring. But that doesn't mean I'm happy with Comcast.
Here in Washington, we had a program guide and DVR powered by Microsoft, a little nod from Comcast to the folks in Redmond. It wasn't in use anywhere else in the country. I found it to be very buggy and annoying. If I told the DVR to tape only new episodes of "Stargate SG-1" only on Sci-Fi, only at 8, besides putting the 8 p.m. Friday showing of new episodes in the "upcoming recordings" list, it would put in that plus every one of the 6 p.m. reruns all week long. On top of that, it loved to become unresponsive while fast forwarding. It would just fast forward along, well past the point where you wanted it to stop, buffering every key press sent by the remote, until it finally decided it was done and executed all those keypresses in quick succession.
When Comcast announced we'd be getting the program guide and DVR control software the rest of the country has, I literally jumped for joy, singing "ding dong, the witch is dead", because I thought ANYTHING had to be better than the Microsoft DVR software. I was soooo wrong. Comcast's is worse. Try to set a series recording for "Top Chef" on Bravo and you get every episode... sort of like the Microsoft DVR, but with one major difference. Microsoft put the recordings in the to do list well in advance so you could remove them. With the new Comcast DVR software, it doesn't add these things until the last minute, so the next time you look at your recorded programs list, there's a bunch of crap you didn't expect and don't want. And better than the fast forward that won't stop, the new software gives me fast forward that advances 10-20 seconds and pauses. If you hit the fast forward again, it jumps up to double-speed fast forward and you overshoot whatever mark you were trying to hit.
I contacted customer service and they just said they were sorry I didn't like it, but tough.
So my options... get a dish. Wait until Verizon rolls out FIOS TV in my neighborhood (they laid the cable this summer, but are dragging their feet on FIOS installs) and see if they're better. Shell out $800 + $12.95 a month for a dual tuner HD TiVO with Cable Card. I'm currently pinning my hopes on the second option. But when Verizon gets off their asses Comcast loses my $1800 a year for cable TV and cable internet.
The only reason Comcast can delude themselves that their customers are happy is because they've been spending millions to lobby the FCC to restrict Verizon's roll-out of TV via fiber and prevent their customers from having a second terrestrial alternative. As TV over fiber rolls out, if the telecoms don't cock it up (and that's a BIG if), you could see people leaving Comcast in *droves*.
Hooray for Mona Shaw. She took civil disobedience a little too far, but God bless her. We're all having a vicarious thrill from her exploit.
Start a happiness pandemic
Have you considered the washington post as your next victim? I think we'd all appreciate someone sending them a clear message about flagrantly unnecessary pagination.
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Damn.
I can't figure out whether I want to go out and smash office equipment with a hammer, or I want this woman to come in and smash my office equipment with a hammer.
Which end of this fight is the right end? I CAN'T DECIDE!!
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
Please let this woman have a made-for-TV movie made of her life.
Internet + SD cable. No box. I think I get great speed because I'm in the city. Never had an issue.
75-year-old Mona "The Hammer" Shaw took her claw hammer back to the customer service center and bludgeoned the office equipment into tiny plastic pieces.
Funny story, Tom Delay got his nickname the same way.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
is there no problem you can't solve?
She's rather old, so I guess the office equipment was easier for her to catch than the employees.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
HAMMERTIME!
(now discussion can continue as normal.)
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
... when it was good :) When service matters, when companies gave a dam... when people gave a dam doing their jobs...
I say we arm our elderly and let them take back this country. They stood up in ww2, and they might be feeling up to it again.
Comcast's miserable but completely irresitable
Bringing TV to the home
Late nights all alone with the boob tube
Ohh-oh-oh-oh...
Mona shaw is getting really raw
and calls them on the phone
"can you fix my cable you
I-dee-ots?"
But she's getting nowhere
so she takes her hammer there...
