Feb. 1, 2007

My wife's conversation with Sarah, head of Comcast's escalation dept. about 10 am.

Me- Hello
S- I'm looking for Frank or Elizabeth
Me- I'm Elizabeth
S- This is Sarah from Comcast ...
Me- Oh yes you called last night and I tried to call you back and left you a message.
S- I know, I had to leave early yesterday.
Me- Ok, So what's going on?
S- Well we aren't able to give you residential or business acct., but we can give you a commercial acct.
Me- What is that?
S- It would be a direct line for your own use connected to your house.
Me- Wow, how much would that be?
S- About $1700 to install and then about $1000 a month service fee.
Me- What the? Are you kidding me, we can't afford that!!
S- Well that is your only option.
Me- Why not the business account?
S- You use to much to be eligible for those accounts and since you have a business that uses so much broadband, you need to have your own direct line.
Me- We have a very! Small business and have had it for 3 + years and never had this kind of usage as has been the last few months. That is a ridiculous thing to suggest and doesn't make any sense. We have 6 children and a budget. This is outrageous and I can't believe you would even consider suggesting such a thing. Would you do it?
S- No, I don't need it and you have a business that apparently does use that much.
Me- Haven't you heard anything that we have been saying as to our ideas of why the usage was so high. Like the spyware that my husband found on his machine that was piggy backing and downloading through our line. Also it isn't a coincidence that the same month our modem was switched that the usage went through the roof. That would cause it if it wasn't capped.
S- We have never had that happen before. It was checked and it doesn't seem to be the problem and as to spyware you should be using an application to detect such things so you don't have those problems.
Me- He does have those and it still can happen and did, and as to the modem I don't believe you could have checked it, since it isn't running right now and it is too much of a coincidence to ignore.
S- What is done is done, we can't reverse it, but you can get the commercial line.
Me- No we aren't going to do that. There is no way we could afford that. You are basically leaving us without any real options and that is unacceptable. We don't have any other ways to get high speed internet and DSL isn't in our area. But that doesn't matter to you.
S- I understand how you feel but we can't do anything about it.
Me- I don't think you really do understand or you wouldn't be doing this to begin with.
S- I am sorry you are having this problem, but you ignored the warning.
Me- Are we back to that again. As far as I am concerned you all are responsible for our loosing the internet acct. If the customer service had actually confirmed to us that there was a problem we would have looked into it and tried to resolve it last month. We wouldn't have ignored it. We rely on internet a great deal. My husband needs it for work and we wouldn't have wanted to jeopardize that.
S- We are sorry that the customer service didn't deal with you properly and we are dealing with that. All the same you were called and you were given a direct number to call the abuse team directly.
Me- We tried with what we had and just got messages and so we tried to call customer service to help us. They told us it was probably a hoax and to ignore it. They should have had some kind of note logged in our acct. to confirm a problem. Based on what they told us, what were we to seriously think. Want to talk about confusing.
S- I can understand how you feel and they shouldn't have said that.
Me- It seems to me that you all should take responsibility for your part in this mess. Your customer service should have given correct information to us. As a result you should be dealing with the result and be apologizing and trying to rectify the problem.
S- I understand how you feel, but we can't do anything about it.
Me- You know thinking about it, when I did talk to the abuse team that they even had suggested a business acct. upgrade and based on what you are saying we wouldn't have been able to do that either.
S- They shouldn't have suggested that. Based on your usage the business acct. would have been to light for your use.
Me- So they gave us the wrong information too. So how can we be blamed for something you all are telling us. How are we supposed to know what to do?
S- Well you should have limited your usage for starters.
Me- We don't normally use that much. We have been with Comcast for about 4 years and have always been doing the same thing, nothing has changed and now we have excessive usage. I just don't see how that is possible. We need a residential or business acct. We will make sure we don't go over our limits, whatever those may be.
S- I understand your dilemma. But based on recent history, you would be back to square one and we can't take that chance of reversing the acct. and letting you back on to do the same thing again. You will have to wait til Jan 2008 to get reconnected.
Me- I don't think you are getting it. Aren't you caring at all about the predicament you have put us into? There is no way we can wait a year and you know it. That is nuts.
S- We apologize for your inconvenience, but you should have dealt with it.
Me- It seems to me we are just running this around in circles, not getting anywhere. So it doesn't matter our reasons and no matter what I say nothing will change your mind. Is that where we are at?
S- That is right, we can't help you at this time.
Me- (Looooooonnnnnnngggggg pause, trying to keep from crying). I finally say, well I guess there isn't anything left.
S- I'm sorry.
Me- I'm sure you will be. Bye
S- Thank you and have a nice day.
Me- (mumbling and rolling my eyes) yeah right.

Both hang up.

At this point my wife calls my cell and gives me the run down.

We decide it's time to get the word out and tell everyone what Comcast is doing. Neighbors are shocked to hear what's going on and express concern. I called Bill Gephart, spoke with Matt at the news desk and will be working with him to setup a time to be interviewed. He said “I'm not blowing you off but we have the next few days booked. Give me your Comcast account number so I can call them and start investigating this”.

Gave the number ... “Ok. I'll call them and find out what's going on”. What would like like them to do?

I said “turn on the service as I'll be watching it and throttling anything that would cause problems. I also promise once their competition visits West Jordan I'll be jumping ship. This has left a bad taste in my mouth”.

Matt. “I understand... I'll get right on it and thanks!”

So now it's time to bring competition to West Jordan Utah and time to get even more involved with my cities politics. It's time to bring UTOPIANET.ORG to West Jordan.