Yet Another Horrible Comcast Recorded Customer Service Call

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Comcast, the king of horrible customer service is at it again. It's not as bad as the time they had a guy fired for complaining or the time customer service thought Steam was a virus or the last customer service call from hell, but it's still pretty bad.

It’s been a bad year for Comcast’s customer service image — probably not what the company wants to hear when it’s trying to convince federal regulators to let it swallow up millions of Time Warner Cable customers — and while many consumers are taking this week off from work, the folks at Kabletown know that bad service doesn’t take a holiday.
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While the rest of the world is on 1000Mbps internet and starting to move toward 10Gbps .... We in the states are struggling to get affordable 100Mbps if we are lucky and have that option.

Wish I had billions of dollars to buy and sell my congressmen too.
 
MNKyDeth said:
While the rest of the world is on 1000Mbps internet and starting to move toward 10Gbps .... We in the states are struggling to get affordable 100Mbps if we are lucky and have that option.

Wish I had billions of dollars to buy and sell my congressmen too.
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Although there are many countries who have access to higher speed ranges than the USA, the rest of the world is hardly universally 1000 Mbps ... the average peak speed for South Korea is 68.5 Mbps (the highest country) ... there are certainly some 1000 Mbps folks in there to bring the average up but obviously not everyone is at those speeds

The USA certainly needs to improve our speeds by changing zoning laws to let companies install the necessary infrastructure or to expand the licenses for wireless providers ... as to low cost I am in favor of that only if we can keep government controls out of it ... a company should be free to charge what the market will bear ... we just need to make sure there are no obstacles to entry into the choice markets so there can be some level of competition for pricing
 
This is why a complicated tiered service and short term promotional terms are BAD BUSINESS. Even Comcast and their third party service tech's can't understand them. :rolleyes:
 
It's not easy living up to their #1 rating, but if anyone can manage, it's Comcast.

http://consumerist.com/2014/04/08/congratulations-to-comcast-your-2014-worst-company-in-america/

finaldeathmatch2014.png
 
kbrickley said:
Although there are many countries who have access to higher speed ranges than the USA, the rest of the world is hardly universally 1000 Mbps ... the average peak speed for South Korea is 68.5 Mbps (the highest country) ... there are certainly some 1000 Mbps folks in there to bring the average up but obviously not everyone is at those speeds

The USA certainly needs to improve our speeds by changing zoning laws to let companies install the necessary infrastructure or to expand the licenses for wireless providers ... as to low cost I am in favor of that only if we can keep government controls out of it ... a company should be free to charge what the market will bear ... we just need to make sure there are no obstacles to entry into the choice markets so there can be some level of competition for pricing
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This is false.
The issue is not that infrastructure needs to be laid, it's that it was already, was gonverment subsidized, and it now more or less owned by individual Telecoms to do with, and price monopolize, as they choose.
Or at least, this happened in Canada, where it isn't as bad as the US situation.
 
So in other words, study what this guy has to say.

MNKyDeth said:
While the rest of the world is on 1000Mbps internet and starting to move toward 10Gbps .... We in the states are struggling to get affordable 100Mbps if we are lucky and have that option.

Wish I had billions of dollars to buy and sell my congressmen too.
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The deal this guy is trying to get from Comcast for 100/25 mb/s is the same price Time Warner was charging me for 15/2 mb/s. I have a difficult time feeling too sorry for him, other than having to deal with lieing Comcast sales reps. I wonder how many times they get away with it because the caller didn't record the conversations.
 
I was a cable internet customer with AT&T @home service back in 2001 and in 2002, they transitioned to Comcast. I've been a customer since and I've recently cancelled my service due to false promises and charges that should never have been processed in the first place.

To sum it up:
Service went down, family member noticed a Comcast tech in the alley working on the pole during the same time it went down. Took 6 days for someone to come out.

Service was resolved due to someone physically disconnecting the line at the pole

Next bill, I was charged $79 for the service call

Called and complained that I shouldn't be charged for something that's not my fault. They disagreed and won't reverse the charge.

After complaining to higher authority, they agreed on the mischarge and would be credited on the next bill.