Bang, bang, Mona's old claw hammer
Came down upon their stuff
Bang, bang, Mona's old claw hammer
Made their office look real rough
Why is Comcast still the only option for my friends who live in Arlington County? Why is Cox my only option in Fairfax County? I have endless complaints about Cox and my friends in Arlington have their's about Comcast. Wouldn't some competition between the two be likely to press these megacorps to resolve a few of the issues?
I always wondered why my local Comcast office was behind plexiglass (bullet-proof?). The Post Office down the street has no such physical barriers. I guess Comcast is used to dealing with this sort of response to their customer dis-service. The Post Office is slow and all, but at least you get what they promise. I just wish Comcast could get their programming guide data fixed. I lost a few channels that they block now with their filter. I can still most of one, and a hazy version of another. Comcast's solution? Upgrade my package to digital and pay $40 more a month for the two channels I want. No thanks. OTA looks better and better if there was just another high-speed internet player in the market.
Comcast high-speed internet (without CableTV): $61
Comcast mini-basic CableTV ($15) + high-speed internet: $60
What a racket, eh? It's cheaper to get their mini-basic CableTV and internet than to just get internet solo. Not by much, of course. I wish I could just get high-speed internet for $45 and then that'd be motivation enough to get a nice OTA setup going.
I'd contribute to paying her fine for her.
The best part about the article is the end, when the police fine her $345 (likely less than the cost of the equipment she smashed) and gave her the hammer back. Is there a lighter slap-on-the-wrist punishment? The police must be Comcast subscribers too.
Sorry Roger, you tiger now.
How many times must people be told? Don't mess with the elderly! I mean, these people actually go out and vote. You just watch, one day there will be a curfew and all those under 70 will be in-home, lights-out at 5:30 sharp.
Having lived through 3 different cable providers giving me the same service. Started with TCI, then moved to ATT, then moved to Comcast. I'd have to say I'm the least satisfied with Comcast out of all three. I hate thier customer service. Thier CRM setup is a complete joke. Personally, I think the woman is a hero, If she had a paypal posted I'd send a buck for making my day. Comcast should have this happen in every one of thier offices every single day until they get the point. Treat thier customers right.
Its copyrighted and I fear lawyers from the RIAA
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Its the little old lady from Pasadena...
Only a 75 year old white lady can get away with something like that. If it was a 15 to 25 year old black male, then he would already be in Gitmo...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I have some customers who use ComCast now that they own Houston's RoadRunner customers. (That is not really a typo...) I had occasion to call ComCast the other day asking for technical assistance for a customer replacing their Linksys Wireless cable gateway. Comcast told me they would have to fill out a form with the new MAC address and the account would be updated in 5-7 days. After an hour of being transferred around I finally found someone who updated the account MAC address in 5 minutes. Then I asked for the DNS address of the nameservers. They told me they didn't support DNS. I got transferred to four people who didn't have a CLUE about Windows XP needing a nameserver address (if you have a static IP, even if it's an internal NAT address) before I finally simply hung up, set the workstation to DHCP and derived a DNS address from ipconfig.
There is such an abundance of crappy customer service out there you would think that any company that provides outstanding (or even reasonable) customer service could steal the market.
My biggest advice for companies wanting to reduce the cost of customer service is, "Clean it up upstream." Don't put out crappy products and you will have fewer customer service problems. This means solid design and VERY good documentation, plus some solid troubleshooting tips. Then pay your customer support techs better money, give them a nice place to work, and reward them for SOLVING PROBLEMS instead of just closing tickets or answering calls. (This means the customer support function needs to be "designed" instead of just being an afterthought.) Provide constant and high-quality training and alternative ways for the customer to get support, and for God's sake, ANSWER THE PHONE!
