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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.)
Ob XKCD 806
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)