Does Comcast Care? my most recent experience

I want to point out that I am not writing this post to cause problems.  I am writing this to help the ComcastCares team better their service and to better Comcast as a company.

I have been living in my condo for 2 years now and have had nothing but headaches with Comcast. Unfortunately they are my only option as I don’t want DirectTV and those are my two options. There was a point when I didn’t have phone, internet or television in my condo for four months. However, it wasn’t just me. It was my entire building. Comcast couldn’t figure it out and then finally listened to me and replaced the main line from the street. Anyway, here is my most recent story:

March 18th I come home from work and while sitting quietly at the computer (no music or tv on) I heard some strange clicking/popping noise come from the TV box in my bedroom. The screen on the box said ‘DL’ and there was a spinning circle. At this time I’m thinking maybe they were doing some upgrade and let it run for for 10 minutes before checking again. Still nothing! I turned the TV on to find a white screen that says “Terminal Locked” and then 5 more minutes later the box restarted and the TV came on. However, the TV didn’t have HD. Apparently it thought it was a standard definition box. Keeping in mind I have two TVs in my house and both are HD. One of which also is a HD DVR box.

I went out to the living room to check on the other TV (which is plugged in via an HDMI cable) and it wasn’t doing the DL spinning circle thing so I turned the TV on and it said “HD not available on this box please plug in Component.” I clicked exit on the remote and all I had was a bright green screen.

I turned off my TVs, and dialed 1-800-COMCAST. I went through the automated system choosing the problem I was having and was soon enough hung up on by this wonderful automated system. I went to Comcast.com and Comcast.net to check for possible outages to find that the website was down. It definitely wasn’t my internet because every other website was working.

This is when I went on Twitter and posted the following Tweet

scottwyden: Comcast tv is messed up, THEIR phone system isn’t working and THEIR website keeps crashing. Guess their service is useless this evening

Soon after I received this response.

ComcastBonnie: @scottwyden we’re working really hard to try and change that. i’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience :( anything i can help with?

Now I know that ComcastCares has been on Twitter since Twitter was born and does work really hard to make their customer service better. I know that the ComcastCares team has grown greatly and is no longer just one person. I understand that companies make mistakes, have problems, etc… I’m in the same environment. BUT I know that when there is a problem I have to get it taken care of or it makes problems worse.

After a bunch of public messaging back and forth between Bonnie and I asked her to follow me so I can DM her. When she did I asked for her to call me, gave her my number and patiently waited. I requested this because I couldn’t call 1-800-COMCAST when the phone number is apparently not in service. This is the response I received.

ComcastBonnie: cant talk, got a tooth out. hurts to talk right now

You don’t tell this to a customer. You tell the customer… “I can not call as I had some dental work done but I will have another employee from the ComcastCares team give you a call”

Here is some more of the conversation:

scottwyden: @ComcastCares 4 hours and TV still not back to normal. You’d think a major co would have back up systems to go up when there is a prob

ComcastBonnie: @scottwyden i’m going to beat some people up now

scottwyden: @ComcastBonnie Usually I don’t mind sarcasm but when I’m paying for a service and there are problems like this I don’t find it funny. Sorry

From what Bonnie posted there was a major sever which blew and caused an outage in North Jersey. Apparently, from what she said, the surge damaged my TV boxes and they need to be replaced.

I told Bonnie that I work Monday through Friday, leave at 7am and do not get home until 7pm and I will not adjust my schedule for Comcast anymore. I was also going to be away at the Small Strobes Big Results Workshop this weekend. She said she will have a tech out Monday between 5pm & 7pm to drop off two new boxes.

Didn’t I just say I don’t get home until 7pm?

I told Bonnie that if I get a call at 5pm telling me they are outside of my house I will be furious. She said she would take care of it.

I got home Saturday late and turned on the TV to find that everything was back to normal. HD!!!! Checking the other box to make sure it was good too I sent a DM to Bonnie telling her just that. She said to check it Sunday morning again and to DM her so she can cancel the appointment for Monday. I sent Bonnie a DM and went on with my Sunday. That afternoon I received an automated call confirming the appointment. The system said that if everything was working normally then to push ONE to cancel the appointment. I did and then it said to push ONE again to confirm that I want to cancel the appointment. I pushed one again. “Your appointment has been canceled. Thank you”.

Wonderful!

Now it is Monday. Everything is fine with the TVs and I am off to work. At exactly 5:19pm I got a call from the Comcast tech saying he was arriving at my house now. WHAT?! I told him I canceled the appointment over the phone yesterday. He said “Ok, you’ll get a call from dispatch, bye”

About two minutes later I received said call from dispatch saying “Our technician will be arriving at your house shortly”

uh…. (need I say more about that)

So here are my final thoughts

• ComcastCares is TRYING to help..but are they? They definitely need a larger to team to fix all of the Twitter user problems.
• They should be professional when responding to customers who have complaints and problems. This is a must. Never joke, be sarcastic, etc, when dealing directly with a customer whom has a problem. If you are just tweeting funny pictures, links, jokes, whatever then get a personal account. Keep it separate or just don’t make those tweets as a reply to a customer.
• They had no idea what my problem was so the answer I received was that the boxes were fried due to the server problem. Obviously this was a BS statement because now the boxes are fine.
• Their customer service department obviously doesn’t speak to their service department and their automated system obviously doesn’t update their customer service or service department on customer problems. Why tech would come when the appointment is canceled only means that their system needs an major improvement.

Thank you ComcastBonnie for trying to help and hopefully WHEN I have another problem in the future you’ll be able to get help again. And I say WHEN because it is Comcast and their are always problems.

Thank you ComcastCares for trying to give a Hoot

Thank you ComcastBill for your random reply in the middle of my converstation with Bonnie (ComcastBill: @scottwyden is there an outage?)