This is so standard; I wish congress would look into THIS.

And this is why I forced my Comcast account to die.

@jdmba: Yes, and for doctors, and dentists, and phone service techs, and for refridgerator repairmen, and wedding photographers . . .

Comcast and others should be forced to issue a credit of 1-3 months service to someone's account when they miss an appointment. They seem to have care for someone having to take a day off from work so they can not show up.

Hitting them in the pocket with a consumer credit should teach them how to communicate with clients.

There should be more choices for cable and internet providers.

I have had similar horror stories with Comcast install, but finally had a good experience. My promotion was supposed to end last month but the new bill came and the promotion was still there! Finally Comcast's crappy billing department got one in my favor. Will stay happy until the mistake is discovered and then I will be back on the I hate Comcast Bandwagon.

I love it when companies insist that they know better than you who is standing on the front step of your own home. When DirecTV installed satellite at my old place, they called and said the installer was right there - right in my neighborhood, and on my street, in fact. We looked outside through all the windows - nothing. Not even a guy in a toolbelt, let alone a big DirecTV truck.

Turns out the guy couldn't find our home and was instead circling outside the location he thought it was (he was right, but was too dim to actually enter the complex).

When I was in college, my roomate was a cable guy. He used to come back to the house at 11:00 or so and watch TV and drink a few beers for a couple of hours before doing his last few jobs. @Smashville_makes his own comments at home:

Chances are when they come back they'll find some reason to postpone it again. I once had them tell my girlfriend they couldn't do the install because they needed to get into the basement. Fine, except there was no basement in this building. They were simply too lazy to locate the incoming cable connection.

When they came back I made sure to be there again they said they needed to get into the basement because there is no place where the cable is coming in. I looked down between our feet at the existing cable wire in the apartment and said there must be a connection since clearly there was cable before. I pointed out that they could just follow the wire. They never even bothered to check that the cable needed to be hooked up it was in fact live, while they were up looking for the roof input I simply plugged it into the cable box the left and it just worked. It's amazing that in two visits they couldn't be bothered to even test the wire before claiming they needed to get in the non existent basement or following the exiting wire. The lack of common sense or care was astounding.

@billbillbillbill: you won't be happy when they back bill you 5 months down the road...

[consumerist.com]

"Maybe that's the problem"

The problem is the mistaken belief that Comcast is in the business of installing cable.

It isn't.

i had at least 3 missed appointments with comcrap when i moved into my current house - and went through the same lying bullshit from the cs reps: 5:00pm, "I just spoke to the driver and he's on his way, will be there before 6." 6:15pm, "All the drivers are done for the day, call us back tomorrow".

after 2 weeks with no internet i dropped the EECB and had it fixed in 24hrs...

@PLATTWORX: This is an amazing idea. The problem here is that there's simply no accountability. They know there will be no consequences to screwing you around. If they continually screw you around? Easy, just switch to another provider. Oh wait, most people are lucky to have 2 options for cable or internet. If they both decide to screw you around I guess you're just SOL. Requiring a credit would solve 90% of missed appointments.

My own personal story with Rogers involves them telling me they were standing at my house when in fact they weren't (verified by opening my front door), then having them show up 3 hours early to the rescheduled appointment the next day (they showed up at 10.00 for a 1-6pm appointment), and tell me it was my fault the appointment was missed (as I wasn't there 3 hours before the 5 hour window) and rescheduling the appointment for 3 weeks later which was their earliest available appointment. I just told them to STFU and got DSL instead, but if it was for cable TV my only option would have been to wait three weeks and take a third half day off work. Ridiculous.

@DJBS77: Crap, thanks for the link. I guess I will have to be ready for anything.

Very, very similar thing happened when I signed up for Comcast 9 years ago (no longer a Comcrap customer, btw).

Installation scheduled for 8-12.

Called at 12:30 for an update. "They're running a little behind."

Called at 1:30. "They should be coming to you within the hour."

