Reader Jeff writes in to let us know that Comcast Frank and the Twitter team swooped in and rescued him from Comcast tech hell.

Hi Consumerist, I figured I’d soon be writing you when I found out my only choices for Internet and TV in my new house in Manassas, VA were Comcast and Verizon DSL. Argh. I had already ditched Verizon’s utterly worthless service for Cox cable in my old home, so I decided to bite the bullet and go with Comcast. As a daily reader of your site, this instilled quite a bit of dread.

The installer appointment was pretty typical: he shows up four hours late, doesn’t bring a HD receiver with HDMI out, sets up his own cable modem on my account after I already told him I have my own modem that’s sitting right next to him, and tries to close the appointment after setting the office (which has no TV) to receive TV channels, rather than the living room where I initially pointed out my big, obvious plasma TV and stated “I’ll need to receive channels down here.” I make sure to send him off with his own cable modem.

A couple weeks later, the only TV channels I can receive are a few soap opera channels and what seems to be the dedicated Air Wolf channel. Work and my chimney falling off my roof kept me too busy to worry about it for another two weeks, at which point I scheduled a service appointment. I went to work extremely early so I could leave in time for a promised callback so they can note what few channels I’m receiving and be there for the tech. Of course, I never receive a callback and the tech never shows up. Three calls to customer service at about two-hour intervals after the expired window all resulted in the same response: “Don’t worry, he’s just running late, he really will be there, we promise! Dispatch will call you in a few minutes.” I was given a $20 credit on the first call.

11:00 pm rolled around and I was dreading losing time at work to a series of no-shows (which my boss had just recently experienced with Verizon FiOS). But then I remembered Comcast Frank! I browse the Comcastcares group on Twitter and see recently activity, so I figure what the hell, it can’t hurt to try. I sign up and post a quick message saying the tech never showed up and I left work early for nothing. Within four minutes, Frank responds and after talking back and forth for a few minutes, determines the problem is either the cable box or the splitter. The coax cable at the splitter was tight, so I asked him if the box needs to be replaced, can I get one with an HDMI out? He replied that he’ll request one and make sure I’m well cared for. Sure enough, the next morning I get a call from an exceptionally nice customer service agent named Rose who took down my info. Shortly afterwards, I was also called by Jeff, the district tech manager who was quite apologetic and unhappy that I was never contacted by the tech who missed my appointment. He scheduled another appointment for the exact time that worked best for me and the new tech, who was much nicer and far more competent, called me 15 minutes or so before he arrived and showed up exactly on time. The cable box wasn’t the problem but he swapped it out for me anyway with one that had HDMI out, and fixed the wiring problem outside.

It would have been nice to have the problem fixed the first time around, of course, but thankfully Frank was there (late at night, no less!) to instantly cut through the BS and give the best customer service I’ve ever seen. If only more companies had a crack CS team like this, the world would be a better place. Thanks, to you too, Consumerist! Keep up the good work!

–Jeff

P.S. Oh, Frank is totally not creepy!

If you’d like to pester Frank about his company’s crappy customer service, you can reach him at Twitter. Tell him we said, “Hi!”

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.