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I'm also considering leaving. Here are a few of my reasons for wanting to leave. First and foremost, is the generally horrible customer service. While I have

I'm also considering leaving. Here are a few of my reasons for wanting to leave. First and foremost, is the generally horrible customer service. While I have occasionally managed to talk to an intelligent customer service representative, these chances are rare. When I first signed up for the service a few years ago, I got a call from Comcast saying that my service would be cut off since for the past three months my bandwidth usage had been well over 250 GB (my roommates and I each streamed a lot of TV and used remote desktop software very often). I asked if there was any way I could pay for a plan with unlimited bandwidth, they said "No.". I asked if I could possibly monitor my bandwidth usage and pay for overage. Again, the answer was "No.". Great, that's very helpful. Eventually, I found out online that I could pay $20 or so more a month for a business plan with unlimited bandwidth. Great, I'll pay more and they'll leave me alone. After signing me up for business, they gave me a modem that supported up to four static IPs. Since I did not need a static IP (dynDns was enough to SSH to my machine), the device instead acted as a NAT and would not allow me to configure port forwarding. I asked if it was possible to somehow enable this. According to them, I had to purchase a static IP to enable these options. So I bought my own modem. Now, generally the customer service on Comcast business has been much better. But this only because the local rep and technician gave me their direct contact info. My understanding is that they don't actually work for Comcast directly, but are contracted by them. These are the only people that have ever been reasonable. However, when I moved last year, I apparently had to pay a $100 installation fee (which I hadn't had to do before). Fine, it just sucks that they changed this. The guy was there for all of 10 minutes. The technician was very polite, however. The final straw was this last month, when suddenly I was being charged a $7 equipment rental fee. I had heard about this online but thought it wouldn't apply to me, since I don't even have a piece of equipment from them. I contacted my local rep and he said that I could only talk to them about service issues (which I have in the past, and they are great) and that I had to contact Comcast customer service. So I call, told to expect a wait of over an hour. I hang up since I can only call during business hours and I'm at work. I sign up on their website to have them call me. I get a call immediately, only to be on hold for 20 minutes. What is the point of this service if I still have to wait? Finally, I get through to someone. I explain my issue in a calm manner. He starts telling me that I cannot use my own equipment (some bullshit about a warranty and fixing issues) and that the $7 fee is unavoidable. I explain over and over that my contract said I had my own equipment and that everyone has told me this was possible. I am getting rather upset with this guy (I've never been so mad at a customer service rep), to the point where I'm very short tempered and demand to talk to someone else. Before transferring me, he says that anyone else will tell me the same thing. It's Comcast's policy, and has been. Then the last thing he asks me is, "Who provides your phone service?" I know he's working off a script, but he has done nothing but tell me I'm wrong and at this point I'm livid. I respond, "That's not relevant to the matter." He says he's "just trying to save me some money." I tell him he can save me money by getting the $7 fee for a piece of equipment I don't have off my account. When the person I'm transferred to answers, I'm in a very bad mood. However, this guy is rather polite, and I apologize if I was rude when he answered. I explain the situation, and he checks that I am indeed not using their modem. He then gives me a $7 credit to my account (since I was already billed) and removes the recurring fee. Finally, someone reasonable. He tells me there is no policy saying I have to use their equipment. Why would this other guy have lied to me? It seems asinine to charge me a $7 equipment rental fee and not allow me to use my own. It's very out of character for me to get as upset as I was with a service rep. I've never had such an angry quip with someone in customer service. This kind of consistently bad behavior that wastes hours of my time can only make many of their customers want to switch to another ISP. I don't understand how a company can treat their customers like shit. Perhaps its the lack of competition, I guess. Anyway, just wanted to vent about my bad experiences. </rant>

