Friday, August 15, 2008

A little advice on customer service

Yesterday evening I went to log into the Mac when I realized that there were no lights on my modem. This is not a good sign. I know that calling Comcast at 10pm at night isn't really what I wanted to do with my night, so I checked email via the blackberry; and realizing there were nothing earth shattering going on, I went to bed. I made the dreadful mistake of calling Comcast this morning. I was on the phone for over 40 minutes. And I was told the following things:
  • I was told that I should not be using my "residential" line to "work from home" instead I should have a "commercial" line. Let's talk about this for a minute. If I want to work from my HOME/or shall we say RESIDENCE then shouldn't I have a RESIDENTIAL LINE?!?!?! I also know NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD who has a commercial line from their house. I don't even know if that's available in my neighborhood.
  • I was told that I could not get someone out to look at my modem until Wednesday. Today is Friday people, it's been off since Thursday evening... COME ON NOW, even if I had commercial service you would probably tell me the same damned thing...
  • After more haggling I was told I could get an appt on Saturday from 8-12 or 12-4. That would have been fine, but we are out of town this weekend. And when I asked if I could get an appt on Monday, they said they can't see Monday's schedules, they can only see the next available appt.
I ask you now- what kind of company can see the schedule for Wednesday but can't see the schedule for Monday? We have our appt for Monday and I am going to ask them for a credit as soon as they fix the thing. But in COMPLETE CONTRAST- I walk in to the office this morning to check my yahoo mail and I get this from Netflix: "We're Sorry DVD Shipments Are Delayed Dear Thereasa,Our shipping system is unexpectedly down. We received a DVD back from you and should have shipped you a DVD, but we likely have not. Our goal is to ship DVDs as soon as possible, and we will keep you posted on the status of your DVD shipments.We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. If your DVD shipment is delayed, we will be issuing a credit to your account in the next few days. You don't need to do anything. The credit will be automatically applied to your next billing statement.Again, we apologize for the delay and thank you for your understanding. If you need further assistance, please call us at 1-888-638-3549.-The Netflix Team" Turns out, and I hadn't really noticed yet, although when I did see the 1 disc on the coffee table this morning I did think, "it's been a while since I mailed in that last movie." But it wasn't a thought that stuck with me, until I saw this email. I just love proactively positive companies. They are apologizing and instead of me having to DEMAND for a refund, guess what, they are just going to give it to me up front??!?!?! How lovely is that? So, to sum up the story- Comcast is the worst company to have to get your cable through (and it stinks even more that they have a monopoly on the neighborhood), and Netflix is lovely, great, fantastic at customer service

2 comments:

ComcastCares1 said...

On behalf of Comcast, I would like to apologize for the experience we have created for you.

Please allow me to assist in getting this resolved for you. If it is not so much of a trouble, please send me the phone number on the account so that I can assist further.

Thanks for providing the opportunity to assist!

Mark C.
Comcast Corp.
We_Can_Help@cab;e.comcast.com

RF said...

Wait here in France we actually have to pay for customer service: the number to call is not toll-free, it is even more expensive than a regular phone call. Then you end up somewhere in Tunisia with underpaid/undertrained reps who seem like they dont give a rat ass. If you're lucky you'll get an appointment with a technician at your place, then he may actually show up on time or just show up, then he won't fix anything and then you'll end up with a 40 euros service fee for his work. And this from the biggest cable company here in France (it's Numericable, affectuously called Misericable).
But I feel your story. Hey I had not noticed someone from Comcast actually commented, way to go! Beware of any scam tho ...
Now if I could get Misericable to react on this too ;))

Regis