Why is customer service generally terrible from your cable and internet service provider? It’s not so much that the service is terrible, even though it often is. The problem is that it’s inconvenient to switch providers, if you even have a second option at all. When you feel like you don’t have a choice, you resent your current provider more. [More]
customer disservice
Listen To A U.S. Senator Try To Get Bogus $8 “Protection” Fee Removed From Cable Bill
By 6.23.16
You’d think that being the senior U.S. Senator from Missouri would help Claire McCaskill get better service from her cable company, but you’d be wrong. As this recording demonstrates, the legislator has just as much trouble as the rest of us trying to get anything resembling decent service from her pay-TV provider. [More]
Hotel That Inspired “Fawlty Towers” To Be Torn Down
By 1.7.16
More than 45 years ago, the uptight manager of an English hotel inadvertently inspired Monty Python’s John Cleese to create a comedy legend. Now comes news that this landmark of sitcom history will soon be demolished. [More]
Comcast Gives Woman’s E-Mail Address Away To Someone Else, But Bills Her For That Person’s Service
By 6.11.15
Given that Comcast has more than 20 million customers spread out around the country, you’d think it would have figured out how to handle billing two subscribers with the same name. But apparently the company is utterly baffled by this notion and has no problem with taking away one customer’s longtime e-mail address and giving it another subscriber, while at the same time sending the new customer’s bill to the wrong person. [More]
Cable Company Tech Arrested After Allegedly Grabbing, Shoving Customer
By 5.22.15
Cable company installation horror stories usually involve things like poorly run cords, maybe a dead gecko, gaping holes in walls, possibly having your house condemned, and the occasional tech who pees into a bag instead of in the bathroom. But a woman in Staten Island says a disagreement with her Time Warner Cable tech escalated to the point of him assaulting her in her house. [More]
Comcast Says Customer Must Sign Non-Disclosure Agreement To Get $600 Refund
By 5.7.15
When your cable company has charged you hundreds of dollars for a cable box you returned five years ago, you’d hope that the response would be “Sorry about that. Here’s your money back,” not “We’ll give you your refund if you agree to not tell anyone about this.” [More]
Comcast Tries To Refute Philly Customer Service Study, Does About As Good A Job As You’d Expect
By 4.10.15
Yesterday, Philadelphia finally got around to releasing the results of a long-in-the-works Comcast customer service survey of city residents, and the results weren’t very favorable for the cable company. Of course, Comcast, which had more than a month to review the report before it was made public, is now trying to discredit it, saying the consultants that put it together should have asked Comcast — and not the citizens of Philadelphia — for accurate data about customer service. [More]
Comcast Refused To Cancel Cable For Customer Whose House Went Up In Flames
By 4.9.15
When your house burns down, the last thing you should be concerned about is having to make repeated calls to your cable provider to get them to cancel or suspend your service. And yet Comcast refused to cancel service for one Minnesota customer after his house was turned to ashes — all because he couldn’t provide his full account number. [More]
Chemotherapy Patient Says Walmart Employees Mocked Her In Restroom
By 3.30.15
A Louisiana woman who had recently completed chemotherapy treatment and who underwent a double mastectomy last summer claims that Walmart employees laughed at her in the store bathroom after confusing her with a man. [More]
Comcast Continues To Screw Up Accounts, Even After Local News Involvement
By 3.16.15
We’ve done seemingly countless stories in which the only reason a company paid attention to a wronged consumer was the involvement of the media. And in most cases where this happens, the customer’s problem is finally resolved, never to crop up again. But that’s not always true. [More]
American Airlines Super Sorry About Leaving Passenger On Hold For 6 Hours
By 3.3.15
If you’ve tried to fly this winter, chances are you’ve hit some weather-related delays or cancelations and ended up in line or on the phone waiting to speak to someone who could help you out. But odds are that you didn’t wait as long as the one Florida woman who spent six hours trapped on hold with American Airlines. [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]
Comcast Rings Out 2014 With Yet Another Tape-Recorded Customer Service Disaster
By 12.30.14
It’s been a bad year for Comcast’s customer service image — probably not what the company wants to hear when it’s trying to convince federal regulators to let it swallow up millions of Time Warner Cable customers — and while many consumers are taking this week off from work, the folks at Kabletown know that bad service doesn’t take a holiday. [More]
Domino’s Customer: I Wasn’t Trying To Get “Go F**k Yourself” Manager Fired
By 11.11.14
You may have heard about the recent incident in which a since-fired Domino’s Pizza manager was caught on camera calling a customer a “retard” and telling her that his manager’s name was Mr. “Go F*ck Yourself.” Now the customer who shot that video is saying it was never her intention to get the man fired from his job. [More]
United Airlines Reply Robot Returns, Responds To Complaint By “Mr. Human”
By 10.1.14
The fill-in-the-blank customer service robot that gave us the heartfelt letter apologizing to (CUSTOMER NAME) for (SPECIFIC EVENT) has returned — and like all sequels, this time… it’s personal. [More]
Burger King Customer Complains About Sandwich, Employee Threatens Him With Box Cutter
By 10.29.13
While it’s been a while since any of us have worked in fast food, we’re pretty sure that “Threaten him with box cutter” is not among Burger King’s suggested methods for dealing with a dissatisfied (dissatisfried?) customer. [More]
Do Cable Companies Deliberately Make It Hard To Return Set-Top Boxes?
By 7.8.13
One of the most frequent complaints we receive from readers is cable companies making it difficult to return equipment (or claiming equipment was never returned in the first place). Most people chalk this up to the cable industry’s ingrained ineptitude, but what if it’s a deliberate attempt to make customers weary of returning their equipment — and thus staying with their current provider? [More]
Comcast Customer Asks For Password Reset, Gets Enrolled In $6/Month Tech Support Plan
By 5.22.13
When a Comcast subscriber found he could no longer access his home wifi setup because the installer had given him the wrong password, he was able to get the company to reset the password remotely. Somehow, he also ended up being enrolled in a service plan that charged $5.95/month in addition to a $13 enrollment fee. [More]
