Tattling on someone to their mother isn’t typically the way adults go about getting results… but then again, Comcast isn’t your typical company and special measures are usually required to get things done.

DON’T MISS: Comcast’s infamously bad customer service isn’t incompetence – it’s a choice

Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky regularly gets emails from exasperated readers who are completely fed up with Comcast’s Kafkaesque customer service, which is quite a common occurrence for those of us who regularly write about the company. However unlike most of us, Polaneczky happens to know how to get in touch with Suzanne Roberts, the mother of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts.

When Polaneczky recently contacted Mrs. Roberts about problems one of her readers was having with Comcast, she found that she immediately got results.

“Center City couple Diana and Jason Airoldi finally got their Comcast cable and internet hookup after six full weeks of broken appointments by the cable giant,” she explains. “Why? Because I took pity on the couple and called to the ultimate authority at Comcast Corp. — Suzanne Roberts, the 92-year-old mother of the company’s CEO. In less than a day, Comcast trucks were at the Airoldi home, and the problem was solved.”

While it’s great that Polaneczky helped this couple get their problem solved, it’s pretty pathetic that Comcast customers have to either contact reporters or hope their stories go viral on Reddit before getting any kind of attention. What’s especially bad is that this columnist felt the only way to get the company’s attention in this case was to tattle on the CEO to his mom, which is something most of us stopped doing around the age of 9 or so.

It would be one thing if Comcast were simply an incompetently run company, but we know it’s not. Comcast’s lobbying operations are absolutely first-rate and it can cozy up to politicians and regulators like almost no one else in the country right now. The reason Comcast’s customer service is so bad is because it simply doesn’t care.