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Comcast's Lobbyists Hand Out VIP Cards To Skip the Customer Service Wait
An anonymous reader writes: A lengthy story about how David Gregory lost his job hosting Meet the Press holds an interesting tidbit: Comcast's team of lobbyists regularly hands out VIP cards to influential (and influence-able) people in Washington that lets them bypass normal customer service and fast-track their support problems. "Its government-affairs team carried around 'We'll make it right' cards stamped with 'priority assistance' codes for fast-tracking help and handed them out to congressional staffers, journalists, and other influential Washingtonians who complained about their service.
A Comcast spokeswoman says this practice isn't exclusive to DC; every Comcast employee receives the cards, which they can distribute to any customer with cable or internet trouble. Nevertheless, efforts like this one have surely helped Comcast boost its standing inside the Beltway and improve its chances of winning regulatory approval for its next big conquest: merging with the second-largest cable provider in the country, Time Warner Cable." (The David Gregory article is worth a look on it's own, too; it shows how Comcast's purchase of NBC has led to interference in NBC's attempts at real journalism.)
So, according to the story, 'every employee' receives the cards, for distribution to 'any customer with cable or internet trouble'. Do remind me, then, of what advantage these cards have over the ordinary support apparatus (allegedly) handling customers who are having issues?
Either the story is BS, and the cards are in fact better than being stuck in phone-drone hell; or the cards are BS, and nothing more than an informational tool to see what comcast employee ended up referring you to the same quagmire that everyone wanders through. Decisions, decisions.
And it's not like NBC killed the show. They just changed hosts.
I don't see how that amounts to Comcast wrecking NBC's ability to do real news.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Disgusting, but very innovative way to generate a reality-distortion field around their true customer service.
I hope the secret code is 'shibboleet'.
John
As a consultant you get a couple of free paid solution cards every quarter if you ask for them and regular employees could if they know who to ask. Support cards are common with all big lumbering evil companies and is actually pretty non-evil. Now the fact they have a special line to provide 'better' service is kind of evil, but having called them about 5 times with a 20+minute wait and incredibly painful slow explanations of the obvious to correct billing with escalations and 2 times to cancel with escalations. It makes sense that they have a team that actually helps instead of trying to get you to accept being over billed or not to cancel.
You get service if you have a card, otherwise you are to use the oh-so-helpful forums.
Oh wait, you have to have working internet before you can get there! Better hope you have a card!
He was never prosecuted, because he is anti-gun. However, he possessed a high capacity magazine in DC. Doing it on TV he should have been arrested immediately after and maybe allowed to negotiate a low jail term and fine. However, he was never even charged much less prosecuted. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/08/david-gregory-prosecution-magazine-clip-angry-response_n_2648295.html.
The cards may also be used to fast track money from Comcast's other customers straight into the pockets of the politician.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Ben Dover
Has anyone gotten a card that keeps your internet connection running without interruptions and at advertised capacity? I'd also like a card that makes them lower their prices to the level that they would be at if they weren't selling a monopoly utility. Thanks~~
...and therefore, it must be true.
Yes, every employee is given these cards, but no they do nothing to "fast track" support. What they do is help a customer get more help and final resolution to issues that they typical tier 1 and 2 tech support can't help with. It is an admission that their tech support sucks, but it's not some special pass to get a customer something they don't otherwise deserve. Nor are they used for bribery purposes.
Basically, the original story is full of shit. But that's not terribly surprising around here, sometimes.
For the record, I'm a former Comcast employee and am not in any way defending their practices.
Jason Van Patten
Important people get preferential treatment all the time. I've got a nice chunk of change stored at my bank. Ever since I put it there, my customer service calls have been diverted directly to Executive Customer Service. I don't even have to do anything. My phone number is linked to my account so my calls go straight there, picked up by Frank or Veronica in Texas before the third ring. I rarely need to call them but it's nice not to sit in a queue like a schmuck listening to hold music warble in and out.
And what's the deal with hold music? Why is it always distorted and fading in and out? Shouldn't we be able to fix that by now?
So they know their service is crappy. But instead of improving it, which would require actual work, they hide it from the people who make decisions. Every person that accepts one of these cards and does not put it online for public use is corrupt. But I guess being corrupt is normal in the US.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
The story is BS.
