So just give him the password, then change it afterwards.

Comcast chat is horrific! They can't do anything at all for you. I couldn't even get them to upgrade my service. It's a complete waste of time. I was trying to give them more money and they kept saying I'd have to call. No point in the chat unless you have time to kill and your bored.

How do we know Lethel is a "she"?

Maybe it's a misspelling of Lethal. As in: I'd prefer a Lethal injection over having to deal with this idiot

This Chat help stuff is all a marketing deal. They always seem to not be able to do anything. Probably because they are all contracted out in India, and they have 0 access to the system, just a manual for helping with the same crap you can find in their FAQ

Seems like a fine example of the typical "chat scenario for case #u3uo43ou3" pulled off successfully!

Have a comtastic time!

Happy Phun Time!

This is so funny on so many counts.. but typical Comcastic service

Obviously outsourced chat, given the syntax.

Somebody must have been absent on "thirty little turtles" day at the Bangalorean trade school.

As a CSR that is forced to use the " chat feature " with our customers, I can ASSURE you, its a COMPLETE waste of your time and mine.

Nothing is ever solved and the poor customer always has to call in.

I've taken to asking the customer for their # so that I can call them. Most people are quite greatful that I do care about their concern and immediately follow up with a REAL phone call.

The " chat feature " was some marketing idiot's idea so that us CSR's could try to handle a phone call @ the same time we handle a " chat ".

PLEASE, I do want to help you so don't use this useless feature.

I propose the following:
Don't outsourse US Bill
Any company doing business with the federal government must have 55% of their non-executive workforce employed in the United States.

Similar bills should be presented to state legislatures.

*tries in vain to find a way to "blame the customer...*

Online chat CSRs for most companies rarely provide any sort of service. I think I would have made the phone call... Probably would have gotten the same run around, though. More and more, I find myself having to do the job of the person I am requesting help/information from. Oh well.

Why didn't the OP just call when the chatty CSR said call? They won't ever be able to do anything. Seems if her time was really that important, then just take the first suggestion and run with it.

I can't see bothering with chat support. I'm certain they are universally based in India (imagine it saves even more than offshored phone support). They speak way too perfectly -- excessively so -- for a domestic CSR, and they apologize way too much for being useless, as if compulsive wordy apologies are expected to make the customer happy (versus, you know, results). Don't bother. Get on the phone, and find someone who doesn't sound like they took speech lessons from Henry Higgins.

I fully expect future chat support to be simply run by an automated Eliza psychotheraist program.

"I'm sorry you're having trouble with your cable. How do you feel about that?"

You can tell exactly where the CSR turns the conversation over to ELIZA ...

guest_ > well, this has been a waste of my time

Lethel > I do apologize for the inconvenience.

Lethel > I understand that your time is valuable.

"I understand that your time is valuable." ... Geez. Thanks for recognizing that I'm not here just to kill time. Now can you maybe do something with that penetrating insight and make yourself useful?

@joeblevins: This wasn't the "first suggestion." According to the chat transcript, she initially tried doing this online and was directed by their website to "chat".

One of the responsibilities at work is to manage some lab resources. I've used the online chat function for tech support from our vendor several times with good results. But they all type in clear and unbroken English so I am guessing they are not outsourced.

comcast does not outsource to india. They outsource to canada.

I used to work in the Help Desk of a major urban university, and on a rotating basis, we all had a turn chatting with our users. The policies there prohibited us from discussing any account-specific details, and we had to ask them to call us, or we could call them from a recorded line. The key there was to have a voice conversation recorded incase we ever needed it as backup.

So I think I would have been forced to do the same thing as this rep, however I would have gone the extra step to ask the user for their phone number and I would have called her.

I love how the CSR says that passwords are "case sensitive" and so he/she can't help. Damn those capital letters mixed with lower case!

You have to read Lethel's portion of the chat session with an Indian accent for the full effect. Sigh.

@joeblevins: Maybe because she didn't have an hour to kill on the phone, like it usually takes us to get anything resolved with Comcast?

Can one of Consumerist's frequent "Comcast insiders" confirm that there is even a live human being on the other end of these chat sessions? I didn't get a feeling at any point during reading that chat transcript that the OP was connected to a live person. Live zombie was more like it.

Now we know how the crackpipe in the above story got in the boy's fire engine toy. Lethel left it there while she was shopping for a brain. sigh...

I was just about to mention that case sensitive thing. I'm pretty sure I'm seeing a interpretation of that phrase that I'd never seen before: case-sensitive as "This is a perfect case of a sensitive item that I am not supposed to ask you for."

That's truly impressive.

Does anyone else think "Turing Test?" Maybe we are receiving poor customer service because the robots are still learning. Big hint: Lethel.

Chat is for informal discussions, not resolutions.

Could you imagine trying to use Chat to tell your Dr. what is wrong or to have your car repaired?

I do not blame the person in this article because she was told to use it, but really people, if you seek resolution, Chat is not the way to go.

AND yes, we are live people in the USA.

What's sad is we are expected to ALSO carry on a phone conversation with another customer while trying to also solve your problem through "chat".

Not all CSR's are assholes or foreign ... were overworked underpaid people.

Oh, and as a side note:
If you're an asshole, ( and taking out all your frustration on me, I can assure you your problem will not be resolved ... I will "accidentially" hang up on you or transfer you to voice mail hell.

Try a little human kindness and I assure you I will work much harder to insure your issue is resolved promptly & to YOUR satisfaction.

