Comcast Is Investigating a Customer Service Call From Hell

Steve said:
When the call ended, I looked at my wife, Veronica, and I asked her “Did that really just happen?” And we played back the recording. Many of the reactions have (I think?) jokingly referenced trigger warnings. I hadn’t made that connection, but it’s kind of true. Listening to it again even a few days later fills me with anxiety and dread.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Not sure what to make of an individual who has to affirm his wife's name and then dwells on a call "a few days later" that "fills [him] with anxiety and dread".

I am thinking that "Veronica" is the name of his Real Doll, and that he's got problems far more severe than running into bad customer service on the phone.
 
Thuleman said:
Not sure what to make of an individual who has to affirm his wife's name and then dwells on a call "a few days later" that "fills [him] with anxiety and dread".

I am thinking that "Veronica" is the name of his Real Doll, and that he's got problems far more severe than running into bad customer service on the phone.
Click to expand...

Sand should be removed from one's vagina.
 
mt2e said:
Mind you this is a billing person at comcast. I work in technical support and if I were to have this kind of conversation I would be straight fired.
Click to expand...

Is that because if you can't find some way to damn the customer to script monkey hell, you've failed to meet a key performance metric?
 
SGA76 said:
This is called "quality control" that is forced on to the employees, where they have to hit "metrics" and either ask or state certain things where they are threatened to be fired. The company doesn't give 2 shits about how customers feel about their service and feel its more important to provide the same experience across the board, even if it is shitty service.
As someone who has done customer service this can be frustrating to us as well because before we're allowed to help you we HAVE to put you through bullshit the company says is necessary or we get fired.
Click to expand...

This is true, but there's ticking the box, and then there is this guy. What you are describing is the situation I had with comcast when I moved. They did not have the contract for the town I was moving to. I had to cancel and they forced me through retentions. I had to go through all the stupid questions, but the CS person who was even forced to try and sell me on moving my account to my new address didn't pull this crap although it took a few rounds to reach the point where "you are not legally allowed to sell me service where I am moving" resulted in simply working through the form and ticking the boxes. They were still not even remotely as big a duchebag as this guy.

IF the call was me, I'd ask the guys name, and answer all the why am I leaving questions with "comcast employs reps like <insert reps name>."
 
Thuleman said:
Not sure what to make of an individual who has to affirm his wife's name and then dwells on a call "a few days later" that "fills [him] with anxiety and dread".

I am thinking that "Veronica" is the name of his Real Doll, and that he's got problems far more severe than running into bad customer service on the phone.
Click to expand...


its ryan block of engadget and aol, and veronica belmont of revision 3 and twit.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Ryan+Block+Veronica+Belmont
 
McFry said:
If you dont know how to argue with someone then just make shit up.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking as I got annoyed listening to this phone call.

Just give him a bullshit answer so he can shut the fuck up.
 
Azhar said:
I switched from Frontier to Comcast about 4-5 years ago because of Frontier's terrible service. It was down every other day.

I cancelled Frontier over the phone when I got Comcast hooked up, but for the next 7 months they kept billing me anyways. Every month I would call Frontier and tell them to knock it off. It's not a new $19 bill every month, but late fees, previous months bills, etc. It was piling high.

I'm not sure how they finally figured out after 7 months that I wasn't their customer anymore, but the funny thing is that if I WAS their customer, they would kill my service if I have just TWO months of unpaid bills. But since I DON'T have their service, they kept billing me every month! Nice try Frontier!
Click to expand...

Is this frontier fios? I was considering switching to them from crapcast because I thought their service will be better.
 
In all fairness, the call only lasted for eight minutes. Not counting how long he had to wait of course. Whatever... Patience and persistence. Though if I have to cancel service, I may try the "this call is also being monitored" trick and see if I get anywhere. :)
 
These are a couple washed out journalists who were hoping and praying to catch a rep like this to make some news and some money with page hits. They aren't any better than the overzealous rep.
 
Thuleman said:
These are a couple washed out journalists who were hoping and praying to catch a rep like this to make some news and some money with page hits. They aren't any better than the overzealous rep.
Click to expand...

Wow .. Did these people kill your dog or something? As you have a pretty severe hang-up on them.
 
Draax said:
Wow .. Did these people kill your dog or something? As you have a pretty severe hang-up on them.
Click to expand...

It's the gotcha-journalism that annoys the crap out of me. People with zero investigative skill and no sense to create actually relevant and informative content run around with their iPhone in hopes of recording someone saying or doing something stupid.

