I want it fixed yesterday

[XXDarrienX]

I had this lady come on my line, she had a installation done 2 days ago and somehow had all services out with no outage declared. Well I can understand her plight and be sympathetic after all I need my internet for my Eve Online addiction and tv for my Star Trek Voyager on my days off. That however is not where she became an Entitlement Whore. She called us at 5pm today and expected a technician to come right then and there. Then was annoyed and bitchy when she did not get her way. Complaining that the service sucks and now she wishes she never transferred to my company. She was lucky to get an appointment the next day? Does that make her happy? I would not be posting if it did.

1. Do not call at 5pm and expect a technician to come out
2. Be GLAD you got a next day appointment not everyone is lucky.
3. I am sorry but cable is NOT that important and if you got a cell phone quit bitching.

[Bright_Star]

On the rare occasion that my high speed connection goes bonkers I rely on good old fashioned slow as hell dial-up. It's slow but it does the job. I keep it as a back up just in case.

[MiloMorai]

XXDarienXX, You got a freighter in empire I can borrow? I need to move my POS.

Names the same in EVE.

[BravoOrig]

That's better than calling in past 9PM, sometimes early the next morning wondering where their technician is that was scheduled to come out from 1-5 the previous day. WTF?

[XXDarrienX]

I have actually gotten those calls and I never understood why they wait so late.


and Milo you got a evemail.

[TNT]

Well I can understand her plight and be sympathetic after all I need my internet for my Eve Online addiction and tv for my Star Trek Voyager on my days off.

One of the things that always bugged me when I was on the phones was customers who said stuff that basically translated to, "You don't care because outages don't affect you."

It's as though they think we have some super-secret employee line running into super-secret employee equipment. I used to always tell them, "I work here 40 hours a week... I'm a customer just like you the other 128 hours a week."

I learned this from my VP who had the following conversation one day when we had a major problem and he was spotted by somebody who saw his company shirt. As he told the customer, "I don't mind listening to you tell me what you think... it's going to milder than what my wife is going to say when I get home and tell her we won't have service at home until tomorrow."

Bottom line: we don't just work for the cable company... we're customers, too.

[BravoOrig]

I sometimes use that in a call for customers who have had multiple troubles with their connection but are still nice. I tell them how my service has been, even before I became an employee, so I know what it should be like. I have had no problems except for a handful of outages in 4 years that I can't even count on one hand!

[gunsage]

Yeah, I love it when the customer takes the attitude "NO SOMEBODY NEEDS TO COME OUT TODAY." In fact, this is typically the way this operates...

Me: "Okay, well, I do apologize, but the earliest time we have is next Monday."
Cust: "WHAT?! No! Somebody needs to come out today!"
Me: "I'm sorry, but that's quite impossible. What I CAN do, however, is e-mail our dispatch group and see if they can expedite it. However, seeing as this is Friday..."
Cust: "You don't understand! This is affecting my business!!"
Me: "I apologize, ma'am, but you're on a residential account. You say it's affecting your business?"

This actually breaks the whole licensing agreement or whatever (or so I'm told).

Cust: "Uh, well-"
Me: "Might you be interested in upgrading to our business class?"
Cust: "I'M NOT INTERESTED IN PAYING MORE FOR SERVICE THAT DOESN'T WORK!"
Me: "Then unfortunately at this point the best I can do is next Monday. I'm sorry."
Cust: "This is ridiculous! I think I might just CANCEL!"
Me: "I can certainly help you with that. It will require a transfer to our customer service. Are you ready?"

Yeah, I'll call your bluff. You really want to be out? Fine. One of three things will happen here that I'm sure you're all aware of...

1. The customer will CONTINUE to b!+ch. At this point, I continue to repeat myself and only apologize when appropriate, which will lead to one of the other possibilities.
2. The customer will hang up. This is usually the smartest thing to do. You just admitted to being an idiot and running a business on a residential account. Are you retarded?!
3. The customer will actually go through with it. I transfer, end of story.

It's not that I don't care about the customer, it's that I don't care if you want to BE a customer. Besides, I guess our retention department is AWESOME, so it doesn't really fall on me.

[BravoOrig]

This could be generic but it sounds like you work for the same company I do. I LOVE to call customers bluff, I've got that same attitude. You want to cancel service? No skin off my back, it's not my job to retain you. All the computer gives me is such and such a date. I cannot due anything to move this up, and you haven't reported a problem or had a tech out before. Running a business? That's against our AUP, etc. Cancel service? Here's retention for you, which will end up in transferring back to us to schedule a service call.

[Pedersen]

Hmmm, I'm hearing something which definitely gets my goat. So, I have to reply by posting a link to my own thread a few months ago: http://www.customerssuck.com/board/s...ad.php?t=14821

To summarize: I am a business customer, with a business account, who spent the majority of a week without reliable service. A string of broken promises about when somebody would be out here to fix this problem, including outright lies about me being on schedule.

Before everybody strains themselves patting themselves on the back too hard, there genuinely are customers who do everything they're supposed to do, pay what they're supposed, and still get the shaft from the big cable companies.

