Well, least she didn't use a Shotgun like that guy at Wal-Mart...

I'm sorry.. thats awesome + bonus points for using a hammer.

hammer? why, gas for a chainsaw to expensive? at least the walmart guy was able to return his shotgun runds to walmart regardless of how walmart felt

Hmm.. she must be that "Little Ol' Lady from Pasadena!"

I understand frustration, but frankly behavior like this warrants arrest and a psych evaluation. Were this story about a 35 year old male doing the same thing, I am sure we would be hearing how frightened the people observing this action were. Take your business to the competition, use the contacts both inside and outside of the company to make your voice heard, but leave your hammer at home.

This woman is my hero. I would like nothing more than to beat Comcast senseless with a hammer.

@Angrysicilian: those should be double bonus points. =)

Though I don't advocate this kind of action against a company, I do find it mildly entertaining. I hope that those high-level Comcast phone #'s work, or else I'm buying stock in hammers.

Hrm, despite all the verizon problems I have seen, I say she is making the better choice. I have never had a bad experience with Verizon (3mbps DSL). Maybe they happen to be good in my area for some lucky reason.

She should plead insanity. Insanity caused by Comcast's awful CS.

@ascara: Competition? What competition do people have when it comes to local utilities? I'd gladly dump Time Warner if I had a choice. No view of the satellites here for me to get DirecTV/Dishnetwork, so it's cable TV or nothing. Not too different from Tampa Electric. It's either I get electrical service from Tampa Electric or do without. It'd be nice to say I could just install a generator and run the whole house on natural gas, but there's no gas service here. Even if I did have a genset, Tampa Electric runs the local natural gas & propane services in this area.

omg that is awesome.. sometimes that is exactly what the company deserves to get a little bit of respect and to get your point across to them.

@FLConsumer: In the story itself it says she is going back to Verizon. And even if they were the only circus in town, I still would not advocate a hammer as the solution to anything other than a nail. If you are in a situation where a public utility is the cause of your ire, most states provide a public utilities commission for a reason. Take the power into your own hands to talk out a solution and go as far up the chain as you need to for that solution.

Hero of the day!

Yay!

Her pose in that photo is hilarious. I love her quote underneath the photo too: "What the hell, I'm 75."

She is my hero. I'd like nothing more than to slap Comcasts's CEO across the face. In public. On camera.

The free market should apply to utilities. And government bailout of those scumbags that run utilities should stop. And seeing from the service that comcast or verizon or SBC or whatever provides, public utilities don't have the teeth that it needs, justl ike the CPSC.

They should be able to fine utility companies $2 mil PER CUSTOMER COMPLAINT. That should get comcast and verizon and whoever else to improve the customer experience.

Whoa... this is interesting. Let a regular Joe exact this kind of revenge on a megacorp, and it's arrest for them, end of story. Let a little old lady do it, and the same thing happens but it makes headlines, shames the company, and gets things fixed. This is really interesting. If I ever form an anarchist group, I'm going to hire some little old ladies.

"What the hell, I'm 75."

Awesome! She doesn't take any crap from the system.

I'm sure we're due for a deluge of the usual bashing directed at this woman. However, when people feel powerless, they get desperate. Desperate people, surprise surprise, sometimes commit crimes because they can't do anything else.

Maybe getting crappy customer service isn't as dramatic as, say, being disenfranchised, and it probably doesn't merit acts of violence. Nevertheless, the woman has a point; these large, near-monopolistic companies treat their customers like shit. This is the natural result: when people can't resolve their problems any other way, ridiculous actions suddenly don't seem so implausible.

Just wondering...will she be tried by a jury of her "peers", i.e. other Comcast subscribers? Because no jury consisting of Comcast subscribers, current or former, would ever convict this woman. I sure as hell wouldn't. What if the D.A. and/or judge are Comcast subscribers too?

Any legislators out there read these blogs?

How about getting into the 21st century?

Why is the "last mile" still a monopoly instead of a city service? Before I took my Adelphia cable box and nearly tossed it through their window the service was abysmal. Dish is a pretty horrid company to deal with but the lesser of two evils.

Why don't municipalities take over the last mile coax and/or fiber and charge residents $10-20/mo for the connection. We would then be free to choose our voice, data, and entertainment providers based on cost, content, and performance.

My power has always been far more reliable than my cable TV ever was. I would have no problem letting the power company handle my "last mile" cable.

Yeah, bonus points for the hammer for sure!

"But it is so irresponsible and so disrespectful." Yes. Yes it is.

Dear Comcast:

Stop.

Hammer time.

YAY!!!! Good work!

That's the nice thing about being 75. You can act like a dick and everyone just takes it.

If she had been male she would still be in jail.

If she had been a 35 year old male she would have been tazed.

If she had been a 35 year old black male she would have been shot.

