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It would appear that 'customer service' is an area in desperate need of a revolution. A relative of mine worked in the BAE call center for 6+ years, and they we

It would appear that 'customer service' is an area in desperate need of a revolution. A relative of mine worked in the BAE call center for 6+ years, and they were constantly reviewed and retrained. This service was exclusively for BAE employees and contractors. The trend of fucking over customers is a vestige of the near monopoly the distributed cable consortium has in the US. There is no real motivation to do better as most people don't give a shit until it affects them directly (@raldi). This is probably a silly idea, but what about an all volunteer charity tech support? Are cable boxes really so mysterious and complicated as to be serviced only by 'specially' trained employees and 'vetted' contractors?

deleted 12y ago
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Domenic_S 12y ago
> This is probably a silly idea, but what about an all volunteer charity tech support? Only if we get prices cut by 90% in return!
padobson 12y ago
Are cable boxes really so mysterious and complicated as to be serviced only by 'specially' trained employees and 'vetted' contractors? I'm no expert in the area, but if a Modem or Cable box needs to be reconfigured on the service provider's end, you won't get that fixed with a charity service. Though a charity service could reduce the volume of calls for the serious problems that require service provider intervention.
kabdib 12y ago
Cable boxes are nearly 100% remote controlled from the head-end (the management software I'm familiar with is eye-gougingly bad, btw). They can tell a lot about what's going on by looking at the box, and the status and logs it sends up. You generally can't change the settings on a box because the state is protected from changes (you can break into boxes, but that still won't give you access to the video streams you're not entitled to, since that access is cryptographically protected from the head-end).
hackuser 12y ago
> what about an all volunteer charity tech support? Is Comcast a charity? Then why would I donate my time and expertise? But that's what I end up doing when Comcast doesn't help my friends and family who are their customers.

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Domenic_S 12y ago

> This is probably a silly idea, but what about an all volunteer charity tech support? Only if we get prices cut by 90% in return!

padobson 12y ago

Are cable boxes really so mysterious and complicated as to be serviced only by 'specially' trained employees and 'vetted' contractors? I'm no expert in the area, but if a Modem or Cable box needs to be reconfigured on the service provider's end, you won't get that fixed with a charity service. Though a charity service could reduce the volume of calls for the serious problems that require service provider intervention.

kabdib 12y ago

Cable boxes are nearly 100% remote controlled from the head-end (the management software I'm familiar with is eye-gougingly bad, btw). They can tell a lot about what's going on by looking at the box, and the status and logs it sends up. You generally can't change the settings on a box because the state is protected from changes (you can break into boxes, but that still won't give you access to the video streams you're not entitled to, since that access is cryptographically protected from the head-end).

hackuser 12y ago

> what about an all volunteer charity tech support? Is Comcast a charity? Then why would I donate my time and expertise? But that's what I end up doing when Comcast doesn't help my friends and family who are their customers.