Next bill came in and still nothing. Called them up and they said it won't be processed and the decision was reversed

Paid the damn bill and cancelled my service and went with RCN. Cheaper rates

2 months later, I get a check in the mail for $79

For 12 years, their service was stellar to me, past year or two, it took a nose dive.
 
i imagine as more and more public shaming attempts are tried, they'll just be so many that both companies and the public will stop caring, and we'll be back to square one: poor customer service with no recourse.
 
traycerb said:
i imagine as more and more public shaming attempts are tried, they'll just be so many that both companies and the public will stop caring, and we'll be back to square one: poor customer service with no recourse.
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No, the reason they don't care (which they current don't do) is because they operate a virtual monopoly in the vast majority of markets they serve.

If you are unhappy, what are you going to do? Go to the competition? Muhahahaha.


Where I used to live was a Comcast only town for many years. When Verizon FiOS came to town, what do you know, Comcast instantly got better over night. Speeds went up, service times went down and service techs were actually more helpful.

It's like a little window popped up on the service techs screen saying "take care of this one, they actually live in a neighborhood where they can switch. The other guys? Fuck 'em, they don't have a choice."

I wound up switching to FiOS anyway even if Comcast DID improve overnight due to competition. I had years of hating them, and didn't want to give them any more of my money.

The only way we are ever going get these companies to improve is to make sure they have real competition in EVERY market they serve. Until then they are going to suck, and have no incentive what so ever to improve.

IMHO, we would be better off nationalizing the bitches, than the Monopolistic abuse that is going on now.

IMHO, if they are willing to abuse their market powers, I have no respect for their property rights. Nationalize them right away. I'd rather have incompetent government working on my behalf, than competent corporations working against me.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041327010 said:
IMHO, we would be better off nationalizing the bitches, than the Monopolistic abuse that is going on now.

IMHO, if they are willing to abuse their market powers, I have no respect for their property rights. Nationalize them right away. I'd rather have incompetent government working on my behalf, than competent corporations working against me.
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And, please allow me to clarify. I am a strong believer in the free market as the best way to pick winners and losers, and incentivise businesses to provide the best product and service at the lowest price and create market inefficiencies, but it relies on there being competition.

In a monopolistic environment where there is no competition, the free market, and all of capitalism falls flat on its face, and fails. If there is no competition, there is no free market, and market abuses ensue.

I'd rather have organizations operating as monopolies sued out of existence and be replaced by - ideally - competing businesses, but if that isn't possible, then a government takeover will have to do.

Free market with competition >> public sector ownership > monopoly
 
Whatever the axe is to grind, Consumerist surely has it in for Comcast. Probably a page-hit scam, most likely, as this is a continuing stream of anti-Comcast hyperbole from the site. Every company out there--including the so-called "best" of them (Apple?--Heh) has service-related nightmare scenarios that can be related over and over again to make the frequency sound much, much more egregious than it actually is. Note that the consumerist always fails to note that for the one-out-of-22-million-service-calls it dredges up that is very negative, there are millions of "Great job--Thanks!" service reports, too--that rags like The Consumerist completely ignore. Why?

I can only think the Consumerist is one of these politically-motivated, sort of faux public-service sites run by persons with editorial agendas that have nothing to do with either news or objectivity. I am not a Comcast customer any longer, but I was--for twelve years--and had no such incidents to relate at any time. Doesn't mean they didn't happen, of course--just not to me--and I had plenty of service calls. Likewise, when I was an AT&T long distance customer I had reams & reams of bad, service-related incidents that did indeed happen to me--yet there are millions of people today who use AT&T without concern and have no complaints with the company (even though I personally want nothing else to do with AT&T ever again.)

The Consumerist is long on page-hit propaganda but very short on objectivity--at least when it comes to Comcast. How many other companies is the Consumerist reporting on negatively? I don't read the site--just the occasional link to one of its anti-Comcast diatribes--so, anybody know how many other companies--if any--The Consumerist finds fault with? That'd be interesting to know, I think.