Every employee at Comcast gets 3 cards a year.
The idea is that if you see or hear someone who's having a problem, you can give them a card and they get a better experience.
The number on the card is a single use number. Thus, once used, it's tied to a specific account/issue, and can never be used again.
Second, it's only good for Residential services (Business services have separate support numbers and staff)
Third, it only bypasses Tier 1 customer support (newly hired users, who are still trying to figure out all the tools, and the problems,; once you're competent enough on enough systems, you can be promoted to Tier 2.)
Thus, if you want the same situation, call in to comcast, and immediate ask to speak to their supervision or a Tier 2 rep; or simply BS that your call was dropped while the issue was being escalated, etc.
Fourth, only a small number of employees actually use the cards. There was a drive to try to convince staff to jus give them out to anybody with a problem; even to friends of friends, or to strangers on the train talking about comcast. Just get them out there.
As the cards are basically tied into the Residential Support system, it doesn't help with Retentions, Service Cancellation, or other non Technical issues with your service. Not sure about billing.
I know when I was at Comcast, I didn't use my cards on friends. Someone complained on twitter about their comcast service, I gave them one of my cards. I gave one to a women I met on a flight; and the last I just lost.
Friends I would direct to call and tell them which keywords to use about their problem so that custrep can find the issue and fix it. (since they're basicaly just using a search engine to try to find out which of the 100,000s of issues your symtoms could match to; which leads to basically hundreds of questions to try to narrow it down, if they haven't experienced your particual problem before)
Verizon in NYC had a similar help line escalation.
When I moved to a new apartment, and switched my phone, it didn't work and they couldn't get it working for a month. (Probably because they were trying to get rid of their land lines in favor of fiber optic, so they let their twisted pair maintenance crew decline.)
I was dealing with the usual tech support hell (on hold for half an hour, transferred call and dropped, supervisors who promised to return my call and never did, etc.).
Finally I called somebody by mistake in Staten Island who gave me the number of the "President's hot line". I called them up, got somebody who was actually helpful, made some calls for me, and got it working again. (Apparently their digital switches were malprogrammed. Give me the old solenoids back.)
A while later I was having trouble again so I called the President's hot line again. It wasn't working any more.
(Pro tip: When I really got fed up, I called my state assemblyman, Dick Gottfried, on the theory that Verizon is regulated by and accountable to the State. One of his staffers called Verizon, and straightened it out, even though it was Friday evening before the weekend.
So maybe that's the kind of thing that was going on with Comcast. If the service is federally regulated, your congressman should be able to call them up in your behalf and hold them accountable. And they can do it for themselves. I don't think it's outrageous for a politician to get that favor as long as they use it for their constituents too.)
* * *
I like copper wire. So sue me.
Hi, former Comcast support representative here.
Those cards do nothing, they're just placebos.
You dial the support number and punch in the code, and the switch drops you right into the same queue with everyone else.
At the call center we called them "idiot cards" because you'd have to be one to think they were any benefit to you.
We usually handed them out ironically to the least deserving customers.
We need to see if there is any difference between the cards that are given to regular workers to hand out and the cards that the government-affairs team hands out. No difference, no problem. Difference, problem.
Passionately Indifferent
To me it looks like politics as usual and just proves neither Democrat's or Republican's have a exclusive on being in the pockets of big business. Anyone who is dumb enough to actually think government changes because their political party favorite is in office is not looking at what just happened with the last recession.
Wall Street and banks totally crushed and yet they are all doing fine today. Even Fannie and Freddie talk about another teaser low down payment again which brought us into the last housing bubble. Gee, do we ever learn? Yet, has anyone in government even made a real effort to help main street? Nope, and the reason is simple. Main street does not have lobbyists or special interest groups feeding the politicians and most politicians go into offices not to service the public. But to create a elitist stature while in office to live happily ever after. The true example of this is simply that government is broken except when business wants something.
Comcast wants to grow, and so while government makes them jump through a few hoops, they eventually will get what they want. Not, for the benefit of consumers as many politicians will argue. But at the benefit of business of which politicians are indebted too.
