Comcast: The Consumerist's Worst Company in America | Hacker News Reader

Comcast: The Consumerist's Worst Company in America

consumerist.com

40 pointssamd29 comments

What did I miss? I didn't see a "why" in there. Is there further reading somewhere?

That being said, my experience with Comcast has been REALLY GOOD.

I don't understand the hate. Is it their policies maybe? Policies that just don't affect me I guess.

The bandwidth cap... I'm a super heavy Internet user. Vidoes, audio all day, MLB TV, etc. I barely even break 40-50GB per month according to their system.

Then there's the service. I had a problem with one channel not showing HD correctly. They gave me Starz for a year for free, then they sent someone out THAT DAY, they gave me a new DVR and a new remote, checked all connections, crawled up the pole in the back of the house and checked the connections up there, and stayed until everything tested out perfectly.

When we first started with their IP phone service, we had problems with connections. They replaced our router within a day and it worked perfectly after that.

I'm sorry, but I couldn't expect better service from a company.

Maybe it's that they have a lot of crappy old hardware that needs upgraded (apparently), but that aside, I don't understand why they got the golden poop award.

I think it has to do with the fact that they:

  + are a huge monopoly
  + want to filter and tier the internet and have done so in the past
  + move into markets with low prices, then inflate them once they take over 
  + don't want to be seen as a utility, even though they are
  + have horrible customer service if anything goes wrong
  + scare the crap out of people with the whole NBC merger thing

Just to give people an idea what "have horrible customer service" means, I called comcast saying my remote was broken and they said they only way to pick another one up was in person. That's right they where unable to mail me a new remote even if I was willing to pay for the shipping.

I can top this. I'll try to keep it down to a summary.

I was moving from one unit in my building to another. I had confirmation on the phone that service would remain on in both units for a month.

Tech shows up, no work order, doesn't identify himself, disconnects the old unit, doesn't connect the new one, leaves. I call and complain.

Next day they go out and connect the new unit. They say they will not reconnect the old unit, but they will gladly bill me for the month anyways. The day after that, they disco it again. This is confirmed because I have no signal at my patch panel.

I call. They say it's obviously my modem. They claimed they tried to send it a new bootfile, and it failed. I asked them what my serial number was because I had no signal to my apartment. For if they could connect through the power of magic, they can tell me my serial number. Awkward silence. I ask to escalate to her super.

I get her super. He tells me to buy a new modem. I entertain the idea and do so.

I call back. Liar rep gets me, recognizes its me. Hangs up. At this point I start bitching on Twitter. Within 2 minutes I get a response, and a number to call.

I call back. Get a VP of customer service. He apologizes for everything, and authorizes a truck roll for the next day. He can't explain why I was lied to by a technician and two customer service reps, nor why it took me bemoaning my situation to the internet to get a shred of service.

I still got billed for both units. And I took 3 days off from work. However, I have no other serious alternative in Boston until mayor Menino and Verizon kiss and make up.

I have one even better. Comcast is actually a big group of companies split up by state. I was told multiple times that each state does not share data, accounting etc... I got to this point because when I moved from one state to another I had to close out my account in one state and open in another state. During the move I happened to accidentally double pay my final bill.

Now, any reasonable company would just credit me my overpayment on my new service (in the same company right?). Nope, everyone kept telling me it was impossible. I'd either talk to someone from my old state or my new state, but neither could see any data from the other. After 3 months of this they mailed me a check. Just so happens my mailman is horrible (completely different story, but this happens all time) and somehow managed to tear the numbers on the bottom of the check so I couldn't deposit it ugh.

Once again on the phone with comcast telling me I'd have to wait for them to cancel the check before mailing me a new one and still telling me it's impossible to credit the account. After 10 days I called back and the CSR acted like I had never called. So they started the process over again. This went on for over a month. Finally last month (nearly 7 months after the original overpayment) they CREDITED my new account! Something I was told over and over was completely impossible across states.

EDIT I wanted to add that actual internet and cable service from comcast has been fine, and the people on the phone were generally nice.

It was decided by voters in a March Madness style tournament. Comcast beat out Ticketmaster in the final round.

Here's the bracket: http://consumerist.com/2010/04/meet-your-worst-company-in-am...

It's obviously biased toward consumer oriented businesses. As far as I know Comcast hasn't killed anyone like health insurance companies or squandered billions of dollars like AIG.

Given this, it seem as if it is more a ranking of public opinion rather than customer satisfaction, although i'm sure there is plenty of over lap.

