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Comcast customer service call

Discussion in 'Non-Vegas Chat' started by Joe, Jul 15, 2014.

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  1. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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  2. smartone

    smartone VIP Whale

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    WOW!!!! "Torture" is definitely a great way to describe this... I'm almost speechless and that NEVER happens! I'm dying to find out Comcast's response to this... what a PR nightmare, but it's not an isolated incident and is EXACTLY the kind of service we've all come to expect from them and others like them. I congratulate the customer for his patience and resolve to get that done... he was outstanding!!! The Comcast rep was just a disgusting person and I don't wanna hear anyone say, "he was just doing his job". For anyone to do that job that way is disgusting to me... go sell used cars if that's your skill set!
     
  3. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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    Comcast and Time Warner voted the two worst companies for customer service. We have TW and I can attest to that, but nothing like this call.
     
  4. Jerseyguy

    Jerseyguy MIA

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    Comcast will probably deny this ,but I'm sure the guy has a list of replies in front of him to just about any thing a customer says to him.You know the guy has a goal of a certain percent of customers he can retain by following the script. If this job doesnt work out he could possibly have a career in a shady boilerroom investment company or even sell Timeshares ,oh excuse me Vacation Clubs.
     
  5. thekillers

    thekillers Low-Roller

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    Same thing with me, I lose my shit when I deal with incompetence, but this takes it to a completely different level!
     
  6. Kickin

    Kickin Flea

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    That was bananas, and it was only half of the call. It says his wife gave him the phone after she got fed up talking to the guy. I became impatient like 10 seconds in, I don't know how he lasted so long. Maybe its karma though because he works at AOL which was also known for making it hard to cancel dial-up back in the day.
     
  7. chitownjohn

    chitownjohn High-Roller

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    Unfortunately that's part of the Comcast customer support model, they have reps in the cancellation department that are paid commission based on how many customers they can retain. Comcast may publicly denounce this, but that's exactly how they train those reps.
     
  8. smartone

    smartone VIP Whale

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    Of course to be fair... I can only imagine how many customers like this... need "customer care."

    [video=youtube_share;RVdNobKNMig]http://youtu.be/RVdNobKNMig[/video]
     
  9. idtwins

    idtwins Low-Roller

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    Ugghh...definitely no love for Comcast here. Had the exact opposite problem with them. We bought a new cable modem to take advantage of the higher download speed and get rid of the Comcast modem lease fee. I was told to drop the old Comcast modem off at a local service center. I did....and about 2 weeks later Comcast turns off our phone and internet! It took multiple phone calls to convince them they made an unauthorized change to our service and we should not be transferred to the new sales department!!! they finally got it all fixed but what a nightmare it was.
     
  10. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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  11. ams722

    ams722 Side Bet Shunner

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    I switched from Comcast to AT&T U-Verse about 10 months ago.

    Comcast was by far the worst cable provider I've ever had. Overpriced, and the service is not as good as the other cable providers I'd had in the past.

    When I called to cancel, they gave me the same basic speal that they did to this guy, but to a much lesser extent.

    He wanted to know why I was canceling - too expensive, I could get a better deal with AT&T. Then he offered me the same service I had had for a year at a much cheaper price. I told him too late - should have offered that to me to begin with before they raised my rates after the promotion I had signed up with ended. Once he realized I had already switched to AT&T and was truly just calling to cancel service, he went on to bash AT&T for a long time - said their internet is slower & when I watch HD TV it will come down to a crawl. Funny thing is - AT&T's internet is exactly the same IMO and their TV service is much much better. More HD channels, wireless DVRs that work across multiple rooms, and the DVRs hold at least four times as much as the Comcast ones did.

    Moral of the story: Screw Comcast!
     
  12. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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    About once every 6 months I look if Uverse is available at our house. Nada. I spoke with an AT&T tech one day who was working on a terminal box on our property. He said they are completely in the dark as to where a service expansion might happen next, but he said we were in an ideal location since one of the Uverse boxes is about 100 yards away. I so want to dump Time Warner.
     
  13. LolaDoggie

    LolaDoggie VIP Whale

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    I've made my living in customer care for a long time, too long, way too long. Anyhow. My professional assessment is this guy was following policy which they will deny. They probably have incentives and contests and whatnot for reps to "save business" and are incentivized per save. Incentivized is a term they actually use at work. I wish I was kidding. They make up a lot of words in this industry. My other fav is verbage. In context, this rep was following policy and using the correct verbage throughout the call. I'm also going to say that this rep probably wins a lot of those saving business contests and is a darling at work. I've had to say the most ridiculous things and I've been told not to say the most common sense things, so I feel pretty confident in my assessment here. You can change companies but they're all the same. I've thought about making myself a business where for a fee, I'll make customer service calls for you. You do the ID part and give permission to speak to me and I'll take care of the call. I know how to talk to these people because I am these people. LOL. How much would you pay for a service like this? Anyhow, I digress. The magic words are always "I need to speak to your supervisor" but don't expect the supervisor to do anything different because they probably don't have any authority. They have a title but they're 2nd line reps. If they even have such a thing. My best advice is to be as polite, professional and business like as possible and remember that the person on the other end of the line is doing their job, which they need just like you need your job and they have requirements that may or may not make any damn sense. There are good reps and bad reps of course. Ones that care and ones that don't care. But, the ones that don't care are often the best performers because they don't give a crap and their bosses don't give a crap as long as they hit their metrics. Welcome to the corporate world kids!
     
