I had an "emergency" set up that didn't go through when the College Football season started (yes, missing a game qualifies as an emergency), and experienced much of numbers five, four, and three with Time Warner. So for what it's worth, this sounds like it's pretty much "policy" with Time Warner as well...

I can personally verify #3. When I moved, the tech wasn't going to make it to the new house to do the install on time (I believe they get graded on this). He claimed that he tried to call but I didn't pick up, so he cancelled. Problem is, at the time he claimed to have called, I was on the phone with Comcast asking where he was and they couldn't find him either. They made him come back out right after his next appt.

What information was "leaked," exactly? I already knew that Comcast supervisors avoid me at all costs, that the CSRs cannot communicate with dispatch, that appointments are randomly cancelled, that Comcast phone service sucks, and that Comcast doesn't care.

I would be much more interested in tips to circumvent these problems. How can I get to someone who can do something the fastest? How do I contact dispatch directly? Etc.

Speaking of a dispatcher who works at Comcast, this is certainly not the way dispatch handles customers in the New England region. I have no idea what region the leaker is referring to, but it is certainly not New England's.

Excuse me, but if you tell someone that you are going to call them back YOU CALL THEM BACK, or if you tell someone that someone else will call them back you MAKE SURE THAT THEY WILL CALL BACK, and if you say that you didn't call someone and they call you and complain YOU FIX THE PROBLEM INSTEAD OF MAKING THEM WASTE THE DAY THEY TOOK OFF WORK.

It's just that simple.

This was a "leak?" I knew all this stuff from basic interaction with Comcast. Hell, a squirrel living in the tree outside my window would know this. Very weak when it comes to any kind of confession.

And by the way, the only option outside of Comcast in many locales to prevent the money from "rolling in" is satellite TV, and thats just as bad if not worse.

I think the supervisor thing makes sense for the most part. When I worked in a call center so many people who didn't get the exact answer they wanted would ask for a supervisor. I was 3rd shift so we didn't have one which just upset them a whole lot more. Sometimes people wanted impossible things, and they thought for some reason the supervisor would give it to them.

I don't think there are tips to circumvent these problems other than the Rep said. The only option is to take your business elsewhere.

I am with AGB. This is all common sense stuff. "oh the poor customer service reps, they are powerless to help..."

I want info on how to fight comCRAP and it's bureaucracy, not excuses from someone so low on the totem poll they have no power to affect change.

As soon as I can I will be taking my business to satellite. That is really my only option since comcast will not listen to me about a problem with the wiring at their pole that causes my digital cable signal to crap out.

@ Buran:

I agree. I just hope you don't send Comcast a check every month, to make your point known to them. Right now, subscribers with CS problems are telling Comcast that these behaviors are appropriate.

You can't contact dispatch directly. There's a reason that these numbers aren't given out to the general public. They don't take customer calls, that's what CAE's are for.

I had Comcast for a year. Then I moved to a building that has a contract with RCN.

*does happy dance. dances around the living room. does a few pirouettes and arabesques for good measure and then sits down to enjoy digital cable that actually works.* (BTW, I'm really happy that I don't have to deal with Comcast anymore. It's expensive crap that doesn't work properly.)

Well, I've honestly never had a problem with Comcast. My internet is fast, and my cable picture comes in fine. Guess I'm one of the lucky ones.

Anyone with horror stories from the Denver area?

"I hate to say it like that but Comcast's customer service is amazing."

Umm... no. It sounds like the Comcast Customer Service Department does a pretty good job given a company structure that is inexcusable and utterly backwards, but the customers don't care. We don't care if you're Customer Service or Dispatch. You're all just Comcast to us, and the WHOLE COMPANY sucks when things go wrong. We really don't care if all these issues are the fault of Dispatch. If you want us off your back, let us call Dispatch.

I'm going to have to call Comcrap this week. ATT has *finally* upgraded the phone lines on my street so I can get their top end DSL. It's $7 less per month than comcrap and my self install kit is on my desk ready to go. Once I verify that the DSL works I'll be canceling their internet service. Next stop: Satellite. Have to decide between Dish and DirectTV....unless they offer me a VERY good deal on a digital cable upgrade.

Baloney.
Look at her picture - no collar on her shirt! The problems in Customer Service are obviously caused by dress code violations.

Kerkira

@jaredgood1: Me too! Of all the cable companies I've had, Comcast is by far the most reliable and has the most advanced features.

@Kerkira: You should know by now that the pictures rarely relate to the story at hand. It's just a gawker style thing. Search google or flicky for photos that match the theme.

