Comcasted
January 29, 2007
Filed Under Change Management, Customer Experience, Reputation Management |
The following is a first ever guest post by mother, Gloria Dalka, who recently had Comcast waste her time, miss numerous appointments and experienced other inconveniences. The largest of these involved a contract tech that visited the house to install a cable modem, said “he’d return later” (yet never did), then reported the job and cable modem installed (apparently to get paid). Comcast stated via phone that they wanted cable modem back (which she does not have due to the apparent fraudulent work order the tech input) and after numerous calls there is considerable concern the refund will not be properly processed and that the US Mail was used to send unauthorized bills which constitutes mail fraud.
Start guest blog post
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12/13/06
At this time, we had Comcast for cable TV, 2 lines of phone service and we had a 56K Internet service provider (much to our son’s dismay when he visited).
An uninvited Comcast sales rep, Mike, personally visits us late in the day, telling us that Comcast will not be able to support the technology that we are using for telephone services for much longer. He offers us unlimited phone @ $30 per month, high speed broadband internet @ $20 per month and leaving the existing Cable TV package unchanged. We signed a conditional contract accepting those services pending completed installation. Mike calls his office and sets up an installation for Dec 20th between noon and 4pm.
12/20/06
Service tech arrives in an unmarked vehicle at 3:15pm. He comes into our home with his clipboard and walks through the house looking at what we have both upstairs in the room where we keep the computer and in our basement to see what kind of box we have there. He checks our backyard and comes in saying that we have all old technology and that he doesn’t have what he needs to do the installation with him. He states that he will return first thing the following morning. My husband asked what time he’d arrive. Tech states that he leaves Palatine @ 7:00; my husband says we’ll expect you 7:30 to 7:40; the tech nods affirmatively and leaves. No equipment was brought into or installed in our home. No document was signed accepting any services or equipment.
12/21/06
No tech arrives. We are nervous and start calling Comcast.
8:45AM - Call 866-594-1234 to find out what’s going on since no tech has arrived and was told that we’re on the schedule for 8am to noon.
12:15PM - Call the above # again and Scott told us that someone will check and get back to us within 2 hours. Given reference # 899206. And no one calls back.
2:35PM - Spoke to Christine at X6321 at the Schaumburg center who said that someone would check and get back to us within an hour. Given reference # 427066. And no one calls back.
3:40PM - Called again, spoke to someone named OJ who said that he’d write it up and have someone get back to us. No ticket # given. OJ was anxious to leave since his shift ended @ 4:00. And no one calls back.
3:50PM - Called Mike, the sales rep from 12/13/06, who was at home with his kids. He said he’d check and get back to us.
3:55PM - Mike calls back and says he has seen how many times we called and that he couldn’t do anything, but that he’d have his supervisor call us. We did not get a call back from Mike’s supervisor or anyone else at Comcast.
We took the innocent viewpoint that everyone had the holidays on their minds and decided to wait until after the holidays to pursue the issue again.
1/2/07
Called Mike, our sales rep and told him how things had gone and that we were extremely unhappy with the way we had been treated. He again deferred to his supervisor asking what day would be all right for installation. I suggested Jan 5th or Jan 9th as the install date and told him that I would not allow a third party installer into my home. He said we would get a call back and, again, no one calls back.
1/8/07
10:00AM - Decided that Comcast didn’t care about retaining a customer that they had for many years and called AT & T to set up installation of services for phone, internet and DISH network satellite television. Installation date was to be Jan 17th.
10:45AM - Patrick Ellisworth, Mike’s supervisor, called to say that installation would be on the next day. I told him that it would not, that his failure to call in a timelier manner resulted in my choosing a different provider.
1/12/07
I received a call from AT& T saying that they had contacted Comcast and that Comcast said that they couldn’t make the change until after the 23rd. It did not seem strange at the time, I now wonder if they did this to attempt to fraudulently get past the 30 day satisfaction refund warranty.
1/19/07
Received a bill in the mail from Comcast showing that I had digital voice and high speed internet. Since no high speed Internet had been installed this now becomes mail fraud.
Called 866-594-1234 to contest that I had the services shown on the billing.
Initially I spoke to Neesha in billing who said that she needed to verify that I didn’t have the services; transferred Pan in technical services who transferred me to Brad in retention, who transferred me to Drake in retention who put me on hold while he conferred with someone and then came back to tell me I needed to speak to someone in a different department. I believe that he put me back in the queue and then the call was disconnected. So, after spending almost one hour telling the truth I was till being told that, no, I had the installation and had the services as well as their modem.
1/22/07
Called 866-594-1234 asking for a supervisor and got Sonia X6077 of the
Schaumburg, IL office. She stated that there was no problem since there is a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. She claims that a credit would be issued in the amount of $75.38, I told her that they needed to get after the tech that marked our install order as completed since he had probably entered a serial # to “verify” the completion. He either had it or sold it.
