Major Outage, Comcast Clueless
While Verizon is likely not any better, Comcast certainly showed their true colors Saturday (insert sarcasm here) afternoon.
Sometime near 4pm there was a complete cessation of all services in the Annapolis area–television, internet and telephone. After about an hour, a cell call was placed to Comcast which was promptly answered by Ben Stein and Shaquille O’Neil asking if Spanish was the preferred language for Annapolis customers. This followed by the equally inane suggestion to go to their website to resolve common internet connectivity issues. Finally, a cheery woman answered the phone with “it’s a great day at Comcast.” Well of course it is a great day at Comcast–they are not providing service yet still collecting revenue.
Anyhow, after about 20 minutes on hold, it was discovered that there was indeed an outage. Mind you, that was already determined and prompted the call. When questioned about the duration of the outage, it was revealed that the equipment that would give an estimate was indeed “out”. Maybe it is not such a great day at Comcast after all!
Three hours later, another call was placed and this operator apparently was not having a “great day at Comcast”. After 20 minutes, she too came back and advised that there was an outage. Well, thank you Einstein! When asked about the duration, we were told there was no way to tell and that anyone that told me there was, was lying. Hmmm, Houston, we seem to have a problem here; an introduction of the right and left hands may be in order. The only thing we were told was that it was a “Stage 2” outage. When questioned what that meant, the answer was (wait for it) “bigger than Stage 1 and smaller than Stage 3.” Our call ended right then and there.
This brings up a few valid concerns. How can a company that provides telephone service have a 4+ hour outage with no back up for people to call 911? It was in the upper 90s and there are plenty of seniors and handicapped people that are at risk–and not all have cell phones. If the company can determine to the minute when service will be shut down for a late payment, why can’t they provide an estimate for a restoration of service? And finally, this was the third outage in the past month that lasted longer than an hour. Will Comcast be willing to automatically adjust the bills of their affected customers? Or will they just hope the customers don’t notice and pay the bill?
What do you think? Do you have a Comcast horror story to share? Leave a comment.
Oh and please give us your yes or no!
When I had Comcast I also experienced numerous outages, without ever being compensated. Anyway, three plus years ago I went to Verizon FiOS. I can say this with a straigth face…I have NEVER, EVER had on outage with Verizon…NEVER. It has been rock sold since day one. Tv, Phone and Internet. Also, with FiOS if you lose power you have a battery that provides backup power so you can use the phone. It appears Comcast doesn’t provide for that scenario. Pity.
I am sorry for all your troubles.
In an outage scenario, we try to get the problem resolved as soon as possible. We are working really hard to make sure that outages are prevented and resolve the problem as quickly as possible.
I hope that you won’t ever have an outage again, but if you do, you can call your local office and we will gladly issue a credit on your account for the loss of service. I also wanted to clarify; we also have a battery back up for our phones in case the power goes out.
Thanks for sharing your experience. If you need further assistance, please feel free to contact me.
Mark Casem
Comcast Corp.
National Customer Operations
[email protected]
Thanks for the clarification Mark. From my point of view, the outage is not the issue it is the conflicting messages (or lack of a message) from your customer service people. A month or so there was another outage and the CSR determined that it was the modem. Scheduled an appt the following morning (and he was on time so that was good) and lo and behold, there is no problem. It was an outage. But your CSR did not know. The tech that came told me that you have call centers in Canada and that they typically do not know “anything once Whitemarsh closes down” after hours. So in that case, it cost you some money for a tech to come out and keep me company for a few minutes on a SUNDAY!
Your CSRs are like pilots and flight attendants when your plane is on the tarmac. They anything but the real answer. All we are looking for is some transparency.
Hey genius if the power is out to the nodes then the cable won’t work because their is no current to the copper. blame BGE.
HEy Mark..
How about improving communication between call-center and technicians for starters. Example: Being told there are no problems in the area, and no one is working in the area when you can look at the window and see 3 trucks working at the node for example.
When customers have to fight to get assistance with repetive and consistent outage/peformanes issues, like clock work. (ie: Every 3 months, performance starts to degrade and takes 2 weeks aruging/fighting to get assitance) Then it should be obvious there is a problem that needs to be investigated and resolved. BS, like a faulty node junction…(shorts out connectivity when closed) being solved by leaving it open, and thrownig a rain coat over it for when it rains, is NOT a solution.
(The scenario, is NOT a joke…this condition last over a year and took 8 phone calls to the corporate office before it was addressed).
I’ve had Comcast for years. Never had any problems. Very helpful whenever I’ve had questions both on the phone and when I’ve gone to their office.
Comcast customer support is the failure of epic proportions. Rick Germano, the Comcast’s head of Customer Operations sucks monkey balls. Let’s put some faces to nameless corporation, this guy sure knows how to run his department into the ground. Thanks to monopoly in many areas, Comcast can still steal money from customers.
There was a time, when I thought nothing could be worse than AOL.
Comcast sucks beyond my wildest expectations.
Do they only hire incompetents and clueless people? Every time they “upgrade” everything gets worse — which I thought was impossible.
Comcast has proven me wrong again.
They can even get more useless than they were before – I am gobsmaked.
How do they find people that are more stupid than those that helped AOL self destruct? And more importantly Why?
Is there anyone at Comcast that cares or has a clue? There is no evidence of either of these things.
Ok, When Comcast was messing up again, I called them. The moron that answered the phone told me that it was due to sunspots. When I informed him that the sun was on the other side of the earth, he asked me if I was a scientist. When I told him I am, he hung up
I don’t know how they can find people as stupid enough to work for the Comcast “Help Center”. If you have the list of these poor uninformed non thinking persons, I would love to help them with their investment opportunities in the land Brooklyn Bridge and other investment opportunities.
It may not occur to these starry-eyed clueless humans that they meet the same hapless fate as their Comcast consumers.
If Comcast does not evolve it will go the same way as AOLHell and all the other useless flash in the pan entities that are momentarily self important but ultimately utterly more and more useless.
While Comcast was screwing up again, I got a robot call from them. Are humans too smart for them?
Why would anyone listen to the blab of a robot call? Time on their hands?
If you receive a robot call from any source, please hang up.
Comcast has even stooped to a lower low than I thought possible.