The business account was on for about 10 minutes. I'm also surprised the replacement of our Cable Modem in November wasn't in the history. We had an outage in September which is reflected in the history then nothing until January 19th. What's really interesting is multiple calls to Comcast in December are not in the history. Fortunately I keep records. Notice the call from (801) 485-0500 on December 13th in my phone records below. That's an incoming call from a Comcast CSR I spoke to 30 minutes earlier (8:13am). According to the CSR, all calls to Utah are trunked through this number. This is why he told us to ignore the call. Apparently he didn't know the Abuse Department doesn't go through this trunk. You see an 856 number when they call. Somebody should teach what unlimited means. If they tell you to ignore it, don't believe them as they are clueless. So here is part of my phone record:
DSL will be installed March 5th. I'm looking forward to it. Oh and yes I've modified my firewall to include monitoring among other things now. I've decided to go with MRTS and some perl scripts I wrote for some detailed reporting and am working on a PHP tool to provide me with some pretty graphs. Not like I'll really need it since Xmission provides every DSL and Utopia customer with a web page displaying their usage. Still, it will be nice to have my own records even though I trust Xmission. I had them for years over ISDN before Comcast.
Friday we dropped off the Cable Modem. I was somewhat surprised to see how many people were there returning equipment. Despite my opinion of the company, I didn't expect to see the lobby full of people lining up (we went to the Murray building). Most were cable modems, some DVR's and a few VoiP phones. Of course there were people paying bills or doing other things. I couldn't resist asking why people were leaving Comcast.
There were a variety of reasons. Most were simply tired of Comcast's poor customer service and have switched to either DirectTV or Dish. A few received "The Call" and were very upset with Comcast's new "Customer Service" (Abuse Department). It was amusing how frequently this is happening here in Utah. When I spoke with an Xmission Sales rep about upgrading to DSL, we briefly spoke about Comcast. Seems sales is hearing more and more people are being dropped.
While chatting with other satisfied ex-Comcast customers, I learned many had heard of Utopia however they "thought" Utopia provided the services or that cities had to maintain the infrastructure. I straightened them out of course. Utopia is a lot like DSL. You can snap in different providers through DSL lines. Also, the infrastructure is maintained by Utopia and can be used by other companies to provide services. Heck, even Comcast or Qwest could join Utopia and provide services through Utopia's superior infrastructure if desired.
The last week at work I can't go anywhere without someone saying they saw me on FOX or Gephardt. Most are amazed. Many are switching now to DSL or Utopia citing they want to know what they purchased. A few even said they were afraid to use their Internet for fear of being disconnected. I've been recommending dumeter or RRDtool lately. Even sent a note to dumeter with my story. I figure they might want to know how much their tool would have helped had I heard of it just a month earlier.
A final note. Just received a link to check out from a blog poster. Very insightful . The title is "Comcast -- The Worst Company in America". Go figure.
5 comments:
It's only a matter of time Frank before your town realizes what's going on and Comcast gets thrown out or worse rejected from HSI service.
This is what they don't want. Continue spreading the word my friend as I am.
A very interesting blog. It seems so many of these companies have "hidden rulz" like the unwritten rules of baseball. Why not just publish what they allow so a person knows? Especially like you say when they are usually the only game in town anyway!
Daagen Duvall said...
A very interesting blog. It seems so many of these companies have "hidden rulz" like the unwritten rules of baseball. Why not just publish what they allow so a person knows? Especially like you say when they are usually the only game in town anyway!
Thanks. I'm hoping it helps get the word out. In the last few months I've spoken with many people who didn't know what to do or how to approach the company. It's a bigger problem I think than what they are willing to admit. But that's my opinion. Perhaps someday I'll be able to obtain proof of that theory. Perhaps.
You bring up a great question Daagen. I wish I could answer this myself. It's almost like they are afraid of something. It's very suspicious but that's me.
Comcast is now a Duopoly in my city now. Qwest is pushing for 90% saturation which I think is what Comcast has enjoyed these last 4 years. I've heard my activities was noticed by Qwest and they have accelerated their DSL roll out. At least this will provide some measure of competition but it's only the beginning.
I'm wondering if Comcast is hiding their usage limits for legal reasons. I can only speculate however I wonder if there are area's in which they can't promise a specific service level without impacting their customers. This in turn would reflect negatively on the company since they don't want to invest on infrastructure in certain areas to match customer usage patterns. So they drop customers rather than invest.
Basically cherry picking their investments. Only in area's where they will get the maximum return.
It should be noted that last year they made record breaking profits. It sure as heck would reflect well on the company to make announcements of investing in their customers. They have plenty of cash in the bank. They can afford to improve their customer service. But of course we're talking about Comcast after all. What was I thinking :-)
Hi. I have read your posts and I feel what it is to be in your shoes. I also hope that you would not forget about the rep's hardships. They should be paid right and be trained well. Also, if the information given to them is limited, how can they assist questions that are out of scope. I hope that would also be looked at by comcast.
Gladys Cyrene said...
Hi. I have read your posts and I feel what it is to be in your shoes. I also hope that you would not forget about the rep's hardships. They should be paid right and be trained well. Also, if the information given to them is limited, how can they assist questions that are out of scope. I hope that would also be looked at by comcast.
I don't disagree with any of this. Concast does a lousy job of taking care of their employees if I'm reading things properly. Heck, even found a web site with complaints from Concast employees.
Guess I shouldnt be surprised. They treat customers like crap, can't see them treating their employees any better.
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