I ask my customers, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate our service?" Then I ask, "What would it take to make it a 10?" I have managed to retain some really loyal customers this way, and I have dropped services I can't provide good service for. Noone can please everyone, so I have also dropped customers who are impossible to please. Cleaning it up upstream for me (an integrator) means clarifying the scope of work and the customer expectations before I start the job. I also evaluate the customer's reasons for wanting my services. Many times they are trying to solve a problem by "jumping to solutions", and I have saved customers a lot of money and grief by helping them troubleshoot the whole problem before committing to help. It takes more time, but it prevents hassles downstream.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I used to work in IT for a cable company, and whenever a customer went bizerk in the customer service office, a white clicking light would flash in most offices and pre-designated "bouncers", mostly employee volunteers, would walk briskly down the hall toward the service area. The theory was that large quantities of large people would make customers think twice about violence.
Table-ized A.I.
I serve on student government at small liberal arts college. My position was recently added, and basically, I handle the concerns of students relating to information technology. For example, I've been working with the administration first by advocating for a wireless campus, then helping decide which areas would receive service.
But the first thing I did on student government was try and tackle the "Comcast problem". The "problem" in question being massive downtime... over 120 calls due to downtime in one month. Keep in mind, this is a SMALL campus. The residence halls only had maybe a thousand students maximum. (And that is a liberal estimate).
Now when my internet went down, I actually followed the Comcast tech into floor's wiring closet, and saw a bank of cable modems hooked up to a switch. He located my room's modem, and power cycled it. Problem solved. And it was something that a user should be able to due themselves, but Comcast insisted that the students not have access to the modems, because we might steal them.
The thing is, the wait for a technician was two to three business days, if the technician even showed up.
Slowly I garnered support for a new provider, starting with Residence Life, and eventually the head of IT for the college arranged a meeting with all the Comcast bigwigs... the main guy was in charge of sales for the entire state I believe. Anyways, the Comcast posse promptly blew off everything the college had to say. When I brought up students having technicians pull a no show, I was told that my peers were exaggerating or lying. It took me stating that I had experienced a no show before they would even concede the point. Everything was like that... they wanted the college to PROVE they were incompetent. They ignored what me and the head of IT said (That modem's should be moved to resident rooms, and that anyone whose modem was missing at year's end would be charged for it) and insisted that the problem was due to illegal file sharing. When they were told that connections were already throttled to a point where that was not an issue, they insisted the college's wiring was faulty and brownouts were causing the problem. Comcast offered to install UPSs in all wiring closets. (And got a little miffed when I said they should have already had them).
Then they insisted it was a firmware issue with the modems and replaced every modem in the halls. Finally they admitted they needed to move modems into the rooms so users could power cycle on their own, and that was only after the college administration threatened to end the contract early and find a new ISP, and I threatened to write to Consumerist.
End result? What could have been a fifteen minute "whoops, our bad, thanks for the suggestion" type meeting, it became a five month process, where every user complaint was dismissed unless not only a specific user would testify to it in writing, but any bad experiences with rude techs, or techs who never showed up were not owned up to unless the user had the foresight to have a witness wait for the tech with them. Even when the college pointed to the acceptable downtime limit in the contract, Comcast refused to turn over logs and insisted that the college either sue or accumulate documentation.
And during the process, every word I said was met with derision or waved away since I was "only a student". It was made clear to me by Comcast that my opinion did not matter. And quit frankly, I think only the threat the college finding a new provider or possible lawsuits for breach of contract prompted them to act.
BAD MOD, No cookie! Referencing the parent and making a JOKE about the current state of affairs? Cut the guy some slack.
Maybe English isn't the mod's first language, but even if you don't get the joke, it's hardly off-topic.
Somebody woke up on the grumpy side of bed I guess.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
Agreed. Mount them on the side if you can. I've never had problems from wind. Now severe rain can cause rain fade problems, but wind shouldn't if you mounted the dish correctly. It takes a lot of force to create significant flexing of a 3 inch piece of steel pipe that's only three feet long....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Mona "the Hammer" Shaw vs Steve "the Chair" Ballmer.
Just imagine!
I like this quote from the Washington Post article: Her take on Comcast: "What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles."
Another quote: "Manassas police spokesman Sgt. Tim Neumann says there have been other police calls to that Comcast office..." I would love to know why.
