My 30 Day Odyssey With Comcast

I had a conversation with a friend of mine regarding some customer service issues he was having with Best Buy and he asked me what my issues with Comcast had been and how come I never wrote about it.

What started with a simple email request on my part to have my then cable connection moved about 500 feet down the hall to a new space became a 30 day ordeal. The Friday before Memorial Day weekend I finally had a friendly tech show up at my door and he was done in less than 90 minutes.

I have had a couple of weeks to decompress and I also need to say that the sales manager and I had a nice chat and he gave me a rundown from his perspective on what went wrong. That defused me quite a bit and he did take some responsibility for the situation.

Funny thing was when he called I had just started proofreading a mighty long and descriptive blog post and email about the frustrations of this small business owner. Because we talked it out and he listened to me there was not much more to say.

For the most part I had forgotten about it until today when I was catching up on some reading and came across Why you should NOT buy Target's TruTech brand from Connecting the Dots. Near the end Steve writes “but it's the principle of the thing that gets me”.

While the local Comcast business sales manager and I came to a resolution on my situation I told him I was stuck on “the principle of the thing”:

-I spent at least 7 hours on the phone, writing and responding to email

-Relocated 5 meetings away from the office.

-Lost 10 days of using the office space.

(A reminder that I use VoIP. No cable, no connection, no phone)

-As an original Time Warner/RoadRunner customer I was grandfathered into the old rates. Moving 500 feet and reconnecting raised my monthly cost from $95 to $160.

-Technically Comcast does not offer cable to business folks in my area although they were supporting previous customers. Huh, you ask?

-I do not currently get cable TV. Oh, I get basic local channels. Actually I get channel 2 to 23. ESPN is fuzzy and no sound. Then I get channel 69 and higher. So I could get it but they “capped” the wire or whatever they call it.

-“Soon” there will be a business plan for cable TV.

I did get 2 months credit on my bill for the less than positive experience.

While I truly appreciate their acknowledgment of the hassle, 2 months credit is no where near “even” for me.

I have decided that at some point before the end of this calendar year I am going to recruit a happily employed and very skilled Comcast technology professional and place him/her with a client.

Then we can call it “even” and my “principles” will feel better.

Technorati Tags: Comcast, Customer Service

Comments

[Bonita]

I doubt that if you will be able to find a "happily employed and very skilled Comcast technology professional" at Comcast. All the ones I have talked with are either not skilled or don't sound very happy.