Comcast Confessions

An anonymous reader writes: We heard a couple weeks ago about an incredibly pushy Comcast customer service representative who turned a quick cancellation into an ordeal you wouldn't wish on your enemies. To try and find out what could cause such behavior, The Verge reached out to Comcast employees, hoping a few of them would explain training practices and management directives. They got more than they bargained for — over 100 employees responded, and they painted a picture of a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit. From the article: 'These employees told us the same stories over and over again: customer service has been replaced by an obsession with sales, technicians are understaffed and tech support is poorly trained, and the massive company is hobbled by internal fragmentation. ... Brian Van Horn, a billing specialist who worked at Comcast for 10 years, says the sales pitch gradually got more aggressive. "They were starting off with, 'just ask," he says. "Then instead of 'just ask,' it was 'just ask again,' then 'engage the customer in a conversation,' then 'overcome their objections.'" He was even pressured to pitch new services to a customer who was 55 days late on her bill, he says.'

Comments

I wonder when...

[ggraham412]

I wonder when customer service will start being more proactive by calling customers.

"Hello, this is Comcast. How may we upsell you?"

Re:I wonder when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you misspelled upset.

Re:I wonder when...

[Strahan]

Hell, they do that already, at least for their business accounts. I wanted static IPs so I bought a business account for my home. Every month or two I get a letter in the mail from Comcast offering "a free account review!" How kind of them to offer to upsell me for no extra charge, lol.

Re:I wonder when...

[xmousex]

Yeah I was constantly getting called up by charter for upsell. I had to log into my account and dig around for that checkbox that disables me from promotions.

Re:I wonder when...

[i kan reed]

They'd discover the same thing phone companies did in the 1990s. Direct calling your customers for an upsell is a good way to create a cancellation.

Re:I wonder when...

[djdanlib]

No no, upsell and upset are synonymous in this case. It's totally okay.

Re:I wonder when...

[master_kaos]

omg this. I remember back in late 90s being called up at minimum, once a week by each of them major telcoms asking if I want to switch (or with the one I was on, trying to upsell). I used to ask them, so if you are harassing me before I am even your customer, what are you going to do when I am actually your customer? I knew multiple people who disconnected all of their phone lines and switched to VOIP/Cell phones just to get away from the constant harassment. Seemed to go on for a year or so then abrubtly stopped, must have been some law that passed or they got fined out of their rear end.

Re:I wonder when...

[rwise2112]

Ah, Comcast, where the 'Q' stands for quality! We're not happy 'til you're not happy.

Re:I wonder when...

[laie_techie]

Hell, they do that already, at least for their business accounts. I wanted static IPs so I bought a business account for my home. Every month or two I get a letter in the mail from Comcast offering "a free account review!" How kind of them to offer to upsell me for no extra charge, lol.

I have residential cable and business internet (yeah, for static IP). Every month or two, Comcast residential calls me up to get me to sign up for internet, and Comcast Business calls me to sell me cable TV. Both want me to sign up for phone service, too.

Re:I wonder when...

[Average]

They'd discover the same thing phone companies did in the 1990s. Direct calling your customers for an upsell is a good way to create a cancellation.

They'll discover no such thing. In the telephone wars era, you could nearly frictionlessly change your long distance provider (if not your last-mile provider, at first). Most people can't change their cable provider, because that's the only possible provider of internet (above 2Mbps anyway), so they can call you all day and you can fume all day, but one thing you won't do is cancel.

Re:I wonder when...

[WhatHump]

I can't speak for Comcast, being Canadian, but Rogers (my ISP and cable provider) has been calling me a couple of times each year. They thank me for being a customer and then start in with a pitch on how much I can "save" if I increase my internet service level or add more services to my bundle. Bell Canada (my phone provider) does the same. My wife hates it so much she screens all calls through the answering machine.

Re:I wonder when...

[hibiki_r]

Yes, it makes some of us cancel, but some companies still do it. Charter will call you mercilessly if you do not have a triple play package. After they managed to call me 5 times in the same week, I just got fed up and switched to another evil company, but at least one that doesn't spend all their days nagging me.

Re:I wonder when...

[skaaman]

I wonder when customer service will start being more proactive by calling customers.

"Hello, this is Comcast. How may we upsell you?"

Please wait while we transfer you to our argument department. You will be billed $5.00 for our time...

I must be the outlier

[smooth wombat]

I cancelled my Comcast cable service last week. Walked into the office, handed them my equipment and told them I wanted to cancel my account. The person behind the counter checked in the equipment, had me sign a form indicating I had returned all the equipment and pay the prorated amount I owed.

The only thing he asked me is if I was going with someone else to which I said no, I could no longer justify the cost.

I was in and out in just over a minute. I waited in line significantly longer than that.

Sidenote, I received a notice in the mail from Comcast that for a small additional monthly fee I could upgrade my service to one of the following. Obviously my cancellation hasn't worked its way through the system yet.

Re:I must be the outlier

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Not really an outlier, its a difference between cancellation on the phone and cancellation in person. The phone drones (or "the lost and the damned") are extraordinarily closely scrutinized and their paychecks and/or not getting shitcanned are directly dependent on 'retention'. The in-store people, apparently, are paid to be in store but not directly induced to hassle you.

I'm not quite sure why Comcast hasn't emiserated the in-store situation yet; but apparently they haven't, and it's not as though the front-line peons are fucking with you for their pleasure, so if they aren't forced to they generally won't.

Re:I must be the outlier

[timholman]

I cancelled my Comcast cable service last week. Walked into the office, handed them my equipment and told them I wanted to cancel my account. The person behind the counter checked in the equipment, had me sign a form indicating I had returned all the equipment and pay the prorated amount I owed.

I was in and out in just over a minute. I waited in line significantly longer than that.

You're not an outlier, but you did do exactly the right thing. You cancelled in person, instead of over the phone.

The people you call on the phone are highly incentivized to keep you as a customer. The ones working behind the counter are not.

If you want to quit ANY cable service, then disconnect all the equipment, load it in your car, take it down to their local office, and tell them that you wish to drop their service immediately. No one will argue with you; at that point you have bypassed their normal customer retention script.

Re:I must be the outlier

[cyfer2000]

I am planning to cancel my comcast, because they claim that they own the modem I bought from bestbuy and trying to charge me a monthly rental, twice. The first time, the costumer service told me if "the system" showed they owned my modem, the modem was their property. Then I called again, a different guy told me that I could fax in my receipt and other stuff to show them that I purchased the modem. Then I faxed my receipt and etc. And after 3 years, the monthly rental showed up again. The customer service told me they could not fix this issue over the phone and asked me to go to a local office...

Re:I must be the outlier

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I actually had to go into a comcast location a year or two ago to get a cable card when I bought my Tivo. The lady behind the desk was very pleasant and, even though she didn't know much about cable cards, she still tried her best to get me the right number to call to get it activated.

Calling in to get the fucking thing activated was a goddamn nightmare, though. I had to call 3 different numbers, talk to about 5 different people, none of whom knew who the fuck I was supposed to talk to about getting it activated until I finally got one lady who knew what to do.

They really don't like it when you own your own equipment.

Re:I must be the outlier

[Threni]

Aren't they obliged to cancel your account if you ask, though? I mean, say you say "i want to close my account", they asked if you're sure, aware of the great deals etc. Say no, again, politely, then firmly "close my account now". What would happen if they continued trying to get you to stay and you stay silent? You aren't obliged to go through their script; you've told them your side of things. Can't you just stop paying them and if there's any come back tell them the date/time of the call, who you spoke to and ask what the problem is? Perhaps there needs to be a mandatory website/service where you just click/say "i'm out of here" and there's no come back on their part?

Re:I must be the outlier

[wisnoskij]

Still, He stated that it was a a monetary decision, and the clerk did not even offer some 50% deal for 3 months.

Re:I must be the outlier

[Lumpy]

Comcast is closing those customer centers in most towns to avoid this.

Re:I must be the outlier

[starless]

I cancelled comcast basic cable service over the phone last week. I didn't get much pressure to continue with them, just a brief question or two.
I just received a UPS box and label to return my equipment. (I had just received unrequested equipment because even basic
cable is now going to be encrypted in my area.)
So, so far so good.

But, the second person I talked with on the phone who was handling the equipment return (at a contractor
company, not comcast itself) thinks I also have a modem. But I don't as I cancelled internet service
with comcast many years ago. I'm hoping that's not going to be a problem...

Re:I must be the outlier

[Lumpy]

Watch out, they may have accidentally reactivated your account and you are being charged for something. your only warning will be a credit collections company contacting you.

It was a very common thing back in 2006 that Comcast did to customers that successfully cancelled their service.

Re:I must be the outlier

[ATMAvatar]

I'm not quite sure why Comcast hasn't emiserated the in-store situation yet; but apparently they haven't, and it's not as though the front-line peons are fucking with you for their pleasure, so if they aren't forced to they generally won't.

