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With all due respect, your customer service policy should be based on doing the right thing regardless of the forum, as opposed to simply responding to those wh

With all due respect, your customer service policy should be based on doing the right thing regardless of the forum, as opposed to simply responding to those who have an audience. The data caps you've recently put into place in my market are going to effectively double my account price per month. I look forward to the day that I have other choices.

samtho 11y ago
The employees are not to blame here. If he is browsing HN, he knows the pain points with Comcast and is just trying to help.
- organsnyder 11y ago
  No one is blaming individual employees. Quite the opposite, in fact—they're blaming the organization for failing to address issues unless the right individual is reached. That's been my experience, as well. In two instances (one business class, one residential), I had issues getting their construction department to actually do the work they promised until I was able to get through to the escalation department—once via Twitter, once (IIRC) on dslreports.com back when the Comcast direct forum was monitored. Once the escalation department was engaged, things moved very quickly, with them calling me almost daily with status updates. There are clearly individuals at Comcast who care about customer service. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be the ones in charge of organizational policies and processes.
  - Eldarrion 11y ago
    Agreed. I recently decided to give Comcast another go because my current provider has some horribly bad upstream speeds, but even with brand new service, I seem to be having issues where my connection drops 4-5 times a day. It is not too big a deal when you're trying to work from home, but it can be a massive pain in the neck when you're trying to play anything online. I've been trying to resolve this issue with their customer support but I've gotten nowhere so far and feel like I'll probably just go ahead and cancel out of the contract before my first month is up. They do advertise that they spend millions of dollars on improving their customer support, but I've yet to see anything happen on their end. Amusingly, our Comcast business contract at work has at least a couple of issues every week, too. We only don't notice them if they are to happen over the weekend, but when CRON jobs that require internet connection haven't run over the weekend, it's easy to figure out who needs blamed.
- archildress 11y ago
  I agree with you. I'm troubled though by this new era of customer service where the focus is on having a team of people who monitor social media for the loudest complaints and devote resources to solving those out of fear of bad PR.
- virtuallynathan 11y ago
  I do my best (customer support is not my day job) - if you are having issues I'd encourage you to try out the tool I helped build here: https://speedexperience.xfinity.com/ https://speedexperience.xfinity.com/
  - metal 11y ago
    Ironically on that page the "highly recommended" link to https://speedtest.comcast.net/ https://speedtest.comcast.net/ times out.
    - virtuallynathan 11y ago
      Thanks for catching it! I'll fix it now! (We just did a revamp of the site text this week, must have slipped - we only 2 of us work on it :) ) EDIT: fixed! let me know if you see anything else out of place.
      - metal 11y ago
        Thank you, it works now. FYI it took everything I had not to post something snarky ;)
  - douche 11y ago
    Does it ever say anything but chat with an agent? Some listing of what the actual issue is would be kinda useful, even if you shove it in a collapsible div to hide it away. I (and most people) are more likely to rage-quit and go do something else than try to navigate three layers of outsourced customer service that is designed and optimized to deflect people, waste their time, and only if they are sufficiently insistent, and border-line belligerent, maybe give them an answer more involved than "unplug your modem and plug it back in"
    - virtuallynathan 11y ago
      Yes, it depends what the issue is. We check: - If your modem is EOL - If you modem's ethernet port is 100Mbps, and you have >100Mbps service - If your modem is otherwise capable of providing your speed (i.e. number of DOCSIS channels) - We check your signal levels to make sure they are in spec - We check if you have been impacted by our Protocol Agnostic Congestion management system in the past 1 day or 30 days. If any of these checks are triggered, we show it on the page. If nothing is triggered, we allow you to go straight to a chat. We'll be adding more checks as time goes on, mostly around Wifi - MCS Index, Link rate, RSSI, etc.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  At least one employee would be to blame, right? Comcast's network hasn't become sentient, and isn't actively rebelling against human businesses by shutting down random ports. At some point, someone either made an explicit decision to do this, or decided to skimp on training.
  - jarfil 11y ago
    It could also be an endemic culture problem, where lots of people skimp on lots of tiny things to the point that the final performance goes down the drain. No one to blame, but everyone to blame.
asd 11y ago
> I look forward to the day that I have other choices. Same here. They are very aware that we have no other choices. They will continue provide the least amount of service for the greatest cost until this changes.
- knodi123 11y ago
  The week after google fiber arrived in my neighborhood, my cable provider "spontaneously" decided to double my connection speed for the same price, "because we care about our customers and want them to have the best experience possible."
- Killswitch 11y ago
  I had Comcast when I lived in Chicago. They basically run that city. You can't get any decent internet anywhere else. All the other providers for some reason in the city, didn't cover any neighborhood I was in. The biggest thing I liked, moving back to Iowa was decent internet provider.
- douche 11y ago
  As usual, South Park absolutely skewered cable companies, and pretty much said all there is to be said https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0sAVtOt2wA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0sAVtOt2wA

samtho 11y ago

The employees are not to blame here. If he is browsing HN, he knows the pain points with Comcast and is just trying to help.

