Technicians

Powerpoint By Pissed Comcast Employee Reveals They Know Exactly How Much They Suck

It's no secret to Consumerist readers that Comcast's outsourced techs are often late, rude and incompetent, and that calling customer service is more akin to improving dialogue in a Beckett play, but as this exclusively obtained powerpoint made by a Comcast employee shows, it's no secret to the cable company either. (I know the damn thing wasn't officially created by Comcast corp. C'mon, give us more credit than that. It's pretty obvious that it's too funny to be official. I just meant to describe how it was created by a Comcast employee and passed around to other Comcast employees and came from inside Comcast. I realize now that "internal" makes it sound official, and that wasn't my intention. I apologize for the confusion.) Watch and/or download the powerpoint, inside... More »

11:56 AM on Fri Jun 20 2008
By Ben Popken
141,997 views, 126 comments

Latest by camillus8: I used to work at a cable company. Both at the local operational level and at headquarters. It really is not the fault of the people you interact with at the local level. They get directives from more »

tune ups

Staples Tries To Charge Senior Citizen $390 For Basic Computer Repair

UPDATE: Staples Rebuts "Charge Senior Citizen $390 For Basic Computer Repair" Post More »

complaints

55 Support Tickets Later And Your Verizon FiOS TV Service Still Doesn't Work

Andrew writes: "I had been a satisfied customer of Verizon for several years - I have had phone service with them since the days of Bell Atlantic and have had their fiber-optic internet service (FiOS) since March 2005. In March 2007, I decided to switch cable providers and signed up for Verizon's FiOS TV service as it was cheaper than Comcast and supposedly provided superior picture quality. As the saying goes, "you get what you pay for." More »

10:03 AM on Sat Feb 9 2008
By Carey
5,794 views, 30 comments

confessions

10 Confessions Of A Circuit City FireDog Technician

A FireDog Technician writes in with the following confessions. More »

bad apologies

Time Warner Offers $30 Credit To Apologize For Hammering Through Wall, Drilling Through Floor

A Time Warner installation tech searching for a cable line hammered several holes in reader Christos' wall, and then drilled a few more in his floor. When the random destruction failed to produce the wire, the tech crept downstairs and split Christos' neighbor's line. Now Christos can only watch the channel selected on his neighbor's cable box.

Christos called Time Warner to complain. Time Warner understood that Christos didn't want holes in his wall and floor, or borrowed cable. To apologize, they offered a $30 credit and "a few movie coupons." Christos writes:

More »

12:35 PM on Sun Oct 7 2007
By Carey
5,360 views, 28 comments

ha, ha, good one

Verizon CSR Gives Fake "Callback" Number That Rings A Dating Hotline

Ariel's phone and DSL inexplicably stopped working and Verizon told her that it would cost her $91 to have it fixed. She agreed and reluctantly took a day off work to wait for the Verizon tech, who, shockingly, never showed. More »

2:57 PM on Tue Aug 7 2007
By Meg Marco
22,406 views, 63 comments

comcast

Comcast Leaves Customer Without Forty-Eight Channels

Comcast has left reader Laura without forty-eight channels since early February. Laura has replaced four cable boxes, and spoken with several technicians. Each one suggests the same diagnosis.

Shockingly, it is not a problem with the line or the box. It is a problem with the coding coming in through the line. The technician tells us that our line is showing both Adelphia codes and Comcast codes coming through it. When both sets of codes hit the box, the box shuts down.

