What is Digg?93 Comments
- lead2thehead, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21I am convinced that Comcast is run by the same people who manage the DMV.
- ubergoose, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21Because they need a job?
- Ydnar24, on 10/10/2007, -9/+29The story reads more like 5 excuses of a comcast customer service rep of why comcast sucks.
Why would anyone work there? - Enochyang, on 10/10/2007, -0/+196. If you do happen to get a supervisor on the phone, don't expect them to take sides with you--as opposed to the representative. Customers often get into heated arguments with representatives and then expect the supervisor to be like, "what did he just do to you?!? omg that is completely unacceptable and i will fire his ass immediately!" More-likely, the representative has calmly explained to the supervisor what a psycho *****-nut you are, and your hostility will only prove his case.
- mt066, on 10/10/2007, -4/+21Nothing much useful. Here's a summary: "Please don't ever yell at the customer service people, even if Comcast just royally screwed you over."
That's great and all, but how about some actual advice? - AriaStar, on 10/19/2007, -6/+22I got so pissed off with Comcast internet never working and them being ***** bout it (I took TWO DAYS off from work to wait for them, and they never showed) that I canceled my cable altogether. Months later, I decided I wanted it back. Since they are the only option aside from satellite (which won't work for my first-floor apartment), I conceded and called to restart, and was told I needed to go down to their office with a copy of my lease and ID to verify my residence there. You'd think that me being home to open the door would be enough, but no, they decided to be ***** pains in the ass. After I called twice and was told the same thing, I decided it's not worth it. If they won't take my money without inconveniencing me, ***** 'em.
I've got the internet (though a company that only does internet, a faster connection, for less, and it's always up). I've got this thing called a "life" that doesn't revolve around watching fictional characters living their fictional lives.
I am fine without cable. - AriaStar, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10He's trying to "defend" Comcast by saying it's not Comcast's fault, it's the fault of Comcast's set-up's fault. Same thing. If Comcast doesn't give the reps authority to do what needs to be done to appease the customer, it's still Comcast's fault.
- twertyto, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Was it just me or was that article so poorly written it was difficult to read? Also would have been nice if CAE was defined up front. Still not sure what it means.
- jcaino, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6This is damn true. I used to work there and saw this first hand. They would rather roll a truck out to a customer's house where they may be able to charge the customer, eventhough it is well-known internally that there is a line or drop problem. Replacing lines costs them money. They would rather screw the customer than fix the issues. I saw this happen to multiple customers for months on-end. It only was resolved once the customer's started receiving area line sup's direct cell numbers. Ooops. Yea, I don't think they liked that. I was terminated shortly thereafter for some VERY questionable reasons. Needless to say - they did me a favor. Comcast tech support is a JOKE. Internal communication is piss-poor and they will cover up a known network issue for HOURS before making an announcement on their system status page, all the meanwhile lying to their customer's and telling them the problem is with their web host. My ASS. I can't wait for this horrible corporate giant to fall - and they will fall hard.
- Hoxie, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6dugg for the picture
- Nougat, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6He's trying to defend the front line grunts who work for a paycheck and have no control over policy and procedure.
- rdoger6424, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5You play Gears multiplayer, don't you?
- FireZipper, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5It means Comcast Account Executive. It's Comcast's fancy name for Customer Service Representative.
- picsectionpleez, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I called Comcast and got put on hold so long that I went to the store and when I came back home I was still on hold.
- AriaStar, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4If they wanted, they could have had the guy check my lease when he got there instead of expecting me to take time off of work to go wait in line at their office to show it. Why do I want to be inconvenienced just to give them money? Especially when the first time I got cable, there was no problem? Technically I just asked for a reconnection.
- jessehadden, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3My current hope is that I never have to call Comcast customer support for my cable internet. *fingers crossed* You see, the only alternative here is Verizon, and I already ditched them for poor service...
- jhartvu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3You've never actually had to call Comcast, have you?
- jokerthief, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Comcast is the poster child of soulless marauding corporations.
- newagenda, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Love it when people do this to the evil corporations that employ them. Ha ha. Good for them! Company's want to exploit people, design systems to milk the most money with the smallest amount of service and pay minimum wages - what do they expect? I hope this happens more often.