[gunsage]

But see, that's why I won't join business class support! Responsibility and all that. No, I could definitely understand when it's business class. THAT would be grounds for irate-itude. But residential? Come on. You get what you pay for. There are methods of pushing dates, but they're few and far between and typically involve me e-mailing our dispatch department in the area, waiting for a response, calling back the customer (typically not same day, of course), and what have you.

In other words, you wanna be a jerk? Well, I guess there's nothing I can do. Funny how I can magically forget stuff like that, especially since it's in the gray area and all. But yes, if you were business class, you BETTER get what you pay for, because just the accounts I've seen from them look mighty pricey.

As far as cancellations? We have a few people here that used to work in customer service, etc. When they get that bluff, they start to RIGHT THEN AND THERE disconnect the customer's services. Those are some fun calls to listen to. Customer =

[BravoOrig]

We never said there wasn't problems with any service, but our business customers get a best effort 24 hour truck roll. Sometimes hotels/etc will get an oncall tech. My wife used to be in the hotel business, it's no fun when guests complain cause they can't watch HBO. Residential customers who's service is designed for recreational, non-business use, can wait the day or two. We'll be happy to credit the account for it not working the two days.

[earl colby pottinger]

Yes, but.

Before everybody strains themselves patting themselves on the back too hard, there genuinely are customers who do everything they're supposed to do, pay what they're supposed, and still get the shaft from the big cable companies.

If you are a real business customer, you should receive business level of service. Additionally, if you threaten to move because it is costing money, then we all expect to if that is what is needed.


What is being talked about are customers who are paying home service rates, but demanding business customer service. Worse, their threats are usually empty ones, not only do they not represent a large loss of income if they move, they usually have not gotten their own domain and instead have their email and website exposing their provider. If they move ISPs all contact info is lost by the few customers they do have.

These people are not you, they are trying to cheat the system.

[Pedersen]

We never said there wasn't problems with any service, but our business customers get a best effort 24 hour truck roll.

If Comcast had done that, I could've accepted it. As it was, I got 48 hours for the first visit. Within 10 hours of that visit, I was down again. I was promised service the next day. I had to make over a half-dozen phone calls that day (actually, I'm pretty sure it was closer to one and a half dozen, but I'm being conservative) to actually get the promise fulfilled. This included such highlights as me being told that I'd been put on the schedule, but then the schedule hadn't been assigned to anybody.

For some reason, Comcast's credibility with me is pretty shot right now. Can't quite figure out why, though. I mean, I think I'd trust a statement like "The sky sure is blue here today", but anything more? Nah, I don't think I'd believe a word of it. Especially if that "more" involves getting somebody out to take care of an actual problem.

If you are a real business customer, you should receive business level of service.

I'm not an actual business, not yet. But I run my own servers. Since I don't want to violate the TOS/AUP/current name, I pay extra to ensure that I don't, and to ensure that when a problem does occur, I will get something approaching better than normal speed for problem resolution.

I do not expect perfection, simply because it doesn't exist. I just expect three things:

1. Reasonable attempts are made to ensure continued service.
2. When service outages occur, I will be at a higher priority for resolution than someone who is not paying the same premium. That is part of what I'm paying for, after all.
3. If a promise is made regarding my service, every effort will be made to keep that promise.

In my book, Comcast fails the second two miserably. Go back and re-read my original thread. I have still more names for them that I didn't use there. Two days before somebody can even visit me when I have a total outage is not indicative of anything resembling higher priority. If anything, it indicates a priority I like to call FOAD (Fuck Off And Die), the priority that gets assigned to a problem when you don't care if it gets fixed or not.

And the number of promises that were broken in just a single day were staggering. I had at least three different people tell me that someone would be out to my house that day. Each of these different people swore up and down that I would have a technician to work on the problem.

Each one of them lied to me, since I didn't get that visit. So no, Comcast does not get cut any slack in my book. Other companies, yes. Comcast, though, I find that I have to check with one person, re-check with another person to make sure the first person did what was promised, and then check the re-checker to make sure the re-checker did what was promised, and then it still only might get done.

Anybody here who does work for Comcast, I'll apologize right now if you get me on the phone. When I'm calling, I'm not going to be happy. I will try to be polite, but I expect to be lied to, and that makes it hard.

These people are not you, they are trying to cheat the system.

Yes, some of them do. But that does not remove or otherwise alter the fact that these customer service issues very much exist, and are company wide by all reports I read.

Yes, law of averages dictates that it will be impossible to keep all customers happy, especially when you get into the millions of customers. Too many people, though, hate Comcast, and would drop it if another cable company came into the area. I know of extremely few people who will say that they are happy with the level of service provided by Comcast. In fact, I think all of the ones I know of are on this forum. By contrast, when I speak to people about Comcast, routine responses run the range from bile and venom to "Well, what other choice is there?"

To me, that speaks volumes about the kind of company that Comcast is, and the level of service they provide. And with it being that systemic, I have to believe that the problem runs right up to the top of the company.

Gah, I've ranted and raved far more than I meant to. My point has been made, I think/hope.

[otakuneko]

You think Comcast is bad.. you might just change your tune if they ever trade you to Time Warner like they did us in my area. Ever since Time Warner took over, the service has gone to crap. After an initial bout of trouble with the line feeding my house, Comcast was pretty solid.