Comcast customers in northern California who call in for help won’t be talking to their neighbors anymore. Kabletown announced yesterday that they plan to shut down call centers in Livermore, Morgan Hill and Sacramento in November. The 1,000 employees affected will have the opportunity to receive severance packages, or to follow their jobs as they’re transferred to call centers in Oregon, Washington and Colorado. The interesting part, though, is what Comcast had to say about why they’re moving the jobs, then later retracted.

Originally, the company’s statement blamed the location. “We determined that the high cost of doing business in California makes it difficult to run cost-effective call centers in Northern California,” Regional Vice President Andrew Johnson explained in a quote provided to news outlets. Well, okay: California can be an expensive place to live and do business. That didn’t raise any eyebrows, and news outlets like the San Francisco Chronicle passed on the message. Then, Diana Samuels from the Silicon Valley Business Journal reports, the call from the governor’s office came. They wanted to make sure that she had seen Comcast’s revised statement: the one that removes all references to California as a crappy place to do business.

Well, that was interesting. Samuels checked in with RVP Andrew Johnson, and he said that he wasn’t ordered to take back his statement, by the state government or by anyone else. Johnson insisted that the revised statement gives more detail about the business climate in California, but, well, it doesn’t. It removes all references to it, only explaining that the changes are

Comcast tones down blame on state for closing call center [Business Journal] (Thanks, Christiana!)
Comcast to move up to 1,000 jobs from area [San Francisco Chronicle]
Statement Attributable to Andrew Johnson regarding California Call Centers… [Comcast California]

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