Ever been scorned by Comcast? A brave Comcast Call Rep has given us an in-depth analysis, as well as some ways to navigate around the Cable giant’s sales pitch.

Jane Doe writes:

Hello,
I am a Comcast Rep. I do not work in a call center, I work from home. Comcast has been contracting out to Cloud 10 Corp and they’ve been providing training to At-Home Agents. Why am I writing?
I would love to fix your problems. I would love to call up and find out where the tech is that has bailed on the last 3 appts. I would love to be able to downgrade your account and help you save money. Unfortunately all we are allowed to do is take payments, do basic troubleshooting, and schedule tech calls. I can also upgrade or change services as long as you are not downgrading.

When you ask for a supervisor, they tell us to take your name and number and account info and send it into an email address. (homeps@nucomm.com) How are we connected? We are all logged into a work IM system and a team chat room. We talk to each other in IMs and a chat room. The supervisors tell us to send in the email when we try to get them to take the call. I don’t know if anyone was called back for the emails I’ve sent in.

We cannot call out. We have no direct line into us and we don’t exactly have operator numbers. I guess we could give you our phone extension number but you wont be able to call back in and get us. We deal with Michigan, Maryland, Indiana, DC/Potomac, Atlanta GA and some areas in Florida. We DO NOT have direct dial numbers to the local stores. We have some funky speed dial that they disable if we call in too much. This just happened with transfers to Baltimore’s locals. They whined that they were getting too many calls that the reps should have handled, so they took away our option to call them. Now it has to go through a supervisor.

We aren’t supposed to call dispatch to figure out where your technician is, a supervisor is supposed to do that. Comcast uses independent contractors for the tech calls, and it’s hit or miss on if you get a good one or a crappy one that lies and says you weren’t home and they never called or knocked on the door.

The training we got was pretty spotty. The subject matter was provided by Comcast’s parent company. It didn’t really cover what we handle on a daily basis. Training is 2 weeks long with 2 weeks of “nesting”. That is when we take live calls and get help in the chat room by a supervisor.

Our phone system and the work systems have continuous issues. Calls come in and we can’t hear a customer, or they call and cannot hear us. We spend too much time rebooting the systems.

We DO want to help. Our poor training and poor support don’t help you much and I apologize for it. I’ve been here a year and I am tired of being chewed out by pissed off customers. Recently we were told that we can no longer do any type of payment arrangements. The customers won’t believe us, but the system won’t let us do it. Only collections has the ability to set something up…or so we were told. There is so much contradicting information out there. I understand why this company has such a poor reputation.

You know that saying “The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing?” Well, the fingers on the right hand don’t have any idea of what the other fingers are doing. It’s frustrating to not be able to help much. I enjoy helping customers and actually solving the problem. I wish Comcast wasn’t such a mess within and that we had better access to the local offices so we could make sure you get to the right dept.

And this is something for the consumers to consider. Having cable tv isn’t a “right”. If you call me up and tell me to turn your cable back on for non-payment and then mention that you can’t pay me until 2 weeks later because you have to buy groceries….maybe you should reconsider having that 150.00 a month cable package. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT USE THEIR CRAPPY PHONE SYSTEM. If the power, Internet, or cable go out so does your phone. Just stick with a basic land line phone. It takes major problems before they go out. I get too many calls from seniors living alone with the crappy CDV (Comcast Digital Voice) and it worries me that they will not be able to use the phone when they need it.

Please be aware of when the promotion ends and what the cost will be. ASK FOR IT when you sign up. I am tired of being yelled at because someone didn’t bother to inform themselves of the future rates. The reps should tell you to begin with, and I always look up the rates and remind customers of the new costs when I see a promotion is coming to an end. Don’t trust the reps to tell you, protect yourself and ask!

From,
Your at-home agent that would like to actually help you

P.S. Don’t let them talk you into a 2 yr contract. The price is only locked in for 12 months and can go up after that. And they usually do.
another P.S. Please don’t get an attitude with me if I ask for the last 4 digits of your social security number for verification/security. You provided it to us, or you gave us the drivers license number. I verify. If you have a problem with that, hang up and call back later to get a crappy rep that doesn’t care who they let into your account. And for the spouses, you are not always automatically authorized. It depends on the area. So if I tell you to have the account holder call us and give you express authorization or ask to speak to them, stop acting like I am going out of my way to ruin your day. It pisses me off and makes me not really want to spend time figuring your issue out. You catch more flies with honey, so remember that okay?

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