Called at 2:30. "Not there yet? Hmm. Let me call the dispatcher."

Called at 3:30. "Dispatcher didn't call you? No, sorry, I can't give you their number. They are an independent contractor for us."

Called at 4:30. "How late can they come out? Well, that's nice of you to offer to stay up all night waiting for them, but I don't think they'll work after 9:00."

Of course, the ending to this story is that they never made it to me. And yes, I tried to escalate often.

I'm all for understanding how horrible it is to wait all day for a tech who doesn't show. But wow, she's sure rude to the people she's chatting with. Why would anyone want to help her when she's already treating them like crap?

@jdmba: They did. Then they called the FCC. They did, and then said, "meh".

@Rusty-Shackleford: B-b-b-b-but, they keep saying that competition is strong in a-a-a-america and that there's at least 2 providers available to each person

End Sarcasm.

Something very similar happened to me. I was moving to a new area and was waiting for a Comcast installation first thing in the morning. There was no furniture in the home and the AC was not yet working. My wife and I had driven an hour just to be there. We arrived an hour early just to be on the safe side.

A half-hour after our installation time we were on the phone with Comcast. The technician said he stopped by the house, knocked on the doors and left a note. We were standing a few feet from the front door. No notes were posted. I figured the guy woke up late and decided to blow this install off.

We were told he was working 10 minutes down the road and he would not be free until 4PM. I said this was unacceptable. Several phone calls later I spoke with the tech's boss (he was contracted). Eventually the tech himself called. He had the nerve to repeat the lie to me on the phone. By this time the temperature was on its way to one of the hottest days of the summer. I told him I knew he had not been to the house and that we were standing by the door because there was no furniture to sit on!

I decided that if I was going to be forced to wait until 4PM for the installation that I would remain on the phone with Comcast the entire time. No matter what I was told, I redialed Comcast or the contacts I had for the contracting company immediately after hanging up the phone. When calls were returned I put Comcast on hold. My wife joined in and made separate phone calls for much of this time too.

After being told there were no other techs in the area and that I would need to wait until 4PM many, MANY times, I finally spoke with a Comcast rep who was not only very helpful but also used to work as a tech himself. Less than 30 minutes later a tech was at my home.

The tech who eventually showed up knew the first tech and told me he had seen him driving down the street I live on earlier in the day. He also told me another Comcast customer had told the guy to leave his property a few days earlier because of a similar incident.

I had never had a problem with Comcast techs before so I consider this guy a very bad apple spoiling the bunch. What burns me up is that after all this the only thing Comcast offered me was free HBO for a year.

A year later I'm still quite upset about the situation and I'll keep telling the story. My advice, when faced with a situation like this, keep calling back until you get results. Some reps seem to have nearly no competence while others know exactly what they're doing.

This kind of thing really irritates me.. If I have to take off from work for Comcast I'm not getting paid. (I'm paid hourly and no paid-vacation.) Lots of people are in this position.

In the past I've scheduled TimeWarner/Comcast appointments in the earliest slot possible because my old job was in the afternoon. I would end up first on their list and they would come earlier than the time stated, then if I didn't answer the door (Why should I be up 2 hours early for this kind of appointment?!) they say that I wasn't home and I would have to reschedule.

If they "guarantee" these appointments then they should do just that.. and provide compensation (billing credits) for when they can't/won't show up.

@Papa Midnight:

You have at least a dozen choices, if you're willing to pay for them.

@outoftheblew: Maybe she's rude because it's rude to keep her waiting ALL DAY? Yeah, just maybe.

@outoftheblew: And dude, she wasn't even angry until, according to the time stamp: Karah(Mon Aug 31 2009 18:24:59 GMT-0400 -- that's almost 6:30. She was given a guaranteed installation between 8am and 10am. They were over 8 hours late, starting at 10am. Of course she's angry.