I work for a Mediacom call center . Basically all of this applies. There are no "tips" to get around these problems. These cable companies are a huge mess.
The dispatchers hate the CSRs, the techs are sub contracted out and depending on the mood just simply don't do the work.
The "supervisors" you speak with are typically just a different agents with no real authority.
If you do get definitive times on tech orders you are typically just being told a lie that will shut you up.

How are these confessions? They're facts that are familiar to any Comcast subscriber. All I gathered from this post is that at least one CAE is aware of how poorly Comcast customers are treated.

...

(5) I've never been able to get a supervisor on the phone. On numerous occasions, I've been promised a call-back, but it's never happened. Obviously, supervisors rarely (if ever) interact with customers.

(4) Since most of us have had to follow up on missed appointments, we're familiar with the separation between customer service and dispatch. (In the past, I've been able to get the CAE to put me on hold and call dispatch.)

(3) Again, the pre-appointment call is familiar to anyone who has had to sit around 4 hours waiting for a tech. And anyone who has had an appointment canceled because of it knows how it works.

(2) IP phones require IP connectivity. If your modem is offline, your phone is offline. And we all know what happens when we don't pay our utility bills.

(1) Duh.

...

So how about some actual dirt? Or some useful information perhaps?

I've had good and bad experiences with comcast.

When I lived with my parents, all I wanted that summer was a cable internet connection (no land line in the house) Comcast came out a week after we called to set it up, the guy waltzed around, said he'd have to do a bunch of crap outside in the street and would have to dig and he would have to come back. Two months later my cable was finally set up. Turns out that guy could have done everything that day by himself he just didn't want to climb into our attic.

For #3, when I missed the phone call the guy left a message, I called him back, and he came out that day.

When I moved back into my parent's house after the hurricane, they had to set up a new line coming in to the house, the guy did that the same day (thank God.) but left the line running across the street, I called Comcast multiple times complaining about how my neighbors were running over my coax. Before it was finally buried it was pretty much flat. Still worked though.

It all comes down to management. Unless a service rep is blatantly rude or has clearly made a mistake, it's useless to get mad at them if they're doing nothing but following the rules or if a problem is totally out of their hands. Sounds like a typical customer service-related problem, with CSRs getting yelled at and then they get angry with their supervisors. At my part-time job, whenever I'm short staffed due to manager mistakes, lines back up at the registers and customers get angry at me. This turns into me getting frustrated with management. If the system itself is inherently broken, as seems to be the case with Comcast, getting mad and yelling at the first person you talk to/see isn't going to help, you're just likely to get more angry.

I worked as a rep scheduling Sears home repair service calls, and the process was eerily similar. The front-line reps had very little knowledge of when or why the technicians did anything. Almost any problem other than voluntary rescheduling required messaging another department and promising the customer a call back, and we all know how often the customer actually gets called back; it's a classic get-them-off-the-phone-and-hope-they-don't-call-back tactic, which is central to their customer service philosophy. That and encouraging the rep to "take ownership" of issues, which means "apologize a lot," because reps don't have the actual tools they need to be able to resolve problems.

These aren't "confessions."

These are instructions for the customer to suck it up and be nice to the poor, poor CSR.

I have always thanked the Lord that Las Vegas is Cox Communications. I get tv, internet, and phone through them and it has always rocked my socks off on how good they are (it was good in San Diego too).

Can Consumerist create a map of where you're better off doing sattelite+dsl than cable?

As I am typing this I am still waiting (From 10am -12 noon Thursday) for someone to show up to take a look at the explosion of wires in the cable box outside that is likely the cause of our many outages. Seeing that it is now 12:12, I think I'm out of luck.

This post did give me some closure.

Here's a few tips about getting through with Comcast's customer service:
1. The best time to call is 1am - 6am if you don't want to wait a long time. Any other time after 6am, you will be put on hold.
2. If you want a tech to be on time for an appointment, grab the earliest appointment possible. The first one of the day if possible. They will be on time, fresh of mind and mostly in a good mood at that point in time. Always request to get a Cocmast Tech and not a contractor.
3. If you know someone who works for Comcast, give them any problems that you have with your service to take care of. Even if they cannot fix it, they will know someone who can. This is how your problem will get shown to Managers and Vice Presidents in a positive way - not because you were the nusance on the phone - and taken care of the best. I know that many of you don't know anyone on the inside, but if you do, use them, they have been instructed to do whatever they can to help with service issues. Some areas also have a VIP friends and family line set up just for this.
4. Sometimes, but not all of the time, calling and getting another CAE on the phone will help. They may be having a better day than the last one.
5. When all else fails, switch or threaten to switch. It strikes the fear into them when you mention AT&T or Dish. Remember, they are a big machine with lots of lawyers and people who don't care, so there is not much that you can do to directly hurt them except not be their cutomer anymore.