j_s 15y ago
Whenever I can, I use Skype to call customer support 800 numbers for free and do other things on the PC while waiting... http://blogs.skype.com/en/2005/07/free_calls_to_tollfree_phone_n.html http://blogs.skype.com/en/2005/07/free_calls_to_tollfree_pho...
- zbischof 15y ago
  Thanks, I'll keep this in mind. I've spent more time dealing with Comcast customer service than all my other monthly billed services combined. I've got more stories, this is just the highlight reel. Now if I could just get them to stop playing crappy, low quality music while I'm waiting...
  - j_s 15y ago
    I agree on that being a problem (was tempted to say "I hear you on that one..."); Windows Vista+ with separate audio levels per-process comes in handy; it's not too hard to notice the transition from annoyance to "hello, hello, hello?" even when turned way down with Spotify on top!
- pm90 15y ago
  you can even use the free google voice service
- technomancy 15y ago
  Works great until your ISP tells you to restart your router.
shrub 15y ago
I worked for a company contracted to do Comcast customer service, so I've got some insight into what goes on on the other side of the phone. Mostly 250+ people in half-cubical rows telling subscribers (subs) to "power cycle" the modem; meanwhile team leads are pressuring the Customer Care Executives (CAEs) to get their call times under 5 minutes (literally 630 seconds, actually) and to stop "escalating" calls at all costs. When I first worked there, training was 3 weeks. For a lot of new hires, 3 weeks is just not enough time to learn how to use a computer, how the internet works, and what the Comcast service offerings are in each area. Sure, they could pass the wussy multiple-choice "progress evaluations", but that's a far cry from having a workable knowledge of computers, internet infrastructure, etc.. A lot of them barely knew how to look something up in the knowledge base (internal website), and when they did find something, it was likely to be horribly out of date. When I first graduated to "the floor" from training (and for a long time after), I kept all my class notes in a tabulated binder and referred to it often. This was entirely optional, and a lot of less capable classmates came with nothing but their password sheets. I bet Comcast spent an awful lot on technician visits because of CAEs who didn't know how to release/renew an IP address and subs who refused to pay $50 when the person on the phone had assured them it was not their computer's fault, thus the visit was free. Eventually someone decided they could make up for general incompetence by introducing software that enforced a specific trouble-shooting procedure. They hoped that questions like "Is the customer's TV working? yes/no" would save time for the CAEs who always insisted it was antivirus causing the problem, whether or not the sub reported a poll down across the street; and questions like "Is the customer's computer turned on (yes/no)" would help the CAEs who insisted it was always a Comcast outage requiring a special technician escalation, regardless of the sub having reported no lights on the computer in addition to no lights on the modem. It's a great idea in theory, except in practice the software was buggy ("I'm sorry, can I put you on hold for 2 minutes? My trouble shooting software just crashed..."), sometimes lead in circles ("Can I get you to check... wait, no. We already did that. What the..."), and when it finally went full-scale and started accumulating hundreds of thousands of tickets, it became slower than slow ("Sorry, I'm just waiting for the next step to come up."). Since the policy for a while was that every call absolutely required a TTS ticket number (only retrieved upon "completing" a line of questioning), we actually had times when we'd say "I'm sorry I can't help you right now, we're having a tool outage," and there were many times I'd just click the shortest path to a ticket number because the system's bias was that the both the customer and the CAE were idiots; it was never the fault of, say, ancient terrible infrastructure that was falling apart. The process of escalating a call in that center, by the way, was to put the customer on hold, stand up and wave your hand in the air. You'd then hope that someone would notice you before you lost all feeling in your arm. If someone did happen to see you (before "ops" called your phone to chide you on your excessive hold time), they'd ask what the situation was and would then usually refuse to take the call. "I'm going to say the same thing as you told them, deal with it." So the CAE has two options, drop the call and get fired or repeat that to the customer. Eventually we'd try to avoid having call time impacted by waiting for a "manager" to refuse to help anyways. For one particularly bad shift I worked out a deal with the guy sitting next to me: I just passed him my headset. He didn't even have to lie and say he was a manager, just the change of voice turned the trick. When I left they had shortened training to 2 weeks. The last guy I partnered with for his last day of training (live calls) could not tell the modem from the router (I got the impression he wasn't sure what a router was, actually). The whole thing was terrible for customers and for people who actually wanted to help customers.

j_s 15y ago

Whenever I can, I use Skype to call customer support 800 numbers for free and do other things on the PC while waiting... http://blogs.skype.com/en/2005/07/free_calls_to_tollfree_phone_n.html http://blogs.skype.com/en/2005/07/free_calls_to_tollfree_pho...

