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Woman Hammers Comcast...over and over

ejb190

ejb190

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 5, 2002
1,407
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At the intersection of Indy Cars and Amish Buggies
This is a short audio story on NPR on Friday.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15445805

Day to Day, October 19, 2007 · Sometimes something so wrong feels so right. Mona Shaw, 75, had that feeling recently. When she got tired of waiting for Comcast to fix her cable, phone and Internet service, she went to their office with a hammer and smashed their computers and phones. The satisfied Mrs. Shaw talks to Madeleine Brand about what drove her to such drastic measures.
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Having dealt with Comcast, I can understand her position totally.
 
They did this type of craziness to me. They were going to give me the 3 services for $99 per month, cable, phone, and Internet. I thought... okay, even if its only for a year, that sounds fine. They call me later and say, they're still scheduled to come, but that my phone was having trouble transferring, because my address was slightly different with RCN (my current phone/Internet provider). They'd somehow gotten "APT 1" in there, even though I have no apartment number. So, they tell me to tell RCN to change it, and let them know. I do this, and call them back, and they put the FULL installation back into the system.

By the time they finally show up for the installation (on the day I've taken off work and planned for), they've taken the telephone service installation off again. But, they only tell me AFTER my exisiting cable/Internet has been disconnected and theirs is installed. I'm staring at the technician waiting for me to sign the "I'm totally happy with what you did" form, and I asking him, "Are you kidding me?" Worse, without the phone service on their, its no longer the $99/month deal... its only two services... and it costs about the same. And the technician informs me, "Oh, call them later when you get the phone installed, and MAYBE you can get the deal."

EXCUSE ME? --MAYBE? This is the only reason I asked for the package. What's worse, is that I'd also lose out on a bunch of channels, unless someone made a number of exceptions, or I paid more. I eventually gave up having him make calls, and me make calls, and waiting around... He restored my RCN cabling to the way it was (which he at first insisted he couldn't do), and RCN was working again. Apparently, the communication between these companies is fairly pathetic. It amounts to automated e-mails with approvals and such. If records are off, and don't match, services get dropped but the installation moves forward no matter what.

Originally I quit from Highway 1/MediaOne/AT&T/Comcast (love the sensation of hand-me down services and endless acquisitions) back when my service went down for a week, and all tech support kept saying is "give it another couple of days". Within days I was switched over to another service that worked. Seems they still don't want my business... nor apparently this woman's.

Bye bye, Comcast.

Whatever happened to businesses that took a personal stake in customer satisfaction?

~ CB
 
Sorry for the bad link and thank you devilot for fixing it.

One of my Comcast stories: When I bought my new house, it had an overhead Comcast line installed. As I wanted to remove the overhead lines and had no use for Comcast, I gave them a call. After waiting on hold for a ludicrous amount of time, I was told by the person on the other end of the line that their service people did not remove lines. I told her the line was coming down and due to their refusal to send someone out I could not be held responsible for damage to their equipment or service outages. There was a long pause on the other end after which I was transfered to someone else who took my information and got a service crew out there two days later.

Sometimes you just have to talk to the right person...
 
I've had issues with Comcast before. The problem is that it's not a knowledgeable technician handling your problem. It's some hourly wage desk jockey reading a trouble shooting manual off of a computer screen. You are lucky if they even know how to operate that screen. When they can't solve your problem they wont admit they don't know how. Going to your local office doesn't help because all they know how to do is take money, write receipts, and call the people you just talked to on the phone.

It would help if they just told you the truth . But if you were told that the next date for you to be serviced by someone who could actually help you would be ten days away you might not want there service. But they would still want their monthly fee.
 
Sky are just as bad here. We're trying to get rid of our service (since it's crap TV) but they keep extending our subscription for a few £ or for free. We would just like to get rid of it thanks :rolleyes:

My Carolines with Virgin Media at the moment and loves the bones of 'em. Shame we don't get cable up in the hills.
 
This lady is my hero...man would I love to go down to Comcast and do what she did. I absolutely despise those people.
 
This article about her in the WashPost was just great. The whole event really has me thinking about how to deal with Comcast in the future.

I'd love to take a hammer to Beth Bacha's (the Comcast VP who called the old lady inappropriate) computer as well.
 
Comcast is without question the worst corporation I have ever had to deal with.

