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America's Most-Hated ISP Is Now Hated By Fewer People (oregonlive.com)
"Comcast's customer service may actually be improving," writes an Oregon newspaper. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
In the second year of Comcast's broad customer service overhaul, complaints to Oregon cable regulators are down 25%. They've also declined 40% since 2014. Complaints are falling nationally, too, according to the highly regarded American Customer Satisfaction Index. Its most recent report showed a surge in Comcast subscriber satisfaction... Two years ago, Comcast made Oregon the test bed for its customer service push, responding both to disparaging headlines and the prospect of growing competition from other telecom companies and from streaming video services.
The company is adding Apple-style retail stores around the metro area and introduced innovations to help consumers understand what they're paying for and when technicians will arrive for service calls. It's rolling out new tools nationally to help them improve their home Wi-Fi, and diagnosing problems before customers call to complain... For example, if several subscribers in the same neighborhood use the company's tool for testing internet speeds, that triggers an alert at Comcast to look for a problem in the local network. The company redesigned its bills to make it clearer what customers subscribe to, and what it costs, in hopes of reducing confusion and calls. And Comcast has a robust social media presence, fielding complaints on Twitter.
The article points out that Comcast's satisfaction scores are still below-average for cable TV providers, "and well below the median among internet service providers. And that's a low bar -- the telecom sector is among the most complained about under ACSI's rankings." Their figures show that the only ISPs in America with a lower score for customer satisfaction are Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, and MediaCom.
The company is adding Apple-style retail stores around the metro area and introduced innovations to help consumers understand what they're paying for and when technicians will arrive for service calls. It's rolling out new tools nationally to help them improve their home Wi-Fi, and diagnosing problems before customers call to complain... For example, if several subscribers in the same neighborhood use the company's tool for testing internet speeds, that triggers an alert at Comcast to look for a problem in the local network. The company redesigned its bills to make it clearer what customers subscribe to, and what it costs, in hopes of reducing confusion and calls. And Comcast has a robust social media presence, fielding complaints on Twitter.
The article points out that Comcast's satisfaction scores are still below-average for cable TV providers, "and well below the median among internet service providers. And that's a low bar -- the telecom sector is among the most complained about under ACSI's rankings." Their figures show that the only ISPs in America with a lower score for customer satisfaction are Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, and MediaCom.
they're spending money on customer service right now so they can get approval to buy up their competitors. Normally Americans don't think once let alone twice on letting companies merge until there's no alternatives, but Comcast took it too far and pissed off too many people. Even they couldn't buy off enough politicians to pull that one off.
Just wait until they're done with their merger and they'll go right back to making everybody hate them and Europe and Canada can go back to gazing on us Americans and wondering why the hell we let things be so awful. Just as God and Nature intended.
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Like dog shit on your shoe is improving. It's still there, just getting better with age.
You can say Comcast is better than its abysmal dystopian past, and I'll agree. But I'm still getting the fuck away from them ASAP, Sonic doesn't play their games trying to undermine my rights to privacy and a free and open internet.
changed their name for the worse
Surprising. I've always been pleased with them. Few outages, and they regularly ratchet up their bandwidth and data caps.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
As a Comcast employee I can say that I've definitely noticed a complete change in culture since the entire company adopted the NetPromoter system (https://www.netpromoter.com/know/). In every meeting, there is an undeniable effort to ensure the "customer" has a seat at the table. No agenda here on my part... I don't question the validity of the concerns anyone of you may have. Just giving you a bit of an insider's viewpoint. I can honestly say that an internal, company-wide strategy to improve the customer experience feels very substantive this time around, in contrast to previous efforts I've witnessed. Take from that what you will. I don't speak on behalf of the company. But, on a personal level, I think we offer a pretty competitive product and hope that we continue to do better by our customers. They've been a pretty great company to work for.
So are they getting better, the other are getting worse, or everyone is just busy hating United right now?