1/26/07
Called Comcast to cancel the second phone line; the primary line was handled by AT&T on the 24th. Internet is up and running so we are no longer using the second line which we had used exclusively as our internet line. They still think we have their service and modem. I’m tired of being called a liar by them
So, Comcast still asserts that we owe for services not received and Comcast believes that they completed the install and that I have a modem that they supplied.
My requests of Comcast:
- Refund of all high speed internet charges for services not received.
- A letter verifying voidance of the contract (requested on 1/12/2007) and refund for all services (phone & cable) provided past the date AT&T requested transfer.
- Compensation for the numerous missed visits and a formal apology.
- Issuance of the refund check that my son David is owed when he changed to RCN earlier after hearing about our recent Comcast experience and other service problems.
End Guest Blog post
******************************
For me this is a frustrating example of a poor customer experience that is driven by management desire to cut costs by using contractors. This often does not take into cost of lack of execution, lack of process accountability and customer dissatisfaction.
Selling via a house visit to upsell due to a technology change is an aggressive tactic, was the fact this occurred so close to year end meaningful and an attempt to “cook books”?
It’s my second run in with the modem issue. When Comcast bought AT&T’s cable system, I owned my own modem. After moving to a non-Comcast area, it took over a year and calls from a collection agency to fix the error.
Why does Comcast outsource things with a poorly defined process that leads to a bad customer experience?
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Newspoo.com will carry this story so it reaches as wide an audience as possible…Comcast should be shamed.
Thanks Newspoo,
It is a management issue. If there was checks and balances here, a tech could not pull this off. Just like with the tech who fell asleep, this is a senior management problem.
Once Gloria is satisfied with the results of her complaint, I recommend she cancel all of her Comcast subscriptions. The best thing my husband and I ever did was to turn in all of our boxes, modems and remotes, and go Comcast-free! We are now back to rabbit-ears–yes, rabbit-ears–and we are reading more, watching DVD’s and listening to more classical music. We’ve rediscovered the dog (she’s actually a pretty neat dog) and we’re learning how to communicate with each other again and why we got married in the first place (it wasn’t to watch TV and pay more and more for cable every year).
Thanks, Comcast, for screwing up so bad that my hubby and I are enjoying life again!
Cindy
Phantom modems seem to be a common problem with Comcast. In 2005, my roommate Michelle moved out, and cancelled her Comcast service that was using MY modem that I paid RETAIL price for at an electronics store. I tried to setup new service at the same address with the same modem and was flabbergasted when they accused Michelle of not returning “their” modem (with my MAC address) to them! It took a week to sort that out.
Hi Cindy,
She has migrated all of the services to AT&T, Comcast refuses to compensate her for the missed visits, cancel the bill and tell her she is not responsible for the modem. An apology in writing would be a nice touch.
… they had the audacity to ask me if I had a receipt for a modem that was over a year old. “Well, do you have one yourself?” I said.
Brendan,
I think you hit the same thing I did, were you a AT&T customer with a purchased modem before Comcast bought it? That is how it went down with me.
No David, Michelle signed up for Comcast in the same month I bought the modem. I wanted to have my own modem because the living situation wasn’t likely to last very long, and I didn’t want my roommates and me paying a $10/month rental fee for a Comcast modem.
not surprised…they charged me for a modem which their rep. took from my place and didnt turn in. it took me long numerous phone calls and 3 months to get them to credit me for it but i still havent gotten a check from them in 6 months….
When I read this kind of post I’m tempted to say “if you dance with the devil…” I say this as a current customer with no alternatives in my area: this sort of atrocious behavior is SOP for these folks. You’ll be lucky if AT&T does you any better, either. They failed to check in a modem I returned prior to moving, a couple years back, and it took months to sort it out. It turned out that the modem had been sitting on a shelf in the Salt Lake City office, right where I told them it’d be.
comcast is a freaking JOKE!
The best thing you can ever do is get rid of Comcast service. We switched a couple years ago to Dish network and have been happy ever since.
When I contacted comcast to cancel our cable and told them I was switching to DISH, the customer service rep tried to pull this huge list of reasons why I shouldn’t get the DISH. The funniest was that the gravitional pull of the earth would over time mis-align the satelite dish on my house and I would have to have a technician come out and fix it. Hah.. In short Comcast is a dishonest company that preys on the weak and ignorant for $$
I can only say…rabbit ears antenna, books, the radio, classical music and one on one time with my hubby.
Beats Comcast, Qwest, Dish and any of the others…any old day!
A satisfied non-consumer who discovered that the value of life is not in consuming or being consumed, but in simply being.