- lukifer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I spent two years as a rep for Comcast, and here's the lowdown:
Because of the patchwork of acquisitions that is Comcast's history, different regions tend to have different support and policies. For instance, we always escalated to a supervisor when asked, but clearly in some areas they do not. Some dispatches would jump backflips, while some refused to get a tech out after 2 pm, even if the tech was a no-call no-show (they called it a "go-back", despite the fact that the tech never showed in the first place). On top of that, the support staff is split between different in-house call centers and outsourced centers (mostly in Canada) who are good people but without the resources and training. Same with techs: some in-house, some contractors.
The moral is, Comcast is awful as a company, but there are some helpful people hiding there. Your best bet if you're having trouble is to call over and over until you get someone with both the desire and the ability to help. (In some cases, this meant calling in favors or breaking the rules, but we did it as often as we could.) - hartley, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I spent over 2 years with only cable internet and no cable television. You're not missing much. The few shows I actually cared about were often easily found that night on usenet.
- jax9999, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Here is a hint. I work phone tech support. You call screaming at me, well I'm gonna ***** you up worse than when you started, make you think it's your fault. Then, if I'm in a charitable mood I'm going to very sweetly, and almost subliminally tell you to go ***** yourself.
All the while you're gonna think I'm your Friend helping you, and feel horrible for yelling.
Don't ***** with the people whose help you're begging for. - LuckyLefty, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Day one of training at Comcast (and every place with phone support/customer service)..."the hold button is your best friend".
- jigglebilly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2ok, i work for a company that does tech support for over 50 ISPS and what the CSR from comcast says is true, for the most part, for any ISP. And yelling at tech support will not get you online any faster. Most of us are geeks that grew up fixing our own problems...we dont feel sympathy because you cant get on your internets, we dont care if you run your "business" out of your house. We hear that excuse from every single person that we cant fix RIGHT NOW. Youd think half of the US works out of there house.
Also, if you yell at us, we will go out of our way to make sure the call is the most painful experience your little newb head goes through. However, if you are kind and semi-competent, we will gladly help you and maybe even teach you a few things.
Now here the key, each time you call our company, it costs the ISP about $6 (this can vary). Be nice and polite to the tech support, and just keep calling...eventually they'll notice that you cost them more than they are making from you and they will fix the problem FOR SURE. Most of the time, it doesnt need to be taken this far, but keep calling if you dont get fixed.
If you want anymore tips, feel free to send me questions etc
but the morale of my post is: be nice to us, or you will just get more upset...simply because we dont care if you get online or not. - TheKoH, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Buried for inaccuracy.
I work in the CAE Go Back dept. (soon to be made into a general group called dynamic dispatch) and I CONSTANTLY get calls from call centers for ETAs.
Of, *****, course only the most irate or deserving will speak to a sup. That's why there are leads. Leads can take sup. calls and often do. The ONLY reason an actual supervisor and not a lead would take a call is if no lead is available or the customer's situation demands it. A lead is fully capable of doing all that a sup. can. Sup.'s have more to do than customer service, that's why they are in that position.
It's true, if you don't pick up the phone we don't roll. Unfortunately, this is only a rule that has been reinforced within the past 2 weeks and not any later. Reason why? It costs roughly $150 USD for a tech. to roll out to a job. That means that code A's (where customers are not at home) cost Comcast $150. Sure, it might not be the most convenient thing in the world, but if you were in charge or the situation would you continue wasting away thousands of dollars a day on no shows?
The phone service thing... the author of the above blogged is a ***** idiot for even bringing that up. If you don't understand the risks and responsibilites for having your phone tied to your cable then you're an idiot. It's just common knowledge and basic logic. It's nothing to actually do with being a CAE rep.
"1. COMCAST IS A GIANT, UNCARING MACHINE"
Is that a joke? Uncaring? Know what's amazing? An 800 line specifically designed for customer relations problems wherein an actual supervisor calls the customer back if they have a legit complaint and not one ranting about cable monopolies. The author of the blog obviously had never even heard of that phone number, thereby proving how much of a ***** worker he/she is/was.
