Every time I see a truck with the NBC peacock logo above the word COMCAST, I wonder if the colorful bird is truly “proud as a peacock” to be associated with one of the most hated companies in the United States.
I’m certainly not alone in my disdain for the provider of cable, Internet and voice service and have fell victim to their horrible customer service several times. When you’re a monopoly, like Comcast is, you’re able call the shots and hold customers hostage.
I’ve been held hostage for three days now, a victim of Comcast’s own doing.
My latest battle with the cable giant started early Thursday (2/25/16) morning when Comcast trucks arrived in my development shortly after 5am to begin “maintenance” work. The “maintenance” resulted in everyone’s cable, Internet and phone service being shut off for 12 hours.
When service went out, I logged into account to report that I was without service and was greeted with a message advising work was being conducted, they were aware of the outage, and service was expected to restored around 5pm.
At 5pm the Comcast trucks were gone and so was my service.
I called to report that despite my account now saying “All Clear,” things were not. The customer service rep told me there was still work being done. It turns out everyone but myself and one other neighbor were the only ones still left without service.
Talk about luck.
As someone who relies on Internet access for work, this was not good.
I spoke to Comcast yet again Thursday night and was told they would have someone out first thing in the morning Friday to fix it. During this call, I noticed that the supervisor I spoke to used the phrase, “I sent an email to Comcast to let them know.”
Was I not speaking to Comcast?
Turns out I wasn’t. After probing, I got this supervisor to tell me he works for Universal Electronics, a 3rd party vendor for Comcast.
Great.
Friday morning came and the service request that was on my account suddenly was “cleared” around 10am and I received an automated call saying things were back up and running.
They were not.
I also received two calls from a local Comcast representative from telephone number 561-410-0534 who told me they were working on my issue and would update me. I never got an update, and when I called the number back and left a voice mail, I never received a call back.
I called in again to advise Comcast that my service was not restored despite the fact that I’ve been told it was, and the answer was “we have flagged your account as having signal leakage and we need to do further work, we can have someone out there Saturday between 3pm and 5pm.”
I took out my frustrations on the customer service representative, who working for Comcast should be very familiar with the tone, language and volume of my voice as I’m sure this is what they deal with 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. (Can you imagine what it’s like to work there? Seriously!)
He said he would “try” to have someone come out the same day, but could not guarantee it.
I asked to speak to the local office, and I was told I could not.
My neighbor, who has also been without service, had a Comcast technician scheduled to be at his home in a few hours. We both hoped that this tech could repair both our problems that Comcast created when doing their so-called maintenance.
The tech arrived at my neighbor’s home a little after 5pm on Friday, and flat out refused to even listen to me about my problem yet alone try to solve it. He didn’t have a service order he said so he couldn’t do anything.
Understandable, but come on. Help a guy out! I didn’t cut a line, I didn’t break a piece of equipment, this outage was caused by Comcast’s own doing, and now I was unable to get assistance in getting them to fix what they broke.
Back to the phone where I attempted to once again speak to someone in the local office or get them to authorize the technician who was now 25 feet away from me to have a look at my service.
The representative I initially got on the phone repeated over and over again that my service appointment was scheduled for Saturday. Time for another supervisor.
This time, I spoke with a supervisor who was militant-like and obviously took a job at Comcast after spending years as a drill-sergeant.
“I was told by a rep earlier today that they would try to send someone out today.”
We are not sending anyone out today, sir.
“I’d like to speak to someone in the local office here in Boca Raton, Florida.”
You will not be able to do that, sir.
“I’ve spoken to them before and I got a call from a local office today, why can’t I speak to them?”
You will not be able to do that, sir. If you want to speak to someone there you will need to go to the customer counter.
“Trust me, they do not want me showing up at their office right now with the mood you have me in.”
We take threats seriously sir and I want to let you know this call is being recorded.
“I’m glad it’s being recorded. Can I have the phone number for Executive Support?”
I don’t know what that is, sir.
“It’s Comcast Executive Support, I’ve spoken with them before.”
We have no such thing, sir.
This back and forth went on until the monotone, non-supportive, supervisor on the other end disconnected our call much like Comcast disconnected my service – abruptly and without warning. I will be the first to say I was somewhat belligerent, as one would expect to be after all this.
While this was going on, my neighbor now had his television, phone and Internet service restored.
Friday night came and went as dawn broke on Saturday morning. The wishful-thinking side of me turned the television on to see if by some miracle, service was restored.