There is never a good excuse for violence, and being old shouldnt get you special treatment

At 75, this woman should know better than to act like a crazy person. Boo hoo, she couldn't get her cable installed - there's a reason to destroy somebody else's property and terrorize the employees in the office - who probably had nothing to do with any delays in getting her crystal clear reception of Murder She Wrote and The Lawrence Welk Show. Put things in perspective people. We have kids dying in Iraq, but you get all bent out of shape when you can't see Oprah. Every last one of you who applaud or condone this 75 year old thug ought to be ashamed.

I wonder if this is the reason my local Comcast office has bullet-proof glass across the counter and you have to use a box made out of bullet-proof glass that only allows one door open at a time, to get anything to or from the Comcast employee. They figure one day they will just make a customer snap and they're prepared.

Wow, it would be cheaper for them to invest in customer service instead of ridiculous security measures. One more reason Comcast deserves to go bellyup-they'd rather put their employees in danger than invest in customer service.

@myuu: Of COURSE she got treated differently because she's old, and good on her! All you toss-bags saying "hammers aren't the solution" should go sing kum-by-ya to Comcast sometime and see how far it gets you.

This is why I love old people.... They dont have time to deal with people's bs... they go straight at the throat

That's Comcastic!

Note to self: Buy Mona Shaw a flamethrower.

Note to self: next time a company is screwing me around, find a grouchy 75yo to deal with them for me.

You know.....

You could bring a hammer to an office and just use it to make an unbearable din. A large rubber mallet would be perfect for this because it's light compared to a similar-sized steel mallet, looks more impressive, and will make a fuck of a racket when banged on the counter or the bullet-proof glass.

Of course, the right catch phrase, since we are dealing with telephone servic here, is "Can you hear me now‽‽"

@ArtDonovansLoveChild.: Says the man who's obviously never had to deal with Concast.

@IRSistherootofallevil:

Yes, $2 Million per customer complaint is perfectly reasonable. After all, all customer complaints are perfectly justified, and $2 million is a reasonable amount for a delay in getting cable installed, given that it's just about what the life of one American is worth (based on how much more income people demand for doing riskier jobs).

Also, what government bailouts? Haven't seen any in the cable space in, oh, ever.

@sfjon: Based on the header at the top of this site, we appear to be at the Consumerist, a website dedicated to issues such as abuses of consumers by service companies, and the ways in which we, as consumers, deal with those abuses. If we were all to simply grip the mattress edges and take it with a forced smile as our taskmasters seem to want us to, then the purpose of this site would be wasted. "Kids are dying in Iraq" is no excuse for delivering reprehensible customer service. Trotting out that tired excuse as justification for every injustice we who are not soldiers fight against at home is ... foolish.

Besides, sfjon, did you consider that she might have been signing up for the triple play more for the internet access so she could have a more convenient method with which to contact family members in Iraq?

GO GRANNY!!!!

Incidents like this just highlight the need for stricter hammer-control legislation in this country. Contact your congressman today and send a message that hammer-control is your priority. She has a constitutional right to bare her arms (see photo), but when she puts a hammer in her hand at the end of one of those arms, she's clearly crossed the line.

@Havok154: "I wonder if this is the reason my local Comcast office has bullet-proof glass across the counter..."

My Comcast office has that too, and the office is in the safest town in America. (I mean that quite literally. That study done earlier in the year ranking every town in America based on violent crimes? This is the town that ranked #1.)

If they feel they need bulletproof glass in this town, I'd say they know perfectly well how angry they make their customers.

I'm Mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

You go girl! If only you threw a tv at them...

Is anyone else a little disturbed that this was apparently a planned event on the customer's part? Unless she happens to tote a hammer around with her, she was sitting at home, decided "that'll show 'em!" and managed to drive all the way to Comcast with the intent to smash stuff up. Yeah, I've had some revenge fantasies for my cable providers, but I've never put any of them into action, and I'd like to think that at some point, perhaps before I was charging the office door screaming "BANZAI!", I'd cool off and ask myself exactly WTF I was doing.

Still, I kinda like that it happened. And to everyone complaining that she should be locked up even though she's elderly, please remember that the main purpose of locking people up is to prevent future crimes. I suspect some 25-year-old guy who does this is much more likely to experience recurring rage-fueled violent outbursts than Granny McWantscable.

AARP Hero of the Year. On behalf of those who are half your age, and can't go all What the Hell on habitually horrible customer service, I salute you, Ms. Shaw.

Go Mona! I thought all of Virginia was under Cox and there was no Comcast there. Oh well, like her, I switched back to Verizon and I'm much happier with them.

As "cool" as it appears, it will only result in one thing (which we have already here in Philadelphia) The representatives sit behind bullet proof glass and are even less friendly and responsive.

@zundian: hahaha I am wiping the tears from my eyes. Good morning laugh!

No excuse. I can understand her frustration, but becoming a criminal isn't the answer.

Vigilante justice is the best kind of justice