That's easy. Someone deliberately screwing with you to prevent your cancellation in person could escalate the situation to violence. Over the phone, the most that can happen is a shouting match, and if the customer gets frustrated enough, they hang up, which is a win.

Re:I must be the outlier

[dbIII]

no, I could no longer justify the cost

That's the trick - convince salesfolk that there is no money in your pockets and you are dead to them. Sometimes it's worth them thinking you are an utter loser just so that they will leave you alone.
Asking telemarketers if there are any jobs available where they are used to be a good one - until those jobs moved offshore and now the trick no longer works.

Re:I must be the outlier

[tverbeek]

Not just to avoid this. Maintaining customer service centers also cuts into their profits.

Re:I must be the outlier

[idontgno]

I'm not quite sure why Comcast hasn't emiserated the in-store situation yet

There are practical limitations in a brick-and-mortar situation. There are a limited number of behind-the-counter folks, and having to hassle a not-gonna-be-a-customer for an extended amount of time makes the lines at the counter grow and grow. Since it's the same counter (and workforce) used to generate business by selling hardware and service, it's counterproductive to sabotage that by extensive "retention" operations. Not to mention that the desperate, wheedling, infuriating conversation that results would be witnessed by everyone else in line; and no matter how dumb, most of the mammals in line may notice that and wonder if doing business with Comcast would be such a good idea.

Whereas a boiler-room telemarketing op has none of these risks and liabilities.

Moral of the story: deal with Comcast where they have some incentive to deal decisively: their own showrooms.

Re:I must be the outlier

[mrchaotica]

My local Comcast office employes an off-duty Sheriff's deputy!

Re:I must be the outlier

[swb]

I'm not quite sure why Comcast hasn't emiserated the in-store situation yet; but apparently they haven't, and it's not as though the front-line peons are fucking with you for their pleasure, so if they aren't forced to they generally won't.

The last time I went to a Comcast service center there were no fewer than a half-dozen people waiting in line, perhaps as many as a dozen and only 4 employees.

The lack of strongarm tactics in stores is probably deliberate to avoid the kinds of arguments and chaos that would end up getting uploaded to youtube from a cell phone camera.

Or it could be flat-out fear. Most people in my line looked somewhere between pretty annoyed and downright pissed. It's easy to be an asshat on the phone, when the guy in front if you is 6'2, 240 and sick of your shit you tend to be a little more cautious. At best you'll get yelled at, at worst you might end up having your face decelerate a DVR.

Re:I must be the outlier

[gauauu]

You're not an outlier, but you did do exactly the right thing. You cancelled in person, instead of over the phone.

In my town, there's a perpetual 45-minute line of people at the comcast office. Even though the lady that works there is helpful and friendly, I'd rather talk to an idiot on the phone for 20 minutes than waste an hour or more driving to the office, waiting in line, and dealing with the issue in person.

Is the line shorter in other towns?

Re:I must be the outlier

[tlhIngan]

In my town, there's a perpetual 45-minute line of people at the comcast office. Even though the lady that works there is helpful and friendly, I'd rather talk to an idiot on the phone for 20 minutes than waste an hour or more driving to the office, waiting in line, and dealing with the issue in person.

And yet, the use of that hour is probably among the best than the 20 minutes on the phone. Because you'll try and try, and then you have to return the equipment to the store anyways (or send it back by mail).

And all along the way, they can lose your cancellation, continue to bill you for months afterwards, fail to receive the returned equipment and bill for that, etc.

And sorting it out through the system when you're an ex-customer is 100 times harder because they really will do the hard sell and sign you up again.

The only real option is well, small claims court, which means easily a day of your time, default judgement (what, you think Comcast will show up?) and refund months later.

Or just spending the hour at the store and getting it all done with documentation. (What, you think that record of your phone call will exist? Ha!).

Aren't they obliged to cancel your account if you ask, though? I mean, say you say "i want to close my account", they asked if you're sure, aware of the great deals etc. Say no, again, politely, then firmly "close my account now". What would happen if they continued trying to get you to stay and you stay silent? You aren't obliged to go through their script; you've told them your side of things. Can't you just stop paying them and if there's any come back tell them the date/time of the call, who you spoke to and ask what the problem is? Perhaps there needs to be a mandatory website/service where you just click/say "i'm out of here" and there's no come back on their part?

Yes, they're obliged to cancel when you ask. But they're not obliged to make it easy - they'll just follow their script endlessly. Remember, getting you to hang up in frustration is also a win for them because it's a cancellation that didn't happen.

And if they can make you wait an hour on hold every time, even bigger plus - most people would hang up in frustration.

Mistreat the call center staff and you'll find your cancellation didn't actually take effect, your file number either won't exist, or will contain inaccurate details, etc.

I'm not quite sure why Comcast hasn't emiserated the in-store situation yet; but apparently they haven't, and it's not as though the front-line peons are fucking with you for their pleasure, so if they aren't forced to they generally won't.

Because in-store staff have to do everything - from signing people up, to people wanting to add subscriptions, buy hardware, etc. Cancellations is just a small part of the entire thing that they couldn't be bothered to try to retain you when most of the people in line are just wanting to add a service.

Plus, humans react differently when they're face to face with another human than when they're on the phone, over the internet, etc.

Re:I must be the outlier

[Lumpy]

If you think they will not modify that agreement when the time comes to renew it, you are silly. in my town it was a requirement to carry public channels and OTA local channels unencrypted. They simply had their lawyer remove that from the last one they signed.

when your town is ran by a bunch of morons (only morons want to be politicians in power) you get this kind of stuff happening. And 99.976% of all american cities and towns have complete drooling morons in charge.

The mayor here is so stupid he demanded they pass a law making it a felony to say anything bad about him. And then threw a fit when everyone told him that will never happen.

Re:I must be the outlier

[n7ytd]

I wouldn't consider your journey done just yet.

If your experience pans out like mine has, in about 4 months you will start getting e-mails and letters from Comcast attempting to bill you for the equipment you haven't returned yet.

Attempting to explain that you don't have any more equipment to return, will get you empty promises that they will fix the error in their computers, along with another e-mail and bill next month.

In my case, they continue to attempt to bill me $70 for a cable modem that I have never rented from them. Their system still shows a credit of $42 they owe me, but no one seems to know when that money will be returned to me, 6 months after cancelling.

If I never hear from them again, I'll consider it $42 well spent.

Re:I must be the outlier

[Just Some Guy]

AND you can leave with a receipt for your returned equipment, plus the names of people you dealt with face to face. That could be extremely useful if they want to play the common game of "we never got your stuff and you still owe us monthly payments".

Re:I must be the outlier

[n7ytd]

This is my exact experience as well. I couldn't convince the customer service rep that their "system" also showed that I was an Internet customer for 2 years before they started trying to charge me a modem rental fee. How was I receiving service before that time? Did their system show me ordering a modem? Did their system show them shipping me a modem? All of these questions fell on deaf ears.

After cancelling service with them, their automated phone service would no longer recognize my account number as an active account, but then 4 months later the attempted billings for not returning this mystery modem began again.

The very helpful person I chatted with on their website last month assures me the problem is fixed. We'll see about that.

Re:I must be the outlier

[Alioth]

In which case send the cancellation in writing, along with the returned equipment, and send it signature required return receipt so they can't claim they never got it.

Re:I must be the outlier

[usuallylost]

I cancelled my Comcast service a couple of years ago. Mainly because I had their DVR service and they absolutely refused to make it work. They just kept sending me new DVRs. After replacing six DVRs in a year, which pretty much defeats the purpose of a DVD, I got fed up and went to Verizon FIOS. The sales rep from Verizon told me I’d have less hassle if I just turned in my equipment locally than if I tried to call them. He even very nicely gave the address of my nearest Comcast facility and their hours of operation. You are doing something seriously wrong when Verizon has better customer service than you.

There is one use for these customer retention people. I used to call Comcast every year or so and say I was leaving. Without fail they would give me various discount packages. I don’t think I paid full price for their services for the last decade I had them. In a typical year I’d reduce my bill by 25 to 50 percent just by calling up and trying to cancel. If they are going to be obnoxius you may as well benefit from it.

Re:I must be the outlier

[sglewis100]

Sounds like you had it almost as bad as me. Took six days to get my TiVo activated (TiVo support is really great, by the way, but they can't fix Comcast's problems). I had two tech visits, I drove to the local retail store four times, and went through six cable cards, plus had to wake one tech up who fell asleep in my house!

Re:I must be the outlier

[taustin]

That's easy. Someone deliberately screwing with you to prevent your cancellation in person could escalate the situation to violence. Over the phone, the most that can happen is a shouting match, and if the customer gets frustrated enough, they hang up, which is a win.

