Comcast To Shorten Cable Repair Time Windows

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Comcast has announced that repair time windows are being cut down to 2 hours. At least that way you'll have only waste two hours (instead of the regular 10a - 7p crap) when no one from the company shows up to fix your stuff. ;)

Comcast, based in Philadelphia, will shorten its cable repair and installation windows in all markets from as much as four hours to two hours or less by 2012. The largest U.S. cable operator is using new dispatch technology and equipping all technicians with laptops and handheld devices to guarantee on- time arrival within the shorter windows, Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts said.
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B*llshit....If I had a dime every time one of these big companies was going to reinvent themselves with better CS, repair time, call backs, prices, etc...I'd be a gazillionaire.

Just cuz you announce something doesn't mean jack! if you could have done it before why didn't you in the first place!
 
Two hours my @ss! They will never improve their customer (dis)service!

I have been waiting two weeks for them to come out and replace the line coming into my house. This was after a month of them trying to troubleshoot why my cable, phone and internet service drops randomly. :mad:
 
Wow, they're updating to cutting edge technology like laptops and handheld devices. That'll be a big update from carrier pigeons and smoke signals. No wonder the change will take 6 months.
 
So I take it they will be adding more field technicians and not raising their rates...good luck with that.

How many years have they been on the top list for customer dissatisfaction and now they are going to magically turn it around...
 
I love my Comcast when it works. Their CS is a steaming pile of BS though...
 
I used to do contract work for Comcast, and unless they have drastically changed the way they route their techs, and change work windows to allow for unforseen technical issues, then no amount of new laptops or handheld devices will speed things up.

The tech always fails anyways. I can't count the number of times I needed to call dispatch to push mtas through because the cellphone/handheld system they used was shit. Trying to provision from laptops only worked half the time.
 
Cruiza said:
I don't think I've ever had a Comcast rep show up on time.
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Get a business connection, $60, same price as the residential+$15 'you don't have cable' fee. Then you get first crack at repair techs when things go wrong. Next day, first on the schedule, maybe even same day if they aren't all booked up already when you call for support.
 
Cruiza said:
I don't think I've ever had a Comcast rep show up on time.
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When I worked for Comcast up until last year, I asked management all the time to shorten the repair window. I was tired of my customers complaining, call my phone everyday about it.
I hope they follow through on this, since now I'm the customer and I don't want to wait all day.

UPS should adopt this too. Their "deliver by end of day" deliver time is ridiculous at best.
Gives us a 2-3hr window so I can know when to leave the damn house!
 
It will not happen. Comcast's problem is a lack of sufficient technicians, terribly poor communications between premises techs and maintenance techs. There is also is rather minor problem of local markets absolutely refusing to do certain types of work in order to make the service work properly. I have seen Comcast's head end signal charts for modems and emtas, they show that a large amount and sometimes even a majority of the devices are operating outside DOCSIS specifications. Probably because Comcast refuses to install new nodes and instead stretches their existing equipment too far.
 
If they actually pull this off we are gonna loose the whole stereo type of "waiting for the cable guy".
 
And yet you will have to have a tech come out 6 times after initial install to get a good connection. Upon the sixth visit they will still discover a filter that they installed on the line in the box that is mounted to your house "a few months ago for testing purposes" even though the line has only been run to the house for a couple weeks.

In AL, comsumer cable support is horrid.

Their business support is quite good.

In AZ, their support was top notch. You have an outage, you could call them up and the person you talk to actually had a clue as to what was going on and they generally had a time frame of when to expect service to be back up if they had a wide spread outage or were just working on stuff in a certain place.

In AL, the phone people and the consumer techs have absolutely no clue what they are doing.
 
WorldExclusive said:
When I worked for Comcast up until last year, I asked management all the time to shorten the repair window. I was tired of my customers complaining, call my phone everyday about it.
I hope they follow through on this, since now I'm the customer and I don't want to wait all day.

UPS should adopt this too. Their "deliver by end of day" deliver time is ridiculous at best.
Gives us a 2-3hr window so I can know when to leave the damn house!
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Where I live, if I am expecting a package from UPS or Fedex they have a pretty good schedule as to when stuff will be delivered.

I can just about know for certain what 1 hour time frame they will stop by.

UPS usually deliveres around noon, and Fedex usually around 3-4p.m.

I know it isn't like that in many places... but I am glad it is like that where I live.
 
niconx said:
It will not happen. Comcast's problem is a lack of sufficient technicians, terribly poor communications between premises techs and maintenance techs. There is also is rather minor problem of local markets absolutely refusing to do certain types of work in order to make the service work properly. I have seen Comcast's head end signal charts for modems and emtas, they show that a large amount and sometimes even a majority of the devices are operating outside DOCSIS specifications. Probably because Comcast refuses to install new nodes and instead stretches their existing equipment too far.
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Yep. When people have bad service in their area, and it's more than a few house on the same node, I know that's the problem.
But, they refuse to replace the nodes in certain areas and people just switch to DirecTV or Uverse. There were many places I couldn't generated business from because of bad nodes.

cyclone3d said:
Where I live, if I am expecting a package from UPS or Fedex they have a pretty good schedule as to when stuff will be delivered.

