The Comcast call

Since we just moved and canceled our Comcast service, this spoke loudly to me.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconside ... net-rounds

Apparently the gentleman who made this call is asking that the customer service rep not be fired.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconside ... -to-cancel

And really, he's right that this kind of experience is a largely systemic problem with misaligned incentives.

I'm not going to listen to it, because I can imagine how it went pretty well. I totally agree about the cause of the problem. The whole incentives for keeping customers concept is very poorly implemented in a lot of places.

If the customer decides they no longer want a service or to be connected to a company, then the company's representatives need to respect that and assist the customer in ending those ties. Nothing more. If I want to cancel service, then I want to cancel service - not change to another plan, not get a reduced rate, not anything else other than cancel service. But the poor representatives get so railroaded on their end that they feel desperate to keep the customer and eventually it can get to them. It's not the representatives' fault, but a reflection of the bad policies of the company when it comes to paying the representatives.

I've had Comcast internet (no cable TV service) for a long time now. I think the service is really great, but the customer service isn't the best, and some of their policies are just stupid.

I just recently had a run in with them. I came home on the second day of Evo 2014 and found my internet 100% dead, nothing. I called them and found out that they shut off my service for non-payment. This didn't make any sense since I always send my bills into them and I have plenty of money to cover the costs.

I guess my payment must have got lost in the mail, and they didn't call me or anything, they just shut my service off. Really? Anyway, I flipped out on the lady and told her in an extremely angry voice that she WILL do whatever it takes to get my internet working ASAP, since I payed to watch a stream this weekend, and I intended to watch it. I told her it's not my fault that they didn't try to contact me before shutting my service off.

I made my payment with my credit card and told them to bill me this way from now on since I did NOT want this to happen again. My service got turned back on and she apologized to me for everything.

This is how you have to handle these situations. This guy that was on the call with Comcast was being far too nice to the guy that was pestering him. I would have been much more rude and stern with him.

Then again, I was pretty hyped up when I called them since I was thinking that I might miss the rest of my Evo stream, so I was very determined to get my service back LOL.

On the flip side, I've had great experiences talking with their customer service reps too. One time I had a really cool guy call me and after he pitched his TV package deals, I told him I wasn't interested, and we ended up getting on the topic of gaming. Next thing you know we talked about Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 for the next 25 minutes. He was probably the coolest guy I ever talked to from Comcast.

When I had an account living in Cambridge...yeah, shutting it off and closing business with them was awful. They kept telling me different things about what I owed back to them, messed up my final billing twice, told me I had credit on my account then told me I owed them, and didn't stop service on the right date.

At the Comcast service center here in Waltham, the clerks are behind bullet proof glass and there's a tiny slot to hand things back and forth. They are hated here and know it. They have a monopoly in much of the Boston area, with small pockets here and there where they compete with Verizon fiOS and/or RCN.

Wow Wolf Bird. That's crazy. I think there is something wrong with your company when you have to protect your employees with bullet proof glass.

There's a reason we chose RCN, as thankfully, this corner of Waltham is served by Comcast, Verizon and RCN. We ruled out Comcast at the start and chose RCN over Verizon as they simply offered a better package for internet-only.