Every cable company office I've ever been in - every single one - all the employees are behind bullet proof glass that would make a bank teller envious.

Re:I must be the outlier

[taustin]

If you don't have proof that you canceled the service, it's he said/she said, and they will send the unpaid bill to collections.

If you have to do it by phone, record the call (they give you permission to do so when their computer tells you the call may be recorded for "quality assurance"). Better, however, is to do it in person (and get a receipt that says the service is cancelled), or by registered mail. Then any unpaid (and unowed) bill that is sent to collection is a Fair Credit Reporting Act violation, and they know it.

Re:I must be the outlier

[amxcoder]

Who the heck takes the equipment back to them when cancelling?!! I'm not wasting my time with that. Did I have to go pick it up at the office when I signed up for the service? If the answer is no, then you can bet I'm not driving it back and standing in line either.

If they want their equipment back, they can either send me a pre-paid box to load it into and ship back them, or send a technician out to pick it up off my porch.

When I cancelled DirecTV, this is how they got their receiver back, they shipped a prepaid box for the receiver to me when I cancelled over the phone. I got the box from them, and put my receiver in it, and dropped it off (without waiting in line) at the nearest UPS store. If I didn't want to drop it off at the UPS store, I could have called UPS for a pickup at my house.

that's how it should work.

Re:I must be the outlier

[RobertLTux]

easy way to handle this

involve either a Priest or a Lawyer in the process (bonus points if you have BOTH).

Okay Your Honor i have here a written statement from Father Smith and Mr Jones Equire stating that on the X day of the Y Month in the Year of Our Lord two thousand and Z the three of us visited the retail location and 1 returned the company owned equipment 2 canceled the service.

Assuming that Comcast even shows up this is an open and shut case.

Re:I must be the outlier

[WheezyJoe]

Aren't they obliged to cancel your account if you ask, though? I mean, say you say "i want to close my account", they asked if you're sure, aware of the great deals etc. Say no, again, politely, then firmly "close my account now". What would happen if they continued trying to get you to stay and you stay silent?

You make me smile, my friend. But your cable company is not like the police who have to stop questioning you when you invoke your rights to remain silent and ask for a lawyer. Unless an ambitious attorney-general is riding up their ass over some consumer-protection clause, your cable company can keep on shilling until they (not you) become convinced they are wasting their time.

Tell them you're moving out of town (to a location that's not served by the company). Tell them you're broke and destitute with no job, and your wife left you and took the TV. Tell them your cable box overheated and burned your house down. Tell them you're appeals have run out and you're going to prison.

Then they might give up.

Re:I must be the outlier

[sjames]

And if they try to charge your credit card again, report it as fraudulent.

Re:I must be the outlier

[s0nicfreak]

Well, that's great if you have the time to go in. Comcast won't let us change our service from my husband's ex-wife's name to my husband's name unless both of them go into the office. The office is 30 minutes away from us, an hour away from the ex, and only open during the hours my husband is at work. They were never able to coordinate a time/day to go there.

When we canceled our cable tv, it was during a time that I couldn't drive due to seizures. We had to pay the rental fee on a cable box that did nothing for a few months, until my husband's vacation from work when he was able to take it in.

Re:I must be the outlier

[s0nicfreak]

That was not an option when I canceled my cable and had to return the cable box. I specifically asked if I could mail it - nope, not even on my own dime.

Re:I must be the outlier

[Anonymous Coward]

Be careful. When I moved out of a Comcast area, I did much the same. I'm an employee, and my job was in the same building as the cable store, so turning in my equipment was pretty easy. Got the receipt and everything.

3 months later, one of my bosses walks over to me and informs me he's gotten notice that the company is about to turn me over to collections for non-payment. I log into my account, and sure enough, the fuckers had been charging me for the last 3 months. And I'd never received any notices, since I didn't live at the address on the account anymore (despite changing my address in the HR system, which is where it's supposed to be pulling from).

Well, needless to say, I was upset. I produced my receipt for turning in my equipment, forwarded my boss the email chain I had with the folks who handle employee accounts outlining the process for cancellation, and my compliance with each step, and then I had a good old hissy fit about how if the company was going to treat me this way, I might just have to find myself another employer.

To my bosses credit, he had the entire issue resolved by end of business the following day.

The cautionary tale here is that, if they're willing to screw with their own employees, regular customers don't stand a chance. Make sure *every* interaction you have with the company is documented.

Re:I must be the outlier

[antdude]

Is there a list? :(

Re:I must be the outlier

[davester666]

you can't just going around mandating what people can do! as long as there is a process to cancel, there is no problem.

no matter how byzantine the process may be, as long as there is one, that's good enough for Congress.

How do investors react to such info?

[RevWaldo]

Would you be more or less inclined to put your money into a company whose seemingly sole focus is profit? I mean focused well over and above happy employees, happy customers, delivering a product/service they can be proud of, and other such trivialities.

.

Re:How do investors react to such info?

[Shadow of Eternity]

They'll fall over themselves for it. Current tax laws reward reckless short-term profiteering, that's why you see shit like Hostess and RMoney where executives flat out vampire a company into bankruptcy and then take a golden parachute to the next one. Just a few decades ago tax rates were such that it was much better to develop a stable long-term profit at a lower level and consistently reinvest the rest back into your employees and customers.

Re:How do investors react to such info?

[benjfowler]

The US has always been fatally weak on control fraud and white-collar crime. Dumb people are impressed by rich people, and never ask how those people got rich, nor how many dead bodies they needed to step over to do it.

Re:How do investors react to such info?

[RabidReindeer]

Would you be more or less inclined to put your money into a company whose seemingly sole focus is profit? I mean focused well over and above happy employees, happy customers, delivering a product/service they can be proud of, and other such trivialities. .

Why yes. That's the AMERICAN WAY. Only the dollars and cents you can add up today matter. Actual quality of product, customer satisfaction, responsible citizenship, future consequences, those are things we've been taught to sneer at. After all, what do they matter when it comes time to do a leveraged buyout?

Anything else is just socialisms and Commie Talk. It's not like capitalism is supposed to facilitate business. We're supposed to worship it for its own sake.

Re:How do investors react to such info?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Would you be more or less inclined to put your money into a company whose seemingly sole focus is profit?

Note that "profit" is misleading in this context. What they seem to mean, based on TFA is "income" or "revenue".

Admittedly, income generates profit (usually. See "loss leader" for an example of income with no profit attached). But they're not synonymous, as any taxman can tell you.

Re:How do investors react to such info?

[tranquilidad]

You seem to think these items are disconnected.

The company is responsible to its owners only.

If it is in the best interest of the shareholders to piss off the customers then that's what they should do.

It is more likely that it's in the best interest of the shareholders to do as you suggest, have happy employees, happy customers and a product/service with which they can be proud.

As an investor I will put my money in those companies that give me the greatest return. Just because a company's sole focus is profit doesn't mean they shouldn't be a "good" company. The bigger question is not for the shareholders but for the customers. Why would customers continue to generate profits for the shareholders if it doesn't provide them with something they value or see as a fair trade for their dollars?

Nothing New

[realsilly]

Lots of companies have engaged in this practice over the years. I've worked for a Credit card company in the past, and they did the same exact thing. It's basically preying on the weak. Those who tended to overspend and could never pay off a debt were the most vulnerable to the sales pitch to keep the card open and active. This used to be called the "sub-prime" market, but that term fell out of good graces back in 2004 - 2006 when the word "sub-prime" referred to poor people; which was true. The original intent of sub-prime was to help people with bad / no credit establish a foundation for building good credit. Just like everything else, it got corrupted by corporate greed.

Re:Nothing New

[RabidReindeer]

OK. I live in a city where the city itself maintained a special number for the sole purpose of accepting complaints about Comcast.

But the shenanigans reported are neither new nor unique to Comcast. Lots of companies have "Customer Retention Departments" whose sole purpose is to make cancelling as miserable an experience as possible.

I don't like seeking after misery, so I avoided opening a Comcast account to begin with. They may own almost all the market, but there are still less obnoxious alternatives.

Re:Nothing New

[tepples]

I don't like seeking after misery, so I avoided opening a Comcast account to begin with. They may own almost all the market, but there are still less obnoxious alternatives.

For you, did such avoidance involve finding a different city in which to work? Or did it involve dealing with sat or cell ISPs that charge $10 per GB?

Moved and still they call

[silas_moeckel]

So I moved out of a Comcast area. It was 3 rounds of what can we do to keep you, to cancel. Apparently I no longer live in a Comcast area is to hard to process. I've since gotten a call trying to get me back.

I ready did not have much of a problem with internet from them, though my new Optimum service is faster and cheaper (75/25)

Re:Moved and still they call

[Anonymous Coward]

So I moved out of a Comcast area. It was 3 rounds of what can we do to keep you, to cancel. Apparently I no longer live in a Comcast area is to hard to process. I've since gotten a call trying to get me back.