Personally, I think Comcast should be forbidden from merging with TW until it has upgraded its current Internet backbone to a mean of 50Mb/s down & 25Mb/s up--as its *baseline* performance package to currently replace its ancient but current ~6Mb/s down, 512k up package. If the company has the money to buy TW it has the money to do *that* first. You'd think someone in the government would have the good sense to make this a condition of approval for the TW deal--but they won't...!

Hating on Comcast for the occasional bad-service report gets us nowhere. Insisting that Comcast upgrade its infrastructure to 50/25 baseline as a prerequisite for permission to do the TW deal gets us everywhere we want to be. So why can't the government see that simple premise? All of this other stuff is wasting time...
 
What a coincidence, I am literally on the phone with Comcast now for the third time trying to get a modem lease fee removed.

I replaced my parent's modem with my own back in 2013, they have just kept paying the bill not noticing the $10 charge for modem lease, and so each time I call they are like yeah you did return the modem and someone will call me in a week. No one ever calls, and I was promised on the NEXT bill I'd see the refund and fee removed. Still nope!

Not understanding what is so hard about this. I put on my modem, brought their modem back, and had them activate my personal modem. I shouldn't have to do anything else or go back and forth so many times taking weeks to resolve.

Luckily I cancelled my comcast and have been TV free, but my parents aren't willing to cut the cord. :(
 
Internet access needs to be removed from the monopolies of time warner/Comcast/others. Cities really need to offer these servers to their residence instead. I cannot wait to get city provided fiber in Longmont, Co. $50 for 1 gig up and down? Yes please!

Can't wait to call Comcast and say, "F you!". Maybe I'll sing a modified version CeeLo Green's F*** You
 
Comparisons to other countries need to stop. It's a ridiculous comparison. The individual States are the size or larger than most countries. The infrastructure of the US compared to most countries is VASTLY larger and more complex to maintain. That alone, requires LARGE corporations just to maintain the huge networks they do.

I hate it as much as anybody. But do you really think dozens or hundreds of smaller companies could do a better job given the infrastructure requirements of the US and for less money?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think some make it an overly simplistic problem that's explained away too easily by just greed. Oh, greed is certainly involved, but it's a more complex problem then that.
 
I've had my moment with comcast too.

I've got charter right now. The less I talk to Charter the better.

I do internet tech support for a living. I get that the big companies are far from perfect, some like comcast very far from perfect, just please keep in mind some of the people who call are less then competent.

Like have a house hold of 4+ people on 768k dsl and yelling an screaming they dont need a speed upgrade to watch Netflix we just need to do out job.

I imagine the comcast employees burn out fast. They take it from the customers and they get it from the company.
 
LancerVI said:
Comparisons to other countries need to stop. It's a ridiculous comparison. The individual States are the size or larger than most countries. The infrastructure of the US compared to most countries is VASTLY larger and more complex to maintain. That alone, requires LARGE corporations just to maintain the huge networks they do.

I hate it as much as anybody. But do you really think dozens or hundreds of smaller companies could do a better job given the infrastructure requirements of the US and for less money?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think some make it an overly simplistic problem that's explained away too easily by just greed. Oh, greed is certainly involved, but it's a more complex problem then that.
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If we are going for complete fairness, often what is brought up as the difficulty of providing uniform and fast internet in the U.S. compared to other countries is our relatively low population density. Our absolute size has nothing to do with the complexity.

This line of reasoning doesn't work, as there are countries with much lower population densities than ours that have much better internet service.

Let's take the country where I grew up - for instance. Sweden has about 2/3 of the population density we do. Their internet service trumps ours by leaps and bounds.

Finland has about 50% of our population density, yet still has better internet service.

Latvia - a former USSR nation for crying out loud - has a smaller population density than we do, and ranks better in internet.

Our internet problem in the U.S. simply has nothing to do with our population density, population distribution or our size. This is a myth made up to be apologetic to the monopolists.

Our problem is a legal and political one.

We have over the years granted special legal status to telecom companies, allowing them to carve out territories where they have no competition like drug cartels, allowing them to abuse their powers, charge outrageous rates, under serve poor and mid income communities, and give lousy speeds and abysmal customer service, and it can all be blamed on a combination of the telecoms, their army of lobbyists and the politicians they outright own, and the laziness and stupidity of those who are not in their pockets.