Unfortunately, the re-run of “Check your connection” was still airing on all channels.
It’s now Day 3 and I’m spending my Saturday afternoon staring at a blank television, burning through cell phone data that’s not unlimited, and waiting for the Comcast technician to show up and restore my service that should have been restored on Thursday.
After this ordeal, I think it’s time to cut ties with Comcast. But who should I turn to? Do I want an ugly satellite dish on my roof who’s signal is supplied to by yet another monopoly, AT&T? Do I want to ditch cable and satellite television completely and just get my entertainment via the Internet?
It’s unfortunate that we, as consumers, are forced to deal with companies like Comcast who say they want to provide us with exceptional customer service, but fail in every single attempt to. If they weren’t the only game in town and actually had to compete for business, they would fail. But unfortunately, when you’re the one selling ice water on the beach in 110-degree weather, customer service and customer satisfaction means nothing, we’re going to buy the water and suck it up.
When the Comcast truck pulls up this afternoon, I’m going to go out and take a good look at the peacock on the side. There’s probably a teardrop there somewhere. A sign that he has lost all sense of pride from being associated with such an organization.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
My time committment for Comcast to arrive at my house to fix the problem was between 3pm – 5pm. With my luck the technician arrived at exactly 4:57pm. After explaining the situation to him and the fact that I was without service since Comcast conducted maintenance on Thursday, he immediately went to the “ped” outside to find out what was going on. He found that myself and “about a half dozen” others were disconnected from the main feed.
I pressed for more information and was told that the maintenance crew who was on site in my community on Thursday disconnected any line that they were getting interference from. The technician went on to say that it is standard procedure that when something like this is done, the maintenance crew will put door tag hangers on those who are impacted so they can call and schedule a repair call since the maintenance people are unable to make repairs.
None of us who were suddenly shut off without warning had door tag hangers placed on our doors.
A second technician soon arrived and after making adjustments outside and in, both Internet and cable were up and running in about an hour. They both apologized for the lack of clear communication from Comcast and the length of time it took for the problem to be resolved.
Before leaving one of the technicians remarked that there are several other maintenance tasks to be complete in my community, however, he put a tag on my line letting them know “not to touch it.” Let’s see how that works out.
While the technicians who fixed the problem were sympathetic and professional, the superivisors I dealt with at Comcast were far from it. As a whole the company is a customer service nightmare. Even their social media people were slow to respond to my complaints when I took them to Twitter. Usually they are quick to get issues resolved and it’s an easy, and often times, effective means to bypass the headache of dialing 1-800-COMCAST.
My tweets with @comcast cares started on February 25, 2016:
@comcastcares service outage impacting me an others but 1800comcast says “all is ok.” Reps working in our comm since 5am this morning.
— Scott Sanfilippo (@scottsanfilippo) February 26, 2016
@comcastcares @XFINITY @comcast If you describe shortly as 15 minutes so far, I guess it’s accurate. Still waiting pic.twitter.com/bolCVIcyIn
— Scott Sanfilippo (@scottsanfilippo) February 26, 2016
Having received no Tweet back from @comcastcares, I took to Twitter again on February 26, 2016:
@comcastcares Day 2 no internet or cable service. Not happy that you don’t answer my tweet or have fixed my service. No wonder #comcastsucks
— Scott Sanfilippo (@scottsanfilippo) February 26, 2016
@comcastcares how do I reach executive support for @comcast @XFINITY. 2 days w/o service is unacceptable.
— Scott Sanfilippo (@scottsanfilippo) February 26, 2016
I thought by now that one of their social media team members would have responded, as I’ve seen tweets they were answering in real time, but no. So back to Twitter on February 27, 2016:
Not even @comcastcares cares, because they haven’t answered my tweets. So I blogged about them yet again. https://t.co/2UeXvViQa3 #comcast
— Scott Sanfilippo (@scottsanfilippo) February 27, 2016
It took them until February 29, 2016 to FINALLY answer my tweet:
@scottsanfilippo Hello, I will be happy to look into that for you. Please send me a direct message
— ComcastCares (@comcastcares) February 29, 2016
By the time they did get around to answering me, it was too late.
@comcastcares Where were you days ago? Too little… Too late. At this point I want the number for exec support.
— Scott Sanfilippo (@scottsanfilippo) February 29, 2016
This latest episode is not my first run-in with Comcast, read about others here and here and here and wait… here.
Want to share you experience being stuck in Comcast hell? Please, share your story in the comments below.