I ready did not have much of a problem with internet from them, though my new Optimum service is faster and cheaper (75/25)

What do you expect? Apparently in India, even the concept of detached housing isn't comprehensible. I tried to open an Internet account and they said I'd have to contact my "building manager".

I own the f*cking building. It's a HOUSE dammit!

When you're on an entirely different continent, you may find it difficult to imagine that there are pockets of Comcast-free territory in the victim^Wtarget country.

Re:Moved and still they call

[silas_moeckel]

I sorta did that with AT&T, ordering DSL I specifically told them that the phone line was down from the pole to the house and they needed to dispatch a tech to correct that. Was using my own DSL modem and waiting to see that they had come out and fixed it. I got a bill for service and took nearly an hour and 2 escalations to figure out the wire did not connect to my house yet meant they had not provided service yet.

Re:Moved and still they call

[Quirkz]

And then they bill you $200 for the visit to the address they have no rights to modify.
Possibly they go ahead and break your existing equipment, too.

Want more profit? Just do right by the customer

[MikeRT]

I don't know any Comcast customer who has had a positive experience with their customer service. I also know some who've had Comcast blatantly disregard the details of their contract with respect to price and features a few months into a 12-24 month contract. Frankly, what Comcast needs besides competition from more companies and municipal broadband (via utilities) is a few strategic arrests of employees and executives for fraud. Put a few of their guys in prison for fraudulent business practices, and I'll wager their billing and sales people will wake the f#$% up and do right.

Re:Want more profit? Just do right by the customer

[Shadow of Eternity]

What comcrap needs is the full experience of corporations being people, starting with getting executed by texas.

Re:Want more profit? Just do right by the customer

[painandgreed]

I don't know any Comcast customer who has had a positive experience with their customer service.

I have. I'd been having issues with my internet service going up and down and getting worse over a period of months. I finally called. I got a woman who listened to my problem, my troubleshooting steps and advised me to go to the connect, follow it back and see if there was a splitter. There was. Asked me to remove it and connect it directly to the internet box and everything worked perfectly. She then explained the various ways of how to get a new splitter, but as I only really use my Comcast for internet, didn't need one considered everything fixed. Listening to how I described the problem, she was able to get it fixed in the first troubleshooting step.

That being said. Having worked those type of phone technical support jobs before (at Adobe), it sounded like she'd been there a while and had seen this issue a lot. No doubt, she has gone off to a better job by now because those tech support jobs don't pay enough to keep around smart people who know what they are doing, and has been replaced by somebody who has to follow the script because they don't know the issues yet.

Same Stuff Different Company.

[mt2mb4me]

OK, this is nothing new, as an EX employee of an American telephone/telegraph company. The first person you talk to is a "customer service and SALES" every time you call in, and their system is "Running Slow" they are looking at your account to "Bundle" a solution to your problem. Bundle = bamboozle. The reps make over half their income from commission, this is "Customer service" not outbound sales. It is the way business is done anymore.

They are already doing that

[Anonymous Coward]

They are calling people on cable-modem only and offering a cable box for 5 dollars more a month.

Re:They are already doing that

[Quirkz]

I wish I could get this. When my local (Charter) calls me, it's always an up-charge of $40 or more. Of course they want to sell me phone AND TV, and pretend like it's such a great deal because, if I pay $40 for the TV, the phone is basically free. I don't want the phone, and I don't want TV for $40. I'd gladly take it for $5, though. No amount of fishing around has gotten me that offer, though.

Re:They are already doing that

[Moheeheeko]

I wish it was a cable box. I fell for that deal and guess what? they just plugged the coax from the wall into my tv. now I get such great channels like 44-234b. But hey, $5.

Re:They are already doing that

[Darinbob]

Of course, I suspect that the $5 dollars more a month is for the first year only.

Re:They are already doing that

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC, since I'm a Comcast employee.

Trust me, it's not that targeted.The sales staff is out to make a sale to anyone, anywhere, and they employ shotgun methods to do so.

Comcast employees get a very good deal on service. When I was still living in a Comcast area, I was paying $24.95 for an HD DVR, Voice service, and 16mb down/6 mb up (which later got upgraded to 60mb down and 10 mb up at no additional cost to me), all premium channels, etc.

At least once a month, I would come home and find a Comcast flyer on my door, or slipped under it. Finally, one day, I was awoken to the sound of insistent knocking just before lunch time. Since I work overnight, that means I had pretty much just gotten to sleep. I was... displeased.

Upon opening the door, there was a Comcast sales rep, who started to go into his spiel. I waited for about 5 seconds, then reached down and shoved my employee ID badge into his face and angrily inquired whether or not he could read. The motherfucker *STILL* tried to get me to 'upgrade' my service. Then another one comes walking over, and lo and behold, it's his boss! I lit into him, asking for an explanation of why they were bothering employees, trying to sell them service that was inferior (feature wise) to what we got for free for a shitload more money.

Neither could answer my questions. I provided them both my name, my position, my bosses name, and his bosses name, in case they wanted to take it up internally. I then informed them that the next time I caught them on my property, I would consider it trespassing, and would react accordingly.

I was never awakened by a Comcast sales rep again, but I continued to get flyers on and under my door.

*NO ONE* outside of sales or customer service actually likes those business units within the company. Those of us on the ops side have our own internal contacts so we can explicitly avoid talking to the people that we force our customers to go through.

as opposed to the other kind of corporation?

[Trepidity]

...painted a picture of a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit

Or for short, just "a corporation".

Re:as opposed to the other kind of corporation?

[hey!]

Here's the interesting thing, though. Let's agree that bottom-feeding is the natural ground state of a corporation; what that means is that nearly everybody is doing it, which means bottom-feeders on average don't make any more profit than you'd get investing in a mutual fund, but involve a lot more risk.

If you want to make *more* profit, you have to be about something *in addition to* profit. A great company has an identity which has value. This, by the way, is how Carly Fiorina ruined HP. She re-imagined HP as something more generic.

Lost the "tech" in tech support

[PseudoCoder]

I can understand wanting to save money by putting tech script as the first line of tech support, but it gets a little tiring when want to skip to the advanced folks and still they want to stick to their script and ask me to reboot the modem as if I hadn't done that 3 times already. If it isn't low hanging fruit for the script readers it's not going to be a very successful or efficient support call.

Seems some DNS issue that isn't solved by reboot kept all of the devices in my network from getting reliable connections for about 10-15 minutes after starting to browse. I did some of the obvious stuff; reboot modem, try other DNS servers, etc. Doesn't matter now. Switched to FiOS and now pages load before I can blink.

Re:Lost the "tech" in tech support

[Greyfox]

Just use the Google public DNS. Also, Windows 7 can have intermittent DNS issues like that when waking up from hibernation. It can ping fine by IP, just not domain name. So if the problem keeps happening after you switch to Google, that's probably why. From poking around on the Internet, Microsoft's answer to that seems to be "Try another network card." Mine is, "The problem doesn't happen with Linux."

Re:Lost the "tech" in tech support

[Lumpy]

I have my own script.... Yes, rebooting now... yes still the red blinking light. I am waving a dead chicken over it now... yes it's facing north. No the red light did not change.

Yes I moved all holy relics away from the modem... No it's still a red blinking light. Yes I'll wait....

Re:Lost the "tech" in tech support

[PseudoCoder]

I tried the Google DNS servers with no luck. At first I too thought it was the intermittent Win7 stuff coming out of hibernation because that was my use case, but my wife's iPad and our cell phones were also taking forever to load a page, mostly hanging at the very beginning of the request.

Anyway just cancelled Comcast yesterday and my pages load blissfully fast at 15Mbps as opposed to taking forever at 50Mbps.

Re:Lost the "tech" in tech support

[PseudoCoder]

Good stuff! Just switched to Verizon FiOS, so Comcast is hopefully a thing of the past. I'll use this if I ever have to get on the phone with Verizon, but my previous experience with FiOS included 0 support calls.

Re:Lost the "tech" in tech support

[Arker]

"I can understand wanting to save money by putting tech script as the first line of tech support, but it gets a little tiring when want to skip to the advanced folks and still they want to stick to their script and ask me to reboot the modem as if I hadn't done that 3 times already. If it isn't low hanging fruit for the script readers it's not going to be a very successful or efficient support call."

The sad thing is that the volume of calls is so heavily weighted towards people that refuse to do anything whatsoever on their own before calling and demanding someone else fix it that clued-in customers with real problems are just lost in the noise from their perspective.

Re:Lost the "tech" in tech support

[geminidomino]

Oddly, it's not just from hibernation. After four years, I'm still having that same bug myself, and my desktop doesn't hibernate. I have to bounce the network interface to fix it.

