It feels a little weird, slightly liking the enemy of many of my peers. But the way that this issue was handled was surprisingly amazing.

Waking Up This Morning

I woke up, and from a suggestion by @ATLChris from Twitter, I decided to go through with threatening cancellation to bring down my price. Not sure how much I can get it to drop, I decided to give them a ring.

On the other end of the line was one of the nicest customer representatives I’ve talked to. If I really was calling to cancel, she would have had my order done without any hassle. Which worried me, because I was waiting for a phrase along the lines of, “Is there anything I can do to make you stay?”

Then, the moment hit. So I explained the story that I’ve written very quickly. She offered yet another introductory rate of $39.95 for six months. In six months, I would be canceling, so I agreed.

And then it got even more interesting.

Two Phone Calls

I don’t normally get phone calls during work hours, but I got one. The number showed up on my caller ID; it wasn’t blocked.

Turns out it that the call was in response to a tweet I made. I @’d @ComcastCares with the link to the blog post, in an effort to see if they could help. At that moment, I had a very weird feeling, wondering how the heck this person got a hold of my number… (I still don’t know how, because my legal name is different and I didn’t actually direct message back my phone number…) but at the same time, I felt like I was getting quite the treatment. (In the end, it turns out it wasn’t the same person who’s in charge of the @ComcastCares account.)

He called to see if he could rectify the situation. Of course, I could have pushed for an even cheaper offer, but at this point, I was okay with the $40 I would be paying. He made sure that everything was resolved okay.

At this point, I felt fairly happy with Comcast. I started to forget the customer service experience from yesterday.

Later in the day, I get another one. Yet another unblocked number. This time, it was someone that seemed from somewhere higher up in the complaint ladder. She made sure everything was taken care of, blah blah blah.

In retrospect, I should have been a little angry that this last phone call happened. After all, are they going to keep calling me at work to make sure everything was okay? Another phone call would have done it.

Maybe It’s Just For The Tweeple?

If you’ve read the most recent issue of Wired (or this article), you’ll get a slightly positive view of Comcast. I didn’t agree with this at all when I read it. But now, after this experience, my view on the company changed a bit.

This is a genius move on Comcast’s part. Appease the techies, and let them do the word-of-mouth advertising on their own. “Comcast isn’t evil.” “They’re so quick to respond… on Twitter.”

I can now start talking about Twitter’s effect on customer relationship management software. I can also talk about how viable Twitter’s business model might be if they start charging businesses.

But that’d be detracting from the point of the post. Back on Comcast.

It’s not just because I got a pretty good price on my Internet service; it’s because of the fact that Comcast seems to be changing… at least the Twitter facing portion. All those horror stories about ridiculous customer “support”… Here’s to hoping that those days are far behind Comcast.

I have to thank @ComcastCares and @ComcastBill for everything. And the people who called me that I can’t really @.

I can’t believe I’ve started to use @ as a verb. I should totally start using more symbols.