Tuesday, August 12, 2008

How to Start a Blog

Go this place: https://www.blogger.com/start

It's incredibly easy!

Whom to contact with complaints

I did a little research online and emailed Mr. Rick Germano, VP Customer Operations for the Md. region:
ecare@comcast.com


I sent him a link to my blog and got a call back within the hour from a very polite person who offered to change my next scheduled appointment from 5 days away to the next day.

Since then I have gotten a couple more calls from the corporate office to "see what they can do to address my concerns". I asked that they reconfirm service calls the day before as other businesses do, and then show up as scheduled. In other words, no more using pre-calls as excuses to not show up for confirmed appointments. No luck - that's their policy!

So I suggest that every time this occurs, consumers post blogs on the internet and send the links to Mr. Germano. Maybe this will convince him and the other decision makers to change their customer unfriendly policies.

At a meeting last week somehow the topic of Comcast came up and every person there (about 10) had another horror story about infuriatingly bad Comcast service. There were situations like mine, related to pre-calls and others even worse. People are switching like crazy to Verizon or like me, counting the days until I can.

Blogspot is a Google blog that is easy to use - keep your experiences posted online!



Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Comcast "Service" Seems Like a Scam to Me

In the neverending saga of horrendous customer service from Comcast, I have yet another tale to tell. First - my brand new cable connection failed after just a few short months.

I scheduled a service call for today from 10am - 1pm and advised the Call Center NOT TO CALL my cell phone since it is off during business hours. I gave them another number to call instead. Knowing how unreliable Comcast technicians are I called again at 11am to confirm the appointment and again to verify that they had the correct phone number to reach me.

By 1:30pm no technician showed up. You can guess the rest - "the technician called you at 12:00 and no one answered so they didn't show up". Which number had they called? - the very number I had advised them NOT TO CALL - the very number the Comcast Call Center rep told me they WOULDN'T CALL. Did they come to my apartment building where I had been waiting since 10 am, based on my having confirmed the service visit?
NO - they simply failed to show up.

By now it is 2:20 pm, and I am willing to wait as long as it takes for the technician to return. However Comcast informs me that the technician won't make the service visit today. Why should they? It's only their error - confirmed as such by the Call Center. Instead they tell me all the things they CAN"T DO for me, based on their error :
1. they can't provide the service as promised, at any time today.
2. they can't put a supervisor on the phone for me to talk to about their error, now my problem.
3.they can't give me the name of a responsible person in charge of either service or customer service for me to write to.

All they CAN do is re-schedule the service visit. But wait, how do I know they won't call the wrong number again? So now I can take 2 days off from work instead of just one, most likely with the same results.

My question is, why do they need to call me if I have called them to say I am where I am supposed to be at the assigned time?

Plus - I live in a doorman building, and the doorman was also instructed to allow Comcast access.

So what's up with this so called "System" of calling the customer before even showing up at the premises? Who does this system serve? Certainly not the customer. Years ago they called me while I was in the bathroom and when there was no answer they simply didn't show up. Did they try again? Of course not.

The only conclusion I can arrive at is that Comcast doesn't have enough technicians to serve its customers, and this ridiculous "system" ensures that they won't have to make a certain percentage of their service calls every given day.

After talking to about 5 different people I finally got a ridiculously small credit for the service I haven't been receiving. But, hey, that's unlikely to reflect the actual time without service, since no doubt they will find another reason not to show up again the next scheduled service visit.

I plan to move this on the next level, writing to the FCC and any other organization that is documenting Comcast's lack of customer service. My experiences are not unique - even the last Call Center person I spoke to admitted that "this happens all the time".

As I find out more information about who to write to about these issues, I'll post more info on my blog.

Unfortunately I can't get DirectTV in this building, but I'll keep trying to find an alternative.