I always assumed it had something to do with constantly having a VirtualBox VM running.

Re: Every single day

[ajegwu]

See how effective that was?

well

[sociocapitalist]

"...painted a picture of a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit"

Is there some other type of corporation?

Re:well

[neminem]

There are - there are *occasional* corporations that actually seem to be driven by the desire to share their love of a great product and delivering that product to their customers. It's rare, but I can think of a few. Granted, they tend to also be much smaller corporations than the Comcasts of the world, but that doesn't mean they have to be tiny local companies.

Re:well

[sociocapitalist]

There are - there are *occasional* corporations that actually seem to be driven by the desire to share their love of a great product and delivering that product to their customers. It's rare, but I can think of a few. Granted, they tend to also be much smaller corporations than the Comcasts of the world, but that doesn't mean they have to be tiny local companies.

I'll have to ask you for examples of corporations that care more about anything than profit, as I don't believe they exist.

I could believe that privately held corporations might do so - but not public ones.

Re:well

[neminem]

Your second hypothesis might well be true, as that is kind of what drives publicly-traded companies. None of the handful of companies I could think of off the top of my head are public. Most notably, the Sprint MVNO Ting, which could easily charge more than they do and still be one of the cheapest around, and who totally don't technically NEED to make it so easy to talk to a competent person on the phone if you call them for help (nobody else does...).

Fresh & Easy, the west coast supermarket chain, also came to mind, though sadly their prices have been going up and variety and quality has gone down slightly since Tesco sold them to a US investor. (It was previously our favorite market by far for a number of reasons; now they're more on par with Trader Joe's, which still isn't terrible, but they used to be so much better. Of course, they also were, as a Tesco CEO said before they sold it, "hemorrhaging money". Apparently they could only accept that for so long.)

To my knowledge, though, Ting is definitely making decent profits. They could just probably make *more* profit if they wanted to cut some corners and raise their prices (as opposed to what they did a few months ago, which was to randomly decide to *lower* their prices even more).

Re:It's common

[dosius]

That's the trick, isn't it? Put an old lady on the line so you won't have the heart to fight back.

-uso.

Re:Every single day

[sinij]

I understand that above suggestion to "saw their heads off" was likely made in jest, but there is grain of truth to it.

We live in an era where people in charge have very little accountability to the masses. "The Mob" no longer puts fear into politicians or business community. As such "maybe I shouldn't do this nefarious yet legal deed because it could end up with guillotine" check is no longer there.

Re: Every single day

[Anonymous Coward]

See how effective that was?

by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30, 2014 @08:49AM (#47564927)
by ajegwu (1142365) on Wednesday July 30, 2014 @08:54AM (#47564957)

You're right, trying for more than five minutes was too much to ask. Off with their heads.

It's systemic

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously since I need to remain employed...

Comcast has two mantras. Increase sales and cut costs. As has already been pointed out, the customer service staff are heavily pressured through careful sifting of metrics to see how adept they are at saving a customer that's identified that they want to flee. They're also incentivised to push new product to anyone they interact with on the phone. All the better if they can sell you something "at a discount" that you won't even use...like voice services as people are switching to cell-only phone service in droves. Pump the earnings, while adding almost nothing in operational cost. And while a "positive customer experience" is often discussed, it has little to do with your compensation. It's all about increasing sales, reducing costs, and truck rolls (minimizing truck rolls is likely tatooed on the private parts of all the supervisors and management types so they don't forget). This constant drum beat of cutting costs has resulted in:

Hiring "lowest bidder" outsourced staff to manage the phones
Reduction of overall customer service staff over time vs number of subscribers (no wonder the hold times are so looooong)
Slow infrastructure for internal staff (sometimes they really ARE waiting for their screen to update while you tap your foot for 2 minutes)
Slow and outdated services (DNS/Email in particular) for customers. Fast pipes seem glacial when it takes 20 seconds to resolve a hostname.

etc...

On the video side of the company, they're bleeding video subs steadily (and so is Time Warner). This is causing a panic. Video infrastructure and licensing is expensive fer chrissakes! Who's going to pay for all that? Well...you are. They haven't clued into the reality that a lot of people want to consume specific bits of content AT THEIR LEISURE. Paying for the hundreds of channels of obscure content that you just don't want is ludicrous when there are so many alternatives out there on the interwebs. That's why you're seeing Comcast kick and scream about content owners paying to ride their last mile to your doorstep (unless, of course, it's NBC Universal content...then it's ok and given a fat pipe). I know...a shocker.

Does this make them any different than any other megacorp with quarterly earnings to meet? Probably not. However, when you consider that they'll be the 800lb gorilla of ISP and cableTV service in the US after they ingest Time Warner, it does give one pause about the future of the quality and cost of those services. Someone is going to pay to keep those quarterly profits up, regardless of the actual cost to deliver the services. Buckle up. It's going to be a rough ride.

Re:It's systemic

[whoever57]

Comcast has two mantras. Increase sales and cut costs.

Comcast is cr*p at doing the latter. Why did it take a callout to my house in order to get my cablecard working? The online system and their attempt to authorize the cablecard when I called in both failed, but why? All that happened during the callout was that the technician called his buddy to send the signal to authorize the cablecard. Then he changed a few connectors in the wiring -- probably to justify the callout.

Re:It's systemic

[s0nicfreak]

Uh, but they don't need to be competitive - they have a monopoly! Staying competitive would only be an issue if customers actually had the ability to choose a competitor. The majority of the US has ONE isp to choose from.

Re:Every single day

[wisnoskij]

I think that might be against Youtube TOS.

Understaffed?

[Lumpy]

They fired most of the technicians and now 90% are subcontractors to get around most of the labor laws. Around here the guys that do Comcast have a magnetic sign on their rust bucket and will swap out for Dish when they go to that next job. They barely train these guys and they pay them a flat rate per job so they want to be in and out as fast as possible many times half assing it because they average out to being paid less than $7.00 an hour on most jobs.

As a Northern European guy....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed to read about the kind of crap Verizon and Comcast can get away with, both in terms of customer service but also in terms of services delivered (Netflix issue among others). My sympathies goes out to all of you.

* Posted this from my 100/100mb fiber connection

Get smart ...

[CaptainDork]

You know what these people are going to do, right? For cancellation, you gotta have a brick wall they can't navigate around.

Them: "WHY DO YOU WANT TO CANCEL?"

Me: "Because work is paying for a teleworker account from another ISP."

Them: "Which ISP?"

Me: "Heck, I don't know."

Them: "We can beat the other (speed, service, etc.)."

Me: "Not if you're not hooked up to my house."

Them: "We will give you 3 months free service just to keep you as a customer."

Me: "I've always back-billed my company for this service. They will not accept the charge in the future."

Them: "Are you dissatisfied with our service?"

Me: "WHAT? Heck, no ... I love you guys." .... ....

--

Go in prepared for it. Your parents died and you got no money. You're heading of to federal prison. Your house burned down.

Re:Get smart ...

[vux984]

Me: "Because work is paying for a teleworker account from another ISP."

Yikes, that's too complicated... do they even understand what you've said? :)

Keep it simple:

Them "Why do you want to cancel?"

Me: "I'm moving to Italy."

Done.

Re:Get smart ...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

You know what these people are going to do, right? For cancellation, you gotta have a brick wall they can't navigate around.

That's just a ton of excuses. If you really want to have fun:

Them: "WHY DO YOU WANT TO CANCEL?"

You: The Martians will kill my parents if I don't

Them: "We will give you 3 months free service just to keep you as a customer."

You: Good lord, they're already dead. The Martians are resurrecting them just to kill them.

Them: "Are you dissatisfied with our service?"

You: MOTHERFUCKING MARTIANS MAN!

Or you could refuse to discuss it and just cancel the fucking account. It's been a while since I cancelled Comcast. They were dicks, but they can really only keep you on the phone if you let them.

Re:Get smart ...

[Guppy]

Them "Why do you want to cancel?"
Me: "I'm moving to Italy."

This. The rep's script is running on rails that he can't really deviate from. To make it easy for both you and him, you need to guide it to an endpoint that won't generate any negative metrics for him.

Re:lol

[oh_my_080980980]

When did people become shills for corporations by posing as a "regular joe." Had you read the article you would have known that call reps whose job did not involve sales in any way are now responsible for making sales.

Nice job ass-hole.

Don't Bother Anymore

[Sentrion]

My credit has been crap for years mostly due to a steady flow of medical and therapy bills for my "special needs" child that far exceeds my ability to pay. But one benefit of not giving a fork about my FICO score is that I don't even bother to deal with the BS from cable, cell phone, internet, gym memberships, "free" trials, or anything else. When I want to change or drop a service I find it much more convenient to just close my bank account and open a new one than to deal with "Customer Retention Counselors". Sure, I get letters for debt collectors every day, but no one has bothered to sue me. Of course, if I had any savings or disposable income that could be a different matter.

