[Update 2014-10-09] Just received a call from Comcast Corporate and received much better service than when I previously spoke to the retention department. Comcast, just a bit of advice, if ALL your employees were as accommodating and have the ability to service your customer like the corporate office, you would have much better customer service reviews. So, after all this go round, do the numerous service interruptions I am able to cancel my existing service without penalty and will be switching to AT&T to give them a try for the next year. So, I have to say thank you to Comcast Corporate for actually taking care of me (letting me cancel without penalty). If I was able to do this immediately without all this hassle, I wouldn’t have written this blog post and would be much more likely to return as a customer if I’m unhappy with future service from other vendors.
[Update 2014-10-09] So not that I’m surprised, but I never got my promised phone call within the 24 hours. Amazingly, my internet actually worked all day and I was too busy to waste another hour on the phone with Comcast. They did reach out to me via Twitter last night about 9:30pm saying they would look into my case and someone would be calling me. We’ll see…I’ve been told that before 🙂
[Original Content]:
Let me start off this blog post by saying this is going to be a rant, so if you don’t want to read my complaints about how terrible of a company they are and how inept and horrendous their custom support it is, I would recommend you stop reading right now. I don’t usually write ranting posts, but after my experience over with them over the 6 1/2 months a tweet was no longer enough.
Currently I have Comcast Business Class internet at home as I work for myself as a SharePoint consultant (if you’re reading this blog for the first time) and have been in technology for over 17 years. So I’m not a newbie when it comes to technology. Also, I have been a loyal Comcast customer for 5 years with no real complaints and very few outages up until this point. It’s been great, there is a reason I’ve turned down AT&T sales offers and stuck with AT&T until now…
So, this nightmare actually begins back in April when I had my first outage. Ok, understandable, I understand technology…it will go down. I called Comcast, got the recording that there was an outage in my area and hung up. Then it happened the next day. This time I got a ticket number. It proceeded to happen 3 more times in the following 1 1/2 weeks. After the 4th time I started asking about cancellation. It would cost $1500 to cancel my contract, or, if I have 5 tickets with confirmed outages I can cancel without penalty. I had in fact had 5 outages, but only had a ticket for 4 of them. They 6th outage never happened. Finally, they got their issue resolved and all was well and good. I got a little credit out of the ordeal and while still frustrated, was happy Comcast had fixed the issue.
Then my nightmare turned into a horror story and I realized what a bunch of crooks Comcast actually are.
Back on Sept. 29 my internet went out again. My first though, OK, it’s been a while. However, having learned my lesson back in April I got a ticket number. (Let’s count, that #1). Then it happend again on October 1st (Ticket #2), and the 2nd (#3), and the 3rd (#4) and again today, the 7th (#5). Each time I called I did get a ticket number. I have them all written down with the date in front of me (Comcast, if you’re reading I’m happy to provide them). I also got a little credit again, nothing to compare to the money lost due to not being able to work.
Today, I called Comcast, got my 5th ticket and asked to cancel my service. And then I learned about the crooks working at Comcast.
First, they said they need a technician to come out and inspect. I asked why, because all of my tickets where during Comcast confirmed outages. It definitely isn’t me, it’s you. You’ve said so yourself when confirming the outage. I was told it’s what they needed to do in order to not have any fees. However, the longer we talked, this proved also to be one of the many lies I was told by Comcast. I then recounted my experience in April and being told I need 5 tickets then. This rep proceeded to tell me I actually only needed 4 tickets, and he only saw three in the system. What?!?! Seriously?!?! I have all 5 tickets in front of me, I can give them to you. He never let me. We went back and forth for a while, Comcast actually confirming indirectly they all 5 while never outright admitting it. I eventually asked what do I need to do to cancel without any penalty. The rep had to go talk to his supervisor. After a few minutes he came back and I quote, “Sir, I talked to my supervisor and he said we can’t waive the fee because outages happen and this doesn’t warrant canceling the fee”. Ok excuse me, but what the $##@#$%? (If I cussed, I would have swore at him right then and probably several other times during the call). In April I was told I need 5 tickets (which I have), you told me I needed 4 tickets(Which I have) and your supervisor says and outage of BUSINESS INTERNET doesn’t warrent waiving fees when you can provide me what I’m paying for?!?! I can understand and outage ever few months, maybe. But 5 times over the course of 8 – 10 days at two different times when Comcast themselves confirms they are having technical issues? And no one has the same story!! I then asked what exactly I needed to do in order to cancel service. I want to hear the exactly steps. Comcast couldn’t provide this.
Enough of this…all this rep could do was say I’m sorry, we care about your business and we want to take care of you, but couldn’t do a flipping thing to take care of me. So, I asked for his supervisor. and again I quote,:
Comcast Rep: “Sir, we are taking lots of call right now…” I interrupted with a “really…I wonder why” he continued “…my supervisor may not be available”.
Me: “Um, you just put my on hold for 5 minutes so you can talk to him, pretty sure he’s available for me if he was available for you”
Comcast Rep: “That actually wasn’t my supervisor, it’s a floor manager”
Me: “You just told me it was your supervisor you talked to”
Comcast Rep: “No, my supervisor is in a different building. I can put in a request for him to call you back within 24 hours”
Me: At this point I’m completely over this sorry excuse for customer support that all they are actually able to do is apologize they can’t actually do anything. All I want to do in cancel my service and not get charged $1500. So, “I guess if that’s all you can do, that’s what I want”
We’ll wait to see if I get a call back, you can guarantee I’m calling back exactly 24 hours later though if I don’t hear anything.
So, my conclusion, after all of this is:
1. Like the conclusion many people have already come to and that is Comcast Customer support is about the worst customer service you can find.
2. Their customer support representatives and customer retention department employees are a bunch of lying crooks who will do whatever it takes to keep you as a customer except provide you, their customer, quality service or just let you cancel when they are unable to.
So, again, sorry for the rant, but this is something that couldn’t fit in a Tweet and I wanted to get out there in the hopes that someone at Comcast who actually has the power to do something will read this post and make things right (preferable just let me cancel without any fees or hassles so I can take my business elsewhere)