  14. smartone

    smartone VIP Whale

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    I 100% completely agree with your assessment, but need to clarify the above comment, at least from my standpoint. This guy was NOT just "doing his job", as he claimed, he had well crossed the line into badgering the customer. The customer was very polite, calm and professional and repeatedly asked to move on to the next question, etc. I respect a decent amount of "how can I save the business?"... that's "doing your job." I'd think even less of the company if they didn't try or care to try to save the business and I know you're right about the incentives for them to "rescue" this business, but this guy was horrible. He was so rudely focused on what he wanted... he lost ALL sight of the issue at hand. I agree... he probably is a darling at work, but has caused his company some problems now. Ultimately, they're so big, they probably don't care... this'll blow over... and that's sad... for us!
     
  15. LolaDoggie

    LolaDoggie VIP Whale

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    I also meant to add that I think it's fair for a rep to be required to say (and have discretion not to say) along the lines of "is there anything we can do to keep you as a customer?" and that info gets forwarded so they can use it appropriately, hopefully to make things better for customers and employees at work. But we all know that's not how corporations work anymore. And we're to blame. You and me and everybody who owns stock in publicly traded companies is to blame. They're quarter to quarter to quarter now. The best bosses in the corporate world now are blank eyed, half smiled corporate robots who all talk the same corporate bs lingo. It's only caused a problem because they got caught. Behind this rep is a boss, a boss over them, another boss over them, etc all pushing these metrics and tactics. Keep going up the chain, they don't care. Honestly, pirates and mafia bosses would blush at what these guys get away with. He took it too far this time but he might have caught hell the day before for not trying hard enough to save business. His boss might have been right behind him giving him the thumbs up. You never know. I'm just not as quick as you guys to blame the rep. Although he does sound like quite a d word.

    Consumers are going to have to say screw you to the worst corporate offenders even if that means paying more elsewhere or going without. The stock market and companies being public started out as a way to raise needed capital and allowed everybody to participate in the economy. I think we can all agree that's hardly the case anymore. Reduce how much of your portfolio is in the stock market and find other ways to invest. Reduce your debt level. That's the only thing these corporate types understand.
     
  16. Suekel

    Suekel VIP Whale

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    God, yes. I've seen this at my own company - We gotta "make the numbers", at any cost, so that my boss' boss' boss can get his bonus. So what if making the numbers means cutting benefits, outsourcing jobs or laying people off? The stockholders will not accept anything but quarter on quarter growth. When that growth can't be attained orgainically, then it comes thru cost cutting. I find it kind of maddening.
     
  17. LolaDoggie

    LolaDoggie VIP Whale

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    All I'm sayin' is the older I get, the more those tree huggers and skinny jean mafia types and even the off the grid prepper types make sense. It scares me. But, my inner hillbilly can't be denied.
     
  18. smartone

    smartone VIP Whale

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    LOL... the older I get... definitely I'm headed more that direction!
     
  19. RockyBalboa

    RockyBalboa Front Line Winner

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    Comcast is a disgusting company. I hope they go bankrupt at some point.

    They're Philly-based and they have been playing shenanigans for years with Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia. They use the loopholes (lobbyists can burn in the same hell as Comcast too btw) in the laws to not make that channel available to satellite providers. So if you have DTV or Dish you don't get CSN Philly. That means you don't get to see the Phillies, Sixers, Flyers or the Eagles pre/post game shows.

    They're doing the same thing in Houston now too.

    So in true Philadelphia style I BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Comcast.
     
  20. hammie

    hammie VIP Whale

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    Had Comcast, switched over to Verizon Fios triple play, with HBO, one main set top box for HD and three smaller auxiliary boxes for non-HD, my bill is about $200 per month. Getting offers from Comcast and will probably switch back since Verizon does not want to give me the $79.99 offer for new customers. I have to say, Fios has been pretty great, never a service outage in about 4 years. But paying $200 a month for phone, cable, HS Internet is sickening.

    It's funny, but when we had Comcast, never had a problem with customer service and in fact thought they were pretty good on the phone when there was an issue with the Internet going down. Maybe because I live in an original Comcast franchise area and not an acquired cable provider.
     
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