Re:Every single day

[Luckyo]

Yes. It's easy to convince yourself that you did something, when in reality what you did was worse than doing nothing. You actually made yourself think that you tried to make a change, and as a result if nothing happens, you have a "well, at least I tried" excuse.

Which is why this is the reality:
http://www.princeton.edu/~mgil...

If you don't know what that is - that's the study of democratic impact of things like "desires of the masses" on actual legislative process. The study that concluded that US is de facto oligarchy, because when masses want something and capital wants something else, capital almost always gets what it wants.

And if you want to know why that is, all you need is to look in the mirror. "Just write your [legislative representative] (so he/she can ask for a bit more money in donations when he/she makes the opposite decision as to have a bit more to finance his/her re-election campaign)" is the solution that is worse than doing nothing.

At least doing nothing makes you feel guilty about it, and may eventually push you to act in ways that may actually bring about a change. What you are advocating is status quo. As a result, you're part of the problem.

And while "sawing people's heads off on youtube" is also a terrible solution, yours isn't that much better.

The more things change....

[mbackwater42]

When I worked for AT&T in the early Naughties, we were instructed in pretty much the same way. Sell, sell, sell, and ignore (as much as possible) the customer and what they really want.

history repeating

[cwatts]

This guy is clearly a graduate of the AOL School of Custormer Retention.

I had a nearly identical call with America Online years ago. I didn't record it, but someone else recorded their similar experience. Definitely the same guy!

cw

Re:history repeating

[cwatts]

whoops! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Gateway was the same

[zeroryoko1974]

I worked tech support for Gateway for about 6 years, and the last couple years, sales were a requirement of our job. It started like, oh if you want to do this, please do it, but it is ok if you don't, to you will try to sell them stuff, it is no longer an option. It got so bad just before the E-Machines merger that there was techs who would go through tickets and find open orders that were missing something like a po, or a wrong address and then take over that sale and finish it to steal credit for the sale. When I started there, it was all about providing the best tech support. By the end (before the whole tech department was outsourced) it was mainly about could you sell them something. As bad as they were, the sales people were worse. At least the techs would sell them stuff that worked. Sales would sell them whatever, and tell them we would support it. It was kind of sad, it was really a lot of fun working there until they went all crazy (things started going downhilll when they got into a price war with Dell).

At&t sucks too.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I spent hours with them, trying to figure out why they couldn't give me access to my online account to pay my fing bill. Finally I just told them I was canceling the account to resolve the matter. Then they aked me why... Then they transfered me to another rep to close the account, who then asked me why .... Finally after going through two people, I just told them I wasn't explaining why anymore, just close the account. Getting angry on the phone is the only thing they understand.

No means No.

[tverbeek]

There's a saying in organizations like Comcast that "salesmanship begins with the customer says no."
Interestingly, "when the other person says no" is also a common definition of when rape begins.

Re:Every single day

[mrchaotica]

So, pray tell, if writing your representative is worse than useless, what's the action that would actually work?

Gives an interesting look....

[Dega704]

At first glance this may seem completely irrelevant to debates about Net Neutrality and data caps, but now I think it tells us a lot about just how unscrupulous Comcast and other big ISPs are. When their greed trumps even the most basic tact and professionalism, how can anyone in their right mind expect us to believe that the best thing for everyone is to let them run amok unchallenged and unregulated with a virtual monopoly? It boggles the mind.

Re:Gives an interesting look....

[Aviation Pete]

When their greed trumps even the most basic tact and professionalism, how can anyone in their right mind expect us to believe that the best thing for everyone is to let them run amok unchallenged and unregulated with a virtual monopoly? It boggles the mind.

It's the army of lobbyists in DC, these are the ones who want to make our elected representatives believe that. And they are quite good at it. What you and me believe is completely irrelevant.

The easiest thing to do

[Coditor]

Is to lie. Tell them you are moving to a city which doesn't have comcast. So they can't do anything but disconnect you. Of course once Comcast is the only Cable company left you are screwed.

Comcast Business is anything but!

[DigiShaman]

So a client of mine uses Comcast Business as their ISP. I drove on-site to configure a SonicWALL. Their modem was in bridge mode with the only option of turning into "pseudo bridge mode" (something like a DMZ). Also, the modem wasn't yet provisioned for their assigned static IP pool. Only Tier 1 answers the phone. If you require Tier 2, a call-back within 24 period IS THE ONLY OPTION! And most of the Tier 1 guys don't know how to do anything other than provision modem, basic reboot troubleshooting, and scheduling a truck roll for physical coax connectivity problems. Or put it another way, I can't schedule in advance (proactively) to setup a business gateway firewall. You have to wait and be reactive, then drive X amount of mile on-site all while the customer is left offline with a business that can't function (IE losing money!!!). But it gets better; Tier 2 will configure the modem and reboot the unit without calling first. Epic fail!

Problem 1: I can't get a modem that will drop down to true bridge mode

Problem 2: Business class support is inharently reactive and not proactive with regards to scheduling downtime.

Problem 3: Tier support of all levels wildly range in competency.

Problem 4: -fill in the blank because I'm sure I missed something here-

Re:Comcast Business is anything but!

[DigiShaman]

Edit: I ment to say their modem wasn't in bridge mode and needed to be.

Re:Comcast Business is anything but!

[silas_moeckel]

This is a problem all over the world with ISP's providing "smart" devices now often incapable of running in dumb mode. Buy your own modem 60-100 bucks at staples solves a lot of hassles since the tier 1 guys do know how to activate a customer owned cable modem (or DSL box for that matter). Frankly the concept of my ISP running my firewall scares me.

They already do!

[dfm3]

They already do this. After getting calls at least once a week pushing offers to upgrade our service to a bundle with a land line, and after asking them *each time* to stop calling us... we cancelled our service.

Re:They already do!

[aaron44126]

They did this to me too. I used to have Internet and basic cable, and they would regularly call me to try and get me to add phone service. I ended up having the number that they were calling from go directly to voicemail, but from the logs I can see that they continued to call for quite a while.

Re:They already do!

[Darinbob]

I don't answer the phone. I don't know if anyone calls for that (I suspect they don't). Basically if it's important then it goes to voice mail (which is almost always about refinancing) or if it's friends or family it goes to the mobile phone. I never give out the mobile phone number as my contact for any service, and it's never gotten any telemarketing calls.

Re:Every single day

[TheRaven64]

Getting the majority of people to vote for someone who actually held and was willing to act on opinions that they agree with, rather than the one who spouts platitudes and pretends to agree on a couple of specific issues. Good luck with that.

Re:Every single day

[Ozymandias_KoK]

So the poster asks for what would work, and you give them something you don't expect to work?

Re:Every single day

[Ozymandias_KoK]

If it bleeds, it leads. You could get it passed around long enough to get talked about, at least, even if the vast majority of people never see the source material.

Re:Every single day

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh... so we only need to act every 2 years (or so). Awesome approach! /me sets alarm clock to awaken from political hibernation...

Psychotic customer service is rampant

[InlawBiker]

Logically, how can this policy be the result of a decision made by professionals? If a customer really wants to end service hiding the exit door is just an inconvenience. If a girl wants to break up with her boyfriend and the boyfriend won't "let her" it's a serious psychological problem, nevermind illegal.

Yesterday I cancelled my newspaper delivery subscription (yeah I actually had the paper delivered on Sundays). I went to the web site to unsubscribe but guess what - it's impossible. There's not even a mention of cancellation. It's like they figure, if we close our eyes and yell "lalalala" our problems go away.

So how's that strategy working out for you, Seattle Times? Not only have you lost my business, you've irritated me so much I will never come back.

This is what happens when a business thinks only of its own best interest and not the interest of its customers. When the Comcast regime is toppled, not only will people not care, we'll rejoice. Another bad company dead - good riddance. I can't wait.

Re:Every single day

[Dishevel]

Real solution is for the people to stop believing that politics is a career. Have people serve us for a few terms the get rid of them. Have our government come from workers, businessmen and entrepreneurs. Let them serve for a bit then go back to their real career.

As long as we allow this behavior it will continue. Also if you are going to murder people ... Murder people who vote based on letters of TV commercials.

If you are not going to take the time to truly understand an issue keep your fucking opinion to yourself and stay the fuck out of the voting booth.

Canadian translation

[JustOK]

For Canada, replace Comcast with Rogers.

Re:Every single day

[CaptainLard]

We live in an era where people in charge have very little accountability to the masses. "The Mob" no longer puts fear into politicians or business community. As such "maybe I shouldn't do this nefarious yet legal deed because it could end up with guillotine" check is no longer there.

All things considered, that's probably for the best. "The Mob" has a spotty record when it comes to serving justice.