This also makes this community look really uninformed. The first sight of anything about Comcast and people just start saying random bullshit. Now when the lobbyists are presented with material that's anti Time Warner/Comcast merger, they just say, "see look, they're all emotional knee-jerks".
Many companies do this kind of thing, which leads me to a question for you. Are you sure there wasn't a separate tier, one that not every employee got cards for? My own company does this to us...we outsourced our IT a few years back, and now if you call and tell them you're from a certain location, you get your hand held, and a blow job, while your machine is fixed.
Just another day in Paradise
There's no such thing as "too soon" for a joke, but you can bet your ass there's such a thing as "too shit".
Everyone has them. And anyone can receive them. A friend got one after he had 3 technicians come to his house to diagnose a weak TV signal. My company got one after our first call for a modem that was dropping packets. There's no conspiracy here. It's actually Comcast trying to do something nice.
The cards are not handed out to EVERY Comcast employee. I used to be one, my wife is one and I know several. Never seen a card.
Perception counts a lot in politics. The big deal is IF the Comcast lobby staff handed out more than the "3 cards a year" with intent to influence. Said another way Comcast is calling the majority of it's customers peons.
Would one of these cards fix my billing errors? We just changed our service to a better & cheaper plan holding the "change to another provider club" over their head. It helps a little but we still pay too much IMO. They came in with the new X1 boxes with a new DVR & gateway & all installed by a typical cable guy. Internet lasted a few hours & started failing. I figured it was a bad box, went to a center & changed it out to a non-X1 gateway & it worked. 6 days later a new tech comes & adds a amplifier so the X1 box would work. Long story longer, they charged us for the installation & service call.
After a long talk with the CS guy, they promise to fix it on the next statement. Yeah OK, yep heard that before. Fucking Comcrap! My very long history of problems with them could fill a notebook. My current alternative is Uverse.... oh god no.
The new X1 UI? Comcrap finally updated their UI that was pretty much the same since the 1980s. It's shit, nothing like intuitive, but it's an improvement. I don't know who they get to design these things but they might wanna run it by some focus groups now & then to see how usable it is.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Wow, where do I get one of those cards?
My machine would constantly be broken. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Monkeyboy(David Gregory) was a horrible host of Meet the Press. Chuck Todd isn't an improvement. The entire show is just a group handjob.
I honestly don't see your clarification as any better. If people are encouraged to hand those cards out sort of as a perk for knowing someone who works there, what exactly is that saying about your company's Tier 1 service? If not having to go through that layer is a special favor, then clearly even the company is acknowledging that it is an unpleasant experience for the poor sucke--er--customers stuck using it.
You wouldn't like it. Sometimes the guys don't shave. :D
[John]
Shit better not happen!
The article says the FCC and FTC are reviewing the proposed merger to decide what to do.
What's to review?
Just say no.
ps, The card thing is a good story, because it amplifies the idea that there is a disconnect between inside and outside the beltway.
Even if the card story is a hoax, the disconnect is pretty real.
Hopefully, the FCC and FTC will be a little more connected with their decision.
It's really hard to see how the merger can be a good thing.
So what you're saying is that an ISP is creating a "fast lane". I'm sure that this is for everyone's benefit, and will continue to encourage them to increase their overall support capacity while ignoring the monetization/influence effects it might have.
The entire premise is wrong. Why should some customers have a secret handshake that grants them reasonable levels of customer service? Why can't everyone get this level of service? Or, more to the point, why doesn't everyone get this level of service?
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We shouldn't have been trusting NBC journalism when GE owned them. Why start now?
You assume that there is only one type of card. Perhaps certain employees get a different type of card, to be given only to political influencers.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
In the UK, the main telco (BT) has truly hopeless customer service (call centres on the other side of the world, usual run around). But... If you mail a complaint to the CEO, it skips the whole process and gets you the Executive Level Complaints team - totally separate from normal customer service, with more power and immediate results. But the normal customer service path will NEVER pass you on to these people - only complaining to the CEO directly does it. Having a friend at a national paper helps too (the criteria for getting that level of service effectively includes "chance of really bad PR if we don't sort it out").
This also makes this community look really uninformed. The first sight of anything about Comcast and people just start saying random bullshit.
