Yet Another Horrible Comcast Customer Service Experience Goes Viral

from the time-to-trot-out-that-new-customer-service-vp-again dept

Neil Smit

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Comcast's customer service troubles are well documented, with bad customer service experiences going viral every few months, requiring Comcast CEO Brian Roberts to trot out of his corner office to promise to do better . Just a few months ago, Comcast also excitedly hired a new "Senior VP of Customer Experience," namedCharlie Herrin. I hope Herrin wasn't taking an extended vacation for the holidays, because just in time for New Year's, yet another horrific customer experience situation has gone viral via Reddit. The whole thing is nicely explained in this 11-and-a-half-minute video in which the guy in question not only records the recent call with Comcast, but also plays back clips from his August calls detailing the promises that were made that Comcast will no longer abide by:If you don't feel like watching the video -- the short version is that in August, when the guy threatened to take his broadband business elsewhere, a Comcast representative promised him a no contract deal for 100 Mbps down/25 Mbps up for $53.85 after all taxes and fees. Yet, each month his bills keep getting higher and higher, and further and further away from $53.85. Here's one example:The customer service person from this week tells him that the promotional rate he was given (which, again, wasn't actually followed) was only for three months, even though he has a recording in which the rep in August clearly says it's a 12-month rate after taxes. In fact, the earlier rep "guarantees that your price won't change for 12 months" and that it's "$53.85 which is really good because that's after taxes and everything." ALL of that is on the recording he has.As the guy notes, even though he had the earlier call recorded, a Comcast customer "shouldn't have to record every interaction" with Comcast customer service just to get the company to live up to its own promises.But, of course, it doesn't matter. The customer service rep this week insists that what the original person told him was simply incorrect, and she no longer has access to that kind of promotion. Towards the end of the call, however, she offers him a different promotion for 12 months (this is a little unclear, because at one point she says until October), and he points out that this new rep is making the exact same kind of promise -- of a certain price for 12 months -- which is pretty ridiculous since he knows he can't trust it.As the story started getting more and more attention, someone from "Comcast Executive Customer Relations" called the guy, but refused to consent to being recorded -- so the customer refused to continue with the call. That person eventually emailed him, and appears to offer to extend the original deal for another 9 months, but it's still not entirely clear -- and no matter what, it's ridiculous that any customer should need to go through this sort of process.I'm sure that should this story go even more viral, Brian Roberts and Charlie Herrin will emerge from wherever they're hiding to act contrite and insist that this sort of thing is unacceptable, but that's clearly not true. And, no, it's not -- as Roberts likes to insist -- because the company is so large and has so many customers. These sorts of failings happen so regularly that it is clearly part of the corporate culture to lie and abuse customers. This is just the latest example, which looks especially bad given the fact that both calls were recorded.

Filed Under: customer service

Companies: comcast