But there are probably quite a few outliers. I would doubt that many of the people who voted on this had ever used cash4gold. Same is probably true for apple since it usual retains pretty strong positive brand loyalty.

On a separate note, it seems strange that there was more negativity directed at Bank of America than Citi. Maybe this is just because more people are customers of BoA than Citi.

As a loyal consumerist reader (but someone who didn't participate in the worst company vote) - At a quick glance glance it looks as if the companies that tended to do the worst were companies you'll find a large number of popular articles about on consumerist. Consumerist has had it out for cash4gold for awhile now (with good reason) and they run a large number of BofA articles and this goes doubly for Comcast. I suppose it's only to be expected that the readers of Consumerist would vote in the companies that the consumerist runs the most negative (though not unfairly so) articles about.

Comcast had the worst American Customer Satisfaction Index rating in the country in 2004 and 2007 (note that compares against government agencies such as the IRS and DMV as well). From the horror stories I've heard, your experience would appear to be an outlier. Lots of slow service, lots of failing to fix problems, lots of extraneous charges. Granted, cable companies in general are pretty bad with that[1], but statistically, Comcast seems to be perceived as worse. Note, for example, that the "bandwidth cap" you mention was not originally a stated policy--they just stopped service with no explanation.

Anecdotally, back when I played MMO's, whenever someone got disconnected and didn't come back for several hours, their first words upon reconnecting where always "fuck comcast." I'm not sure I heard any other company mentioned in similar circumstances. This came from quite a few players. Not enough to be statistically valid, maybe around 10, but enough to raise a red flag for me.

Comcast is also the company I associate most with anti-net-neutrality initiatives. They've admited to hiring a rent-a-mob to crowd out net neutrality advocates from an FCC hearing on the subject, and they don't just throttle torrents, but go so far as to insert false data in order to break connections.

[1] My roommate canceled Time Warner cable when we switched to AT&T. TW sent us bills for another four months, despite my roommate re-canceling every month. The last few warned that if we didn't pay they would discontinue service, so the problem eventually corrected itself.

I have Time Warner and can only dream of having a connection stable enough to even think about playing an MMO. I don't even know if this comment will go through, since just a moment ago my roommate asked "Did the internet go out for you, too?"

They're the only entity I know of that can get away with charging you to cancel a service. They're one of the few I'm aware of that can "give" you a mandatory "upgrade", requiring you to physically go to one of their locations to exchange hardware in order to retain the same service you've always had.

Providers with regional monopolies are always the worst companies. They have something you want and you can't get it from anywhere else, so they behave as you'd expect them to behave.

To maybe over generalize a bit...

New Yorkers can attest that Time Warner Cable = nukular buttfail.

Large business corporations, as I've said before, are a wonderful way to provide the worst of both worlds between capitalism (greed, high prices) and communism (apathy, poor service).

I am delighted to inform you of the relevant agencies you can complain to. I highly recommend you complain to the local cable commission. From a subscriber's rights pamphlet that arrived with my first bill, verbatim:

If a problem or question has not been resolved to your satisfaction by a Customer Support representative, you may request to speak with a supervisor in that department. If you are not satisfied with the results, please write to us at: Time Warner Cable, Research Department 41-61 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, NY 11355

You will be notified, either by phone or by letter, within two business days of our receipt of your letter. We will make every effort to resolve the problem within 10 business days. Should you still remain dissatisfied with our resolution, you have 30 days to refer the matter to the State of New York Public Service Commission, 3 Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY 12223, Phone: 1.800.342.3377, or 10 days to refer the matter to the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, Telecommunications and Cable Television Division (DOITT), 75 Park Place, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10007, Phone: 311. If the matter is referred to the DOITT, it has 30 days in which to investigate the issue and recommend a resolution to the company. If the matter is not referred to the Research Department in 10 business days, our resolution shall be considered final. We also participate in the Better Business Bureau (BBB) Customer Commitment Program. The BBB can be reached at 257 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010, Phone: 1.900.463.6222 (Calls cost caller 95 cents/min.).

- Now the text implies that there is some sort of time limit regarding when you can file a complaint, but if you visit the websites of the respective agencies (NYPSC: http://www.dps.state.ny.us/New_complaintdept.html, DOITT: http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/consumer/consumer_cable_s...), there is no mention of a time limit. I would suggest complaining anyway, since you have nothing to lose, and the purpose of these agencies is to serve the public. And of course the Better Business Bureau: Better Business Bureau: https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/getstarted.aspx

but what if the problem is something like:

I have no choice when it comes to selection of service, or,

I am paying you while you fight in court for decisions to be over turned that I don't support

What are they going to do about those?

