Over tha past 6 months I have had to call Comast more than a dozen times usally because On-Demand suddenly wasn't available. Everytime I have to go through the same routine of a 'junior' analyst who is taught that doing a single re-send followed by a reboot solves 99.999% of these issues. Clearly this isn't the case. But what annoys me more in Comcast's lack of professionlism. Clealy each time a customer calls into their service center you would expect the anaylst to at least record the details and actions on the Incident Managemnt system. Apparently not - because each time I call in, there is sometimes a record of my previous call but no notes.
So the last time this happened I called back a second time and a really 'helpful' guy said he would send a 'trouble' ticket to the technical team and that someone would get back to me between 24-48 hours. So after being almost 3 days without On-Demand and with no one calling me back - I called Comcast (or is that Crimecast) back. Once again, there was a note I had called previously but no mention of a trouble ticket being sent to the technical team for resolution. This time the guy seemed to know exactly what was going on and said he had taken dozens of similar calls with the same error message of the previous months. It was a problem at the data center end and the only to get it resolved was to ask the engineer in my area to stop by (no mention of any charge and clearly stating it was a Comcast issue).
I was told I would be called back within 30 minute to agree a time. After 3 hours I gave up waiting and I called back - to an automated system and arranged for the technician to come by the next day between 2pm and 4pm.
The guy arrives at 4:20pm (20 minute past the time) and didn't even acknowledge he was lait until we brought it to his attention - and by the way, at the end of the visit I asked him if we had to sign anything for him being late - he said, of course, no that the $20 credit would be applied to our account automatically.
Well, this guy was here less that 10 minutes and he told us it was indeed an issue do to ongoing problems with the integration of Comcast and Xfinitiy and even mentioned Cisco. He said he had so many of these issues and wasn't really supposed to tell customers what the real issue was - but seeing that I have a background in Data Center management he said I would understand. And he is right. If a company cannot implement even the most basic Incident Management process (to log call details and actions) how can we expect them to have mature Change Management processes managing their Data Centers.
So the technician left and we had On-Demand back. Now, in the intervening weeks we have had many occassions where a channel will come up, out of the blue, and say 'A subscription is required' even though we have the subcription and had just been watching the channel - but we rarely call in for these issues as a simple reboot (AGAIN) will usually clear the fault.
SO IMAGINE MY HORROR and Disgust that when my bill arrives a) I did not receive my $20 credit and b) I was charged for the technician who fixed a fault caused by Comcast. Nor was any rebate offered for not having access to the On-Demand service for nearly 20% of the month.
So the final nail in the coffin and why I am cancelling my business with Comcast is what I learned from Customer Loyalty at Comcast this afternnon. That is:
When the Service provider cannot provide the service you have paid for it doesn't matter that is the service providers fault - you, the customer still have to pay the charge for the technician to come out. I had this policy ratified by three different people at Comcast. Then they tried to sell me the $3.99 service insurance... what? you want me to pay $50 a year just so I don't have to pay $50 everytime you mis-manage a Change at your Data Center and I lose my service??? Is this North Korea I have just moved to and not North America? Actually, it probably is North America because I am sure in North Korea this would cause a revolution. This to me sounds like a good way to make money i.e. cause an Incident, as in a badly managed Change and get the customer to pay to have the Incidents it causes, fixed.
I think this is the topic for my next lecture at the IT Service Management World Wide conference in October.
And I received no appology for the credit not being applied in fact, I wasn't even going to get the credti (as promised on the TV advert) they tried to give me a month free of a premium channel instead!!
So Comcast, your TV service sucks, your customer service sucks but you will no longer suck my bank account of $300 a month.
Customer Service... what customer service....??? Oh wait... it's the customer's who service Comcast... maybe this is North Korea after all.
My only dilemma now is which of your competitors will receive my business??????