Obligatory Jeff Dunham

[Sentrion]

[Cue Voice of Achmed]: "SILENCE! I bill you!"

This Post May Not Be Popular...

[Anonymous Coward]

but I really don't care.

It's high time we realize the Internet is not about money. In order to get to the point where everyone can have free (paid for by taxes) Internet, the Internet needs to be seen in the same light as universal healthcare -- it's now a basic human right. ISPs should be non-profit entities that exist to deliver bandwidth to end users -- no ifs ands or buts. Yes, watch for abuse, but we could, without profit rearing its ugly head, deliver 100mbit Internet to most Americans and Europeans with current infrastructure and work on the remainder. It's time profit was removed from the equation. The Internet should be free for all based on a small tax increase. Remove the high salaries and let's just provide for people. I'm sick to death with everyone trying to get ahead. People should be content with what they have (excluding poverty) and be happy. Pipe dream unfortunately.

Re:This Post May Not Be Popular...

[Sentrion]

I'm definitely not a fan of global "corporatism" having undue influence and leverage over local and national governments or over the lives of private individuals. But when you say that people should be content with what they have and be happy, understand that the philosophy of Primitivism advocates this as well, and free internet is not a per-requisite.

If we're talking basic human rights, shouldn't the right to food, shelter, clean water, sleep, growing your own food, selling your own products and services, buying your own medication at the global market price, and freedom from conscription come before broadband and Youtube? I'm all for broadband for the people, but there are a lot of other rights that are not guaranteed in the USA or many other countries. And unlike many protectionist, mercantile regulations and policies of urban fascism, free internet is a problem that could be solved at a grass-roots DIY level. Many undeveloped parts of third world countries are coming online with wireless internet networks even though there are no roads, power lines, or sewer lines. Hops are installed that carry signals from village to village. These projects often take place even without government support.

What surprises me is to see lack of any sort of effort in the US to bring about a "public wireless internet", following the same model that brought us public television or public radio stations, pledge drives and all. If the FCC would loosen some restrictions to how HAM radio frequencies are utilized, there are probably already enough amateur technicians that would be eager to plant the seeds for a nationwide ad hoc user supported public network.

Re:This Post May Not Be Popular...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

the Internet needs to be seen in the same light as universal healthcare

It is. Did I mention I live in America?

Re:This Post May Not Be Popular...

[s0nicfreak]

If we're talking basic human rights, shouldn't the right to food, shelter, clean water, sleep, growing your own food, selling your own products and services, buying your own medication at the global market price, and freedom from conscription come before broadband and Youtube?

The internet isn't just youtube. I make my living by selling the products I make online. I afford food thanks to coupons I get online combined with sales that I find out about online. I order medication online. I find out that a water main was broken and the town's water is not safe to drink online. I pay my property taxes (to keep my shelter) online. It is all connected, nowadays.

Re:Every single day

[Copid]

The trick is to keep the poeple in charge afraid of what the mob might do while not actually having the mob take over and run things. It's a tough balance to strike.

Re:i'm sure this is part of the reason

[Sentrion]

And they don't badger you when you visit in person, given that you can recognize faces and wait for people to get into their cars and follow them home. No, mega corporations prefer to rip you off from a very safe distance with no way to identify the front-line "retention specialists".

This isn't just Comcast, and it isn't new

[mad_psych0]

I worked for Charter as a tier 3 tech support specialist about 10 years ago now, and towards the end of my time there we were trained in a program called "Purchase Power". It started off as something that everyone on the phones, regardless of position or nature of the call, was "encouraged" to do and basically involved reviewing all the services on the account with the customer and point out changes that could be made to save them money, like bundle services they already had going, point out promotional rates, etc. After a month or so of this, it was turned into a non-optional thing that consisted of roughly 50% of the call score when it came to review time. If a rep in any department didn't at least make an attempt to review services with a customer calling in for any reason, it had the potential to result in a write-up if it happened in a call that was randomly pulled during a performance review since it was impossible to receive a "passing" call score under this system unless these guidelines were adhered to. "Service reviews" quickly became sales as the requirements were again modified to include trying to sell new services. "Overcome the customer's objections" was, verbatim, a category that calls were graded on during reviews. This posed an extremely.. interesting.. challenge for my team as the higher-tier support staff were dealing primarily with repeat issues that the lower-tier teams had failed to diagnose properly or fix properly. And yet we were expected to try to sell higher speed internet connections, HBO, phone service, or anything else to these customers that were calling in repeatedly because the service they already had were not working for sometimes months at a time. Not long after I left for a new position that didn't make me feel like a sleazy car salesman on a daily basis, I learned that my entire team ended up getting dissolved and the people that hadn't already voluntarily left were given the choice of moving into other departments (customer retention or sales, primarily), or to go be successful elsewhere. So now, in our region at least, there is no tier 2 or tier 3 tech support out there to this day.

The most sickening part of all of this though, from the perspective of someone who worked with it first-hand, was the internal fervor behind refusing to call Purchase Power a sales program. It was always about "satisfying" the customer, calling it a sales program was extremely taboo even in internal conversation among employees, and telling customers about the program, calling it by name, or telling them we were "required" to do it was an offense that could lead to termination.

From my experiences dealing with other telcos as a customer over the years, I've heard the telltale signs of this breed of training from reps in almost all of them. What starts as an innocent "lets take a look at the services you have with us" is the opening line these programs train their reps to use, which will soon be followed by inquiring about what you like or use the most with the services, highlighting some other service or bundle you don't have, "overcoming the customer's objections", and then trying to sell you something. I've heard it from Charter, AT&T, and Time Warner first-hand and I know from my own personal experience that this has been a trend in the industry at-large for at least a decade now.

Better enemies

[dunkindave]

an incredibly pushy Comcast customer service representative ... you wouldn't wish on your enemies

You don't know my enemies! Loan me a few Comcast customer service reps and a catapult, and I'll be a happy man.

a corporation

[TsuruchiBrian]

a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit

This is (and should be) the goal of all corporations. There are many strategies for achieving this goal. A corporation can bribe legislators for laws giving them special benefits and extra restrictions on their competitors, it can try to achieve a monopoly and exploit it, it can lower the cost of operation at the expense of quality, hope no one notices. It is our job as consumers to choose the companies we want to survive. It is in our interest as consumers to vote with our wallets for companies whose strategy for profit is to focus all their attention on creating better products than their competitors. It is our job as members of society to vote in elections for representatives who will not be bribed by lobbyists, and to ensure that corrupt politicians lose their jobs (i.e. regardless of their party).

Re:a corporation

[inode_buddha]

Wouldn't it be nice if there was 5 different cable lines hanging on the poles outside, or on my house? Meanwhile back here in the land of Reality...

Re:a corporation

[TsuruchiBrian]

I am really not sure what in my post your comment is referring to...

Re:Every single day

[rogoshen1]

Getting things done in the Senate/Congress is a skill, one that I think is bolstered by experience..

The problem isn't so much that they serve too long, it's that they see their position as a way to advance their concerns, not those of their constituents. Force them out every couple years, and we'll have a hopelessly inept, ineffective legislature. (which isn't so different than what we have now).

What we really need is for them to be more accountable to us, and not their campaign donors. It's a more complex problem than just "throw the bastards out". We need more people like DeFazio, Wyden (why yes i'm from Oregon.) , Ron Paul etc -- regardless of the number of terms in office, they seem to stick to the needs of the people who elected them.

Re:Every single day

[Dishevel]

It is much different than we have now.

You think the legislature is inept and ineffective. You are wrong. They are incredibly effective at getting laws passed to keep themselves in power.

A weak, mostly useless Federal government is a major step up.

Re:Every single day

[Luckyo]

No, he tells you one of the things that would indeed work.

Unfortunately, since most people instead follow the original advice, they get no results while remaining under the illusion that voting for incumbents from two main parties would bring some kind of a change.

Re:Every single day

[Luckyo]

They are sticking for people that elected them. That's the entire point. It's just that ignorant people like you think that masses elected them.

In reality, their campaign donors elected them. Masses merely did what election campaigns paid by said donors told them to do.

Cancel? I'd be happy of they could upgrade

[jpellino]

the right way. THEY JUST ASKED ME TO PRINT THE EMAIL THEY SENT ME WITH THE AGREEMENT AND FAX IT TO THEM. Agreed to go $15 more for 50 more channels and 2x bandwidth. They upped the monthly by $30 and somehow doubled the first month. Bandwidth has not budged. They don't seem to understand that a written agreement needs to be honored.

robot

[beefoot]

from the article:
Rep: I’m just trying to figure out here what it is about Comcast service that you’re not liking.
Block: This phone call is actually a really amazing representative example of why I don’t want to stay with Comcast. Can you please cancel our service?
Rep: Okay, but I’m trying to help you.
Block: The way you can help me is by disconnecting my service.
Rep: But how is that helping you? How is that helping you? Explain to me how that is helping you.
Block: Because that’s what I want.
Rep: Okay, so why is that what you want?