Quote from the parent comment: "I called Comcast and started screaming. This got me somewhere as I finally got escalated to the CEO's office where they had a customer care executive assigned to me."
You never get to the CEO's office, I'm guessing. They just say that to try to make you think they believe your complaint is important. In 2005, the Comcast CEO made $14.3 million, just for that one year. I know, I know what you are thinking: "I'm sad. He had a bad year!" But, don't worry, in 2006 he made $27.8 million.
I think that it is safe to assume that someone who makes millions each year for doing a bad job has no concerns whatsoever about any troubles you have with his company. Any phony expression of concern is handled by people who barely make a living.
In case you want to express your horror that he only makes tens of millions instead of hundreds of millions each year, contact the Comcast CEO directly: Brian Roberts.
Why is being rich considered by rich people a license to be evil?
....will Comcast blend?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I've got Verizon DSL/Phone with no CATV, and Comcast STILL managed to screw me badly!
A couple weeks ago, in the middle of the afternoon, my internet connection started crapping all sorts of madness. Disconnecting constantly, poor throughput... I thought maybe the line was really noisy or something, so I pick up the phone... No dial tone.
It took a couple hours to piece together some of the information in my head. Hearing someone say something about cable while standing outside a new tenant's apartment across the hall, and later going to the top of the stairs and coming back down. (The box where all our phonelines come in is on the third floor, at the top of the stairs)
With this information, I go up and check the box... It's closed. I take the screw out and open it, the clasp that holds everything down in one of the blocks pops open on its own... Closer inspection reveals a broken retaining tab. (Later found on the floor.) One cordless phone handset, and a little wiggling of wirey bits later, I am able to determine that this unmarked and now quite fscked connection is my line. So I taped the clasp down with some gaffer's tape, taped a little ball of tape to the back so the door puts pressure on it, marked the thing correctly, and wandered back to my apartment grumbling about how it shouldn't be illegal to light stupid people on fire.
After talking to the new tenant, he confirmed that the Comcast technician said he had to make sure there was a phone line (wtf?!), and did in fact go play about in the box.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Hear Hear!
I remember the cable company calling me up shortly after I'd moved into a new place. I'd not automatically called them up to turn my co-ax on.
"We notice that you haven't activated your cable yet, sir. We can take care of that right away! What sort of package would you like to have, sir? "
"None. I don't want to watch TV, thanks."
Confused silence. (I really think that the sales guy had never contemplated life without cable before.) Then, "Why not?"
"Because TV sucks and people who watch it are losers. --In the sense that they are losing out on hundreds of hours of life every year, missing out on personal growth, and falling behind in their mental development. Have you noticed how so many people act like adolescents in their thinking patterns until well into adulthood and beyond. I don't want to be a loser."
"Oh."
"Do you watch TV?" (I was feeling perky and pesky.)
"Um, yes."
"You might want to reconsider your life. Have a nice day!" Click.
The amazing thing is that TV really wants to be in your life. I had to bat away offers and pressing arguments from friends, and in the end, the cable company just ended up providing free cable even though I didn't want or ask for it, (and certainly didn't pay for it.) Luckily my life had become so robust and interesting with all those extra hours filled with actual living that it was very easy not to turn the crack-tube back on again. These days I don't even own a television set.
Most poignant memory with regard to TV: Walking home one night and passing a three story apartment complex with virtually every window flickering that creepy blue TV light. It looked like a damned Borg cube, an analogy which, I thought, worked on several levels.
Beware the Zombie Nation.
-FL
First of all, let's qualify "evil". A lot of people (probably not you, but just to get it cleared anyway) have this "Black and White" idea that "evil" means being on a self-destructive quest to cause as much pain as possible, fuelled by pure hatred towards your fellow man. Unfortunately those don't really get ahead in the real world.
RL "evil", especially of the corporate kind, is really just Sociopathy, a.k.a., Antisocial Personality Disorder. And indeed there seem to be a lot of them in management, and especially CEO positions.