To sum it up:
Whoever this... "Comcast Service Rep" is (who I can't tell is a male or female from the picture, either way he/she is ugly as sin) obviously has either not worked long enough at Comcast to know what the hell they're talking about or simply does what 99% of what other people do and only look skindeep and then speaking. My advice? Don't listen to anymore of these ***** rants about how Comcast is evil or doesn't care. Simply put, all these links on digg ranting about Comcast in a negative way are only designed to boost popularity of their own website.
I'm not a Comcast fanboy, fact is, they even recently gave me more work to do and I don't even get a pay raise. Do I honestly care? Not really, no. Stop bitching and just get on with your life. - vanebeard, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2No *****, I could have told you all those things and I don't even work there. A la carte cable NOW!!!
- Bilabrin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Actually Bingobongony, my angry friend, this is quite accurate as anyone who's worked on a sprawling call center floor for a huge corporation knows.
- Chandon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Step 1: Put them on hold.
Step 2: Go to lunch. - rdoger6424, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2hey, the long lines are what got me my permit
(nothing like forgetting to study for the test until you drive there) - drmobutu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2When i was going to drop my comcast for cheap att-dsl, the comcast dude totally offered to cut my rate, by more than $20/month, for six months...kept me from switching...for at least the six months.
- TheKoH, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Sadly, if you're screaming like that instead of presenting your case as calmly as possible, yeah, you not only prove the rep's case but even if the rep. didn't say anything to the sup. to begin with he'd still have gotten the impression that you're an irate *****.
- thebigmammoo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1This article annoyed me. I worked for a Citibank call center as a supervisor and the reason why we had an escalation procedure was to weed out all the calls that could have been handled quickly by the original agent in the first place. Its a better service to the customer to get their issue resolved rather than have them wait for a callback (24-48 hours eta), which drags out the situation. You also have a small portion of agents that love to hand calls off at the smallest sign of complication, instead of showing ownership of said call. While I agree that most corporations are money-hungry pigs that only live to increase profits, what do you expect when you work in a call center? Do your job or leave and let someone else earn your paycheck.
What company doesn't have issues of one hand (dispatch) not washing the other (phone reps)? That's corporate America. Inefficient.
This is not a whistleblower article and I'm disappointed The Consumerist posted it. Its just whining... - nvsocr7, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1com'on google! you're our last hope!
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1God that sounds familiar. From the day I had the service connected my internet was *****. Still is actually, 3 months later. I can't play any online games due to my horrible lag spikes. When I first tried talking to customer support one guy had the nerve to tell me that you're not supposed to be able to play online games with 6mb down 768 up, I made sure he could hear me laugh. 5 Tech visits later and still no ***** fixed internet. I just called verizon today and ordered DSL, ***** you Comcast.
- Armitage2k, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I have been that psycho *****-nut before... never seems to solve anything...
- jazzmess, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Say whatever you want, this guy is telling you the truth. It's better that you understand that this is how it is, even if it pisses you off. Also, the person who yells and curses random strangers is the *****. Maybe the response to ***** should be charity and kindness, but if you act like an *****, know that you're very likely going to be treated like one.
- picsectionpleez, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Just wait- you are in the queue to have your bandwidth throttled.
- playaj20008, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I'm surprised no one has mentioned Comcast's problem with HD cables. Everyone I know who has bought HD service from comcast had a technician who wired the box to the tv through a standard cable wire. Then the HD is formatted wrong and looks like *****. When you call to complain Comcast pretends they have no idea what wires your talking about and continues to insist on running diagnostic tests that confirm that your HD box is online, GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- DJDevine, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1i used to be a direct sales rep, where i went door to door for comcast. Techs are ***** ups, period. the reason your install or tech problem gets cancelled is them, not dispatch. dispatch just follows what they say. they can go and tag your door and "say" they were at your house and knocked and no one was there, if you get a door tag at all, and dispatch can say, oh he was already there. the phone call things is VERY true. they don't have to call and still cancel it because you weren't home. it took them 3 tries to install my own cable when i worked for them, twice before my appt got cancelled, once because they were 30 min early and i was not home(imagine that, the tech is early), and second because they called and i was not home they said, whech they did not call and i was home. the 3 hour window for installation is a joke.