Do the Comcast execs believe the result of this monetary investment is worth replicating?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
First and foremost, when a customer says they're down, try to ping other modems in the same neighborhood. If those are down too, roll a line truck. Do not claim it must be a problem at their house.
Re-emphasize in training, if any light other than network activity is flashing on the modem, it is not a problem with their computer, don't try to sell them on paid Windows support, especially when they say they don't have Windows.
If the customer is using words you are unfamiliar with such as traceroute or ping, just elevate the call to someone who understands the problem.
Use Visual Studio and a be a pro.
My mother is ignorant of all technology woes. When her Time Warner internet goes out she literally told me not to call on her behalf to address it, instead encouraging us to just wait for it to come back.
I spent two weeks with her after not seeing her for 5 years in the military. Every evening between 6pm and 10pm she cannot use streaming services and even her television gets wonky. She is in a new all fiber neighborhood but everyone has Time Warner. Everyone. It is the only provider out here.
The point to my story is that I went behind her back and called 4 separate times. Never resolved. I gave up. My mother has given up. Consider less calls out of fear of futility and no options besides (INSERT NO COMPETITION COMPANY HERE)
Consumerist stories about Comcast.
One of the stories: Comcast: 2014 worst company in America. In 2014, Comcast was selected as worse than Monsanto!
Comcast is disliked so much, the company is now calling itself Xfinity.
In my experience, it is Comcast policy to be abusive to customers. One of the many negative results is that Comcast employees abuse Comcast.
They simply speak more nicely these days than in the past - and try to ooze the want of solving anything that might be wrong. In the end - the agents are just as inept as before, the service is just as meh as before - so really they just covered up the stink with more deodorant.
Makes you sound a bit like a battered housewife. It literally costs them about $9/mo to offer you your service; and I'm guessing you're paying about $50-$70/mo (depending on your region and how much competition you have). At the very least for a 5-7x profit margin you'd think you wouldn't have data caps to worry about. I'm on Cox and I don't.
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Any study that does not have Windstream at the top of the list is suspect to me.
FEWER CUSTOMERS.
most the unhappies have left already and they aren't exactly bringing in new customers in droves.
the market and coverage is saturated. the only way comcast brings in significant amount of new customers is if they go build out in new markets and actually ::shudder:: compete with another wireline provider and steal their customers by providing superior product and service at ::thehorror:: lower prices.
plus, "cord cutting" happens with internet access, too, not just tv. people are doing without wireline internet just like they're doing without traditional subscription television.
absolutely NOT because they're actually providing better service. that's funny. fucking hilarious.
That's still a thing, right? I'm not sure we should assume Comcast is actually improving. People are just getting complacent with Comcast's poor service.
Outrage burnout is more likely.
Everyones been fucked by comcast for so long.
And have complained so much for nothing... They're giving up.
I bet their subscriber #'s are down too.
People have just given up hope and have stopped calling in to complain figuring that it'll get fixed sometime. They just don't have the energy to deal with the unhelp line anymore and that's why call volumes are down.
Depending where you land @ Comcast - ornery seems to be the right term....
I am suing in small claims court by them being totally obnoxious and their - well, probably legal staff - is cocky.
Will see what the outcome is.
Seems that corporations make rules right now (or since the beginning of time, just bigger and bigger now) to their advantage and the small guy/gal has to swallow and see how to deal with it.
The automatic process is, if there is no insight on their side, they rack up your bill and then forward it to a collection agency - in this case they are using http://www.windhampros.com/ - all those nice kiddies coming up on their site and how great they are... Hope they get burnt in my case.
Problem is that you have to be quick to file at court if Comcast does business in your county - once it's at the collection agency, far far away, forget about small claims court and deal with endless phone calls talking to people in maybe far away countries and try to cut a deal....
A basic question is, if a large corporation can even remotely be customer-friendly? Their rule set is purely profit maximization driven and somebody pays for that.