These are people who, simply put, don't give a flying fuck about their fellow man. You're an NPC to them. They don't hate you, they just don't care. They might harm you if it provides some momentary entertainment, and they think they can get away with it, but just as well they might pretend to be your friend if it helps them get an advantage that way.
They also tend to be people who can (A) read others perfectly, and (B) fake any feeling convincingly. They can look hurt when they need to look hurt, shed a tear when that gets the emotional message across, or sell you logging rights in Sahara with the most sincere look on their face. They could tell you to do something that will ruin your life with a perfectly straight face, and be perfectly able to look themselves in the mirror the next day. Why not? You're just an NPC to them. You don't matter.
Just as an example of lying with a straight face, a lot love to reinvent their past as something that milks the most sympathy. It helps manipulate people.
And my take is that it isn't money that turns people into sociopaths, but the other way around: in the race up the corporate ladder, these guys have a natural advantage. And in the race between corporations, the one without principles or scruples will have the lower costs and get ahead.
If being rich changed someone that way, then he probably was thinking that way long before. All that's changed now is that he feels powerful enough to drop (a part of) the mask and act like the asshole he always wanted to be.
In a sense, we even expect them to. The idea that a corporation should have no other goals or responsibilities than making more money, at all cost, is, well, just saying that said corporation should act like a sociopath. Unfortunately, a corporation is nothing more than a bunch of people, and its decisions _are_ taken by people. So if we expect corporations to act that way, and put our money on those which act that way, we're pretty much asking them to be led by sociopaths. Or if they aren't, we'll sell their shares and move our money to the ones who can act properly antisocial.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Maxwell's Silver Hammer." The Beatles, Abbey Road.
I might as well...
I was a business class customer of a local cable company that comcast bought out. Back then, I was pretty much forced to pay extra for that service because they blocked all inbound smtp and http (which I provided on my servers). But, the commercial service was actually nice, and when I had a problem, they were very responsive and I had a direct line to L2 techs who knew what they were doing.
Comcast then bought the company. I only found out when my bill arrived and it was now from comcast. They never told me I needed to change anything, and my service was still working and the bill amount was the same, so I didn't really care.
One weekend, I lost connectivity. My own end seemed fine, as I was seeing the typical stream of ARP requests flying by on comcast's network. It looked to me like my default gateway was down. I called and explained the symptoms.
The tech was confused and thought I should own a comcast router (I didn't...I run my own firewall with a regular linksys cablemodem). This would be a matter of contention for the next 2 months.
Anyway, the problem persisted intermittently. To their credit, I did finally get through to a support rep who actually discovered the real problem: My modem was being intermittently filtered for some reason. He did explain that comcast was moving to using their own routers for all business class customers (same service, they just give you a static IP address in a 'good' netblock). I continued to use my old ISP config, and it worked, so I didn't care.
Problem came back, but this time I knew the likely cause. This time the support lady was a total asshole demanding that I owned some form of comcast equipment, and that they would need to send a technician out (after explaining to her several times what was really going on) to remove that equipment and install their new solution. At this point, I was sick of paying extra for service I was not receiving so began the process of going back to residential service.
Long story short, I had to sign some form to give comcast permission to cut my commercial service and go back to residential. They mailed this form to me in such a way that my server dropped it (their server was on the spamhaus block/exploit list!). I finally got the form and filled it out.
2 days later, service is dead again. #$!@$#@!$. Again, they claim that I own some sort of comcast gear (b/c I was a commercial customer, and they have a certain way to do that...but I was transplanted from an ISP that they bought out...this is like the 20th time I've explained this to them). They will schedule a time to send a technician out. I agree, for now, and then call back to cancel the nonsense (hoping to speak to somebody with more clue)
When I complain about this, I finally get the rep to concede that they don't need to send anybody out, and that they will transfer me to residential class service. They *FINALLY* understand that I don't have any of their equipment. I continue to use my old static IP address, which still works (go figure), because they have not given me any connection information yet to change (this is for a change that they were definitely going to force on me...and I have yet to hear any official news of this, other than when I call to report problems with my service).