It's my understanding - I heard this from a guy that had a roommate who worked in a Comcast call center - that once a week, they have a "motivational" meeting where fresh babies are sacrificed and eaten.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
>why doesn't everyone get this level of service
Comcast would have to spend more on tech support so they'd make less money and NOW WE CAN'T HAVE THAT, CAN WE?
Are you really that naive?
Or, more to the point, why doesn't everyone get this level of service?
Not to defend Comcast here, because they do have shitty customer service generally. But the state of customer service is what it is because people generally aren't willing to pay for more. Better service = hiring more reps and/or building better customer service tools = more costs which will be passed on to the customer. Sure, they could be Good Guys and decide to spend more on customer care and not increase your bill to do it - but honestly what consumer services company out there ever does that?
You can get better customer service... you just have to pay for it. Try signing up for a business class service, and you'll see a world of difference. But, again, you have to be willing to pay for it. It's just like with airlines - everyone complains about the crappy seats and paying for soda. But you can get nice seats and free booze on the plane... but you have to pay for a first class ticket. The vast majority of us (myself included) say we want better service but we refuse to put our money where our mouths are and pay for it.
"95% of all Slashdot
As Employees, we get mixed CS support.
Anything dealing with services cannot be handled by customer support, and must be routed through your Department's Gratis Services.
If there's anything wrong-wrong with it, at the Engineering level, you send emails to the appropriate Engineering team to have them take a look.
At the average-worker level, you can usually create your own ticket for escalation.
If you don't have access; you call CS, and they usually escalate it to Tier 2.
Either way, Employee's don't often use the Make It Right cards.
To reiterate Roodvlees' point, the giving of the cards and the receiving of the cards is corruption. It may not be obvious what the dollar value is immediately, but if you count up the time saved by the politically-connected recipients when they get expedited service, then it almost certainly would exceed Federal standards for gifts.
Tier one service is adequate for 70-80% of the people calling in.
of the above calls, the issue is resolved in one call for 95% of the time.
It's the deeper problems that require Engineering Insight, or learning customer state, or escalating to what's effectively Tier 5 support, to escalate to Engineers that cause issues. (tier 2 and above get logged; and increase in weight; usually driving bug-fixes and Engineering time)
The issue is more that no-one has figureud out a way to actually enable good Customer Support.
This is an ongoing problem and there is no good solution in the wild yet.
State 1: There are only a few visible symptoms, and end-customers usually have no idea what's going on.
State 2: There are literally hundreds of systems internally that affect the customer
State 3: For these 10-20 symptoms, there are 100,000s of possible problems.
Problem 1: Hiring hundreds of call centre workers for $10/hr, many of whom have little technical background.
Problem 2: Trying to teach these people everything about Engineering, IT, Infrastructure, Systems Architecture, Hardware, Interaction issues, Software Service Issues, Billing Systems, Switching Systems, etc.... and not quit becasue they now know more than most Engineers.
PRoblem 3: Because Problem 2 never happens, how does the CS agent search for the solution for your particular problem?
You state symptom 1, 2, and 3.
CS does a search, there are 80,000 possible problems.
CS asks you a question to try to limit.
You perform, and answer.
CS enters that in, there are now 50,000 possible problems.
[repeat until there's a reasonable number]
This leads to Problem 4: Users lie, or misinterpret. If they answer any question wrong, or perform an action incorrectly and give a unknowningly false response, that just filtered out their actual problem, and their problem will never get resolved on that call.
Things like "reboot your modem" are good filters, as that eliminates thousands of possible issues if it causes no change. If you don't actually do this (depending on the problem, they would actually send reset signals, and then require you to reboot; many techincally competent people don't reboot when asked, and thus ) a problem which normally would be fixed with a reboot, isn't, simply because the end-user assumed becasue they rebooted before and it did nothing.
Now, if anyone can design a system that allows unskilled end-users, to communicate their issues, and allow unskilled CS workers to search and find the solution, that would make millions.
For people who ask "train them more" As a fully trained CS degree, Engineering degree, and Engineer at Comcast, I would say that I have no insight as to how hundreds of systems interact or data-relays function. Within my realm, there are thosands of things that can go wrong, thousands that should never happen (yet somehow do, possibly becaues of CS reps changing state on an account without realising the impact). I can fix many issues. But bceause I have this breadth of technical skill, understanding, and knowledge -- would I work CustSupport? No.
