comcast
Travel with Consumer Watch columnist Jon Yates of the Chicago Tribune to the training ground of our nation's elite. The few, the powerless, and the often berated:
Comcast customer service representatives. Yates sat in on a training class for new reps, sat in on many live calls, and shared the secrets of agents' formation. Sort of.
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comcastic
Want to know the secret to
Comcast's success? No, it's not high rates, poor service or random porn broadcasts. It's much more basic: The company's employees just love working there, and want to share their love with customers. Yay!
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that's comcastic
Coaxed by the promise of rebates, Rhea took the
Comcast high-speed internet plunge, but found it difficult to get her money, since Comcast had outsourced its rebates to a company called
OfferWire.
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zombie computers
Where does spam come from? Well, there are these things called
botnets. They're networks of hijacked computers that secretly do the bidding of their masters. Often, they send out spam.
Comcast plans to offer an automated service that will inform you, within your browser, if your computer is behaving as if it has been compromised by malware.
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that's comcastic
Mike writes us to say
Comcast's
On Demand service in Chicago is suffering from dropsies reminiscent of Bears receivers. He says a CSR admitted as much when he called to complain. He writes:
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the last year of network television
Hey, are you ready for Comcast to take more control over your entertainment? Then great news for you! Yesterday a rumor leaked that the cable giant is negotiating to buy 51% of
NBC Universal, which includes the movie studio Universal, Universal theme parks, the NBC network, and shows like 30 Rock and SNL.
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happy endings
CJ responded to his daylong Comcast outage with an
Executive Email Carpet Bomb that hit its target with vigor. He says within 20 minutes his phone was bombarded with calls from company reps around the country, who managed to restore his service within four hours.
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net neutrality
The
FCC today proposed new rules to protect and preserve "
net neutrality," the idea that ISPs must treat all users the same and not prejudice against different types of customers. In a speech, Chairman
Julius Genachowski supported adopting the "Four Freedoms"
first articulated by the FCC in 2004 (PDF) not just as principles but as formal rules, and adding two more: "non-discrimination" and "transparency." The big networks are, naturally, incensed.
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comcastic
So you're working as a door-to-door contractor for Comcast, faced with the task of convincing subscribers to a competitor to get Comcastic and net you some commission. So naturally you decide, "why not disconnect their service, then step in and offer my wares when they'll be more appreciated?"
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gouging
Comcast is going to start rolling out a $2 fee hike across the country this fall, which means your cable modem rental fee will go from $3 to $5 by the end of the year. Comcast says they absolutely have to do this or they'll never be able to pay for service and equipment upgrades, which makes us wonder how the poor underfunded company manages to stay afloat at all.
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comcast frank explains it all
There are three ways in which HDTV blows your mind: It lets you read too-small text in video games and movie subtitles, makes the picture on DVDs take up the entire screen, and in football games lets you see more of the field, and in such stunning detail you can make out the tears on Buffalo Bills fans' faces as their team blows 11-point leads in the final two minutes.
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yearning
Attention: A satisfied
Comcast customer has written to this website. Sadly, reader Kevin is now being denied the delicious shivery pleasure of Comcast's services — because his new house is 600' too far away.
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installations
We're happy for
Comcast that it's a giant company and all, but is it really that impossible to have someone in Connecticut talk on the phone with a Connecticut-based customer about a
no-show installation tech who we presume should also be in Connecticut? Maybe that's the problem—maybe the technician was accidentally outsourced and is presently driving around Mexico or the Antarctic looking for Karah's address.
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