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Comcast Employees Change Customer Names To 'Dummy' and Other Insults
An anonymous reader writes: According to customer bills and screenshots submitted to and reported by blogger Chris Elliot at BoardingArea, Comcast employees have repeatedly changed the names of customers to insults like "dummy," "w***e," "a*****e," and "b***h." Elliott notes although reasons and consequences for this behavior are unknown, "one thing is clear: At least one person, and maybe more than one person, really doesn't like Comcast's customers. Enough to put it in writing. Repeatedly." Comcast has apologized and is looking at ways to prevent it from happening in the future.
What is a w***e ?
white
Is Comcast a real company, or just an Onion-like parody of one?
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
I wonder if anyone has looked into which region this might be happening in.
Comcast has undergone some significant growing pains since, while in theory they are one big company, in reality they have a maze of poorly connected systems left over from the hundreds of smaller ISPs and cable providers they bought up over the last decade or two. Some of these systems have better controls (and auditing) on them than others, and each absorbed company has its own corporate culture and oversight.
... I'd give them pet names. Like "Mr Muggles" or "smeegle"... just calling people ahole... come on. That's what kids say their name is in RPGs when they don't care... which is always.
A more interesting subject... when you're playing a single player RPG do you ever care what your name is? I mean... half the time I put in nonsense names but it is never meaningful. I might as well be entering in "asshole"...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I would like to suggest that the lower level employees are merely aping the culture of management. We have a global epidemic of bad corporate manners and of course, occasionally evidence of these bad manners will leak out. All of this can be chronicled back to when they bifurcated the client base into "customers" and "consumers". Customers get helped, consumers get slapped around, called names, and abused. Just sayin'''
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
dummy
whore
asshole
bitch
Serious libertarianish social conservative here...
Anyone who thinks there exists more than a Potemkin Village level of competition in this industry is either an idiot or a liar. Exhibit A? You're looking right at it in TFA. In a modestly competitive market, stories like this would get Comcast eaten alive.
If I were a major executive at Verizon, I'd see if we could find these people and if they're anywhere near FiOS. Why? Because I'd order the construction crews to build out to their neighborhoods and then offer them two years of free service just as a publicity stunt to show how much more Verizon cares about its customers than Comcast.
This would get you fired once caught. At least at the Beaverton, OR call center I worked at.
Now why would a bottom tier employee do something like this? Probably because management treats you like crap, corporate wants numbers and management is there to make sure you are on the phone with as little time between calls as possible (you are timed on everything...). They want you to take as many calls as you can by making them quick. They want you to suck up to customers too. On the other hand, they don't want you to give customers a god damn dime.
The customers that have this stuff written about them? Odds are that they're a problem customer that calls frequently. You get those. People who demand moon from you. Sometimes they believe that you have the power to set company policy when in fact we have the least power in the entire organization (our bathroom break times/frequency were monitored). People that believe you have a personal stake in making their connection suck and actually fixing it is the last thing you want to do. It's quite the opposite, we want to fix the problem with a smile on both ends and have a pleasant conversation then move on to the next nice person. Being screamed at actually makes our job loathsome. People who refuse to help you in any way when trying to troubleshoot an issue. People who call you a liar when it's obviously a problem on their side. People who think you're in India and berate you for being a stupid foreigner and treat you with zero respect. Doctors and lawyers are the worst in that arena, even if they know you're American they feel that they know more than you do about your job and you're some shiftless loser lackey barely able to answer a phone. The doctors like this even demand you call them "Dr. SoAndSo" because that is their title. The power trippers like to scream at you and tell you that you're losing them hundreds of dollars per hour, but they refuse to upgrade to $99/mo. business class service where we could have sent a technician out 24/7. Nope, saving hudreds of dollars per hour isn't worth tens of dollars per month more on a billing statement.
Here is some more info: The Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger May Not Happen
seriously, this is a news story, use the fucking words they fucking wrote you fucking fucks. worse yet, they were used in quotes meaning it's literally a misquote.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Comcast has apologized and is looking at ways to prevent it from happening in the future.
How about if Comcast offers better customer service, so their customers don't get so angry? Given how bad their customer service is today, "better" is really low-hanging fruit.
Anyone who explodes here in rage probably never worked in support. You get your share of assholes. Actually, you get more than your share of assholes. Because you are in the mind of some people the source and reason of everything that ever befouled them. If you treat the customer support badly, don't expect good service. Your 5 bucks a month are not paying his paycheck, your call is not his reason to exist and you are essentially of no particular interest to said customer service rep. He's there to HELP you. With a problem that may or may not be caused by you, but one that absolutely certainly was not caused by him or her.