Complaints are down by 25% in areas where a competitor opened shop and claims they took a market share of about 30ish percent from Comcast...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just show a Comcast Tech dragging some grandmother out of her house, and the ratings will go right back to normal.
...they just gave up complaining because it seemed pointless, even though they still hate it with the burning passion of a thousand suns?
I've wanted to switch to Sonic for a while. However I haven't because of the terrible reviews on Yelp. Sonic used to get wonderful reviews on Yelp. But then the average ratings went down. Right now more than half (14/22) of the Yelp reviews on the first page, sorted by "Newest First", are 1-star (counting both reviews when someone sent in an updated review).
Those bad reviews seem genuine, not negative astro-turfing.
I hope Sonic can fix whatever the problems are. I'd like to switch to them.
Isn't this like saying the flaming pile of shit is no longer on fire? How about comparing themselves to someone who actually has good customer service? Like your local pizza place for example.
As much as it hurts me to say this, they are improving significantly. I'm still going to leave them as soon as decent competition moves into the area. They want customers to pay money but they still don't care about customers.
When I moved to Keene, New Hampshire last year I thought I was going to be stuck on a slow ADSL internet connection (as I'm too far from the central office for decent or faster service) or get stuck on a crappy cable internet service provider. Fortunately I did a little hunting and for a mere $3,000 (which is low- compared to the $17,000 neighbours get quoted) was able to get fiber installed. There were 3-4 other providers as well that I could have gone through. Those providers though were much more expensive on a per monthly basis running all the way up to $500 / month. Currently I pay a lot ($155 / month for a 25/25 connection), but compared to the local cable provider it's a steal. I have a friend nearby who pays $300 for 4megabits up and a bit faster down connection. For $200 on fiber I'd get 50/25. Keep in mind I do live in the middle of nowhere. We're a town of 23,000 people and a good two hours from Boston.
How do you compare service when you don't have any competition? So you are better than yourself? How do you gage that? Doesn't make sense to me.
This is unacceptable to me. Comcast is my Scrooge, my bête noire, my cartoon corporate villain. They are my Dr. Evil with a soupçon of Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life.
If Comcast is getting less evil, even if only by a little, who will play the role of evil standard-bearer for me? I am bereft!!
I categorically refuse to believe that any ISP/cable company is hated more than Frontier Communications.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Yes, we have two choices for Internet/TV/, Uverse & Comcrap. Neither are good. Comcrap raised raised our bill to $189.00 a month. That being said, they did offer extremely fast speeds, both up & down. They would not lower by bill back to an acceptable level no matter how much I tried. They didn't really think I would leave, literally saying "we would hate to lose you, but there is nothing we can do...". So I got Uverse installed. I called to disconnect Comcast & they of course offered to match the price.
Uverse works but upload is slow & really shows up when I am working using my employer's VPN. After my 12 month agreement is done, I'll likely return to Concrap & likely get a great deal. Maybe by then will be ready to just cut the cord & get straight up Internet.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Yelp is a racketeer.
Would have been interesting to look at whether improved customer satisfaction was correlated with increased local competition. I strongly suspect it is, not just because Comcast works harder to try to retain customers, but largely because the unhappiest customers leave as soon as they have an alternative. Even if actual customer service doesn't get any better, the people who remain are more satisfied on average.
Kind of like the famous demotivator says- "sometimes the best solution to workplace morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people."
When Google Fiber came to my area, Comcast sent door-to-door salespeople to try to get signups before people were committed to Google; Comcast was offering something like half its usual price. I knew it wasn't the salesperson's fault, but I couldn't help laughing in his face.
Yelp is a racketeer.
Do you mean some of those bad reviews aren't genuine, or they're not the typical experiences of all of Sonic's customers? I'd love to disregard the bad reviews if I could, because I really do want to switch to Sonic.
I, for one, am fed up with the awful customer service at TIme Warner, but I have good news - I'm going to switch to a shiny new company called Spectrum and I'm sure everything will be better. Eat my shorts Time Warner!
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That's what happens when you lose subscribers. Less people to hate you.
