Reader Courtney was on a promotional plan with Comcast that she didn’t know about, so when it expired she was unhappy to find out that Comcast would rather let her switch to the competition than give her a deal.

Courtney writes to Comcast:

I’ve been a Comcast customer at my current address since June 2008. We were initially on a new-customer promotion that ended in June 2009; once that happened, I called Comcast & spoke with a representative about our options for bringing our monthly bill down a bit. I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation a year later, but I believe we gave up a few premium channels, ultimately ending up with a package that served our needs while remaining within our budget.

I hadn’t even thought about this until several days ago, when I went to pay our monthly Comcast bill & noticed it had gone up by about $20 from the previous month. I assumed it was some kind of easily correctable error, but when I followed up with Comcast I learned that apparently we’d been on some kind of promotional rate for June 2009-10, which has now expired. I discussed this issue first with an online chat representative, & while I was disappointed when he told me nothing could be done about the price increase, I figured I’d have better luck once I spoke with someone in person. However, after following up via phone with a frontline service representative, a retention specialist, & finally with a retention supervisor, the consensus seems to be that Comcast would rather I switch to RCN’s version of the same package than restore my account to the previous pricing.

I completely understand that many of Comcast’s prices have a lifespan; I wouldn’t be so frustrated if I’d had any idea that our package had an expiration date. Even the Comcast representative I spoke with acknowledged that nothing on my bill indicated that I was receiving a special promotional rate, & the person I spoke with back in June 2009 certainly didn’t mention this either. Unfortunately, this means that from my perspective, Comcast has arbitrarily hiked its prices by $240/year for our household, & I need to accept that if I want to remain their customer.

Everyone I spoke with—all of whom were very helpful & sympathetic to my situation—told me that no one had the power to bring my bill back to its original rate. Since we are on a really tight budget, & simply cannot afford to pay an extra $20/month for services we’d already accounted for, this means we can no longer be Comcast customers. I don’t want to switch to RCN; in addition to the hassle, I’m not confident that they’d have the same level of service that we’ve enjoyed from Comcast. We just don’t have a choice.

…Unless you guys can fix this. This whole situation feels like a silly reason to lose a customer, & I’m hoping that perhaps you have some authority that the retention specialists do not.

We’ve never had RCN, is Courtney right to be worried that they will be worse than Comcast? We seem to have found the first truly satisfied Comcast customer and they’re kicking her out the door.

Oh, Comcast!

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