I can only guess what happened here. My guess is that Comcast suits forced support to be nice to even the most obnoxious waste of oxygen calling, and this is their only outlet. If you ask me, a very, very tame reaction. I've seen people actually resort to physical violence.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you cut the Comcast cord, then you're on Exede satellite with its 10 GB/mo quota.
this happens at every call center. They're high stress jobs with low pay. This kind of thing happens. I knew a project where the entire case was 75% ID-10T tickets. You don't usually even get the chance to fire the people. They're doing this stuff because their lives are a mess, they can't reliable get to work on time, and they know they've only got a little time left before they get fired for their next tardy.
A better question is why the hell would anyone care? There is no way in hell this has any bearing on Comcast's merger plans.
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Anyone who explodes here in rage probably never worked in support. You get your share of assholes. Actually, you get more than your share of assholes.
Do you know there are systems that listen to customers on hold, and if they seem angry, puts them to the front of the queue?
People in support encourage that behavior, reward it, by doing things for people when they get angry. They reward anger, even when not talking to anyone! As a result, people pretend to be angry. I know a guy, who, I've never seen get angry ever.......but when he called support once, I saw him pretend to be angry. Because that gets results.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Last time I called them to update my expiring credit card number, I didn't even have to talk to a human being. It was all handled by a computer that was easy to understand, quick and didn't try to upsell me on any Comcast bullshit in the process. I gotta say I like Comcast a lot more when I don't have to talk to anyone there.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Because you are in the mind of some people the source and reason of everything that ever befouled them. If you treat the customer support badly, don't expect good service.
"Hi, I'm the lowest-level support guy, I've got this menu I have to go down before I give up and connect you to someone who understands your problem."
"Let's start. Unplug the modem, wait 60 seconds, and plug it back in. Does that solve your problem?"
(Several steps later)
"Okay, now unplug the ethernet cable from the modem and computer, switch it end-for-end, and plug it back in again. Does that solve your problem?(*)"
This is what I have to go through before I can talk to someone about their system bouncing an E-mail I sent.
Your 5 bucks a month are not paying his paycheck, your call is not his reason to exist and you are essentially of no particular interest to said customer service rep. He's there to HELP you. With a problem that may or may not be caused by you, but one that absolutely certainly was not caused by him or her.
It's a psychology thing. When you need to give someone instructions or ask for help or whatever, you have to communicate the situation and what you want done.
I've never had a problem with level 2 support, they understand the problem, ask some pertinent questions ("but you can otherwise access the internet OK, yes?") and fix the problem.
If the level 1 person continually misunderstands what you are describing, misdiagnoses the problem, or stubbornly avoids dealing with your problem getting angry is a natural consequence. They are wasting your time, and doing it on purpose.
It's OK to get angry at stupid, stubborn people.
(*) Not making this up. An actual Comcast level-1 support request.
Dodged that bullet.
I had my own run-in with Comcast support recently.
We're a customer of theirs. And something is screwed up in their phone tree such that I *always* get disconnected when calling any of their #s, right before getting transferred to a live human. Even if a rep was transferring me, as soon as my call was associated to my account, my call would get dropped when being transferred. Our business depends on internet, so this is more than just an annoyance.
I constantly pleaded for help via Twitter and email for ~2mo before I convinced someone to contact me. The support person I talked to was probably the worst support I've ever had. She acknowledged that it was a "known issue", but that there was no timeline for a solution and no way to provide me with status updates.
More surprisingly, she informed me me that some online chat option was sufficient for getting Concast assistance when I needed it. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to use online chat if our business internet connection goes down. I told her that wasn't an adequate solution. She told me that it was. I told her I wanted to speak to her manager. She refused ("I can't put anyone else on the call"). All the while, I heard her "gaming" the support notes system ("Okay, let me just record this.. I informed the customer of the chat option, and the customer opted not to use it").
Think about this. We're a somewhat large customer, and their team isn't the least concerned that I have no method to contact them at all.
We'd switch to another provider if one was available. And I'd at least dismiss it as a fluke if it wasn't so fitting with all the other stories out there.
There's a real problem at Comcast.
It seems improbable that a 'Enterprise' Customer Relationship Management system that Comcast must be using wouldn't have a detailed history on account changes, such as who submitted a name change. There should be no mystery as to who is changed the names.
