Tag Archives: comcast

Why I Have Started To Like Comcast

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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.

Why I Continue To Not Like Comcast

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This story has very little do with their actual Internet service (which is not very good to begin with: huge huge latency and bandwidth issues at certain points in the day), but instead their customer service.

I noticed a recent hike in my monthly Internet bill. I knew that my introductory pricing plan was up, and I knew that I would be paying the full price. I called in and found out that since Insight, my old Internet provider, was bought out by Comcast, that their old monthly prices were null and void. Now I had to pay the new Comcast rate of $60.

So the customer service rep comes up with a great idea: Why not add basic cable for $10 and reduce the Internet bill to $43? This came to me as a surprise, and made me ask her why would anyone go for the now full price of $60 for users of only the Internet service? She mumbled some reason about some people wanting to have different cable service, but that still didn’t make any sense. I decided to not push any further.

So I said, fine. I’ll pay the $53 (~$55 including tax, hooray for $5 of savings). I then asked if there was there any way to reduce this month’s bill to the previous rate, seeing how I was not notified of this change in rate from Insight’s normal rate to Comcast’s. So she graciously waives the $44 installation fee. Wait, what? You were going to charge me an installation fee? For what?

All you have to do on your end is change the numbers on my billing statement. I guess not, because it gets even better.

She then asks me for an appointment time to come and install the cable. I tell her, no one watches TV here. In fact, there is no TV in the apartment. We go back and forth a couple times, me telling her that there is absolutely no reason for anyone to come out because nothing is going to change physically in the apartment on our end. Then she puts me on hold to go and figure this out.

She comes back, saying that I would have to pay the full $60 if I didn’t have a TV.

blink blink. What?

So I said screw it, and made an appointment to install tomorrow. Without having a TV. I’m probably going to have to find a TV if the technician is really picky, but instead, I’m hoping to sweet talk him into not doing jack squat to the apartment. There goes 2 hours of my life waiting for a service that I don’t need or want, which is paid for by the company providing the service. Yippee.

This entire situation is just so mind-bogglingly retarded, I had to put it to blog form and share it. Maybe I can tweet it @ComcastCares and see if they really care.