Tue 10 Apr 2007
If you are disappointed that Overheard in Pittsburgh’s updates have suffered lately, please contact Comcast and tell them that Chris Griswold would like his Internet service to be installed finally. I also would appreciate it if technicians showed up when they are supposed to, customer service reps called back like they promise, they’d stop scheduling appointments without telling us, and the Comcast phone system wouldn’t dump customer calls when it wasn’t forwarding you to a call center in Texas.
I spend hours on the phone with Comcast just trying to get them to do what they promised: To send someone over and flip a switch so I could have cable. I left work early on Friday to be home when the technican showed up, but he never did, and this isn’t the first time. Comcast has a long history of horrible service. If you have a Comcast DVR, you know how bad the software is, and how often the boxes freeze up or dump memory. Guess what? Time-Warner DVRs don’t hurt to use, and neither do Tivos. In one year, I had to have the Comcast DVR replaced seven times because I could never depend on it to actually do what I was paying for it to do.
Comcast as a company should be ashamed for the state of its customer service department. Every time I speak to a customer service rep, I make it clear that although I am frustrated and angry with the situation, I know that they are not at fault. They tell me they understand awful the situation is, they agree that Comcast’s equipment is atrocious, and they speak under their breath to me about how ineffectual and uncaring Comcast is with regard to customer concerns.
I always wind up believing the reps when they tell me of their good intentions toward me, and nearly every time, I wait for them to call me back with news about the situation to no avail.
When a technician clumsily broke a set of picture frames, I was told I would be re-imbursed for them, but I was routed through several departments every time I called, and the one I needed was apparently always closed. Supervisors were supposed to call me back but never did.
Customer service isn’t supposed to make a customer feel helpless. But that’s exactly what Comcast customer service does.
I’m not the only angry Comcast customer:
April 10th, 2007 at 5:18 am
simple - get Verizon Fiber service. The speed of LIGHT. Best customer service in the business. If you can’t get fiber in your area, get DSL.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Verizon blows too - I’ve had more issues with Verizon than I’ve had with Comcast but they still both suck!
I went to the BBB when Comcast was still AT&T and I got a letter from the manager of the local franchise over on Corlis St.
You really have to hit them there to get anything done. Let the BBB know how bad they are and the PA Utilities Commission.
If I had the time I’d set up a rant site to let people talk about how Comcast sucks and Verizon sucks.
If it got enough traffic you know they’d have to think about doing something about it.
Maybe if we type Comcast sucks enough in these comments when people search for comcast we can drive the p.r. on Overheard higher than their websites! I think it might be worth trying - Comcast sucks. Comcast Internet is crap, Comcast doesn’t know anything about customer service.
- Comcast sucks.
April 10th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
I sent this letter to Comcast about 2 weeks ago - I got a response from a Customer Support Rep within about 1 hour telling me how sorry she was and that she would be forwarding my letter to Comcast right away… of course, I’ve heard nothing.
And just so you know, after this happened, I ended up cancelling my final appointment with them and decided I would rather just pay for service I don’t have. I’d rather do that than have to deal with their atrocious customer service one more time.
My letter here:
http://www.aftertastebliss.com/archives/2007/03/why_i_still_hat.php
April 10th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Just this morning, Comcast cut my service off. The reason? I didn’t pay my bill. The reason for that? They were mailing it to the wrong address. After I’d called them three times to ask them to fix my address in their computers.
April 11th, 2007 at 11:25 am
They cut off my service in Nov 13th of 2002. It took until Jan to straighten things out, this included 3 trips to the office. They had my wife and I scheduled for an upgrade that was to take place the day they knocked the service out. We never ordered the upgrade.
We finally got them convinced that we were not going to pay for more than half of nov. and nothing else even though they wanted us to pay through jan.
They then told me I had to set aside 4 hours of my time for them to come get their crap - I told them no. I said be here between 12:30 and 1:00 or it gets set outside the door to my apartment building.
The pissed off “cable jockey” came 10 minutes late. I was already unhooking it and planned on leaving the house at 1:15. He came in, kicked my laundry basket which was not in his way, knocked my clean clothes on the floor, shoved my coffee table out of his way, (again not really in his way), nearly took down my entertainment stand on top of himself and broke the plate on the wall where the cable was coming out of.
He told me f**k you when I told him to take it easy. I pointed out the broken plate, he told me to go to hell, he slammed my apt. door, shouted f.u. again and scared the shit out of the little old lady down stairs.
My mother has a cable co. in West Virginia that is a mom and pop, and I know people in Butler that have a little provider that both get excellent service and cheaper rates. Comcast is allowed to take their customers but they can’t switch back because of the way the big cable co’s have paid off the government and bought the laws.
Comcast sucks!
April 11th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Comcast uses contracted technicians; so that wasn’t horrible service on their part.
April 11th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
They were AT&T at the time and the guy was driving an AT&T van - it wasn’t an independent contractor he was an employee.
April 13th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Whether it’s a contractor or not is irrelevant.
The company selects the contractors the same way they hire their employees. It’s their responsibility to ensure that the people they employ, either directly or through a contractor, do their jobs reasonably well.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Just doing my part to spread the bad word. When I lived in pgh, my cable / internet was ridiculously unreliable. For the first six months it cut out at least once a week. I’d have to unplug ans restart it each time– sometimes it wouldn’t come back properly for a day or so. I had techs come out half a dozen times, each time I was assured I would not be charged for the visit and then each time I got a charge on my bill. I will say that when I called about the charge they took it off. Finally i called and just begged for a new box, which again they tried to charge me for. I never had a tech tell me to f*** off, thank god. Rev. R should definitely call the BBB.
April 16th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Yeah, I had a Comcast technician break a bunch of picture frames, and I repeatedly was lost in the phone system trying to report it. Nothing ever came of it. I have added this to the entry.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I had a contractor in my house he went to my bathroom and pooped