Topic: Why does Comcast hate me......

[BlackNMild2k1]

or Why is everyone at Comcast an idiot?


I've been dealing with Comcast for about 7+ years now and I'm pretty good at working their system to stay on the best deal possible at the time. The trick i stop always have a NEW customer ready to have service in your house. After every deal ends I always dread having to get on the phone with Comcast and argue my way to the deal that should have been easy and offered to the existing customer you already had but opted to lose in favor of a "NEW" customer. Hours upon Hours spent usually once a year negotiating the terms and conditions of my TV & Internet hostage situation.


Today my sister's deal apparently ended and the I've been tagged to step in the ring to fight for my mom's NEW deal and save my sister some money. The arguments always lead to me pointing back to how I've done things in teh past and how they can do this or that because I've done it before, so stop being stubborn, quit making this so hard and let's just get it over with. Occasionally I even have to tell them what their own policy is.... anyways, I'll just post the chat transcript.


Just remember that there is atleast 1 minute inbetween all of her responses, so some of my responses are to something she said previously. Her pauses are really long when I make her look up her own policies to verify that I know more about her job than she does.


edit: this post failed during formating the copy/paste of the transcript. cut off half of it and erased the last half of the post.
I'll try again later.


anyways, Anyone else have any Customer Service frustration stories?
Anyone else have Comcast and go through these (bi)annual contract negotiations?

[that Baby guy]

I canceled my cable television service on Wednesday.  I told the person I spoke to that a friend in the area did the same thing, and they accidentally shut off his internet.  I asked if it could happen.  According to her, there was no chance it could.  I'm talking to her, she's canceling the cable TV, I double check again during the process, and finally, when she says it's done, I glance over at my modem...

The internet has been disconnected.  I tell her.  She told me that it must be resetting itself.  It wasn't. We wait a few more moments, I say when it resets itself, it doesn't take so long.  I suggest that it could be a side-effect of the service cancellation, she insists it isn't.  In the end, I got transferred to tech support.

Turns out when just television is disconnect, a code has to be put into Cox's system to enable cable internet.  The tech guy sounded upset that he had to do it himself, since he's actually supposed to be troubleshooting user-end stuff.  I tried to be nice about it, suggesting perhaps it wasn't a part of the cancellation team's training and they just needed to add in a new item into the process, but he adamantly said no, it's her job to know how the system works, and that if she was giving misinformation, that was a problem.

Needless to say, I was actually satisfied, to an extent with his reaction and elevation of seriousness with what happened, especially since I was aiming to complain just to help the process be better.  I don't know what all happened about it, but given I've had a random recent string of issues with customer service since right before Christmas, I was glad to hear someone on the business end wanted to solve problems.

[Morari]

All cable companies are terrible. That's what happens when you have government sanctioned monopolies.

Really though, there's so very little even worth watching on television nowadays that I wonder how so many people can justify paying for those Double Ultimate Gold Tier Packages. The only reason there is any coaxial running through my house at all is because I need my broadband.

[NWR_insanolord]

If I weren't such a sports fan I don't think I'd be able to justify any kind of paid TV service. Everything else I watch can be had easily online.

[ShyGuy]

I think Comcast hates you because you only take advantage of their deals and try to squeeze a bargain out of them.

[BlackNMild2k1]

But I only do it because paying $150 for a bunch a channels I didn't want & don't watch is asking too much.

[ShyGuy]

But I only do it because paying $150 for a bunch a channels I didn't want & don't watch is asking too much.

I agree with you there. The value of TV is changing and Comcast needs to adapt or die.

[bustin98]

If cable would be a la cart, I'd have more channels than I do now.

[ShyGuy]

This is what I've been saying for years. Let people choose there own package of channels. Maybe it would kill off crappy channels and homogenization of formerly good channels.

[that Baby guy]

This is what I've been saying for years. Let people choose there own package of channels. Maybe it would kill off crappy channels and homogenization of formerly good channels.

When I canceled my cable, I asked the technician to put in a note saying something like that.  I figure the only way my words will have power with a cable company is if they associate it with money lost.

[ThePerm]

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=32955.0

[vudu]

But I only do it because paying $150 for a bunch a channels I didn't want & don't watch is asking too much.

If you don't want them and don't watch them isn't paying anything for them too much?  Why do you even want the fancy package?

[Morari]

If cable would be a la cart, I'd have more channels than I do now.

That's what everyone has been wanting forever. It'll never happen though, because there's too much money to gain in packaging channels. Maybe if the FCC wanted to actually do something they could, but their recent failure over net neutrality doesn't show much promise of it ever happening.

If I could pay a reasonable price for just the channels I wanted, I'd have maybe five channels. Until then, I'm fine with just PBS and whatever I can download off of the internet. Besides, it's much more fulfilling to read a book or play a video game... television is such a passive activity.

[TJ Spyke]

There is a slippery slope letting FCC get involved though, right now they have almost no involvement with cable/satellite.

[BlackNMild2k1]

But I only do it because paying $150 for a bunch a channels I didn't want & don't watch is asking too much.

If you don't want them and don't watch them isn't paying anything for them too much?  Why do you even want the fancy package?

Gotta get a certain package to get certain channels, and I know they need to bundle the channels out to us since the networks bundle channels out to them, but $150 a month for cable TV & internet is absurd, so I will always try to hustle the best deal out of them, regardless of if I can afford to pay the full price or not.

At this point, cable TV is a convenience as I can find almost every show online and watch it up on my TV anyway by the time I would have watched it my DVR. Internet is the necessity.

[Morari]

There is a slippery slope letting FCC get involved though, right now they have almost no involvement with cable/satellite.

Letting the government get involved is always a slippery slope.

That said, the cable companies are government created monopolies. They should be heavily regulated because of it. If it weren't for you local municipalities signing exclusive contracts with Comcast and Time Warner in exchange for running infrastructure, they'd be a lot more competition out there to create better prices. Just think about how the availability and speed of broadband would increase if the cable companies were faced with real competition. As it is now, they just sue small anyone that gets in their way... including small towns that want to set up their own ISPs because they're "not profitable enough" for the cable companies to service.

I've only had cable television once and it was very brief. I immediately went back to satellite, where the prices are a little bit better. You generally get much better picture quality and quicker program guides to boot! Even then, I just can't justify even the $40 a month it takes for lower end packages. I always wonder how people manage to survive in the world between their cable bills and their cell phone bills.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I had a real pleasant experience with Comcast today. So I just moved and had the service transferred. I have a deal that is  cable and internet for 2 years @ $54.99. I just added an extra HD box and the bill changed to to $99. Previous bill was $63.

By the time I they were done, I had a free hd dvr, free hbo, an almost free cable modem, and my extra box free and all for $58.15 a month for the next 12 months.

Comcast is obviously worried about losing more customers, but they should have been like this from the start and we wouldn't all be looking for any reason to drop them hot garbage.

[Ceric]

Service Provides hates all fo us.  End of discussion.
Its like how worker in tourism based towns Hate tourists even though the be nothing without them.  Its an annoying fact of life in the States.

[King of Twitch]

Service Provides hates all fo us.  End of discussion.
Its like how worker in tourism based towns Hate tourists even though the be nothing without them.  Its an annoying fact of life in the States.

Jimminy H Cricket, Ceric...