This is not human, it is robot.

Institutional Investors

[ThatsNotPudding]

They only way to combat Comcast would be the top ten institutional investors (public employee retirement accounts, etc.) threaten to drop Comcast from their portfolios due to their dickish behavior. This and only this (given that the FCC is already captured) would get the attention of the greed pigs at the top.

Such practices REDUCE profit and kill companies

[mi]

painted a picture of a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit.

A typical anti-Capitalism drivel. The listed practices reduce profit and cause the company to either collapse or be taken over — unless it has powerful friends in government.

From the article: 'These employees told us the same stories over and over again: customer service has been replaced by an obsession with sales, technicians are understaffed and tech support is poorly trained, and the massive company is hobbled by internal fragmentation.

Yep, that's what leads to losing money. Few can survive it without being a monopoly.

Re:Such practices REDUCE profit and kill companies

[Average]

Thanks for posting a link (your CATO one) from 1984. It's rare to get that kind of historical perspective on a site dedicated to modern technology issues.

While you were sleeping, Rip Van Winkle, exclusive local franchise agreements (the crux of that paper) were made illegal by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Re:Such practices REDUCE profit and kill companies

[mi]

While you were sleeping, Rip Van Winkle, exclusive local franchise agreements (the crux of that paper) were made illegal by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Too little, too late, youngster. The existing monopolies have had too much of a head-start — an action like that taken against AT&T once would now be required. And that's unlikely, when the CEO is playing golf with the President.

Re:Every single day

[bill_mcgonigle]

So, pray tell, if writing your representative is worse than useless, what's the action that would actually work?

Working to obsolete that system.

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

- R. Buckminster Fuller

Politics is an enormous opportunity cost that ought to be left to people who cannot participate in society in a more meaningful way. e.g. Libertarianism is an abject failure by every conceivable measure. Intent isn't important, it's results, and things have *not* gotten better. Yeah, 1 out of 10 battles are won, but any General can tell you how that war will go.

Re:Every single day

[suutar]

oh, it would work. It may not be feasible, but it would work.

Just dump Comcast

[mschwanke97402]

I recently dumped Comcast. They had raised my rates by 15% right after replacing my HD DVR with a model that held four times less than the one they took away. I have to pay extra for the HD DVR service BTW. I called in to complain about the rate hike and their suggestion was that they could cut my bill by $10 a month if I could live with half the Internet speed. They didn't seem to interested then in keeping me around. So I signed up with CenturyLink, I am actually getting a faster connection than I had. The bundled satellite TV provided an HD DVR (at no extra cost) with the ability to record and watch twice as many shows simultaneously and five times the storage capacity and the option to attach my own USB external hard drive to double it again. There's the occasional satellite signal dropout but not really too bad at all. The local Telco DSL is serving me well. The bottom line is more service and features for HALF THE COST! Before the big brouhaha about the AOL guy trying to cancel service, I read where Comcast was bragging to the shareholders in their annual report about how much they had cut back on home service calls and how much they had increased the average bill. Comcast is all about less service for ever increasing fees. My advice to all of you: Just dump Comcast.

Long lines here too

[sjbe]

Is the line shorter in other towns?

No. Last time I visited Comcast to get some gear there were about 30 people in line and I waited about an hour, not counting driving time to get to the one service center which is about 25 miles from my house. They announced loudly that if we were just dropping off gear that we could put it in their drop off big (a cardboard box) which nobody believed. Then there was no way to prove that you had dropped it off.

Fortunately my dealings with Comcast have been minimal and the service has been largely reliable for my needs. TV is WAY overpriced for what you get but the internet service isn't too bad as long as you don't need to deal with support too much.

Re:Every single day

[mrchaotica]

Working to obsolete that system.

That's not an action; that's hand-wavy bullshit. Try again, and be more specific this time.

Bullet-Proof Glass

[WheezyJoe]

Every cable company office I've ever been in - every single one - all the employees are behind bullet proof glass that would make a bank teller envious.

My experience also. Would mod up if I had mod points. Everywhere I've lived, returning a cable box was like visiting a prison. Desolate white-washed cinderblock waiting rooms with strange-smelling air in a run-down part of town. The security glass makes you think you're looking out from a decompression chamber. The steel drawer you put your equipment in can take your arm clean off.

What could have happened in these places to inspire this much security? I wanna know!

Re:Bullet-Proof Glass

[SlashdotOgre]

Must be location dependent. My closest Comcast location (now Concord, CA) has no glass at all -- completely open air although it does have cameras. I try to avoid it as much as possible as it's near some relatively low-income areas and is often filled with people who pay their bills in person (in cash/cashiers' check I would assume) so the lines are always 30 mins to an hour. I've also been to their Livermore, CA & Walnut Creek, CA (now closed) office and also didn't see any barriers. I will say that for the most part, banks in these areas don't use glass barriers either, but are much more secure. I'm sure things are different in lower income areas like Richmond, Oakland, Compton, etc.

Similar experience with Rogers yesterday

[aclarke]

I needed to find out when a wireless contract ends. Of course they don't seem to show this anywhere on the customer service web portal or on the bill. So, I tried their live chat system. The chat basically went something like this:

Me: I'd like to know when this contract ends.
Rogers: Why would you like to know that?
Me: I'm not interested in going through a dog and pony retentions script rigamarole to qualify why I want to know the answer to the question. When you answer my question, I'll answer yours.
Rogers: I'm sorry, I can't tell you without you giving me a reason why you want to know.
Me (annoyed, so I typed the first thing that entered my head): I'm moving to Albania.
Rogers: I can't give you your contract expiration date. You need to call xxx or go into a store.

Why do these companies hate their customers so much? I had to qualify why I wanted to know in order to even get an answer that she wasn't allowed to answer me? WTF?

Check this out!

[XB-70]

Dial: 1-800-Go2-Hell and you'll a direct line to Comcast's tech support - 'cause that's what they are living in - the poor bastards.

Re:Every single day

[severn2j]

I think that might be against Youtube TOS.

There's always Faebook.

Comcast isn't exceptional

[bbsalem]

This sounds to me like the trend in much of business and at root cause is the digital revolution itself. It enabled investors to micromanage the fortunes of companies who routinely cut customer service to please the markets. They also pressure the companies to show very short-term return on investment and completely forget the service they claim to provide.

There needs to be something like a purge of business and investment in the world which restores confidence in the products and services a company provides to its paying customers, not just its financial condition. I think this state of affairs is the fault of the world banking and finance system and the poor ethical examples set in markets and management and taught in business schools around the world. I would like to see the MBA and economics degrees depreciated against degrees in history and politics supported by training in ethics. A collapse of the current economic order and the resulting conflagration could have that effect at the cost of millions of lives, we have been down that road before, and to go down that road seems to be ingrained in the human condition that relies on short-term thinking and elitism. Classical education was supposed to address the human failings, but it was only for elites. Now, pragmatism has tainted the quality of people's training so that basic human decency is not taught. The behavior of Comcast agents is a moral failure in a place where leaders do not set an example and where people mistake ethics for moral authoritarians. That is why members of the clergy are often more prone to moral lapses than even business people, who already have loose principles.

Re:Every single day

[Sciath]

That's a joke right? Contacting elected officials about concerns just gets you generic form letters thanking you for your comments. But every letter reads nearly identical no matter what you contacted them about. In other words, their responses usually read like horoscopes. Could apply to anyone or anything. You can tell that your comments never even got to the representative but was screened by some kissass wannabe politician (aide) because none of the specific concerns in the letter were even addressed. Now, you might say that elected official should not be reelected. Problem is convincing a majority of your constituents of that but their too busy screwing their friend's girlfriend, dreaming about being "fast and furious", where and when they're going to get their next bag of weed, watching American ninja, checking how fast they can drive from one side of town to the other, holding drinking and hotdog eating contests for a moment of glory, playing WOW, or being an asswipe in the favorite bar, etc. Americans don't care about politics anymore. They're more interested in scheming how their going to survive by getting over on the next guy. The government is too dysfunctional and no one cares anymore. It's a sinking ship and everyone knows it. So America is now the land of the hyenas. They make a lot of noise but can't see themselves engaged enough to really do anything about change.

Re: Every single day

[Sciath]

That's sarcasm right? You can't get enough Americans together on a large enough scale to do anything that isn't preferenced upon individual self-interest.

Let's see if it is effective

[beastofburdon]

After thousands of people "contact" their government representatives, contact is in quotes because you will not actually gain any direct contact (not even direct email), and these companies contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to their election campaigns we will wait and see who they side with.

I will bet on the money winning every time.