People stopped complaining because they realized that it is not doing any good.
Time Warner Cable is now Spectrum, I assume the name changed is the hide the guilty and to try to ignore the sins of the past. Actually, I excellent service from my 100 mps fiber connection. But it's too much! I only need 20-30 mps but this lowest level for $66.66/mo. They throw in free ViOP phone service which I never use. They call it a landline--please! I called the Spectrum droid from India who advised to Google "Time Warner internet phones" and it shows business phones that start for $100. He didn't even know what VoIP is! As long I never talk to these spuds, I am satisfied with the service. Not so much the price for much more than I need.
Their telephone support is still abysmal at best. However, one of their customer service centers opened about 3 miles from my house and the experience is radically different - I've actually gotten pretty good service and support by going in person. AT&T ran fiber all over my neighborhood about 2 months ago. If their offer is much better than my current Comcast plan then I might consider switching to them (their customer service makes Comcast look like heaven).
Slime Warner is Spectrum - owned by Charter, the second most hated cable cable company.
Could be both, most satisfied people never fill out surveys or reviews. Companies have been known to get people to complain about competitors. Did you read the reviews to see why they're complaining, that's what I've taken to doing on every site with reviews. 5 stars "It works", means 3 stars to me. 1 star with a "It came late but works fine," is a 3 star with a shipping problem. 1 Star, "It doesn't work with my iPhone", when the description says android only is a meaningless review.
In light of recent events I'm putting up with using Tor just to give Comcast my middle finger. If I had a viable alternative to them I'd be gone in a heartbeat.
So what does it tell you that I wish I could get Comcast, and fire Time Warner / Charter / Spectrum?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Tells me you haven't been Comcast's customer yet.
Time Warner sucks. Everyone knows it, but it cannot be as bad as Comcast.
internet is fine but although they offer a lot on their home and cable services they have been really glitchy over the last year. once my contract on the home is up I plan on seeing if I can figure out a non bundled alternative that is more stable.
ANY proverbial "800-pound gorilla" corporation focuses solely on the bottom line.
There is little concern for client satisfaction, especially when there are few choices available.
Cox is absolutely VERY bad. Comcast is not far behind.
And, another important consideration is that I have stopped complaining because I GIVE UP!
NOT because they have made improvements!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
But I have great dislike for my internet bill and how I constantly have to do the retention dance to save money on my bill. I'm going to have to do it again soon cause my price goes up again. I'd rather have either one fixed price for internet or something that decreases over some time based schedule with the same caliber of service. It is insane that my rates go up for changing literally nothing about my service. Griped to a couple city council reps about it and asking why Cambridge MA doesn't have municipal fiber or at least RCN to offer some competition.
Funny thing is I was content to get cable at $100/month because my internet speeds would have been great. Then they wanted to tack on a $10/month router fee so I could use my $10/month DVR box and another $10/month for my bedroom. And then the fuck you $10/month HD fee even though that's the standard now. Now having realized a combination how little free time I have out of grad school and what costs matter while living alone, they priced me into cheaper internet and becoming a streamer.
It's not entirely their fault - cable service is also victim to content providers - but that makes the point all that more clearer. Comcast might be better served just becoming an internet only company and focused on delivering a fast, dumb pipe. Then tell content providers they can figure out how to shovel their own shit to people. I'd bet a lot of the streaming options popping up would quickly die off as people can really start to drive the value of content. Maybe we'll even see less of it.
...if Comcast warranted it, would mean that they are only hated with the intensity of 750 suns. They recently just demanded a 60% price hike just to remove the totally arbitrary usage cap that they chose to impose. And with the latest boondoggle that they and other ISPs have pushed for in Congress, I now have to pay extra money again just to keep my Internet usage private. Fuck theses guys. The only thing that limits the negative things that I have to say about them is that I am absolutely stuck using them with no effective competition just because I where I live, and with California's prop 13 and real estate commissions, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to move to get another ISP's service.