Funny, I just spent about an hour on a ridiculous chat with Comcast and then I see this post. The guy kept putting me on hold for "2 to 3 minutes" but he was actually beginning to answer my questions effectively even though he had to keep putting me on hold. Then I got disconnected on accident so I tried to get reconnected to this same person but they couldn't do that.

This new person couldn't even answer simple questions and told me that I had to place an order before I could speak with someone that could answer my questions. But the problem with that is that I didn't know what I wanted but he kept linking me to the order page. He said he was only able to answer question about existing internet accounts which is odd seeing as how when I was speaking with Paulo.93438534 earlier he couldn't answer these questions albeit at a slow pace.

I really hate Comcast. This is what always happens, I get a rep that knows a little bit of something and then someone who knows nothing at all.

I had a very similar experience...I should save my chat logs, cause that is comedy gold!

@AMetamorphosis - Shouldn't changing a preference as simple as "e-statements to paper" be something that you shouldn't have to call and navigate the 1-800-COMCAST abyss for?

Chat based support is actually excellent for certain things. Ever try giving out a lengthy URL full of query string parameters over the phone?

Can you really trust someone who works in support if they don't know what case sensitive means? I would have just closed the chat right then.

@katworthy:

Sadly no :-(

We really are not allowed to do ANYTHING with your accounts through chat ( management ) ... and thats why I suggest you call.

Like I said, CHAT was some stupid marketing idea that was thought up so we could do the work of two people @ once. It's really an awful form of communication and I feel for the people that try to use it. Thats why I always ask for a # and call the person.

I REALLY do want to help ... believe it or not :-) I take pride in the work I do and I get so angry when some middle management retard prevents me from keeping you happy.

My " Quality Assurance " scores are always low because I do not follow their inane procedures, yet my company would not dream of firing me ( 6 years here ) because I frequently get accolades, emails & calls from happy customers that are grateful I did what I had to do to make sure they were truly helped.

... ( said in fun ) oh, and your call is very important to us ...

( ducks )

@Nenne: And then when they call or ask you to rate service, they don't have any way to account for the fact that you dealt with two people. I hate to mark good people down on the ratings because I ALSO happened to talk to an idiot, but the phone ratings don't allow you to differentiate. Of course, who knows if industries that rely on churn even pay attention to those surveys.

You were dealing with someone with poor english skills, not necessarily outsourced.

I used to work in a Canadian call center that had many minority employees with varying grasps of the english language. Just because his name is Parminder doesn't mean he's in India.

Comcast phone support is also awful.

i actually had a good experience with the comcast live chat when i had my cable installed. it turned out that because my house was already wired by comcast, the chat agent was able to reduce my install fee by $10 (39.95 instead of 49.95)..i guess it depends on who you get...

@AMetamorphosis: Seeing that you are on Consumerist reading links and following up definitely speaks to your character and awesomeness. It's too bad the stuffed shirts up at the top have done all these stupid things to make your job so much more work than it needs to be.

Keep up the good fight!

I've actually had good experiences with Dell's chat support.

Not all chat support sucks...

My favorite:

Lethel > May you give me a sec to pull up your account.

As if adding "May you" makes for nice, polite, professional chat. I'm guessing outsourced?

@kakashisan:

As one poster said above, I can think of one good reason for chat:

To "push" a long URL webpage to you.

Chat is good for information retrieval ... like: "where can I find xxx page? " but honestly, thats about the only time I have found it useful from a CSR's perspective.

PS. THANK YOU Katworthy ! It's people like you that make my day :-)

Funny story - one day I wanted to get a promo that was being offered to new customers. I used the live chat because I sitting on hold on the phone.

An hour or so later I finally get the deal given to me, but I was told I was getting the deal for life. I knew it wasn't right, but hey, I've got a log.

Long story short, three months later my $39.95 becomes $89.95. I got balistic and end up reaching a *REAL* supervisor. I send him the logs and detail how I had the oppurtunity to switch to a competetior but didn't and now both deals are off the table.

In the end, the supervisor cut me an awesome deal to save my account and to correct the mistake.

With the "lifetime" special, I was paying ~$100/month for HBO, Digital, two boxes(one a HD DVR), and internet access. Now I pay ~$100/month for all that plus three more premium channels.

Change the name to Ezekiel, and you'd have almost verbatim, the last conversation I had with MagicJack chat support last night. I could so obviously tell that I was dealing with somebody whose first language *wasn't* English. I guess chat CSR's are about as helpful as live CSR's if not worse.

Yea Comcast sucks but way to treat the CSR like complete garbage from the start. CSR was at least polite, and the customer was never...

and she wonders why someone wont go the extra mile...

I love reading this site and www.customerssuck.com to see the opposing views.

@SteveZim1017:

For some reason, people get bold and really rude in chat. They would never think of doing this face to face.

@kakashisan: Me, too. I had an issue with a 5 year old laptop, and Dell Chat was very concise and helpful in finding the issue. They even followed up with a call a few hours later to give me an additional part number.

@AMetamorphosis:
So can we have your direct phone/email for any problems us Consumerist.com readers have? j/k ;-)

anyone else actually think lethel did a good job??

(S)he could not do any more for the customer, and explained exactly why. (S)he was reasonable and tried his or her best to solve the problem and see why the system was broken (since it's the system's fault for directing her to people who couldn't actually help).

I don't see why you have to call the CSR an idiot because