I did eventually get changed to residential service. Biggest hassle is that I have to smart relay through comcast's SMTP servers. Luckily they don't block inbound ports, so I can get away with paying less.
Here's the fun part. Last week there was a router from comcast sitting on my porch. Inside was a letter about them changing my commercial service (which I no longer have due to the frustrations with my connection and horrible customer service). This thing showed up about a month after I started having problems, and AFTER I changed to residential service! These people obviously have a serious lack of internal communication that rivals even that with their customers!
If they ha
Dude, let's just look at what Fiduciary really means, before going down that line of reasoning.
In a nutshell it just means that they'll do a honest job and not defraud the investors to enrich themselves. That's it. They have the respeonsibility to do a honest job... the same as everyone else.
Every single employee in the company is held to the same expectation. (If less sometimes less formalized.) The lowly janitor too isn't supposed to let himself be bribed to install a few keyloggers and sell the company's secrets to the competition. The database admin too isn't supposed to export the production database and sell it to the competition. The accountant isn't supposed to invent new taxes payable to his own account, either. Etc. They're all, simply put, expected to do a honest job.
Shouldn't they be paid millions per year too, then?
Do you genuinely think that paying them tens of millions a year is the only way to keep upper management honest?
1. That's such a bad opinion of them, that it stands out even on Slashdot. But more importantly,
2. Repeatedly it didn't really work. Enron and WorldCom sure weren't kept honest by high management salaries, for example. Or I can remember at least one case where one guy gutted a company just for the hell of it, and actually cooked the books to make it look like his cost-saving measures were doing anything positive at all.
3. Even more importantly, you can look at continental Europe or Japan, places with much more reasonable GINI indexes. Meaning that the difference between a director's wage and the janitor's wage is a helluva lot less than in the USA. If what you say was true, then both should see some massive corruption and have their economies ran into the ground as everyone who gets to the top starts defrauding the company to fill his own pockets. And somehow, while such cases occasionally do exist, they tend to be rather isolated, few and far in between.
Contrary to somewhat popular misconception, there isn't some income limit at which people suddenly become honest because they already have all the money they might ever need. The guy with 2 million a year, wants 3 million a year. The guy with 20 million a year, wants 30. If you paid someone 2 billion a year, the only effect would be that he'd want 3 billion, so he can buy an aircraft carrier as his personal yacht.
You can see that for as long as we have a recorded history. Whoever was an earl wanted to be a duke, whoever was a duke wanted to be a king, and whoever was a king wanted to be an emperor. It's just human nature, and it's how the human brain is wired.
The brain sees differentials, not absolute happiness values, so there simply is no point where you'll say "ok, I have enough, I can stop now." And if you had an inclination to supplement your income by dishonesty when you had only $100,000 a year, you'll have the same inclination at $10,000,000 a year.
Simply put, past maybe the poverty limit, more money doesn't make one more honest.
All that's maybe changed is the sum that looks like an acceptable bribe, but no more. But even then, if the only thing that keeps a director honest is that the company is paying him more money than he could steal from it on his own, then that company just replaced an illegal drain with an even bigger drain that it called legal. It's a Baldrick-class cunning plan akin to giving each bank robber a million a month, 'cause it's more than they could find in any bank in cash to rob.
So to cut this long rant short, I might even swallow the argument that such a big pay is needed because of their uber-l33t skills, and the rarity of such skills. Tell me that you need the 0.1% best managers and economists that ever walked the Earth, and I might even see how such a salary would be warranted to secure their services. (Though, then again, the top 0.1% physicists don't make tens of millions a year.) But that they need tens of millions in compensation for doing their job honestly? Heh. Gimme a break.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Interesting that your most poignant memory with regard to TV, in opposition to it, elicited scenes actually drawn from a television program. You will be assimilated... er it seems you already have been.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.