Comcast is the suck, I am waiting till my contract goes to out and going with ATT( not that they are much better.. but they are cheaper) The problem is that these gassbags have become so large and have no competition that there is no reason to do better. I commend you( or your mom ) on the decision to drop their services entirely. I think that in the future every US consumer is going to need something like http://www.prepaidlegal.com to even do business with these monkey pounders.
Cindy,
I do agree with you alot on that. The only problem is when everything goes digital the rabbit ears (sadly) will go the way of some many other now obsolete.
“The only problem is when everything goes digital the rabbit ears (sadly) will go the way of some many other now obsolete.”
Actually, No. When everything oes digital, what will go obsolete is your analog TV NOT your rabbit ears. You can pull Digital and HDTV off the air using your old rabbit ear antennas provided your TV has a digital and/or HDTV tuners built in.
I agree, there should be competition to these monopolies and NO Dish (Satellite) network is NOT a competition to Comcast (cable). They are different technologies with their own adwantages and disadvantages. Cable should compete with cable and satellte should compete with satellite. We need more than one of both in any locality
My solution, download the TV shows I want via Bittorent. I still need High Speed internet though which brings us back to the same problem…….
Hey, at least he didn’t fall asleep on your couch.
rcorino,
Thanks for the information on the rabbit ears and making it more “technically accurate”. I’m surprised to learn that actually, I would have thrown both out!
I got a cable modem when it was @home. Then it went to at@t. Then when comcast took over I left. They kept jacking up the price over and over I laughed and canceled everything.
Now I have 1.5/64 DSL for 25 bucks a month and watch much less TV. Couldn’t be happier
[...] Her son has put her complaint history up on his blog. It’s a very nice complaint history. Lots of who what when where why hows. Short on emotional appeals. Good stuff. [...]
[...] Her son has put her complaint history up on his blog. It’s a very nice complaint history. Lots of who what when where why hows. Short on emotional appeals. Good stuff. [...]
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Comcast has changed my bill, often by $100, every month since i got them. I was called 2 months ago to see if i wanted to try out their new auto-debit or something bill pay. I told the nice lady i would never give comcast auto debit to my account and she actually seemed confused.
Good luck with the struggle. I wish you could take comcast to the bank for this one, being mail fraud and all.
Although it wasn’t Comcast I used to work for out sourced customer service for DirecTV. Tips
Always escalate. If your getting nowhere in 10 minutes with one person try going over their head. Especially since they usually aren’t allowed to offer to transfer you to someone who is really able to help without you asking first.
Be patient, these customer service reps are nothing more then meat factories. As soon as your call disconnects there is literally .38 sec before the next call starts, barely enough time to inhale to say hello
Don’t waste your time getting the employee ID/Reference Number. It is logged in the system and does no help to the next person you talk to anyway.
Unfortunately this is the world we live in. At places like that they track effectiveness, not by problem resolution, but by how fast you can get the person off the phone without intentionally disconnecting them (which happens a lot anyway).
The best thing to do in this kind of case is to file a small claims against them in small claims court.
Most of the time, these companies will settle rather then pay the high cost of an attorney to represent them.
It is simple, $50 to file, and some initiative on your part to file it.
I am in the process of considering filing one against cingular …
I worked for Pacific Telephone-PacBell-SBC-AT&T for 30 years in repair and installation. Each field technician has a daily “Quota” of jobs to be completed. Each job is “completed out” in a computer by the tech so their productivity can be checked. Their is no check to guarantee any work is done - so it is quite easy for the tech to show a job as completed without ever doing any work. Trust me it is common practice for the less productive techs to falsify productivity to keep their jobs. Ethics and quality work disappeared years ago. Now it’s only volume and revenue that matter. I’m glad to be out of the hypocrisy that passes for customer service in today’s environment. The best resolution I have found is to set up auto pay on every bill and to block payment when services are not received. That seems to be the only thing that gets anyone’s attention. The next best thing - take the assholes to small claims court. Big corporations will almost always settle rather than show up. It’s cheaper for them to resolve the problem rather than to send someone to the court for a hearing.
When I moved a few years back, I had to get out of my previous home in a hurry, so I took my rented cable modem with me. I wasn’t moving very far (about 25 miles), and I planned on taking the modem back to the original payment center sometime over the next few days. When Comcast came out to install service at my new address, the tech saw the modem on my desk, and insisted he had to collect the old equipment before he could activate my new service. Not wanting to fight about it, I reluctantly handed it over.
A few weeks later, I got a bill for my old account with a charge for “unreturned equipment”. After several phone calls, I found out that my new service was on the “AT&T Network”, which had been acquired by Comcast many months ago, but the two markets were still operating as entirely separate entities. I gave my modem to a Comcast tech with a Comcast ID badge and a Comcast polo shirt. He was driving a Comcast truck. He handed me a Comcast receipt. Yet, somehow, I didn’t give my modem back to Comcast.
