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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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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.
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.
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.
So instead of telling you to "go to hell" they inform you that they "want you to have a warm, fuzzy feeling"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So the lack of complaints is simply due to people noticing that complaining only wastes their time without resulting in any measurable improvement?
Guess why most people don't vote anymore...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...they just gave up complaining because it seemed pointless, even though they still hate it with the burning passion of a thousand suns?
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.
The problem is the network is operating 100% as designed. The neighborhood node is unfortunately so over sold that they just drop connections. Think about airlines and overbooking flights. Some people get bumped from full flights. During prime time they bump people off the net. No use in making tickets or rolling a truck. Nothing is wrong with the infrastructure. It is working a designed. It is the over selling of the neighborhood node that is the problem.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.