@outoftheblew: Glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. While I respect that she had an entire day wasted, and she was really fed up, taking it out on the CSR doesn't help. Having worked in telephone customer service for 7 years (the last 4 taking escalated calls), I can say that a supervisor is usually going to need at least a few moments to review the situation before anything can happen. And, being human, we're far less likely to go out of our way to help someone who acts like that.

Anyone notice how she's barking at the representative that is brand new to her case? I can definitely understand her frustration. But if she's going to be barking and being rude and snappy to someone, it should be the people directly involved with causing the issue. Seriously, the first thing she said the guy was "I'm having an awful day. Comcast is awful."

Yeah, telling someone that their place of business is horrible is going to make them help you real fast.

Also, she called him a liar? Seriously? The guy is reading information from his account database. He's just reading schedules and customer notes. He's giving her information that is true *to the best of HIS knowledge.* I think her attitude to the guy was totally unnecessary.

I have no sympathy for her towards the end. The situation sucks and is horrible and I hope she gets it sorted out and she gets treated nicely by Comcast in terms of credits and maybe some free HBO. But her behavior, little miss "professional? comcast is not professional" Sunshine, isn't really acceptable.

Try an EECB or Frank Eliason. When I opened up my Comcast account for the first time, I went through a lot of trouble, involving two major roadbumps A) The previous tenant of my apartment didn't pay his bill, so I was redflagged when moving in B) Someone used my social security number in 1997 for comcast cable and also, never paid their bill.

B) was easier to prove. I gave them my SSID card and proof of identity. Simply put, 8 year olds (which I would've been at the time) can't get cable. It obviously wasn't me.

A) was terrible. I was told I had to bring certain documentation to prove i'm not the previous tenant. I did, but the people at the comcast office told me i needed more stuff (utility bill). Now, you see, I just dragged my mom and dad (mom's birthday, also I couldn't drive) through a bad snowstorm, just to be turned away because I'm missing a utility bill even after I already provided 2 forms of ID and my original lease. Oh not to mention, It was just about closing time, so it's not like I couldn't went home to look for the bill and come back the same day.

Frank's team helped me. Hell, one guy, I think his name was Anthony, called me at 8 or 9 or so in the evening from his house to help me. That's a personal above and beyond for me.

Long story short. Try Frank's team - We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com. Explain your situation nicely. They'll help where they can.

@InsertPithyNicknameHere: I read the chat logs. The CSR did nothing at all to help her. Nothing. Literally, nothing. Nor did anyone else in the 10+ hours. Seriously, folks, she did nothing wrong.

"And, being human, we're far less likely to go out of our way to help someone who acts like that."

This cracks me up, considering they couldn't even do the very basics of their job to begin with. You honestly think someone was going to go out of her way? When they couldn't even do their job to begin with? HILARIOUS.

@pattiesmart: "go out of their way".

@pattiesmart: I suppose I wasn't clear, I apologize. That comment was really about the supervisor who came into the chat. I can agree that the CSR with whom she initially spoke didn't seem to be doing much, if anything, to help. But she ripped into the supervisor before he could even look at her case. That was really the point that I was driving at.
I'm just of the personal opinion that an individual is not a corporation, and that when a person is supposed to be there to help me, I should at least give them an opportunity to try before going off.

Not in most places, maybe in the city.@NeverLetMeDown:

@HiPwr: You forgot repairmen in general. You think Comcast's windows are bad. I had a 12 p - 6 p window on a heating technician last week just for standard furnace maintenance (I know it's August, it's something my buyer required for the sale of our condo)

I had the exact same experience during an install in Killingworth, where Comcrap has a monopoly.

Lying that they were at my front door,
Dropping an installation time reservation *pOOf* disappeared into the void
Rescheduling to the wrong date (got attitude from them on that one)
Dropping calls after a 30 minute wait on hold

Give them points for consistency.

Had a VERY similar issue with Comcast about 2 years back. Tech never showed, claimed no one answered, rescheduled to a week later. Was told by Comcast nothing they can do.

