Today, Los Angeles is a Time Warner Cable town, with Charter poking in around the edges. Of course if Comcast and TWC get their way, Hollywood will be Comcast central before the year is out. However, there are plenty of Californians around who emphatically don’t want that to happen, and in a new report and press event this week they got together to call on federal regulators to block the corporate marriage before it could hurt their hometown — or anyone else. [More]
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New Comcast Customer Loses Old Phone Number
By 2.18.15
When people switch from one phone provider to another, even for landline service, they’re supposed to be able to port their phone number from their old phone company to their new one. That didn’t happen for one new Comcast customer, who lost her phone number of 15 years when she switched from AT&T. [More]
Prank Callers Trolling Comcast Twitter Feed For Victims
By 2.18.15
Comcast’s public image has sunk so low that customers now assume that a customer service rep who threatens you with violence or calls you a “b*tch” is actually someone working for the nation’s largest cable provider and not a prank caller. [More]
Analyst Downgrades Odds Of Comcast, Time Warner Cable Merger
By 2.17.15
An important industry analyst who had previously placed decent odds on Comcast being allowed to spend $45 billion to acquire Time Warner Cable is now looking at the deal in a less-sunny light, downgrading the likelihood of the merger succeeding. [More]
Comcast Doesn’t Want to Improve its ‘Internet Essentials’ Program for Low-Income Consumers
By 2.16.15
With Comcast’s $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable nearing the finish line, you’d think the company would be willing to do something as insignificant as make promises to improve its broadband program for low-income users. You’d be wrong. [More]
New MLB Commissioner Won’t Do Anything To Get Dodgers Back On L.A. TV
By 2.13.15
With pitchers and catchers set to report to spring training in the coming week, and the start of the 2015 Major League Baseball season fewer than eight weeks away, the overwhelming majority of Dodgers fans in Los Angeles are still unable to watch their hometown team on TV. And even though now-former MLB Commissioner Bud Selig had said during his final months that the league would do “everything we can to break the impasse,” those words now ring hollow as Selig’s replacement has confirmed he wants nothing to do with getting baseball back on TV in L.A. [More]
Comcast Accidentally Receives Customer’s Rent Check, Cashes It Anyway
By 2.12.15
When a 79-year-old Comcast customer accidentally included her rent check with her Comcast bill, not only did the cable company cash the check — which was more than 10 times the amount of her bill and was made out to someone else — but it also refused to issue her a refund when it acknowledged the goof. [More]
5 Empty Promises Comcast Has Made About Time Warner Cable Merger & One Promise They Won’t Make
By 2.11.15
It’s been a year since two-time Worst Company In America winner Comcast confirmed it would spend $45 billion to acquire another much-loathed pay-TV provider, Time Warner Cable. And while we all wait for the FCC and Justice Dept. to finish kicking the tires and looking under the hood of this deal, what better time to review some of the promises Comcast has made about the post-merger pro-consumer wonderland we’ll all enjoy. [More]
Contract Fight Between Comcast, Estrella TV Highlights Another Reason Why The Mega-Merger Matters
By 2.11.15
There’s another TV contract dispute a-brewing. This one isn’t between a powerhouse cable network and their carrier, though. This time, it’s a fight between a small, Spanish-language broadcast network and everyone’s favorite cable company, Comcast. And while on the one hand the dispute looks to be a completely bog-standard fight about money, it’s also a key example of an often-overlooked aspect of Comcast’s growth and dominance. [More]
Columnist Calls Comcast CEO’s Mom On Behalf Of Jerked-Around Customers; Actually Gets Stuff Done
By 2.10.15
Sometimes the best way to get something done is to tattle to one’s mother. Apparently, that works when it comes to fixing Comcast’s cable service. [More]
Complaining Comcast Customer Renamed “Super B**ch” On Her Cable Bill
By 2.5.15
While Comcast says it’s doing its best to stop employees from renaming customers things like “A**hole Brown,” the reports of Comcast customers with rudely revised account names continues. This time, it’s a Chicago-area woman who has been dubbed “Super B**ch” on her Comcast bill. [More]
Despite Threats Of Disaster, Investors In Comcast, Verizon, Etc. All Seem Totally Fine With FCC’s Plan To Reclassify Broadband
By 2.4.15
For a year now, the big ISPs have been having a series of public freakouts that stronger net neutrality rules would make for an uncertain regulatory future, leave them exposed, drive investment down, and hurt their businesses. And yet earlier today the chairman of the FCC dropped his bombshell that the agency is going to aim for the strongest possible regulation anyway. So how’d the market respond?
The stocks all went up. [More]
Comcast Says It’s Working On Making It Harder To Change Customers’ Names To “A**hole”
By 2.3.15
Last week wasn’t a good one for Comcast. It began with a report that someone at the company changed a customer’s name to “A**hole Brown” and ended with multiple customers claiming their names had also been changed for the worse. Now Comcast says it’s making an effort to curb this sort of rude and bizarre behavior. [More]
6 Things Comcast Customers Can Try To Get Some Actual Customer Service
By 2.3.15 — Updated: 4.28.17
Comcast is not exactly renowned for its high-quality customer service. It consistently ranks as one of the most-hated, most ineffective companies in the country, in both formal and informal surveys. They hired an exec just to change the customer experience, but the heap of public, embarrassing incidents for them just keeps getting bigger. So if you’re a Comcast customer, and you’re stuck in a loop trying to get your problem solved, is there anything you can actually do? [More]
Comcast Is Also Changing Customers’ Names To “Whore” And “Dummy”
By 1.30.15
This is not how Comcast wanted to end a week that saw it having to explain how a supposedly rogue employee could change a customer’s name to “A**hole Brown.” Other customers have since come forward claiming they also had their names tweaked for the worst by Comcast staffers. [More]
Are Cable Companies Lowering HBO Rates In Advance Of Standalone HBO Go?
By 1.30.15
Though we still don’t know a specific launch date, name, or monthly cost of HBO’s upcoming standalone streaming service, it looks like some pay-TV providers are cutting their rates for the premium service or offering discounted promotions in advance of its debut. [More]
Exec Formerly Known As “Comcast Frank” Has Some Tough-Love Advice For Company
By 1.30.15
Once upon a time, Frank Eliason was better known Comcast Frank, heading up the cable company’s Digital Care team during a time when people began to realize that complaining on the Internet could get results. He left Comcast in 2010 to take his social media and customer service skills to Citigroup, but his legacy of giving a damn about customers remains. So after months of seeing Comcast make one huge goof after another, Frank apparently felt compelled to pen an open letter to his former employer with some good advice. [More]
Two Big Reasons The New Broadband Standard Is Bad News For The Comcast Merger
By 1.29.15
None of the big ISPs are happy about today’s FCC vote drastically increasing the bare minimum that qualifies as “broadband.” But even though executives at Verizon, AT&T, and plenty of others are probably muttering aloud rude words in the C-suite right now, Comcast and Time Warner Cable have good reason to be more worried than most. [More]