Unless someone has hacked in to the underlying database and is bypassing the business logic, in which case Comcast has a serious problem on their hands.
Tech goons are tech goons, and you better believe it, if you're any of these colorful adjectives, they're going to toss it around to each other for a chuckle.
What do you expect? Employees always make fun of ***** customers. It's just a fact of life. I know Comcast in general sucks at customer support, but face it folks. I'd be willing bet most tech support call centers, regardless of the product they're supporting pass around stories with lots of colorful adjectives about you.
Sticking it in your internal support database is a little crass and over the top perhaps, but.. not surprised. When you're the worst customer support in American, all bets are off, go the extra mile to alienate the people paying you.
Comcast needs to move most if not all of there contractors and sub contractors in house.
Sometimes (Often) you really do get a customer that is an a*****e. When doing an adjust or refund we have to put down a reason for it.
While I will agree wholeheartedly that some customers really are a-holes (I've run into quite a few myself) there is NEVER any excuse for behaving as if they are. You behave professionally and politely even if asking the customer to take their business elsewhere. Always. No exceptions. If they get threatening or abusive then you end the conversation or transfer it to someone whose pay grade justifies taking the abuse. But at all times you remain polite even when the customer doesn't deserve it and isn't being reasonable or nice. If you cannot do this then you should not be talking to customers.
A few times corporate called us asking why the paperwork said "Customer is an asshole" Well, which part of that don't you understand? It was later changed to "Code 10"
Customer being a jerk is never a "reason" to give a discount. You either give a discount because you need/want their business or you don't give a discount and let the customer do whatever they feel is appropriate. Management can set whatever guidelines they want. I have *increased* the amount charged to a customer because they were not being nice but I would never give a discount they were not otherwise entitled to just because they were a jerk. That said, there does need to be a way to signal to others in the company that a particular customer is problematic. I've fired customers because they were not nice to people who worked for me. I've also fired people who worked for me who were unprofessional towards customers.
Having worked Tech Support for a dial-up ISP years ago, I can attest to the "100 idiots for every intelligent person" problem. You call and believe the CS rep to be an idiot, but you need to understand that the CS rep probably thinks the same about you. Don't get me wrong, in my experience, most CS reps *are* idiots. But having worked as one briefly, most customers are too.
We'd switch to another provider if one was available
There is your problem. They have you by the short curlys and they know it. Doesn't make it right but customers without options tend to get abused.
What I would do after a conversation like that is take it to your Public Utilities Commission if possible. That usually gets their attention. Another option is to call and ask for their legal department (after consulting your own) after very completely documenting what has gone on. That also tends to focus their attention. You also have the option of filing a lawsuit if their legal department won't return your calls. You don't have to actually do anything with it but I can almost guarantee it will get a response.
Actually, Comcast already merged with AT&T Broadband, while the rest of AT&T went bankrupt piece by piece. The current AT&T is really what SBC used to be.
I agree w/ you, but how exactly do you 'fire' customers? Refusing to sell them the product/service in question?
Just just either ask them politely to take their business elsewhere or you charge them a rate so high that it will accomplish the same end. If you have control over pricing you can give them a "go away quote" which basically charges a ridiculous rate. If they pay, fine but then at least you are being compensated adequately. We have a pain in the ass customer at my business and we simply keep raising rates on them to compensate us for the time we have to spend. Sometimes though no amount of money is worth the problems some customers cause.
I have on two occasions however told a customer in no uncertain terms that due to their behavior we no longer cared to do business with them. One was sexually harassing one of my employees and on the other occasion they had someone who simply was rude well above and beyond what his business was worth to us.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
But aside of that, these crib sheet supporters exist for a reason. Their existence does not only serve the purpose to waste your time, because that could be accomplished even cheaper than the support monkeys are. By keeping you in the holding loop.
No, the reason is that these utterly and absolutely moronic questions they ask that make you wonder whether they think your IQ measures in the single digits actually solve most tech support problems. Yes, people ARE that stupid. And no, I'm not talking about the supporters here.
The "solutions" these sheets offer that make you wonder whether the support thinks you're unable to tie your own laces without a coach and a personal assistant DO solve the problems most idiots calling them have.
Don't blame support. Blame the idiots who want tha intarwebz but don't want to be bothered with knowing anything about those funny boxes with the blinkenlights next to their computer... or what do you call that thing where my Farmville is shown?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.