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Former Comcast cable technician here. I was an in-house tech, and corporate has ludicrous quality standards and nitpicky, white-glove QC's after an in-house tec
by pwerner2 9y ago
Former Comcast cable technician here. I was an in-house tech, and corporate has ludicrous quality standards and nitpicky, white-glove QC's after an in-house tech leaves a job. However, the company obviously employs a TON of _independent contractors_. Some of these contractors are excellent at their jobs, but a lot of them aren't, and as they're not subject to any real oversight by the corporation, you really don't know what you're going to get. At least, this was the case at the office I worked out of. Based on my experience (and I worked at the company for a while), this is almost definitely 100% true, but it's probably a contractor or an individual corporate tech being lazy, instead of malicious action on the part of Comcast.
- packetslave 9y agoThis is why I "happily" pay extra for Comcast Business Internet. Completely separate call center and 100% in-house techs. It also probably helps that a Comcast field supervisor lives in my building (now if he'd just stop blocking the %$#@ driveway with his van...)
- Bill_Dimm 9y agoI don't think "100% in-house techs" is right. I have Comcast Business and my line was recently cut (probably an accident by apartment maintenance). The tech who came out and put in a temporary line was from Comcast, but he said a contractor would come out at some point in the future to put in a permanent one (hence, he could not guarantee that I could get a notification when it would happen).
- packetslave 9y agoInteresting. I've had techs out several times in Santa Clara, both for installs and for repairs/troubleshooting, and it's always been a Comcast employee in a Comcast Business van.
- monocasa 9y agoI've had contractors come in vans with official Comcast insignia on the side.
- MertsA 9y agoThat's because they have a different team to do burials.
- icelancer 9y agoI have three Comcast Business Installs. The phone support service is superior but the techs are outsourced. We had one good one do two installs and one horrible once completely botch an install just today.
- crooked-v 9y agoIntentionally cutting lines that don't need to be cut to do your install is more than just "lazy".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoIt should be called criminal Damage.
- rgbrenner 9y ago> instead of malicious action on the part of Comcast. Im not so sure of that. The destruction occurred from June 15th to Aug 1st (when they lost their last customer) -- thats 6 weeks -- using over 4000ft of cable for repairs. If comcast was notified after the first incident, and it continued for 6 weeks.. doesn't that indicate malicious intent?
- pwerner2 9y agoComcast is huge, and again, a lot of the techs are independent. Some of the employees, especially management are totally incompetent too. Ever been to the DMV? Now imagine that they're the ones hooking up your internet. That's Comcast.
- wavefunction 9y agoThe DMVs I go to are staffed by highly-competent but over-worked and underpaid folks.
- bluGill 9y agoI have learned which ones to not go to though. Some are worse than others. I know of an out of the way office that is never very busy. (actually this office is more convenient than the much bigger overcrowded one everyone around me uses)
- johnmaguire2013 9y agoThe DMV didn't cut my friend's brake cables when I went in to get my driver's license.
- Clubber 9y agoThe DMV I go to is usually slammed, but they have a decent queue system so I only wait about 10 minutes. It used to be a joke that the government was inefficient and companies were bastions of efficiency and customer service. That's how bad the US has gotten. We run a sham economy.
- 9y ago
- camus2 9y ago> However, the company obviously employs a TON of _independent contractors_. They are contractors and do what Comcast tell them. "It was a contractor" is the laziest corporate excuse. But that's one reason why big businesses employ them, plausible deniability when things go wrong.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoYeah, it's weird that the OP emphasizes their contractor status. What they are is undertrained and incompetent employees. What kind of tax form they get is completely irrelevant.
- logfromblammo 9y agoOnce is an accident. Twice is incompetence. Thrice is intentional. What was described in the story is just pure malice. They cut three more lines as the guy was on the phone trying to complain to Comcast about the first cut. Comcast was given a map, and from the story, it looks like they used it to pre-plan the willful destruction of someone else's business and livelihood. If there was a lack of training, it was a dearth of ethics classes. If there was a lack of competence, it was in devising plausible excuses for the cuts.
- kw71 9y agoI previously worked inside Comcast systems for 10 years, I am always amazed by the competence and dedication to quality and service on the part of their engineering and technical operations staff. It makes me a bit sad that these guys do really great work and then the press are able to have all these terrible things to write about customer service reps, megacorp lobbying and conspiracies, and some hotspots of technical problems.
- jostmey 9y agoWhat planet are you from? I have nothing but negative things to say about comcast and the quality of comcast products I fully believe the press because as a customer of comcast they treated me like a turd on the sidewalk
- 0xcde4c3db 9y agoTo be fair, every exchange I've heard of with Comcast's actual network tech/admin people has given me the impression that they're extremely good at their jobs. Almost all of the problems I hear about with Comcast are related to extraordinarily poor customer service, neglected outside plant, or customer-hostile policy decisions.