If you want better Customer Support, figure out how to make it enticing for highly skilled, trained engineers to work phone jobs; and enough of them to support millions of customers.
Comcast is all about not making exceptions; it complicates business and handling.
Top Engineering ands VPs are treated the same way as Call Center reps; at least when it comes to all the details of initial pay, vacation, benefits, cards, tools, etc.
Now, the Skilled staff get additional items added on, but these are hacked in.
To minimize internal costs, means getting everything onto the same systems, no special cases, and nothing un-audited.
In our division, I have seen, usually near end of year when VPs and Execs send out an email asking "Does anyone have any extra Make It Right cards?" ... employees are usually more than happy to forfeit their cards to someone higher-ranked.
Needless to say, I'm not discounting that the lobbying arm of the company has added benefits, and have access to much more influential tools.
But the Make It Right cards still relies on existing Customer Support infrastructure.
There's no room in that particular system to allow for any real exceptions to give preferencial/better service.
If you go to high in the support chain, your problem won't get solved because of triaging, and work-load, and now issues are being managed by Scrum and Project Managers; and thus you'll wait longer.
If you go too low in the support chain, they may not have the experience or know how of how do figure out your issue.
Hence the cards get you to tier 2. You bypass the easy-fixes (assuming you tried that once all ready), and thus Tier 2 can help you better and start assessing your issue.
If you use the card, and didn't go through Tier 1 first; you'll basically get the same quality of service as the Tier 2 rep needs to basically do all the tier 1 work with you now. Only difference is that the Tier 2 rep has more experience and may have dealt with your particular issue before (which is also the case with Tier 1), and can bypass some questions due to insight.
If I were a Comcast or Verizon etc employee, I'd keep the priority cards for myself to use when I have a problem. I doubt they'd give most of their employees enough codes to handle all their comms problems.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
And if you don't have any VIP cards, then you know what class you are in.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'm already paying $70 a month for a measly 12 Mbps. I should get decent customer service. Fortunately, there usually isn't a problem, but when there is Century Link is fucking useless at customer service. A couple of weeks ago, I had to reboot their modem 10 times within 24 hours. They swore up and down that there was no problem on their end. Okay, maybe it's the modem I suggested. Very reluctantly they finally agreed to ship me a new modem, but by the time it got to me everything was working fine. So, I'm convinced they fixed something on their end.
There's no way in hell I would go back to Comcast, but they would have set up a service call and/or shipped me a new modem without hesitation. The problem with Comcast though is you can expect to do that several times a year whereas Century Link has much less downtime. At least they do in my neighborhood.
And they also bumped my speed up a bit after the last outage. The last speed test I did was nearly 47 Mbps although I really don't notice a difference, but it is annoying to realize that they have the bandwidth available, but are just being stingy with it. There are plenty of idiots out there willing to pay more without realizing that the websites they are accessing can't pour out content at the speeds their internet service can handle.
Oh but they are haberdashers-- virtual haberdashers. With their service, one can acquire any number of hats from many online retailers. The core business, however, is to push their own line of quality fiber hats and caps with bands of various width. They even wrap it all up in nice little packets so transport is easier. The service is really top notch. When you synd a question, they acknowledge it promptly while keeping it in the proper frame and ensuring it is routed to the proper technician. They have rarely dropped any of my packets, even when long hauling it down to the local port. I've also been able to do a lot of networking while in their shop. Various people with popular rapport, are often there picking up their own packets or getting the biggest cap with the biggest band width available. I even met Princess Di there once. They suggested that she needed much faster transport and that she should avoid any kind of tunneling but due to her preferred discreet protocols, she declined their advice. Well, we see where that got her! Don't be like her, choose A&A Ltd TODAY!
So the blood orgy was friday's eh?
I eat fresh baby chickens every morning.
"But the state of customer service is what it is because people generally aren't willing to pay for more."
Even if they're willing to pay more: In most locations the choices are Comcast or Comcast.
That's no incentive to keep prices low OR to provide decent customer service. Monopolies naturally tend to "shaft the customer" attitudes.
The irony is that PUCs - setup to prevent that kind of issue - are aiding and abetting this kind of thing.