Sunday, December 30, 2007

Because You Suck. And We Hate You; Comcast Edition

From Gene Weingarten's column in today's Washington Post Magazine:

"I remained at home for four hours, obediently waiting for the Comcast man to come and make my land line phone work. He never arrived. When I finally contacted customer service, someone explained what had happened: Following company procedures, the repairman phoned my home first, and when no one answered the land line that was broken, he canceled the appointment on the theory that no one was home. It was at that very moment that I elected to officially terminate my service by yanking some wires out of the wall."

There is a reason why the cable companies have a reputation for customer service that is so bad, only the airlines and loan sharks are below it.

Now, as for what is truly bizarre about the cable companies: They have separate divisions for dealing with consumers and with business customers. The businesses get far, far better service from the cable companies. Yet a small business which has a standard cable Internet package pays less per month than a consumer who has cable Internet, cable TV and phone service from the cable company, and they usually pay a lot less.

I know a lot of people who have different cable services. To a person, I have not met a Comcast residential customer who does not secretly wish to see the management of Comcast skinned alive and dipped into hot salt water.

4 comments:

  1. 2 1/2 years ago I got so fed up with Comcast (4 price increases in 1 year) that I switched to DirecTV. I pay less for 3 hookups with DTV than I did with Comcast for 2 TV outlets. I get more diversity, including foreign language programming (NOT Spanish) and as a bonus when I call customer service, they actually try to solve my problems.

    If you want to try DTV, I'd recommend it. Let me know because if I recommend you we each get a $50 payment. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lurch,

    A friend of mine ditched Comcast for a local start-up cable company: Better service, lower rates.

    As for me, I do not have a good line-of-sight ti the south, so I can't do any kind of satellite.

    ReplyDelete
  3. And here I thought only painters sought a northern exposure.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My apartment doesn't face that way. I once lived in a building were half of the apartments on one side had those little satellite dishes and those on the other side were stuck with the local cable company. I've forgotten who they were, but they operated on the traditional cable customer service model of "fuck you very much."

    ReplyDelete

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