I can just about know for certain what 1 hour time frame they will stop by.

UPS usually deliveres around noon, and Fedex usually around 3-4p.m.

I know it isn't like that in many places... but I am glad it is like that where I live.
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FedEx delivers before noon were I stay, but UPS can come anywhere between 2-6:30pm.:rolleyes:
 
This should make my co-worker happy. He's had his cable "accidently" disconnected twice in the last month, and both times they have said it will be at least 2 days before they can send a technician to reconnect it. Charter did the same thing to me twice over a 4 year period.
 
They cut back here a little bit. Went from 5 hour window down to 3.

I got a tech coming tomorrow due to the crappy service I've been getting, slow internet, on demand not working, channels wigging out. You know, the normal comcrap stuff. We'll see if this tech can fix it, supposedly it's a tech from the business division or something. Doesn't usually work on residential service.

We'll see. Betcha it'll work right for, oh, approx. 1 week.
 
oh, so now theyll show up and fix something within a months time?

the post on my telephone pole broke, so the cable fell down about 4 feet, and since im on a slopped drive, it made it even worse for my neighbors up hill. it took a month of my self and my neighbor calling to get this fixed, as it was so low, any truck would tear the line down.

we had one guy show up in a week, took a look at it, and said he couldnt fix it.
2 weeks later, another truck comes in, looks around, and leaves
week after that, a 3rd truck comes in and pulls the wire up at my neighbors end, but leaves the line down on my telephone post.

atleast its up high enough now that trucks wont rip it down.
 
I love it when they are late , last month I got 2 credits for $20 dollars .. that's $40 off my bill for there own fuck up.

But this will , at least in the beginning lead to more fuck ups. Comcast techs , no offense to any of the good ones viewing this .. are constant fuck ups. They are well known for fucking around on job sites and taking there time , not all of them do this but some do ..

What I really wish Comcast would do is increase its network reliability overall instead of worrying about this. If they could harden there networks against outages from storms or faulty hardware and even make them a 1/5th as reliable as DSL service. I may not have U-Verse anymore but you know how many outages I got in nearly 3 and half years? 2... 2 fucking outages total , that's an incredible track record.
 
Steve said:
Comcast has announced that repair time windows are being cut down to 2 hours. At least that way you'll have only waste two hours (instead of the regular 10a - 7p crap) when no one from the company shows up to fix your stuff. ;)
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...wow...
:(
You know I dispatch for Comcast and we just launched the 2 hour window in our state and we are at a VERY high percentage of on-time arrival. I don't see many other company's trying to revolve around the customer in that regard. Getting to customers houses and giving them a better choice as to when that will be has been a project that I am proud to say I am a part of. Just remember that there are a lot of hardworking honest people who ARE customer focused and want to do good for you here!
:)
 
klljm said:
...wow...
:(
You know I dispatch for Comcast and we just launched the 2 hour window in our state and we are at a VERY high percentage of on-time arrival. I don't see many other company's trying to revolve around the customer in that regard. Getting to customers houses and giving them a better choice as to when that will be has been a project that I am proud to say I am a part of. Just remember that there are a lot of hardworking honest people who ARE customer focused and want to do good for you here!
:)
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Oh and please don't forget about the 1-hour windows we are starting to transition in as well.
 
In a word - bullshit! Words fail to express my total contempt for Comcast. I've never seen a more inept group of "repairmen" in my life. In the two years I had their service,I was lucky if I got through a month without losing cable service for days at a time,usually because some boneheaded service man screwed up while working on the local lines. Not once did they show up at the promised time, it wasn't unusual for the delay to last for a week.
 
Ualdayan said:
Get a business connection, $60, same price as the residential+$15 'you don't have cable' fee. Then you get first crack at repair techs when things go wrong. Next day, first on the schedule, maybe even same day if they aren't all booked up already when you call for support.
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Comcast Business is a joke, dude. (I know because I've had and canceled it) It runs off the same network as residential, the only benefit is being able to have a static IP. Their technicians are the same that are sent out for residential calls, too!
 
Here in San Antonio at Time Warner Cable we have had 2 hour windows for 3-4 years now. All techs have had laptops with CSG for 2 years. This is all old news.
 
I used to be a senior field tech for Cox Communications. We always operated within a 2 hour time block. But this was back before we used sub contractors for everything. Now I wouldn't put cable tv in my worst enemies house.
 
This is why I like my ISP (Shaw in canada) and thier techs in my area. I always get two calls from the techs, one in the monring to confirm im going to be there and to give me a rough guess of how long till they can help me, and then one about 1-2 hours before they actually show up. This way i can go up town or even go to work and know that I wont miss the tech. Very nice service
 
Eh, I work as a sup in a charter call center, we have had the 2 hour window as long as I can remember. Service is excellent if you live in the right area. I just wish we had more information on outages, can't give anyone eta of resolution or why it is out.
 
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