Geek Stuff

Comcast has no sense of what good customer service is.

As Chris wrote in his blog, we have been having no end of problems with our Comcast Commercial (now called Comcast Business) account. We originally brought them into my apartment to provide a high speed line with a block of static IP addresses that would provide connectivity to our self-hosted servers. Over the past nine months I have opened several trouble tickets with Comcast to address problems with slow connections, weak signals, etc.

Their strategy is to do a quick diagnosis over the phone, and then to send out a technician. I’ve learned during these nine months that this is merely a stall tactic. Sure, the technician goes through the motions of checking signal strength (something that can be done remotely), they usually replace the cable modem, and they spend a lot of time on the phone with their dispatcher. But ultimately the technician has neither the knowledge or capability to diagnose the problem any further.

Luckily I learned early on that when the guy on the phone wants to send a technician, that’s when you ask for escalation. Sadly, their idea of customer service is to delay the customer as long as possible so they either just give up (and go away), or cancel their service. I imagine that for Comcast, losing a few customers is cheaper than hiring more experience technical support folks to provide a better quality of service.

At the end of the day, Comcast has proven unable to deliver the service promised in the contract. Oh yeah, they make you sign a contract when you initiate service that binds you to two years and where early termination costs a small fortune. At some point last week, Chris and I decided that no matter how many hours I spent on the phone with Comcast tech support, they would be unable to really deliver the service. In fact, one of the technicians admitted that fact to me, but refused to send me a copy of my case notes, stating they were Comcast property.

Apparently my demands that they dissolve the contract (without charging any termination fees) finally struck a nerve. Without notice, today at 11:40 AM the line took a final dive. Someone had gotten tired of my angry voicemails and put in a disconnect order. I suppose it would be too much to ask for, but a little bit of notice would have been nice! Oh, they also cancelled my video service (and I definitely hadn’t asked them to do that… yet). I guess they wanted to be rid of me as much as I wanted them out of my place.

But I will say this: I’m glad to be rid of Comcast Business. They have been nothing but a pain, and seemed wholly unconcerned that my business was without internet (and therefore without website and e-mail) for over a week.