ISPs have a reputation of providing terrible customer service. My experience with Comcast over the last two weeks or so was an example of the company living up to its reputation.
I had been having intermittent issues with my Internet for a while. Comcast had been out once before, looked at the computer for about a minute, and said nothing was wrong. Everything was fine for a month or so and then the issues started happening again. My Internet would go out for an hour or two and then come back. No apparent reason for it going out randomly - it just did.
Since I couldn’t stand my Internet randomly going out, I called Comcast again. They tried to troubleshoot (which consists of blaming my router for the problem) and realized they couldn’t get a connection to the modem. A service call was scheduled for later in the week after 5 PM.
I was home by 5 PM and waited until 8 PM before calling Comcast. I called them and they said the service call had been canceled. They didn’t know who canceled it or why it was canceled, but the service call was canceled. I had waited at home for three hours and the call was canceled.
They had no additional information about why it was canceled, which was ridiculous. Their best answer is that they (the people who do the service calls) sometimes call in advance to make sure someone is home. Apparently, I had to wait home all day, in case someone from Comcast called. I asked to talk to a supervisor, but instead spoke to a “team lead.” He told me that he would try to get it rescheduled to Saturday (my preferred time), but at the moment, the only available time was Wednesday after 5 PM. I told him that I wanted to hear back from Comcast by 11 PM that night with a yes, no, or still working on it answer. He assured me that I would hear back.
As 11 PM rolled by, I had not heard anything from Comcast. They failed to do what they said they would do once again. I called on Tuesday evening to confirm my Wednesday service call and it was still scheduled.
At exactly 5:00 PM on Wednesday, my phone rang. It was the Comcast represenative confirming I was home and available. He told me he was in the area and would be there in a few minutes. By 5:15 PM, he was working on my computer. Apparently, nothing was wrong with it. After trying to sell me a modem about 5 times, he checked outside to confirmed nothing was wrong at the street level, and left.
The entire experience was absolutely terrible at worst and mediocre at best. I’ve written quite a bit about service calls and this experience was not the best by any means.
Companies that do service calls can learn a few lessons from my Comcast experience:
- Communicate the times very clearly.
- Never cancel a service call without talking to the customer.
- If a service call is canceled, ensure you record all the details.
- The company’s central office should have a better idea about what the field representatives are doing.
- If you make a promise (whether it be to show up or to return a phone call), keep it. If you’re unable to keep that promise, don’t make it.
And maybe one more tip - when you are down and on the ropes, the service call may not be the best to upsale a modem.
Comment by Bill Gammell — January 28, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
Bill,
You’re exactly right. I wasn’t in the modem buying mood that day.
Comment by Service Untitled — January 31, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
All the people @ Comcast,
Per my case, You have done the best to help with my billing problums & Servise,You have helped me with my Phone,TV & Modem hookups.
Just wanted to say Thank You.
Also there is a lady in the billing dept,Named Jacky ext#-(3212), But i can not get to her on the phone so please let her know that she did a wonderful job.
(She is one of reasons why i am still @ comcast).
By helping people and not looking down at them thats one of the Reasons people will stay Comcast,Not just the(MONEY).Its the employes like the one that helped me that go`s a long way.(I know it will not work with everyone.
It did work for me).
Thank you all,(PS- Give her a raise).
Michael W Burgess.
Comment by Michael W Burgess — February 27, 2008 @ 11:54 am
For 2 years I lived with DSL and DirecTV - waiting the day when I could move to a cable wired building. It finally happened two weeks ago, and I’m sorry to say I’ve lost all the enthusiasm as it took 5 phone calls, two service calls, a $98 billing error, a trip to the comcast office to get a new cable box when the other one stopped functioning after 2 days, 2 weeks to port my phone number from Verizon and a final call this morning to have them turn my DVR service back on after my wife tried to correct the billing error (which they said we’d need to call in with a voucher code since customer service people are only authorized to correct errors $50 or less) and they turned off all our DVR service instead of just the double billed one!.
To top it all off - the customer service “personally garuanteed” our number to port on Friday - it finally ported the following Thursday. We had one customer service person who tried to schedule a service call on Friday night at 8pm to port the number - something each of the 4 other people said was done remotely.
Clearly there are serious issues - its a shame now that I dread each week wondering whether I’m going to be overcharged, or have my service turned off and miss my favorite show, or if my telephone will still be working.
Comment by Ross Carver — May 4, 2008 @ 9:11 am
Folks, Comcast is like Walmart, Exxon, Entergy and many big big companies who simply do not give a damm about their customers. My best friend works for Comcast and is wanting to quit, he says they are terrible and their call centers are over-run by minorities, he has heard F the white Mother-??????. He has seen people fax items to verify items or billing issues and the forms never left the fax machine and at the end of the day went in the garbage. These are horrible people, my suggestion is cancel and if you can’t live without 120 channels call dish network…
Comment by John Stein — May 30, 2008 @ 10:40 am
Comcast regularly cancels customers’ scheduled service calls, in my experience and the experiences of many others I know. They use the “pre-call” as their excuse: if you don’t answer your phone quickly enough, they say no one is home and the techs don’t bother to show up. Never mind that I had called them twice to confirm the service, once just one hour before they called (the number I told them NOT to call). I believe they don’t have enough techs to service all their customers, and this is one oft he tactics they use to avoid making service calls. This way they can blame it on the customer! Read my blog, I’ll be posting a petition:
http://comcastservicecalls.blogspot.com/
Comment by Fern Robin — June 20, 2008 @ 10:25 am