comcast cities are run like franchises, independent from each other, so they have their own service, techs, etc. If you live in Dallas, like i used to, i don't envy you. the customer service is a joke. - TheKoH, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Bottom of the heap? Hm... Wasn't aware that pissing off stupid ***** like you for $14 an hour was considered "bottom of the heap." Now you know why you won't ever get decent service. *****. :)
- jazzmess, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Yelling at a rep will only cause that rep to want to NOT help you. See, if someone is nice to you on the phone after they've been screwed over, you really want to do things to help them. Maybe you have a friend in that other department that is needed to fix their issue. Maybe you know someone who can escalate them up to where they need to be. Maybe all that it will take is for you to make a single phone call, and the situation is fixed. But you're not going to feel much like going out of your way for a customer if they just called you a bitch and told you to go to hell. In that case, you're going to say "I'll make a ticket about the issue, you'll receive a response in 24hours", which is your polite way of telling them to go to hell. "Don't be an ***** to random strangers that you expect help from" is actually very good advice.
- brada33928, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Comcast will listen once Google takes over! I hope they go out of business.
- encognito, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Speed Test #37543697 by dslreports.com
Run: 2007-09-28 21:13:11 EST
Download: 16377 (Kbps)
Upload: 1475 (Kbps)
In kilobytes per second: 1999.2 down 180.1 up
Tested by server: 54 java
User: 2 @ dslreports.com
User's DNS: comcast.net
Compared to the average of 2757 tests from comcast.net:
* download is 81% better, upload is 32% better - bremstrong, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That sounds on target based on my experience with the firm.
I got tired of the Comcast people lying to me. I've been very happy with my new provider. Life's too short to deal with a company that lies to you repeatedly.
The internet service is now much better as well, faster and more reliable. - draegloth, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Sure you do. Like your pillow cares how long you last...
- sharky1564, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1 I am a Comcast employee at a local call center. Yes my title is "CAE" or Customer Account Executive I make about 19 dollars an hour providing Technical support for all 3 LOB's (Lines of business) This includes everyone from the person who racked up $1,200 worth of adult PPV's and is wondering why his service has been cut off to the 46 year old who got HSI (high speed Internet) and is wondering why it won't work on his windows 98 PC. I really love the calls I get from Trailer parks where guys say that they are losing "Thousands of dollars" while we are running maintenance on our Email servers at 1:00 AM. Now we do have a lot of tools at our disposal to help customers and we are being given even more in the upcoming weeks (Grand Slam, Pilot) yeah there are plenty of things that need improvement (Motorola's DVR firmware) but you find that anywhere. I have worked for many places in which the customer service was nonexistent (Mind-spree after Earthlink took over) This is the only company I've been at where the front line reps have any ability to change things. God forbid if there is an outage in your area for a day I will take a couple of days off of your bill, I can do that! we have an Escalations team that handles Dispatch interaction so no I cannot contact them. Just about every problem we do have with your service we can get someone out there the very next day. If you need Tech support at three is the morning on Christmas day you are going to speak with a live local agent (Me well not me because graveyard is too draining but someone will be there) All in all I am more than happy with myself and my company but if you do have any concerns you can call me Tuesday thru Saturday I will be there. And yes I do like to help you get the problem resolved -No it does not help if you yell or swear I will warn you and then disconnect the call. But if you tell me what is wrong (Like a decent ***** human being) I will help you and do my best to make the experience a pleasant one for you is well.
- jkharris07, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Sounds about right, As pretty much a monopoly, they can do anything they want. Even treat their customers like crap.
- cherwilco, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1this part seemed to make alot of sense!
"There are so many people screaming that Comcast has become tone deaf. They will start listening again soon when the money stops rolling in. That's how you put a company in check. You leave them and make them lose money in any way possible. Comcast needs a wake up call and the consumer needs to give it to them." - cherwilco, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yeah I know the drill....I used to work for AOL!
- jazzmess, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Indeed it is. I'm a call center rep myself and It seems damned accurate to me.
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