They bought out Time Warner, our sole cable IP here in Northern Lousiana, and things have gone completely down the drain.

I got an HD TV, and needed a new box to get the HD channels. Comcast told me I couldn't come pick one up, they had to send a "qualified technician" out to install the new box for me. What's ridiculous is, Comcast sub-contracts out all installation work, and the people they hire are completely clueless.

The guy that came to hook my box up hooked everything up completely wrong - he got one of the component video plugs correct, then plugged everything else into audio. He said - "looks great!" and left. I then plugged red into red, green into green, etc, etc, and had HD. Only cost me $30 for his services. Excellent!

Oh, and for whatever reason, HDMI doesn't work with Comcast boxes. You get video, but no sound, or vice versa. I thought it was just my box, but when I called to get a replacement, nope - they don't support HDMI. Even though it's there.
 
A few years ago I had an electrical surge go through my cable line and fry everything (except my computer, luckily) When I called Comcast To get the line fixed (it was fried to), and get my modem replaced the lady paused and in a very condescending tone said, "Um, sir electricity doesn't go through the cable line" I said "then my internets gets delivered by little squirrels in my cable line?" After that I explained to her that a wire uses electricity (except fiber-optic) and a wireless signal uses radio, and there is no other "element" to use. I was told I was a customer and therefor had no idea what I was talking about and she hung up. I called back the next day to cancel. A week later I got a bill for $600 for repair to the cable line, which was never repair, not a single person come out to look at it. I wanted to firebomb their office, but took them to court instead and won.


I am now happily using DSL.
 
According to wikipedia, Concast has the worst customer service rating of any company or goverment agency, including the IRS.

If every Concast customer does what this lady did, it would still never make up for the money they have stolen.
 
Mike Teezie said:
Oh, and for whatever reason, HDMI doesn't work with Comcast boxes. You get video, but no sound, or vice versa. I thought it was just my box, but when I called to get a replacement, nope - they don't support HDMI. Even though it's there.
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Your box has HDMI? My parents' HD box only has DVI, and I was told that they don't offer HDMI. There is a reason why my wife and I only get the ultra-basic package (it's cheaper to get that and broadband than broadband by itself) and are waiting for FiOS - which is funny, because I detest Verizon.
 
2nyRiggz said:
Good job....now maybe when a customer tell them something they will listen. People should wear her shirt when they walk into comcast.

I've dealt with them as well.



Bless
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Wouldnt bet it would happen. I cant believe that companies get away with this s***
 
synth3tik said:
A few years ago I had an electrical surge go through my cable line and fry everything (except my computer, luckily) When I called Comcast To get the line fixed (it was fried to), and get my modem replaced the lady paused and in a very condescending tone said, "Um, sir electricity doesn't go through the cable line" I said "then my internets gets delivered by little squirrels in my cable line?" After that I explained to her that a wire uses electricity (except fiber-optic) and a wireless signal uses radio, and there is no other "element" to use. I was told I was a customer and therefor had no idea what I was talking about and she hung up. I called back the next day to cancel. A week later I got a bill for $600 for repair to the cable line, which was never repair, not a single person come out to look at it. I wanted to firebomb their office, but took them to court instead and won.


I am now happily using DSL.
Click to expand...

That is unreal. The same thing happened to me, sort of. A surge came through the modem and fried the logic board of my Mirror Door Dual G4 PM. I loved that computer!

Time Warner basically told me I was insane, nothing like that was possible. Just to be sure, they told me I'd have no way of proving that's what happened.


nbs2 said:
Your box has HDMI? My parents' HD box only has DVI, and I was told that they don't offer HDMI. There is a reason why my wife and I only get the ultra-basic package (it's cheaper to get that and broadband than broadband by itself) and are waiting for FiOS - which is funny, because I detest Verizon.
Click to expand...

HDMI is only on the HD DVR boxes, I believe. But it still doesn't work.
 
latergator116 said:
According to wikipedia, Concast has the worst customer service rating of any company or goverment agency, including the IRS.
Click to expand...

According to the latest nationwide survey, my local cable company Charter Cable is a single point WORSE in customer satisfaction rating than Comcast, thereby capturing the crown for execrable service. Yay, Charter!

I imagine that if the survey were taken WORLDwide, Charter could still compete for the title. I won't trouble y'all with the stories; they are just like the ones above, and then some.
 
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