Earlier this year I wrote about a dismal experience I had with Comcast, you know, the Comcastic bunch from TV. In that article, I wrote that they would soon be fired in my household due to unfriendly business practices (still true, only the timing has changed.) Since that entry there have been two interesting developments.

The first development is that Comcast has given me the “new subscriber rate” for my Internet access. So instead of paying $60/month for 4Mb service, I’ll pay $20/month for 4Mb service for six months. This has resulted in a reprieve for the time being, but I’ll likely still switch to DSL at the end of the promotion period.

The second thing that happened was an outage last Thursday morning. It’s not that uncommon, especially out here on the coast. I was sitting in my office early morning typing away and one minute all was good, the next, the link dropped on my modem. Since I know periodically this happens and a cold modem restart will fix it, I proceeded to do this. When that didn’t work, I deduced that the problem was outside my home since nothing had changed on my end.

I called Comcast customer support to ask if there was a larger problem in the area, no was the response. Then a relatively untrained support engineer proceeded to lead me through 20 minutes of unrelated diagnostics, cold starting the modem, removing my router, connecting a computer directly to the cable modem. He attempted to remotely communicate with the modem (I’d already informed him there was no link light, he wasn’t going to get there.) I more or less patiently proceeded through this because I needed him to check his boxes in the CRM system to be able to dispatch the help I needed, someone to reset the box on the pole serving this neighborhood. This happens all the time out here when it rains.

Turns out Comcast support can’t dispatch crews to anything other than replace cable modems. So I have to schedule an appointment for the next day to replace my modem (even though there’s nothing wrong with it!) I informed the Comcast support guy that this was a waste of his time and mine, he didn’t care. Appointment scheduled, I hung up feeling rather frustrated.

Since there is a local Comcast office here with actual people and I needed to go into town anyway, I thought I’d stop off to see what the issue was. Turns out a piece of equipment failed the night before on the headend and when they replaced it, they took everyone down. I asked if they’d informed the home office, yes was the response. I proceeded to tell them the support story above and they couldn’t believe it, apologized, asked for my address to cancel the appointment for the next day, and told me service should be restored (it was.)

Low and behold on Friday at 3pm a Comcast service guy shows up at my front door step to replace my modem (mind you the appointment was for 10am…) Apparently, either the local office didn’t cancel the service appointment or did, but the dispatch system didn’t get the word. Who knows, but I sent the guy on his way. Monday of this week, I get a call from Comcast support asking me if I still had problems, no I say. Didn’t the service guy you sent out Friday mark this node down as good? Apparently not.

This morning was priceless. I get an email from Comcast support suggesting the next time my modem is down to visit their self-service support system! Here’s the text from the e-mail:

Valued Comcast Customer,

We see that you recently contacted us concerning your Comcast High-Speed Internet service. Because we know that your time is valuable, we do want to inform you of some additional options for resolving future issues with your service that are as simple as 1…2…3 and are an added benefit of subscribing to Comcast.

1. Desktop Doctor
2. Ask Comcast
3. Live Chat

Right! My service is down, I can’t get to the network, of course I’m going to use the same network that’s broken to serve myself. And, the Desktop Doctor software doesn’t run on Macs or on Linux (do people still use Windows?) And, they know my name, they can’t even say “Hey Mike?” Insulting and stupid.

Since I’m sensitive to this type of situation (seen it 1,000 times at my prior employer) I write a response to the mail this morning detailing that case avoidance and case management were broken throughout my experience and offering suggestions to fix it. Response? It came from an autoresponder saying that the reply-to mail address wasn’t monitored and that I should feel free to contact them through their webform. Not bloody likely.

Not only is Comcast turning away long-time, high paying subscribers, they are also hopelessly wrapped around the axle on things as simple as support. By my count, there were 8 opportunities in this interaction to make it a positive one, for them and for me. Starting with the support staff knowing there was a general outage in my area. Followed closely by treating a technical user like a regular dunder-headed end-user, followed by misdiagnosis resulting in a service call, followed by not cancelling the service call, followed by not communicating to the home office that all was well at this node, followed by an inane check in call, followed by an illogical plea for case avoidance, and topped by an inappropriate response to customer input. This is a textbook example of customer support mismanagement. I’m not quite sure how much this series of miscues cost Comcast, but I’m going to guess more than the $120 they are likely to get from me during the cable modem promotion period.

Meanwhile, I’m completely underwhelmed to see Comcast spend big bucks on TV advertisement to get new subscribers. They ought to invest that money to take care of their existing subscribers first. Guess no one has done the math, it’s an order of magnitude more expensive to gain a new subscriber than to simply take care of and retain and existing subscriber. Comcast is executing a going out of business strategy the likes of which is rarely seen. If my experience is in any way common, they’re in real trouble. I think Comcast is a wonderful short opportunity for investors.


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