Comcast might want to slash the budget on its Live Chat service and devote more resources to Frank and Sherri over on the Twitter side of things. The only good stories we hear about Comcast customer service comes from encounters with them, it seems.

Take Gene’s story, for instance. As a new Comcast customer, all he wanted was voicemail added to a second line. After three Live Chats and a face-to-face with a confused, if helpful, technician, he still didn’t have it. He voiced his his frustration on Twitter—and 24 hours later, the feature was activated.

Just thought I’d extend a hearty thanks to the folks at Consumerist for suggesting I reach out to Comcast via Twitter. I’m an AT&T Callvantage customer, and as you might have heard, AT&T is dropping the service sometime in the next couple of months. I already have a line setup through Comcast, so I figured I’d add a second line to replace the one that AT&T is ditching. I used Comcast Live Chat to ask about adding a second line and they were able to take care of it during the chat session. I specifically asked to add the voice mail feature, which they said wouldn’t be a problem at all.

Within 24 hours the second line was active, but alas no voice mail functionality. I thought, “Not a problem” and got online with Live Chat again. They took a while to check it out, but said that they successfully added the feature and to wait another 24 hours to activate. One day later, no voice mail. Went online with Live Chat again, rinse, repeat. Interestingly enough, they rolled a truck out to run the phone lines (as part of the initial request to add a second line), which I wasn’t expecting (nor was I even told they were going to do). The tech was surprised I already had the phone up and running (not that it took much effort, just plug a phone line in to the router, duh.) Guess he thought he needed to make himself useful because he ended up running new cable to the house since the old one was coming apart. I asked him about the voice mail and he mentioned something about having to provision the line (it was already done)and he would bring it up. I’d give them an A for effort, but that’s like changing the oil in my car when I’ve got a flat tire. Helpful, but pointless.

At this point, T-Mobile’s @ Home service started looking like a better alternative. I updated my Twitter status to rant about Comcast’ inability to add a feature after reading on your site how some people have been able to get escalated support via Twitter. A few minutes later I get a Tweet reply from Sherri @ Comcast asking me to email her. She digs up all the info she needs and 24 hours I have voice mail activated on my second phone line. A rare kudos for Comcast, now all I need to do is get a hold of someone at AT&T to ditch CallVantage.

Thanks!
Gene

If you find yourself having a problem with Comcast that their CSRs can’t seem to make right, try complaining about it on Twitter. Just make sure you include the word “Comcast” in your tweet so it’ll show up on their search filters.

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