organsnyder 11y ago
No one is blaming individual employees. Quite the opposite, in fact—they're blaming the organization for failing to address issues unless the right individual is reached. That's been my experience, as well. In two instances (one business class, one residential), I had issues getting their construction department to actually do the work they promised until I was able to get through to the escalation department—once via Twitter, once (IIRC) on dslreports.com back when the Comcast direct forum was monitored. Once the escalation department was engaged, things moved very quickly, with them calling me almost daily with status updates. There are clearly individuals at Comcast who care about customer service. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be the ones in charge of organizational policies and processes.
- Eldarrion 11y ago
  Agreed. I recently decided to give Comcast another go because my current provider has some horribly bad upstream speeds, but even with brand new service, I seem to be having issues where my connection drops 4-5 times a day. It is not too big a deal when you're trying to work from home, but it can be a massive pain in the neck when you're trying to play anything online. I've been trying to resolve this issue with their customer support but I've gotten nowhere so far and feel like I'll probably just go ahead and cancel out of the contract before my first month is up. They do advertise that they spend millions of dollars on improving their customer support, but I've yet to see anything happen on their end. Amusingly, our Comcast business contract at work has at least a couple of issues every week, too. We only don't notice them if they are to happen over the weekend, but when CRON jobs that require internet connection haven't run over the weekend, it's easy to figure out who needs blamed.
archildress 11y ago
I agree with you. I'm troubled though by this new era of customer service where the focus is on having a team of people who monitor social media for the loudest complaints and devote resources to solving those out of fear of bad PR.
virtuallynathan 11y ago
I do my best (customer support is not my day job) - if you are having issues I'd encourage you to try out the tool I helped build here: https://speedexperience.xfinity.com/ https://speedexperience.xfinity.com/
- metal 11y ago
  Ironically on that page the "highly recommended" link to https://speedtest.comcast.net/ https://speedtest.comcast.net/ times out.
  - virtuallynathan 11y ago
    Thanks for catching it! I'll fix it now! (We just did a revamp of the site text this week, must have slipped - we only 2 of us work on it :) ) EDIT: fixed! let me know if you see anything else out of place.
    - metal 11y ago
      Thank you, it works now. FYI it took everything I had not to post something snarky ;)
- douche 11y ago
  Does it ever say anything but chat with an agent? Some listing of what the actual issue is would be kinda useful, even if you shove it in a collapsible div to hide it away. I (and most people) are more likely to rage-quit and go do something else than try to navigate three layers of outsourced customer service that is designed and optimized to deflect people, waste their time, and only if they are sufficiently insistent, and border-line belligerent, maybe give them an answer more involved than "unplug your modem and plug it back in"
  - virtuallynathan 11y ago
    Yes, it depends what the issue is. We check: - If your modem is EOL - If you modem's ethernet port is 100Mbps, and you have >100Mbps service - If your modem is otherwise capable of providing your speed (i.e. number of DOCSIS channels) - We check your signal levels to make sure they are in spec - We check if you have been impacted by our Protocol Agnostic Congestion management system in the past 1 day or 30 days. If any of these checks are triggered, we show it on the page. If nothing is triggered, we allow you to go straight to a chat. We'll be adding more checks as time goes on, mostly around Wifi - MCS Index, Link rate, RSSI, etc.
pavel_lishin 11y ago
At least one employee would be to blame, right? Comcast's network hasn't become sentient, and isn't actively rebelling against human businesses by shutting down random ports. At some point, someone either made an explicit decision to do this, or decided to skimp on training.
- jarfil 11y ago
  It could also be an endemic culture problem, where lots of people skimp on lots of tiny things to the point that the final performance goes down the drain. No one to blame, but everyone to blame.

asd 11y ago

> I look forward to the day that I have other choices. Same here. They are very aware that we have no other choices. They will continue provide the least amount of service for the greatest cost until this changes.

knodi123 11y ago
The week after google fiber arrived in my neighborhood, my cable provider "spontaneously" decided to double my connection speed for the same price, "because we care about our customers and want them to have the best experience possible."
Killswitch 11y ago
I had Comcast when I lived in Chicago. They basically run that city. You can't get any decent internet anywhere else. All the other providers for some reason in the city, didn't cover any neighborhood I was in. The biggest thing I liked, moving back to Iowa was decent internet provider.
douche 11y ago
As usual, South Park absolutely skewered cable companies, and pretty much said all there is to be said https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0sAVtOt2wA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0sAVtOt2wA