The telecoms even had the balls to get their paid for politicians to enact state laws in some states to ban community internet, so they didn't have to compete with them.

The comparison to other nations is VERY relevant.

Our problem is not physical or technical. It is a corruption problem, a lobbying problem and a monopoly problem, and until someone in politics has the balls to crush the telecom ISP/Cable cartels this problem will remain.

Stop being an apologist for these evil monopolistic cartels!
 
LancerVI said:
Comparisons to other countries need to stop. It's a ridiculous comparison. The individual States are the size or larger than most countries. The infrastructure of the US compared to most countries is VASTLY larger and more complex to maintain. That alone, requires LARGE corporations just to maintain the huge networks they do.

I hate it as much as anybody. But do you really think dozens or hundreds of smaller companies could do a better job given the infrastructure requirements of the US and for less money?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think some make it an overly simplistic problem that's explained away too easily by just greed. Oh, greed is certainly involved, but it's a more complex problem then that.
Click to expand...

The population density argument is absurd at best. If it were true New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago would all have insanely fast internet, wide coverage, and low prices compared to the rest of the world. Do they? Nope. They have Comcast and Time Warner.

If you hear someone defending Comcast they are either so pro-big business that they are blind, have personal interests in the company, and/or they are brain damaged.
 
Definitely not a technical problem, I am having issues getting broadband in an area I am moving into in upstate New York. Verizon controls the monopoly in the region I am moving into and tries to direct all it's semi-rural customers to it's 4G as a broadband alternative. They have no unlimited data plans and it is extremely expensive, fuck that. I can't find any DSL providers in the area, and I am only 7 miles from the town center which has cable providers.

I do this stuff for a living and found about 3 to 4 different broadband solutions that really weren't that expensive considering what Verizon was wanting to charge but unfortunately these solutions would be outside the scope of normal consumer capabilities. These guys are crooks.
 
But they're running those new ads that say they've changed. That they support an open internet and are to net neutrality. I totally believe them!

Seriously, if you haven't seen that commercial yet, it's good for a laugh.
 
this is a good example of why you have to call up the 2nd month to REconfirm a promotion before they fuck you over.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041327010 said:
No, the reason they don't care (which they current don't do) is because they operate a virtual monopoly in the vast majority of markets they serve.

If you are unhappy, what are you going to do? Go to the competition? Muhahahaha.


Where I used to live was a Comcast only town for many years. When Verizon FiOS came to town, what do you know, Comcast instantly got better over night. Speeds went up, service times went down and service techs were actually more helpful.

It's like a little window popped up on the service techs screen saying "take care of this one, they actually live in a neighborhood where they can switch. The other guys? Fuck 'em, they don't have a choice."

I wound up switching to FiOS anyway even if Comcast DID improve overnight due to competition. I had years of hating them, and didn't want to give them any more of my money.

The only way we are ever going get these companies to improve is to make sure they have real competition in EVERY market they serve. Until then they are going to suck, and have no incentive what so ever to improve.

IMHO, we would be better off nationalizing the bitches, than the Monopolistic abuse that is going on now.

IMHO, if they are willing to abuse their market powers, I have no respect for their property rights. Nationalize them right away. I'd rather have incompetent government working on my behalf, than competent corporations working against me.
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Government created problem solved with more government.
 
kbrickley said:
Although there are many countries who have access to higher speed ranges than the USA, the rest of the world is hardly universally 1000 Mbps ... the average peak speed for South Korea is 68.5 Mbps (the highest country) ... there are certainly some 1000 Mbps folks in there to bring the average up but obviously not everyone is at those speeds

The USA certainly needs to improve our speeds by changing zoning laws to let companies install the necessary infrastructure or to expand the licenses for wireless providers ... as to low cost I am in favor of that only if we can keep government controls out of it ... a company should be free to charge what the market will bear ... we just need to make sure there are no obstacles to entry into the choice markets so there can be some level of competition for pricing
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The difference the rest of the world has is competition. Restoring competition is not too late. OTOH hyper regulation would pretty much close the door on that.
 