- kw71 9y agoI am sure they are getting blamed for customer premises wiring faults too. I wish people didn't have to deal with their terrible CSR's. I think they are more inclined to sell HBO rather than communicate a useful fault report to technical staff. I was also treated differently as a customer once I got insider connections.
- eip 9y agoComcast execs would literally stick it in your fart maker if they had the chance.
- walls 9y agoIt's not a 'conspiracy', Comcast really is just awful for the average person.
- raarts 9y agoVery hard to believe the company has'ludicrous' quality standards but at the same time works with so many bad contractors without putting controls in place. I don't buy it.
- dragonwriter 9y agoIt's quite easy to believe a company has much higher quality standards for things it can blame on some other actor that it nominally doesn't control. Outsourcing blame is fairly common.
- ghostly_s 9y agoI've literally never heard of anyone impressed with the quality standard on a single service Comcast provides soooo...gonna call bullshit on this, too.
- mjevans 9y agoI can believe that they have some small 'gold standard' team like this that they reserve for... say the houses that their lobbyists visit.
- delackner 9y agotheir business service is somewhat responsive and pretty reliable. That said, the installer they sent was totally unprofessional and also, yes, a contractor. How can you screw up just connecting a cable modem to a coax outlet? Run two lengths of cable connected by a four port adapter, and staple the adapter to the wall a foot above the baseboard because why not, this is only in the middle of someone's dining room. As soon as he left I disconnected the whole mess and ran a single length of cable along the baseboard, with a right angle connector to keep it flush.
- pwerner2 9y ago"I don't buy it" Ah, sorry, I forgot I was on the internet, land of experts in everything.
- jimjimjim 9y agoIn a near-monopoly situation: Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice.
- pdeuchler 9y agoNot requiring sub-contractors go through the same "ludicrous quality standards" is a lazy, malicious act on the part of Comcast
- MaysonL 9y agoI would have to say that hiring all those crappy contractors is malicious action on the part of Comcast.
- CaptSpify 9y agoIt doesn't matter. If they are contractors working for Comcast, then Comcast should be held 100% liable. Outsourcing has no bearing on who is responsible for the problem.
- pwerner2 9y agoYou're right. I was just trying to give some insight into why the quality of work varies so much.
- orclev 9y agoTechnically the way the US legal system works, the expected outcome is that Comcast loses, pays this company, and then sues their independent contractors to recover the damages they had to pay out.
- CaptSpify 9y agoThat's how it's supposed to work. How it actually works is that the contractor is probably going to get a new giant contract with Comcast.
- rayiner 9y agoIf a contractor did it, the company isn't liable. It's precisely why Uber fights so hard to keep drivers classified as contractors rather than employees.
- pwerner2 9y agoI am astonished. This is not a complicated issue. This is sensationalism. Before any of you "vote" on anything, consider exactly what it is that you're criticising. As it is, I'll bet almost all of you have never turned a wrench, let alone crawled into some ungrateful asshole's filthy attic or appalling, sewage filled crawlspace to replace a corroded cable fitting so said customer could spank his monkey at 3am to shitty cable porn, or worse, play farmville, and made < $15/hour doing it. We are talking about a very delicate electrical system that cannot function effectively outside of a specific radio bandwidth before being completely overtaken by the numerous sources of RF which exist in the world. Remember radios? Well, they got their name because they were the receivers of "radiated" "waves" in the air. As were TV's. Guess what? That coax line in your house? That's the modern version of an antenna. CATV literally means "community antenna television". It's an antenna that you share with everyone on the same "node" of your cable system. It's shielded so the RF no longer has to go through the air. In effect, if there is a breach in the shielding around that cable (a long antenna), you're going to get noise, and crappy service. Additionally, your precious internet rides on the highest frequencies carried by this sole, frail copper wire. Those high frequencies, as any EE student can tell you, are especially highly susceptible to interference. A single dB can make all the difference for your highly calibrated, sensitive cable modem that you don't fully appreciate. Some of these networks are huge. If one of your neighbors got high and plugged a blender in, anywhere in his home, and he has frayed cable jacketing, anywhere in his home, or a bad fitting, anywhere in his home, it can easily take an entire block down. There are hubs, of course, but don't count on one being nearby, if you're tasked with repairing someone's internet. I get it, "fuck Comcast, they're the devil because I have to give them money", but let's be adults here. Comcast is people. Every company is people.
- covercash 9y agoSure, every company is made up of people. Comcast just happens to be made up of a lot of people lacking integrity. It's part of the company culture, trickling down from the top.
- nyolfen 9y agothe wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron" -dril
- jaclaz 9y ago> instead of malicious action on the part of Comcast. Incompetence (by me, by you, etc.) may be just incompetence. Incompetence by a Corporation is malicious action. Possibly not the specific case, but the ludicrous quality standard is in itself malicious action.