This isn't a "confession of a Comcast CSR," this is "desperate plea from a Comcast CSR to make people stop yelling at me."

Yeah, we know that Comcast techs are lazy and useless. That's the problem, not the solution. The solution is telling us how to get a tech to our house... not telling us that we shouldn't even bother trying to escalate.

Yeah, none of this is specific to Comcast. See, we know that Comcast techs are lazy and will often cancel calls. That's the problem, not the solution. The solution is telling us how to get a tech to our house once the call's been cancelled. The solution is not telling me to calmly and politely call my local Comcast Representative to schedule a follow-up call.

If the tech doesn't show up, and the CSR has no way to verify his location or ensure the tech can do his job, then you're going to get yelled at. If you refuse to put your supervisor on the phone, you will get yelled at again. No, I will not give you my number so the supervisor can "call back." I already know this is code for "you are killing my handle time and I need to terminate the call to save my own metrics."

Ah, I see comments are borked again. Thought my first comment got eaten, so I logged in and posted the second, then both appeared. Soo... yeah.

@dragonpup: Where exactly are you in New England, Drago? I live in South Boston and I can confirm that this is EXACTLY how dispatch has worked for us.

When we first moved in to our place last year, our internet was down for most of a month. We had techs out no fewer than a 8 times and had at least 3 'phantom' cancels happen to us. Oh, and my personal favorite tech: the guy that said "it's your modem" and proceeded to burn through 5 brand new modems until he found one that would work ("must be a bad batch" was his excuse). There didn't seem to be any continuity in our ticket escalation so we got to go through the same basic 'protocol' with each CSR and supervisor we spoke with. The only thing that got us a resolution (a fix at the pole that we suspected after the second tech visit) was a phone call to Clark Howard's people to get the phone number for local executive customer service manager. Problem resolved the next day...

Oh, and Comcast is our only option in our area (aside from satellite)...even though we live 3 blocks from an RCN dispatcher, the way the market's carved up, we can only get dial up from them. Which is all sorts of awesome...if you're living in 1989.

it seems like the biggest problem they have is the "handoff". this is not uncommon for large companies that have multiple independent departments. these guys seemed to have made an art out of it though.

i would imagine they have 20 different divisions using 20 different software apps - i bet a switchover to something similar to lotus notes would solve most of their problems.

even setting up company-wide usage of IM could help.

I've gotta say, I've never had anything but good service with Comcast. Perhaps I've just been lucky but take this for example:

A few weeks ago I had Comcast Digital Voice installed (now I have all 3 services) and soon after it was installed, my lower numbered channels (local mostly) would be nearly unwatchable on the weekends... Sunday in particular was bad and when there's football to be watched, I'm not a happy person. Anyways, it would clear up by Wednesday then start again on the next Sunday.

I was having issues with my DVR at the time as well as it would lock up, so I decided to get it replaced. I drove 5 minutes to their billing center and no questions asked 5 minutes later I had a brand new unit. Hooking it up fixed the lockups, but did not fix the reception.

At work this past Tuesday at 12pm, I used Comcast.net's live chat and told them my problem. They said they needed to send a tech out to check it out and that they had an opening between 2pm-5pm that very day. A 2-5 hour problem resolution? I was speechless but because of all the 'issues' I had heard about, was a bit skeptical.

The tech showed up as promised in the rather small time window, did some tests, replaced a splitter that the phone installer originally put in and my service was restored back to what it was.

Before this minor issue happened, I went 3 years with uninterrupted Digital TV and Internet service. Maybe I'm just lucky but I can't talk ill about them.

Number 3 is true to form. No answer, no appointment, no matter how many hours you've been home from work waiting on Comcast to show up for an appointment you had to wait 7 days to get while living without the benefit of cable or internet.

I did find the MASTER comcast "executive customer care" line where you can speak to a real person, with a direct extension, who will actually call you back personally to 1. resolve the issue and 2. check up a week later to see if all is still well. Miracles do happen.

Here it is...best of luck: 888-309-2583

Do what I did, learn to live without cable or dish. After fighting with Comcast for months over our DVR, I finally had it removed and canceled cable all together. Guess what, I still have a pulse. TV shows are not worth this much trouble.

Throughout this article the rep in question constantly re-iterates that it is not the fault of the customer service reps that these problems exist, and then exhorts the customer not to complain about it to the customer service rep.