Not to say Comcast was right, but all I really took from that conversation was he got screwed and he didn't sign a contract. Well.. that's what he gets for not signing a contract.
 
jpm100 said:
Government created problem solved with more government.
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It's an old argument. And while there's some truth to it - SOME - it rests mainly on the fact that legislators are in the pockets of big corporations. After all, most of the time spent by legislators is done looking to find money to finance their next elections.
What there needs to be is a major change where law makers actually serve ALL the people, instead of serving just the people that control big corporations.
One of the roles of the government is make the laws, not let lobbyists actually write them for them.
As long as government allows those who are in charge of big corporations dictate what a bill of law should and should not stipulate, there will be no true competition, there will be abuses of said corporations, there will be crappy customer support.
 
Although I do believe he was being screwed, what did he expect the service rep to do, bad mouth the company she worked for? Customer was not exactly being smart about it even though he was in the right this time.
 
satsunada said:
Not to say Comcast was right, but all I really took from that conversation was he got screwed and he didn't sign a contract. Well.. that's what he gets for not signing a contract.
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Did you sign a contract for your ISP service? Or are you just a troll?
 
timta2 said:
The population density argument is absurd at best. If it were true New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago would all have insanely fast internet, wide coverage, and low prices compared to the rest of the world. Do they? Nope. They have Comcast and Time Warner.
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Don't have Comcast in Los Angeles, I do have a choice of Time Warner and FiOS, after Time Warner started charging me for hidden fees, my monthly bills were never identical, always some kind of fee added to my bill,I switched to FiOS. I pay $68/mo fees included for basic TV 1 box and 50/50Mbps internet. It's never gone down as far as I have noticed and is very reliable.
 
Also, i've been noticing people are using the term "troll" so freely now, stop, it's beginning to lose it's significance, not everyone is a troll. Troll this, Troll that, Trollers gonna hate, cause trollers gonn ain't. lol anyways, chill with the troll stuff, not everyone on the internet is a troll.
 
LancerVI said:
Comparisons to other countries need to stop. It's a ridiculous comparison. The individual States are the size or larger than most countries. The infrastructure of the US compared to most countries is VASTLY larger and more complex to maintain. That alone, requires LARGE corporations just to maintain the huge networks they do.

I hate it as much as anybody. But do you really think dozens or hundreds of smaller companies could do a better job given the infrastructure requirements of the US and for less money?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think some make it an overly simplistic problem that's explained away too easily by just greed. Oh, greed is certainly involved, but it's a more complex problem then that.
Click to expand...

It's funny how the people in the US compare the US to other countries all the time on other topics/subjects/issues, with the intent to show how great the US is, and then some expect to not be compared when it comes to this topic, especially since the US ranks so poorly? The greatest country on earth - as many portray the US - does not have the greatest Internet services/coverage/prices?
Besides, companies like Comcast - as big as they are - should be the company providing the best bang for the buck internet, especially in densely populated areas (i'm not even considering rural areas for obvious reasons!)

With all this said, I firmly believe that the US is still one of the better places to live - in general, as quality of living can vary from one state to the other - but that still doesn't mean it is the panacea. Switzerland, or skandinavian countries, Luxembourg, Monaco, Lichtenstein, Canada, South Korea, Japan... heck... these are no crummy parts of the world to live in.
 
Zinn said:
Did you sign a contract for your ISP service? Or are you just a troll?
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No. But I know the limitations I have if I don't sign a contract. Verbal agreements have limitations. Still, I did say he got screwed.
 
Elf_Boy said:
I've had my moment with comcast too.

I've got charter right now. The less I talk to Charter the better.

I do internet tech support for a living. I get that the big companies are far from perfect, some like comcast very far from perfect, just please keep in mind some of the people who call are less then competent.

Like have a house hold of 4+ people on 768k dsl and yelling an screaming they dont need a speed upgrade to watch Netflix we just need to do out job.

I imagine the comcast employees burn out fast. They take it from the customers and they get it from the company.
Click to expand...

As someone who does phone tech support for Charter this is pretty much it.
 
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