Elderly woman smashes up Comcast office with hammer...

[greensinestro]

I have some relatives who have Comcast and they have had no problems with them. As with any large company that serves multiple regions, their will be good reps and bad reps. Violence is not acceptable, regardless of what happened with your install.

I myself have never had any problems with Comcast. I was a little upset that my rates went up a little after they absorbed Adelphia, but that was to be expected. Besides, the rate I pay now is better than what Adelphia had with what channels I get.

My belief on this is people who love to wage war on the utility companies are the ones who stoop to this type of behavior to begin with. I worked 13 years for Bellsouth, and there were many incidents I could think of. One dealt with a man who was upset at how he was treated by a representative, so he found the nearest building with Bellsouth's name on it, and laid in wait. The first person out the door was a woman operator, and he attacked her from the nearby bushes. This lady worked as a toll operator, not in customer service, but because she was an employee of the company this asshole was disgrunted at, he decided to try beating her up. Luckily, another man came out right after and was able to chase him off.

[dispatch]

the washington post hates us

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

ok, I understand getting frustrated, but the language on the second page of this makes my blood boil!
I apologise if this is in the wrong section (haven't been around much lately if you didn't notice) but I still don't understand why people think it's acceptable to treat us like crap, threaten us with violence, and generally bully the hell out of us knowing we'll get fired if we fight back.
I'm seriously one epic SC battle away from packing up some basic supplies, driving out to wyoming and doing the Jeramiah Johnson thing! and to think it's only october.....Christmas season is upon us!

[ditchdj]

The only thing that pisses me off is that she, being a retired veteran, put her life on the line in the battlefield to defend the right to Comcrap treating their customers like scum-of-the-earth.

[CancelMyService]

The only thing that pisses me off is that she, being a retired veteran, put her life on the line in the battlefield to defend the right to Comcrap treating their customers like scum-of-the-earth.

I'll probably be scolded for this, but that totally sounds like something one of the customer-is-always-right Consumerist.com posters would say.

I mean, come on. Every single customer is treated like scum of the earth? Hyperbole much? There's other options for TV. If every customer was being treated horribly they'd leave for dish or other options. FIOS TV is launching in most areas. Have the fact that a lot of installs for FIOS have resulted in house fires made as much news as Hammer Lady? Doesn't that make as sexy a story as one old woman single handedly defeating the Galactic Empire by throwing her hammer into the figurative Comcast Death Star vent?

BTW, her being a veteran has nothing to do with the story at hand, and I honestly don't think she was putting her life on the line in any battlefields. Her age would place her in a point in time where women in the Army were pretty much just nurses and other non combat positions. She could have been stationed in a war zone I suppose, but she wouldn't have been saving Private Ryan.

[greensinestro]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

I still don't understand why people think it's acceptable to treat us like crap, threaten us with violence, and generally bully the hell out of us knowing we'll get fired if we fight back.

Been there, done that. I have not been actually fired, but came close to it a few times, normally when it was really ugly customer who wanted my blood, or anyone's blood for no reason. I wrote a thread a while back on "the customer is always right", and it dealt with a lady's wanting everyone she dealt with that particular day fired for not giving her what she wanted. It dealt with a doctor's office being busy, and she wanted me fired for not forcing the person to hang up on it, and she wanted the nurse fired that had been talking and refused to hang up on a patient that had a far more dire emergency than this bitchy lady I had.

[Rubystars]

Don't know about "innocent". This rep first made the couple wait in the lobby for two hours for a manager, then never bothered to check on them. But again, this couple could have avoided this mishap had they done something like ask the rep, "How much longer are we going to be waiting?" Who actually sits in a lobby for two hours waiting on someone without getting huffy in between?

They probably just wanted to seem like martyrs. You know, like those people who come up to a pharmacy window 20 minutes later and complain that they've been waiting for over an hour!

Besides, has anyone noticed that the article says that Comcast's records don't match up to this woman's story? Thanks Rap for posting that part of the article!

[ditchdj]

Yeah well Cancel it looks like Comcast is striking out with its so-called "Triple Play"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21473855/

A major monopoly that huge and still growing does NOT get hammered like THIS by accident.

[Rapscallion]

Those are the earnings for the third quarter ending September, so they're unaffected by the hammer incident. I'm actually very impressed that a company that size can get its results out so quickly.

The article points out that it's unfair to compare the results to last year due to large acquisitions back then.

Rapscallion

[ditchdj]

That's true. But, considering all the cable companies they've been gobbling up over the past year, their customer gains leave something to be desired. Factor that in with the proliferation of "Destroy Comcast" websites by more disgruntled customers, the decision to terminate service to anyone they basically feel like it, and the alarming speed in which they are buying up more and more ISP's nationwide give me an overall impression that they're just a big monopoly that only cares about being in control and collecting money at the public's expense. Clear Channel (a huge radio monopoly here and now trying to become one in Europe) went the same route and now they're on the verge of splitting at the seams, resulting in having to turn around and sell off a lot of radio stations and took a hit in the pocketbook.