I'm unique in that my experience with Comcast has been pretty good. Internet service has been solid. When I have had issues they've sent people out and fixed them w/o cost.

While they were late to the HD game, they've come on strong. Lots of HD channels with reasonable quality. And the OnDemand content is probably the best of any cable/satellite provider in the industry.

The DVR is pretty sucky, but stability has become rock solid. I used to get a lot of missed recordings, but haven't in literally a few years. Oddly, this was fixed when I just happened to mention to a Comcast rep that my DVR was flaky and he said, "We have a fix for that." They sent it, and no more problems. My only complaint is that I had to get this fix out of sheer luck from a rep.

I'd definitely rank Ticketmaster or Sony or my credit card company behind Comcast.

I hope they're right up there next to AT&T :/

Comcast and AT&T are the only choices for broadband where I live. I've had both. It really is awful either way.

Ouch. I'm moving from an area with Optimum Online & Verizon FIOS to one with only Comcast & AT&T. If you had to recommend between the two, which one is less awful.

Comcast has bats, AT&T doesn't

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/9/20/

Where I live Comcast offers higher speeds. It's also more expensive. I recently moved and switched to AT&T and I'll explain my current gripe with them.

I have 6Mbit DSL (the fastest they offer). Things worked fine for the first couple months. No real complaints other than the fact that 6Mbit isn't really that fast. Then all of a sudden about a month ago my connection drops to ~1.25Mbit. Netflix is un-streamable (any video really), downloads are slow, all of this regardless of host. Speedtest.net confirms my speeds.

I call and complain, they verify I still have the 6Mbit plan, I play their unplug and replug the modem game (that I had already tried numerous times, as well as a different phone cable and ethernet cable). They run a "line test" and say everything looks fine so they'll send someone out.

The guy never calls or shows up. I call back last weekend to try and get this worked out and get another guy out and they say there is no record of my service call ever. Also, their tools are currently down and without first running a line test they can't schedule a service appointment. They tell me to call back and try again the next day.

As it stands I haven't called back yet because I've been too busy... but I'm planning on it and hoping for the best :/

This is exactly why I have Speakeasy.

Probably not correct. You can buy a twisted pair from someone like Covad and then use whatever ISP you want. This is how Speakeasy works.

Yeah, it costs more, but it's nice to not have to deal with AT&T or Comcast, right?

Comcast's customer service isn't as bad as DirecWay (satellite internet provider) in my experience. When I had DirecWay my wait for service was typically over 30 minutes on the phone. So I had to find a big block of time before calling. My internet went out for the 4th or 5th time and I called them the next day to try to figure it out. The service guy on the phone berated me for waiting so long and said "if you had your arm chopped off would you wait a day before going to the hospital??".

I can't comment on Comcast's customer service since I am not and have never been a customer. What I can say is that when a company obtains a reputation for bad customer service as Comcast has, it only snowballs; confirmation bias leads people to remember, "Oh Yeah, Comcast screwed me on X" and at that point the game is lost.

Lesson: Never let your pissed-off customers define your brand. Preferably by not pissing off too many, or too influential, customers.

By the fact that Comcast has a monopoly in my area both as a cable provider (which comes with the territory) and in broad band I can't help but be biased against them. Every problem reminds me that they have a strangle hold on both these markets, and I don't even have the option to switch. So much for market forces.

Also, I shouldn't have to setup my own DNS server (this did stop a lot of the outages I was experiencing).

You can't get a copper twisted-pair to your house (for DSL or a T1)? There is no 3G or 4G wireless service?

I highly doubt that Comcast is the only option. It is merely the cheapest option with the highest available bandwidth.

No other wired option, Verizon refused me service (something to do with the wiring in my apartment building). Wireless is an option, but then I either need an extra machine running with the wireless NIC to function as a router for the 2 current machines. I pay enough in power as it is (mainly due to electric heat).

You don't need a full computer to be a wireless router, take a look at: http://3gstore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&prod...

Also, I'm sure that Verizon won't sell you anything (they are just another shitty company that caters to low-end consumers), but higher-end companies will probably make the effort to fix your wiring. Speakeasy is one.

Thanks. I'll have to check them out. Verizon did wait like 3 months to tell me no, can't say I was very impressed even ignoring the fact that they refused to give me service.

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