One of 130,000+ employees of a corporation went overboard while trying to retain a customer. Whoop-dee-doo. Every company has shitty employees and every company has exceptional employees. Luckily not everyone who just happens to receive bad service attentionwhores about it on the Internet going all emo about it.
 
Nvidia_ATI said:
Is this frontier fios? I was considering switching to them from crapcast because I thought their service will be better.
Click to expand...

DSL. Frontier bought Verizon in Chesterton before Verizon expanded FIOS. Grrr...
 
raz-0 said:
Is that because if you can't find some way to damn the customer to script monkey hell, you've failed to meet a key performance metric?
Click to expand...

Considering how big this thread is, I can understand that you didnt see my earlier post explaining that Comcast doesnt used scripts. It is a process that they moved away from at least 10 years ago.

Even through my old contacts that still work there I know that much hasn't changed on this front. Comcast realized a long time ago that scripts were only inhibiting their ability to receive good customer satisfaction ratings.

Now with that said. Those who I know in the Retention department had to "save" about 15 customers a month to slot up into a higher pay scale. Pulling what this guy did wouldn't help much. If he was caught it would have reduced his pay scale to the area of null and void.
 
I would think that in a call center, you want to deal with the customers in a timely manner once you're on the line. Sure, you try to sell them stuff, ask a few questions, or dissuade them from downgrading/cancelling, but you can tell in a few minutes if they're not taking the bait. That call should have been 5 minutes, tops. Not counting the hold time waiting for a representative, of course.

It seems to me that the service rep was wasting company resources and holding up the line. There were probably a lot of other customers behind him.

It's kind of funny, I actually have the opposite problem with Verizon. If I call them up and complain about my bill or try to get anything cheaper, they just tell me that I already have the best deal and that I can just cancel if I don't like it. One of them even threatened to cut my service off. They won't talk promotions or prices at all, they just have this "my way or the highway" attitude. I guess they can get away with it because we don't have any other ISP choices here.
 
Insula Gilliganis said:
Bad customer service is nothing new.. especially from companies who are put in a monopoly position by the Government!!

Lily_Tomlin.jpg
Click to expand...


And now that they've been deregulated, the service is WORSE. What exactly is your point unless you're just trying to brainlessly parrot a libhurrrtarian talking point?
 
Comcast blows. Anyone who uses comcast has live through this nightmare. They have the worst customer service.
 
Farkle said:
Apparently, you've never had to deal with Cox ;)
Click to expand...
In general customer service when dealing with internet distributors is poor to just right down shit. Seriously the whole industry is a non compete as internet is nearly a requirement to participate in society and if they are all shitty to deal with jumping from one of two poor choices just seems like a waste of effort.
 
McFry said:
I'm sure I'll bust you soon enough like Ducman posing/plagiarizing/astroturfing around here. You've been on my BS detector list for quite some time.
Click to expand...

Oh yes. We're sneaky, diabolical political operatives for the Koch Brothers, just staying one step ahead of you, the Social Justice Warrior. It's all a movie, and you're the hero.

Just kidding. Take your meds.
 
Wow! This is just like the call I had to Time Warner a few months ago to disconnect my service as I was moving cross country where they don't even exist. They spent more than 10 minutes trying to sell me phone service for an apartment I was moving out of. I wasn't nearly as nice as this guy though.
 
While I am sure Comcast is embarrassed, we all know the company probably pushes its customer service reps to be that way.

“We are very embarrassed by the way our employee spoke with Mr. Block and are contacting him to personally apologize,” the company said in a statement. “The way in which our representative communicated with him is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives. We are investigating this situation and will take quick action. While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.”
Click to expand...
 
Entering a cable companies "retention department" is like entering the gates of hell.

The only thing worse is trying to cancel Sirius service.
 
I have a coworker who used to take calls for Comcast and Time Warner. He listened to the audio and said that no way would that have been acceptable where he worked, but he also said this guy might work on quotas or commission. I can't think of what other motivation he would have had for doing this.
 
I just went through this myself not too long ago when switching services. One of the things the retention agent kept trying to tell me is I was lying about the deal i could get with the other company because she was on their website and it told her a different number. Yet she was willing to give me a better deal than the one on her company's website...but she was unwilling to believe another company would do the same...

The way they operate is baffling at times. I think to be a retention agent you have to live half your life in a town of blissful ignorance and make believe.
 
I listened to that nonsense.
It was both their faults.
The CS guy was sort of rude and the guy was a dick too.

I would have politely asked for a supervisor and/or simply hung up the phone and called back until I got a rep who didn't hassle me.
Honestly the CS guy was just doing his job, but went overboard, but that can be cured by simply disconnecting.
The guy is a jerk for spreading this all over the internet.:mad:
 
I kept expecting the service rep to tell the customer to just lay back, and let it happen. Like a rapist with fixed intent.
 
