They tried to charge me a $1.99 "transaction fee" to have them stop sending me their tv guide which I never requested in the first place. So, to stop getting charged $3.39 a month for the guide, I had to pay $1.99. I went through their customer service chat for about a half hour before they finally gave in and credited me back the $1.99.

comcast cares thats why

You might just be better off canceling anyway if you're a new customer. You'd probably get some sort of promotional rate for it that would end up saving money.

Becasue that time on the phone to verify who you are, that you have rights to make changes, then to get new info and enter it will probabaly end up taking 10-20 minutes, if the person on the phone is making $15/hr + medical/dental/other benefits, and overhead to manage that person, it will probabaly be over 30/hr. 1/3 of an hour spend with the customer = $10

@alyssariffic: Maybe.. except for those "activation fees" and the $90 dollar charge for a tech to drop off a cable box.

They likely need to run your credit too to make sure you're capable of paying for the account.

I don't think this is a big deal, like what was already suggested, if you don't like it don't agree and call back as a new customer. At least they were quick to credit it back at your request.

Even though the task may seem small, people tend to abuse simple tasks such as this thus they charge the fee to prevent account holders from changing the name often. Also it does cost the company to pay the person on the other end to perform the name change, its not like its free for the company.

They can charge any fees they want to. What everyone should do is threaten to cancel the account over a $5 fee. Even Comcast is smart enough to know that these fees have consequences. I did the same thing over a Verizon phone and they waived the activation fee. God bless competition.

I just paid this fee also and I was sooo unhappy about it, and the woman who I had spoken to at Comcast DIDN'T TELL ME ABOUT IT. She also insisted there was no way they could send me the form to fill out at my new address, that it would have to be sent to my old one and there was no way around it. I called Comcast again when my ex-roommate *still* hadn't received the form, and the guy I spoke with said "no problem, I can email that to you easily" What the hell? Why didn't the other woman do that!!! He also didn't bring up the fee either.

The line about being able to not charge the fee if he died is quite ludicrous. I guarandamntee you that if his roommate died he would have to jump through so many hoops he would qualify for the ringling brothers circus to get that $10 waived

I experience this first hand. I didn't want to pay the fee so I canceled the account. My brother opened a new account under his name and was able to take advantage of the promotional first time customer prices for 6 months.

We've had problems in the past with our (mandatory) cable/internet carrier, NTC, in my apartment complex.

Earlier this semester, NTC decided that instead of charging the old $25 per person for internet, they would just start charging $50 per apartment. So for people like my roommate and I, the amount we pay for internet didn't change, but my friend who lives in a one-bedroom apartment just got his monthly internet charges doubled for the exact same (shitty) service.

Also, I have to mention that their cable TV sucks... all they do is buy it from Dish Network and run it through to us as cable TV... so every time there is a big storm the satellite TV goes out, and so does our cable TV.

I really wish I had a choice in TV and internet. We live on the ground floor and have no balcony where we could mount a satellite, so NTC is our only choice.

@Scuba Steve: plus the cancellation fee, and the fee for a tech to come pick up your box

I really should have put "tech" in quotes - every time Time Warner has come out to do something involving my cable box (upgrading to digital cable, upgrading to DVR, replacing dead DVR, software update (swapping out boxes)) i've had to go back and fix the wiring failure they've left behind my TV. come on guys, the DVR is wired directly to the TV, and so is the DVD player - there is no reason that you should rewire the DVD player through the cable box!

@satindevil: I recently drove by my local Comcast office and there were a bunch of satellite dishes outside. I think I heard that all of them get their feeds to the local POPs via satellite.

it is still all about customer service. Thats whats wrong. just like fast Food and others!!! Customer service sucks in the U.S. !!!!!! Also why I no longer have comcast. Direct TV and clearwire. Both have great customer service. Also no AT&T T-Mobile unlimited for good customers.. 45 a month. mmmmm Now who knows customer service.

@humphrmi: I don't understand how it's legal for NTC to pay for satellite from Dish Network and resell it to us. I don't know much about the law, but it always seemed like a shitty practice to me.

Do they do a credit check? Before transferring the responsibility to another person?

If they do, then it would pay for Equifax, and it's justified.

(If not, it should be waived by courtesy to long standing customers.)

Sadly this isn't really a Comcast "problem" but common with other services like electric utilities, etc. Electric utilities do same process and charge new account activation fee in case of roommates switching, etc due to having to take a reading to close old/open new account and some other tenuous semi logical reasons (only time I've found they make exception is if you have both old and new party on phone at same time and verify you are both ok switching the account as of the last billing/reading). In the case of electric, makes sense (though I don't agree with it as far as the hassle goes) to not be able to simply switch names on the account and avoid new account setup fee. Not sure what Comcast's reasoning is since it's not like they need to take a reading, but this phenomena certainly isn't exclusive to them.

"I mean, it can't be more than 45 seconds of keystrokes to change my number and name from his."

Actually, with current laws regarding personal information because Comcast is a phone company, requests are needed in writing. Or at least that is what I am told. :)

@femaleconsumerist: Did that ever get taken care of? I'd love to help! Email me at bonnie_smalley@cable.comcast.com and I'll make sure it happens :)

@humphrmi: it depends on the channel. some come through via satellite, but most come through over fiber

@dragonpup: You're absolutely right. We require ID and whatnot for verification purposes. I usually tell people to head to their local payment office to take care of this, as it's much easier that way. Additionally, yes... the current dude can cancel his account, and once disconnected the new dude can be a brand spankin' new customer! :)

@xtc46: BS! Those expense are already figured into base prices.

@meltingcube: Again, BS! That's what the price of the service covers.