Was amazed that I called Verizon and they installed FIOS the next day. Cancelled Comcast and amazingly enough, the phone rang about an hour later saying that a tech could be there by 6PM. Told them never mind, and they still sent out a tech the next day and he offered to disconnect FIOS and reconnect Comcast. I told him to go away, then a supervisor showed up, rang the bell and made the same offer.

They did something similar to me when I moved to my new apartment in early June. We wanted to transfer service to the new apartment, and got ahold of Comcast two weeks before we moved in order to set things up for June 24th, the earliest they could come out.

I sat at home all day waiting for Comcast to show up, but they never did. So I borrowed my brother's cell phone and called Comcast. The rep told me that her notes showed that the tech had declined the installation appointment because he called us to verify that we were there and nobody answered the phone. Well of course that would be the case, being that we had no phone on file with them to begin with.
Anyway, the CSR told us that this was standard operating procedure, and that the earliest they could get someone out would have been July 12th. Being that the the tech was obviously either mistaken, or more likely lying (a conversation with Comcast's tech supervisor, who graciously came out personally after work on the way home to hook us up, would show that at least the CSR had been...), we protested that and requested an earlier appointment. However try as we might to appeal to their better judgment, they essentially told us that there was nothing that could be done for it, and to take a flying leap if we didn't like it. I conceded the matter and accepted the appointment, with the full intention of contacting the Comcast Cares Twitter folks from work the next day.

I indeed did just that, and they promptly saw to it that I had a service call set up for the same day, at my convenience. So I had them come by at 4:30, which is generally when I get home from work. The tech showed up and took care of everything, and I was happy. For a time.

See, the thing was, somewhere along the way the CSR went ahead and cancelled our service, so instead of being a simple, free service transfer, it had become a new service hookup. I'm sure that everyone who has used Comcast knows that new service calls come riddled with fees. Now for the record, I didn't authorize a cancellation during the initial call to the CSR, nor did I hang up before the call had reached its natural conclusion, which I've been led to understand can give the CSR the right to cancel from reading the Consumerist. This was just straight-up vindictive bullshit, the motivation for which is mystifying to me. I was taught from an early age to kill 'em with kindness, and besides, I've worked on the other side of the phone before, so I know how much value there is in simply treating CSRs with respect and kindness. You attract more bees with honey than you do vinegar after all. Oh, I'm positive that she understood that I was upset, but at no point did I abuse her or betray my feelings of annoyance at the situation I found myself in, as well as the total lack of regard that Comcast's techs and CSRs have for the company's customers, so I don't quite understand how she came to the conclusion that she was free to cancel my service.

At any rate, I wasn't aware of any of this until I got my first bill and saw tons of service charges tacked on to it, including the installation fee. My bill should have remained at the 70 some odd bucks it had been before the transfer, but my first bill at my new location was more to the tune of 253 bucks. So shellshocked, I got ahold of Comcast on the phone and spoke to a rep by the name of Michelle. Thats when I learned that my service had been cancelled on the 24th of June, the day I spoke to the CSR about the missed service call. I lost some special promotional deals that I had, which I'm betting was the impetus for cancelling my previous service in the first place, and that put my regular bill up to about 147 bucks. The other hundred bucks or so was in miscellaneous introductory fees. Yay.

I spoke to Michelle for nearly two hours, and eventually got everything "fixed". By fixed, I mean that she was able to credit me for the fees, but she was unable to restore service to its previous condition, which left me without all the promotions and whatnot that I had.

I was as satisfied as I could be by Michelle's assistance. She did a fine job, and took care of me to the best of her ability. Still, the entire situation was a charlie-foxtrot of huge proportions, and really drove home how little Comcast at large cares about its customers. From fudging the original service call, to cancelling my old service out from under me for daring to express dissatisfaction, the whole thing has just reeked. If I had other options available to me in my apartment complex, I'd go with them, but I don't, and so it goes.