Derfman said:
Considering how big this thread is, I can understand that you didnt see my earlier post explaining that Comcast doesnt used scripts. It is a process that they moved away from at least 10 years ago.

Even through my old contacts that still work there I know that much hasn't changed on this front. Comcast realized a long time ago that scripts were only inhibiting their ability to receive good customer satisfaction ratings.

Now with that said. Those who I know in the Retention department had to "save" about 15 customers a month to slot up into a higher pay scale. Pulling what this guy did wouldn't help much. If he was caught it would have reduced his pay scale to the area of null and void.
Click to expand...

Having been a comcast customer within the last 10 years, they sure as hell DO use scripts. Yes, it is not the read this verbatim intro of days of old, but when you have bullet points you have to cover, in order, and you ahve to tell me about awesome service 14 I cna upgrade to, and you have to make me jump through hoop X, Y, and Z just in case the exact same problem as last time isn't the exact same problem as this time despite all the evidence to the contrary, and when I have to cancel because I'm owing to someplace they do not have the franchise contract for, I have to hear the retention spiel the exact specified number of times, be offered the comcast easy move service despite it's total irrelevance, and all the above happens because it's the performance metric they are judged by?

I got news for you.. THATS A FUCKING SCRIPT. Just cause you can ad-lib a bit around the major beats doesn't make it not a script. Oh also, replacing the script read by a human with a script read by the robot voice of the voice menu... that's not getting rid of the script.

GRanted, if you run the gauntlet to tier 2 support, it's usually much nicer and an actuall discussion takes place.
 
When I called to cancel my Comcast service I had a pretty awkward call. The rep was very pushy and it was frustrating just to cancel the service. That wasn't the worst part though. The worst part were the days following the cancellation. I had about twelve calls from some guy claiming to be from Comcast's custom retention department trying to cut me deals. I eventually just blocked his number because he wouldn't take no for an answer. He would call all hours of the day too. Freaking weirdo.

I've also had some bad encounters with the door to door Comcast people. Those people are pushy and total assholes. They hassled my wife one day and when I came to the door I told them to get lost and they left, but across town, at my mom's house one of them stuck his foot in the door so my mom couldn't close the door on him. I'd probably lose it if one of them did that to me or my wife.

Comcast is a wretched company and I will never do business with them again.
 
Farkle said:
Apparently, you've never had to deal with Cox ;)
Click to expand...

Oh trust me cox aint got nothing on comcast. Im in the phoenix area now and have cox as my provider. Wait until you have to deal with comcast. You'll change your mind.
 
"Very Embarrassed" My ass. Maybe because they were caught.

I know, I've basically had the same discussion with these people over the phone and in person a time or two.

Just recently, last November my GF and I finally got Google Fiber. So after the install and a day or two later we decide to go down to Comcast to return their box. So we get there, walk in and have to wait around a bit until finally we get to go up to the counter. I hand the box over to the customer service guy and ask him to disconnect or service. He asks why. I'm very proud to tell him that we now have Google Fiber. He then goes into this mini self controlled rant about how Google Fiber is really not a great service, that's it's new with a lot of problems and that customers are not even getting close to the speeds they were promised. And then he says most people don't even need that speed. etc etc. Then for a cherry on top he says, people have been coming back to Comcast from Google Fiber because they just do not like the service or customer service.

I compose myself and tell and then say - your asking me to stay with Comcast that's not only less than 10% of the speed I get with Google Fiber but more expensive? Sorry, that doesn't make sense to me. I then went on to say, with all due respect ( there were people near us so I was trying to be quiet ) that Ive been on the internet for 21 years. I know how to get the full bandwidth out of Google Fiber and that it's actually faster than 1gb, that it's around 1.1 to 1.3 gigabit speeds. not just 1gb. And that was that. We left.

I will say, early on when we had issues, for example when I was downloading at say 40 - 60meg a second, the TV was get a lot of artifacts on the screen maybe ever 5 seconds until the download was over. We called the 24 hour number, yes, Google offers 24/7 support and actually got to speak with an engineer about the issue. He told us they were rolling out an update shortly that would limit DL speeds when the TV was on but he stressed it would only be a short reductions. One I've not even noticed.

I just installed BF4 to play the new expansion and the install was over 30GB. It took about 7 mins to download
 
This call was damn near identical to my experience when I called Sirius/XM to cancel my service back in 2008. At one point I was put on hold for over 20 minutes while the rep "consulted" with his supervisor. It was a nightmare. I hate those satellite radio bastards.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top