@webreacher: No, it's not justified. They should price basic service to cover such expenses. It's BASIC FREAKING BUSINESS CONCEPTS!!!!!

@satindevil:

There are lots of these reseller arrangements - they're legit, NTC is paying Dish based on how many units in your complex. Of course, they could just be pirating the Dish signal, and claiming they're a regular residential customer, but that's really unlikely.

@sinfonian94:

Why are you so worked up over this? It's their business model, they get to choose whether it's "higher rates, fewer fees," or "lower rates, more fees," or, if they can get away with it, "higher rates, higher fees."

@BlairCrane: Sounds like my gym membership.

@xtc46: Medical/dental/other benefits? Clearly you've never worked in a boiler-room style call center. I have, and the benefits were so insanely expensive to the employee that nobody could afford to be covered. (The coverage was garbage anyway, you'd be better off saving your money and paying the bills yourself.)

You are better off canceling services and opening a new account. As an added bonus, you get 6 months of new account discounts.

@meltingcube: No, it's actually much simpler:

Comcast (and many large companies) hire people to dig into the company's operations and look for ways to either make money or cut spending where opportunities have gone unnoticed. One of these people examined the call center records vs. database figures, found that a fair number of customers were making account name changes, and thought, perhaps, the number was low or high enough that charging extra for that service might not be unreasonable. Pick an amount for the fee, multiply that by the average rate of name change transactions, package it up into a neat bullet point, and ship it to the boss. Later, in some other part of the company, someone is looking at a list of potential revenue streams, thinks for whatever reason that the name change fee is sufficient, and green lights it.

Comcast may have needed that revenue stream to balance operation costs and keep their customer service going (gee, I wonder, probably not...), but that doesn't mean the fee has to have anything to do with operation or even anything rational to begin with.

@sinfonian94: True, except subscription costs are limited by competition. When and where competition is forcing prices down and decreasing profits, fees, fines, and other sources can bring those profits back up.

@satindevil:

If they have a contract with Dish for an MDU setup, this (analog cable injection) is an option (or I believe it *was*). It usually used for hotels/motels, though. Can't see why they'd use it in an apartment building, since at a minimum (if the equipment to do multi-channel decryption/playback from a single tuner even legally exists for Dish Network) you'd need one tuner per transponder per satellite.

As far as the signal going out, that's a WTF right there. If you're putting the cash in for an MDU setup, you should be putting up the extra $100 (seriously, that's all) to upgrade to a 1 M dish. Okay, okay, if you want more than the one satellite (you probably do) you need to multiply that by the number of satellites you intend to receive. The standard 18" LSD (little silly dishes) should even be pretty tolerant to rain fade, but yes, those will lose signal in a very heavy storm.

With a 1 M dish, properly installed, you will experience "OH GOD MY APARTMENT BUILDING IS GOING TO COLLAPSE IN A HURRICANE" before you experience rain fade. Having used this size (well, 24" actually) myself, it was a great predictor of the electricity going out--once the picture starts breaking up, you were almost guaranteed a storm major enough to blow out the utilities was on the horizon.

@xtc46: "Becasue that time on the phone to verify who you are, "

Um? What? That doesn't take long at all. Whenever I call anyone in regards to any account I hold (cable, internet, phone, health insurance, the HR help line at work...) they ask a set of questions that usually include your full date of birth, the last four digits of your solcial, and your billing/home address. It takes like, two minutes tops.

@meltingcube: "Also it does cost the company to pay the person on the other end to perform the name change, its not like its free for the company. "

So will they start charging extra for every little thing?

Last I checked, the CSR is there to do his/her job. Which this is part of. I seriously doubt she gets paid extra whenever she does some little thing that's ... part of her job.

@meltingcube: "may seem small, people tend to abuse simple tasks such as this thus they charge the fee to prevent account holders from changing the name often."

And why pray tell would someone do that? For fun? to be annoying? The "potential abuse excuse" is the best reason you can come up with for that?

How about "they can make a couple of extra bucks" Mystery solved.

@ComcastBonnie: It cracks me up that Comcast's service is so horrible they have to send someone around to clean up their mess. Why not just train the CSRs to do the job right in the first place?

@nakedscience: It's actually harder than you think, mostly because it gets cost prohibitive. Corporate policy basically has to be laid down for every situation that comes up. It takes a couple of weeks to a couple of months to get a new employee trained up, and call centers typically have fairly high turnover. The more time you spend training someone, the less they're out actually doing the work you need them to do.

I do higher-end technical support work, and one of the projects I supported had me doing work directly with the repair team for the product that we support, and only because I spent several months learning the processes and people in a different department that has no direct relation to my job do I understand which levers in the bureaucracy can be pulled to expedite a process.

Is training the CSRs "right" more related to keeping costs down, or is it more related to allowing them to become masters of the bureaucracy? Are you willing to take a 15% increase on your bill (and convince all of your friends and family to do so as well) to cover those costs?

@pb5000: Comcast doesn't run your credit. They only ask for the last 4 of your SSN anyway.

This is why you do what I did. Whenever you can, always use a fictitious name (and "Last 4 Digits") from the very start. Because I can see why Moving Out Guy didn't want the cable to stay in his name when someone else was in charge of making sure it gets paid. But if the name on the account was instead your favorite TV character or just something totally made up, then it can stay on the account forever, well, until you all move out. Even if someone screws up, it doesn't go on anybody's credit.

Obviously this doesn't work on cell phone carriers, who DO run your credit and ask for your full social. They'd probably require a deposit if you insisted on making up your SSN and name with them.

@shepd: Neat info, thanks.