Diagnosing the problem is not the same as fixing the problem. Though aware of the issue, Comcast has not offered a solution. Laura is still without forty-eight channels. Comcast is still billing her for full service. More »

1:35 PM on Sat Mar 3 2007
By Carey
3,089 views, 15 comments

Latest by Sir Winston Thriller: My sister-in-law in Cape Coral FLorida has been without internet service AND cable for going on three weeks now, with the switch from Time-Warner/Roadrunner to Comcast. SHe's not alone--almost everyone she knows has the same problems. Comcast has repeatedly more »

geek squad

Geek Squad City Unveiled, With Fabio

This is a Multivu PR newsreel about the unveiling of Best Buy's Geek Squad new central headquarters. Geek Squad City sounds awesome. By all appearances, the video is an upload of the footage supplied to TV news stations that helps them from having to do any reporting of their own. More »

12:42 AM on Thu Nov 2 2006
By Ben Popken
261 views, 7 comments

sears

Sears' Pricey House-call

Dan and Marguerite found out the hard way that Sears uses a "minimum charge" to extort repair fees from their customers. More »

11:15 AM on Tue Sep 19 2006
By Meg Marco
865 views, 8 comments

updates

Happy Day of Labor!

Today is a bank holiday for the Gawker Media Network but that doesn't mean that the fickle wheel of commerce stops keep spinning round. Here's some updates on consumer's stories we reported on last week. More »

11:11 AM on Mon Sep 4 2006
By Ben Popken
80 views, 1 comment

complaints

UPDATE: Time Warner Pays Inexplicable House Call

Dan Edelman gives us an exciting update on the mysterious, TWC tech that visited his house two days ago, without notice and for no apparent reason. More »

1:58 PM on Thu Aug 24 2006
By Ben Popken
414 views, Comment

complaints

TWC Tells Customer To Shove 'A Pack Of Matches' Under Broken Router

Short version: Mark got high-speed wireless with Time Warner Cable. They gave him a dirty, fidgety router that if you touch the power supply, it resets. When he got a tech to come back, the tech told him to shove a pack of matches and a bottle cap under the router to keep it from moving. More »

9:00 PM on Wed Aug 23 2006
By Ben Popken
1,255 views, 7 comments

complaints

Time Warner Pays Inexplicable House Call, Consumerist Helps

Dan Edelman, a loyal Consumerist reader, was shocked to hear a Time Warner Cable tech visited his apartment yesterday. Odder than the difficulty in getting one to show up in the first place was that the tech wasn't asked for. No service call was put in. His cheetos slathered roommate let the guy in without an explanation. The tech puttered around for 20 minutes and left. More »

1:16 PM on Wed Aug 23 2006
By Ben Popken
653 views, 9 comments

cable

UPDATE: Comcast Tech Fails Installing Cable to Customer's Heart

Eager to prevent another snakesonablog style sleepy tech debacle, a Comcast rep contacted us about the unwelcomlingly amorous cable installer. She says: More »

9:10 AM on Tue Aug 22 2006
By Ben Popken
154 views, Comment

customer service

Sleepy Comcast Denouement

Once again, the guy who took a video of the Comcast technician asleep on his couch, is dissatisfied. Oh, his internet works fine and everything. No outages, no malfunctioning routers, no snakes crawling out of his cable box. More »

4:24 PM on Tue Jun 27 2006
By Ben Popken
78 views, 7 comments

abject failures

Sleepy Comcast Tech Fired

Plenty of rock a bye babies and sweet dreams await Brian's Comcast tech, now that he has no job to get up for. The Comcast rep who fell asleep on a customer's couch while lamely attempting to fix his router has been fired, Comcast said. Brian grabbed a camera and uploaded the proceedings to YouTube, where it got 200,00+ hits and ended up on Countdown on MSNBC. That was Tuesday. More »

7:26 PM on Fri Jun 23 2006
By Ben Popken
119 views, 2 comments

top

Comcast Tech Falls Asleep on Customer's Couch

Brian had a Comcast tech come to his house to replace a router, one of two broken ones they provided. The operation shouldn't have taken but a moment. Instead the tech was on hold with Comcast for 90 minutes. And he fell asleep. Brian made a video documenting the affair. More »

12:28 AM on Wed Jun 21 2006
By Ben Popken
6,194 views, 4 comments

Spherion Corp. Steals $426,000 From Widow

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