@Rusty-Shackleford:

It all depends, of course, on (a) what service you want, and (b) what you're willing to pay. You can get ultra-high-speed Internet access from half a dozen providers anywhere in the country, if you're willing to cover the construction costs.

@billbillbillbill: Oh, they'll not only discover it, but they'll back-charge you for all the months you've been getting the free promotion as well.

Unlike us customers, Comcast doesn't have 90 days to find and correct a billing error in your favor. They can take as long as they need to in order to find it, and they can charge you as far back as they want to in order to rectify it.

I'd let them know what's up as soon as possible if I were you, before the charges start piling up and you're hit with a huge bill somewhere down the line. It's happened before, and I'm pretty sure the stories are on this site if you want to verify it for yourself.

I've had the van rolled up and leave and claim no one was home. I was peeking from the windows and they didn't even get out of the van. Just pulled up for 10 minutes and then drove away. I thought maybe they were going to get something. Was set up for 10-2. At 2 I called comcast and was told they were there and no one was home.
The supervisor I escalated to after 3 transfers tried to be of help and get me an appointment the next day but I had work all their hours available and it would have been a week before I could get them out there again. I ended up going with someone else and cancelling that appointment I made.

On the other hand, I've had Comcast techs show up on time, but not get the installation or service request right until the second or third visit.

@Knippschild: Frank's team can help. To a certain degree, sure. However, you really have to hope shit goes smoothly after the first time you're forced to contact them, because in my experience they'll suddenly go incommunicado if you need their help a second time.

And folks here is the reason that twitter's comcast crew and comcast frank exist.

But not many people know about it (nor can the people contact the company when they have no cable or internet service)...

@Cyberxion101: Your story demonstrates the need for recording consumer to company phone calls...

@billbillbillbill: If your a good comcast customer and call them up and say hey I know my plan just rolled over and I'm looking to save money what can you do, they will just roll you into what ever special suits your needs currently. I have done it for years with no problems. Keeps the bill down and saves you the headache of them incorrectly billing you only to then back charge you for their mistake.

It'd be nice if these types of companies gave you an option by which you could get a phone call from the tech when he was, say, an hour away or something. At least then, if you lived fairly close to work, you wouldn't miss an entire day waiting for them to show up in a "window".

My Comcast install wasn't bad time-wise. He was supposed to arrive between 8-12 and came at 12:15. However, he balked at running a cable line into my bedroom. I finally got him to do it, but he bitched and moaned the whole time.

@DaveDidNotPay: "I decided that if I was going to be forced to wait until 4PM for the installation that I would remain on the phone with Comcast the entire time."

I liked that techinique.

@roshambo:
Seconded. I call them every time whatever promotional rate I have ends and ask for another one. I also advise them I will have to cancel if they don't give me the cheaper rate.

I went from a least a doz. to half a doz. In this small city of 2 million theres AT@T and Time Warner, then theres the Sat. guys for TV@NeverLetMeDown:

At my old apartment, I had a fenced-in, locked yard. One afternoon a Cox Cable technician knocked on my door because he needed to access the cable box for the entire triplex, which just happened to be in my fenced-in yard. I asked him why he needed to access it. He told me my neighbor had moved out, and they needed to disconnect something from the box. He said my signal would be temporarily interrupted while he did so.

I told him to return the next morning between 8 and 12 (when I knew I'd be at work). Was it mean? Yes. But it felt good to just once have a little power over the cable company.

@InsertPithyNicknameHere:
I actually agree with you. I certainly understand her ire, but she didn't even let the supervisor try to help her. She did the right thing by asking for one, but then failed to let the super try. If the super had failed, then fine, lay into him. The super is asking her to wait, and she just continues whining.

@econobiker:
I like it, too. BTW, I'd love to get free HBO for a year. I guess I should've made more of a stink when my tech showed up late!

@tbax929: The may try to upsell you into a special promotion that includes something you don't already have -- like HDTV or premium channels.