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.)

Comments

Bloody Innovative

[skegg]

Disgusting, but very innovative way to generate a reality-distortion field around their true customer service.

Re:Bloody Innovative

[Anonymous Coward]

The airlines are way ahead of Comcast. They've maintained lists of important people they want to keep happy since time immemorial. Their systems automatically flag VIPs' reservations so employees know to give influential people special treatment.

Slashdot protip: If you want airlines to stop treating you like an animal, change your name to a famous person's name.

Re:Bloody Innovative

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Notably Hollywood people, lest one appear on a talk show and casually drop the terrible service they received on airline X, costing the company millions.

There was a pregnant woman in Detroit who, while boarding a plane, was shoved violently aside by such an airline goon, striving to get to the Hollywood person aboard already to serve them. As it turns out, the pregnant woman happened to be a columnist for the Detroit Free Press.

It didn't go so well for the airline.

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume that every Comcast customer is personal friends with a Comcast employee? Why these cards are given to low ranking pawns I have no idea, but discrimination against customers based on their perceive influence should not be a surprising behavior from a company operating in an industry that is prone to "natural monopolies"(in a regulatory environment that hasn't taken significant anti-trust action since the 1990s).

Re:Ob XKCD

[ihtoit]

Andrews & Arnold Ltd (also known as AAISP) is an Internet service provider based in Bracknell in the United Kingdom founded in 1997 and launched in 1998, primarily serving businesses and "technical" home users.

In 2009 the company was judged the best niche provider in the Thinkbroadband Customer Service Awards, based on customer ratings and again in 2010.

The company's owner, Adrian Kennard (RevK), stated in a blog post that as of October 2010 the company is "XKCD/806" compliant, referring to XKCD comic number 806. This means that technical support callers who say the code word "shibboleet" will be transferred to a technical support representative who knows at least two programming languages, and presumably can offer more useful advice than a standard tech support script.
Andrews & Arnold is one of the rare ISPs in the United Kingdom to provide IPv6 to home customers, for free.

Andrews & Arnold are strong advocates of not censoring Internet connections. Adrian Kennard has several blog postings discussing why Internet censorship as discussed in the UK is not workable, providing background for AAISP's decision.

I Read it on the IntardWebz....

[jvp]

...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.

Re:I Read it on the IntardWebz....

[NicBenjamin]

If used properly they should probably be given to newish customers who have a difficult problem the front-line support guys will need to escalate to Tier 2 anyway. But these ones were being handed out to important people solely because those people are important, so I'd say they're by definition being used for "bribery purposes."

The bribe here isn't in the fact that Rep. Jackass and Sen. Blowhard have actually been given something great normal people don't have access to, it's that Jackass and Blowhard think they've been given access to something great normal people don't have. That's a hell of an ego boost, and it'll make those two guys a lot more sympathetic to the guy who handed them the card. In many ways it's the ideal bribe -- in monetary terms it's worth virtually nothing (maybe $10), but it's recipients probably think it's worth a lot because they think it will allow them to totally bypass the most hated customer service system in the country.

To hide the bad service regular people get?

[Roodvlees]

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.