Months later, after a number of nasty “late payment” letters and countless phone calls, my modem eventually found its way from the AT&T-Comcast warehouse to the Comcast-Comcast checkin center, and was removed from my old account. By this point, I had canceled my digital cable service, and switched to Dish Network. Comcast was my only choice for High Speed Internet, so they got to keep some of my business.
I still hate them.
Digg is here to save the day.
The people Comcast hires to do work are the lowest bidders. If the CEO talked to half of the people who contract for him, he would not want them representing his company. They’re dirty scrubs. And don’t get me started on the SPAM they’ve recently put on their Guide menu…
The only thing good to ever come from that company was a funny slogan, “It’s Comcastic!”
We’ll make them pay.
-Disgruntled
There really isn’t an incentive to provide good service.
There are two major internet providers where I live, Rogers cable and Bell Canada. Rogers generally delivers good service, high band width, very few outages and has a knowledgeable customer support. Also their wait times for customer support are rarely more than 10 minutes. They aren’t perfect but they usaully correct their mistakes in a reasonable amount of time. None of this can be said for Bell Canada. The two companies have a roughly even market share. My assumption from this is that at least half of the customers don’t value good service. So it’s no wonder that most companies take the easy route and don’t even try to provide a good product.
NOTE: I’ve been a customer of Bell Canada, SBC Yahoo (in California) and Rogers. I’d go without internet before using SBC again.
I would suggest writing a letter to their corporate office as well as a formal complaint to the BBB. I would also suggest contacting the local news, as that usually gets the companies to play a fair game of ball.
I used to work for a cable contractor. Comcast has few actual employees in the field. The contracting company can be a mixed bag, the sub-contracts can be a step above vagrants. They’re paid by the job, not by the hour. Clearly, it’s easy to see how something can get screwed up between the sub-tractor, contractor, and Comcast. That doesn’t surprise me. What amazes me is how Comcast can be surprised by what their customers tell them and dig in based on what their contractor says.
My advice is find out who the contractor is and talk to the sub-contractor’s supervisor. He/she will know what the score is and will be much more motivated to help you than 1-800-comcast. If that doesn’t work, go down to the local Comcast office and ask to talk to their field supervisors.
If you have to do business with Comcast, know in advance that this is the cost of doing business. The benefit of having a monopoly or oligopoly is that you can have a business plan that is openly hostile to your customers, and they know it. Just look at net neutrality, where the well-funded telcos tried to tell you that the internet is best served by extorting website owners. You know why the satellites weren’t able to offer local channels in the 90’s? It’s because lobbyists convinced government that it would be *too successful*, forcing the poor little multibillion-dollar cable companies out of business. Do you know why there is no service in the country? Cable companies refuse to build out the most expensive “last mile,” but also lobby to keep rural municipalities from doing the job. They also shot my mom
Comcast has a business plan built around escalating prices, hidden fees, lies and false billings. Anyone who has tried to cancel service knows exactly what I mean.
Wasting your time with Comcast’s horrendous CS is like trying to nail Jell-o to a tree – don’t. If they don’t have it in writing that you accept a fee, don’t pay. If collections is called, that’s what you want to have happen…request them to stop contacting you until they have proof that you owe the money. If they can’t produce a written agreement that you asked for the service attached to the fee, they legally are no longer allowed to contact you. Tah dah, end of harassment over illegitimate fees.
Maybe this can help you out, theres a company here in MONTERREY, NUEVO LEON, MEXICO called TELEMARKETING that pays students underage to answer phone calls speaking in english and represent themselves as people that really work in there. They use the COMCAST SYSTEM, and put some exams regularly so the company gets to know that they can give support to the phone calls.
Anyways, what matters up here is that they CANT say where are they located or else youll get fired. I dont know what comcast is but i think they are doing something illegal by doing such a thing, PLUS THEY DONT OFFER STUDENTS NEITHER CONTRACTS OR HOSPITAL FEES!!!!!
If questions you can mail me at viko.nava@gmail.com
[...] serious problems that my Mom and I had recently experienced with Comcast, explained in a post that was promoted to the Digg front page in this guest blog post from my [...]
i work for the connecticut branch and this would never happend it all depends where you live i guess….I would like to say sorry to whom comcast was rude to..
I think everyone should join Florida’s lawsuit against Comcast about their sorry On Demand service. New Movies are often not there as advertised or will come out for one day and then get yanked. In addition, they go for weeks without updating the anime channel although they supposedly made a deal with the anime network to offer more and better service.
In addition, Comcast uses the old bait and switch when it comes to advertisement for services that include hidden fees like a $99 installation fee for phone service for their 33+33+33 for internet/phone/cable service.
Was I the only one charged $99 for an installation fee. If so why? How do I correct this.
Comcastic!