I'm sorry, but as the customer service rep you are my contact with the company. It is your job to listen to me, and rectify the situation. If you are not given the tools you need to do this, you need to get the other reps together and ask management for those tools. You must persevere until you are able to do your job; otherwise you must sit and listen to complaints.

I, and others, have done this before at many jobs. However, companies like Comcast like to keep the average age of their employees low so that this will not happen. Either make it better or leave, but do not expect me to make your job easier for you.

When I was with Comcast, one of they're techs disconnected my cable for no reason, other than they think he did the wrong address. So they sent tech out to see what was wrong, no signal coming to my drop so he runs a new drop. After threatening to file a complaint with the local telecommunications commissioner finally got a real supervisor who pinned down the issue. I've moved since then and I'm with Wave Broadband. It's actually faster than comcast was, and consistently has better bandwidth.

I was told by a tech to check the footwear of any tech that comes to your home. If they aren't wearing work boots, they are a contractor and should be avoided. If they are wearing boots, they work directly for Comcast. I've experienced both, and the contractors were definitely not as helpful and seemed to just want to get in and get out.

@Buran: "Excuse me, but if you tell someone that you are going to call them back YOU CALL THEM BACK, or if you tell someone that someone else will call them back you MAKE SURE THAT THEY WILL CALL BACK"

EXACTLY. I called my local office to try to get my cable hooked up when I moved last month. I kept being told I had to talk to "Rhonda" and that there was nothing I could do but talk to this ONE person.

I was told once that she'd call me "as soon as" she was done with the customer she was talking to. The next day, I called the direct line I'd been given and got her voicemail. I left three messages over the course of the day, listening to a message saying she'd call me back as soon as she could.

I called the main line again and asked for her. They said she was on the phone with a customer and would call me back. I replied that I wasn't hanging up unless they could PROMISE that she was calling me back when she was done with the next customer. They said of COURSE she would.

Four hours later, I left her a message saying that I'm sorry it's taken her three days to get rid of one customer, but if she didn't call me back in the next hour that I'd be canceling my account instead of upgrading.

Thirty minutes later she was on the phone. Completely unprepared and without the information that various people had ASSURED me was sitting on her desk, but nonetheless, she got it worked out for me in the end.

I liked the tech much better to be honest, he actually was helpful and nice, and only 20 minutes late.

I'm confused. Point #5 tells me that unless I'm a screaming asshole, my call won't be escalated. But Point #1 tells me that being a screaming asshole does no good. Clearly it does something, as loathsome a tactic it may be, and Comcast is reinforcing the behavior.

Also: Amazed that anyone still falls for the "we'll call you back" routine. That's when I laugh and start asking for a supervisor.

You forgot that with cablecompanies and phone companies the person answering the phone has a small what to do list that basically includes restart cablebox or modem.

besides that theyt can't help you. you have to ask for a higher level of support of get a technician to your house.

Even whe nthe tech gets to your house it will be some contractor and they will only handle inside your house problems.

@Kerkira: Not pictured: her skort

New Post Title:

Comcast CSR 'Confesses': "It's all somebody else's fault!"

"It's not our fault it's the company's." Was also the favorite defense of Nazi war criminals. No I'm not saying you are like a Nazi but I'm just trying to illustrate how ridonkulous that crap sounds. If you are so great and the company sucks so much ass, why do you work there?

Thank you for validating our switch to satellite. True, the satellite providers have their own set of problems, but honestly, the tech and customer support have been great, in our experience. What a relief to never ever ever have to pay another dime to underwrite the incompetence and arrogance that is Comcast.

@leftistcoast: Left, the dispatch policy states that the tech attempts contact and if they can not reach the sub, they call into dispatch to make the call and leave the message if no one answers and note the account with the time(CAEs should be informing you of this policy when you set up your trouble call, but you can also request what number to call, or if there is no working phone to be reached at). For no dial tones, accounts with no working phone number or installations, the tech must go to the door and knock and ring the bell first.

As for bad batches, it can happen, although 5 would say to me that there was something wrong at the same time.

I'd type more, but I am meeting a friend for dinner and need to get going.

@faust1200: Because people need jobs. And please don't reply with "There's other jobs out there". It's not that easy to change jobs, and you know that.

I'm with a couple commenters above that have said that this is no confession, but a plea to "be nice to the person on the phone..." Either that, or it is a company leak posing as a CSR to try to stem the flood of bad Comcast press on Consumerist...

So far, I haven't had a problem with Comcast (after the initial problems when they bought Time Warner RoadRunner in my area and we switched over).

It's good to know that when I need to call them, they will either ignore my needs, waste my time, or basically do nothing for me. Thanks for the heads up!