zbischof 15y ago
Thanks, I'll keep this in mind. I've spent more time dealing with Comcast customer service than all my other monthly billed services combined. I've got more stories, this is just the highlight reel. Now if I could just get them to stop playing crappy, low quality music while I'm waiting...
- j_s 15y ago
  I agree on that being a problem (was tempted to say "I hear you on that one..."); Windows Vista+ with separate audio levels per-process comes in handy; it's not too hard to notice the transition from annoyance to "hello, hello, hello?" even when turned way down with Spotify on top!
pm90 15y ago
you can even use the free google voice service
technomancy 15y ago
Works great until your ISP tells you to restart your router.

shrub 15y ago

I worked for a company contracted to do Comcast customer service, so I've got some insight into what goes on on the other side of the phone. Mostly 250+ people in half-cubical rows telling subscribers (subs) to "power cycle" the modem; meanwhile team leads are pressuring the Customer Care Executives (CAEs) to get their call times under 5 minutes (literally 630 seconds, actually) and to stop "escalating" calls at all costs. When I first worked there, training was 3 weeks. For a lot of new hires, 3 weeks is just not enough time to learn how to use a computer, how the internet works, and what the Comcast service offerings are in each area. Sure, they could pass the wussy multiple-choice "progress evaluations", but that's a far cry from having a workable knowledge of computers, internet infrastructure, etc.. A lot of them barely knew how to look something up in the knowledge base (internal website), and when they did find something, it was likely to be horribly out of date. When I first graduated to "the floor" from training (and for a long time after), I kept all my class notes in a tabulated binder and referred to it often. This was entirely optional, and a lot of less capable classmates came with nothing but their password sheets. I bet Comcast spent an awful lot on technician visits because of CAEs who didn't know how to release/renew an IP address and subs who refused to pay $50 when the person on the phone had assured them it was not their computer's fault, thus the visit was free. Eventually someone decided they could make up for general incompetence by introducing software that enforced a specific trouble-shooting procedure. They hoped that questions like "Is the customer's TV working? yes/no" would save time for the CAEs who always insisted it was antivirus causing the problem, whether or not the sub reported a poll down across the street; and questions like "Is the customer's computer turned on (yes/no)" would help the CAEs who insisted it was always a Comcast outage requiring a special technician escalation, regardless of the sub having reported no lights on the computer in addition to no lights on the modem. It's a great idea in theory, except in practice the software was buggy ("I'm sorry, can I put you on hold for 2 minutes? My trouble shooting software just crashed..."), sometimes lead in circles ("Can I get you to check... wait, no. We already did that. What the..."), and when it finally went full-scale and started accumulating hundreds of thousands of tickets, it became slower than slow ("Sorry, I'm just waiting for the next step to come up."). Since the policy for a while was that every call absolutely required a TTS ticket number (only retrieved upon "completing" a line of questioning), we actually had times when we'd say "I'm sorry I can't help you right now, we're having a tool outage," and there were many times I'd just click the shortest path to a ticket number because the system's bias was that the both the customer and the CAE were idiots; it was never the fault of, say, ancient terrible infrastructure that was falling apart. The process of escalating a call in that center, by the way, was to put the customer on hold, stand up and wave your hand in the air. You'd then hope that someone would notice you before you lost all feeling in your arm. If someone did happen to see you (before "ops" called your phone to chide you on your excessive hold time), they'd ask what the situation was and would then usually refuse to take the call. "I'm going to say the same thing as you told them, deal with it." So the CAE has two options, drop the call and get fired or repeat that to the customer. Eventually we'd try to avoid having call time impacted by waiting for a "manager" to refuse to help anyways. For one particularly bad shift I worked out a deal with the guy sitting next to me: I just passed him my headset. He didn't even have to lie and say he was a manager, just the change of voice turned the trick. When I left they had shortened training to 2 weeks. The last guy I partnered with for his last day of training (live calls) could not tell the modem from the router (I got the impression he wasn't sure what a router was, actually). The whole thing was terrible for customers and for people who actually wanted to help customers.