Why Does It Still Take Press Attention For Comcast To Fix Obvious Screw Ups?

from the dysfunction-junction dept

Just about every year, like clockwork, Comcast will breathlessly insist that it has finally turned the corner when it comes to the company's historically abysmal customer service. In 2014, Comcast even went so far as to make a big deal about the fact it had hired a new "customer experience VP" who, the company promised, would finally get to the bottom of why Comcast has been ranked among the worst companies in any industry in America in terms of customer service and support. The end result: Comcast is still among the worst companies in America in terms of customer service and support.

And, time and time again, Comcast will engage in some fairly obvious but incredible screw up that only gets fixed once the media gets involved. Case in point: Ars Technica tells the tale this week of a condo association in Sarasota, Florida that was just at the tail end of a 10 year bulk service contract with Comcast to provide cable service to the community. Once the contract ended, the association went ahead and cancelled service. But, Comcast being Comcast, the company kept billing the association $680 a month for several months, resulting in an "outstanding balance" of more than $2000.

As always, actually getting a refund from Comcast wound up being a Sisyphean feat.

When contacted, Comcast first claimed the association sent the cancellation center to the "wrong location." That's something the association denies, noting they sent the request to a Comcast office in Boca Raton that handles paperwork related to bulk contracts in the region (Comcast just mishandled the request). Subsequent efforts over the next few months included filing complaints with the FCC, filing complaints with the Florida government, and writing to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. The association also tried to obtain mediation through the Citizen Dispute Settlement Program in Florida; a request Comcast never responded to.

Ultimately, like we've seen countless times before, Comcast only jumped to action once the media got involved:

Riggs Landing canceled the automatic bank payments, refused to pay for further months, and accused Comcast of illegally charging them twice for the same service, which Comcast denied. Riggs Landing and Comcast were at a stalemate for a few months, until Wiener contacted Ars in early September.

“It just amazes me that for $2,000 plus, which has to be petty cash for them, that they would put up such resistance and alienate customers,” Wiener told Ars. Comcast is the United States' largest cable company and broadband provider.

Finally, after Ars contacted Comcast, the company agreed in mid-September to honor the April 1 cancellation date and provide a refund. Riggs Landing received the refund check of $2,034.31 on October 21.

It's just the same pattern over and over again. Comcast screws up, and instead of just admitting error and nipping the problem in the bud, the company doubles down -- putting the already incredibly annoyed customer through a gauntlet of dysfunction, compounding the public disdain for the company. Only once the threat of broad public exposure of its incompetence surfaces can Comcast be bothered to actually take a closer look at what happened.

The problem is there's no end in sight for this kind of market idiocy. Cable giants are consolidating at an incredible rate. And the nation's DSL providers are effectively refusing to upgrade huge swaths of their DSL networks to instead focus on getting into the content and media business. Add in an incoming regulatory regime that doesn't think broadband monopolies are real, and you have a recipe for a stronger cable monopoly, less competition, and less incentive than ever to fix this ongoing parade of dysfunction.

Filed Under: attention, customer service, press
Companies: comcast

Comcast Fancies Itself The Tesla Of Cable

from the we're-innovative-if-we-say-we-are dept

Despite offering some of the worst customer service ever documented, Comcast has been busy lately trying to convince anybody who'll listen that it's on the cusp of becoming a Silicon-Valley-esque innovation giant. That's an uphill climb for those familiar with the company's often biannual TV rate hikes, attacks on net neutrality, or the company's ongoing quest to sock uncompetitive markets with usage caps. High prices aren't just a result of Comcast's monopoly domination, you see, they're reflections of the incredible value being delivered unto consumers by an innovation engine, the likes of which the universe has never seen.

This argument that high cable and broadband prices reflect premium quality is an idea the cable industry has used for years. Before the company was acquired, Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus tried to proclaim that the company's high prices were because it was the "Mercedes" of cable. Continuing this metaphor, Comcast recently told its hometown paper that it too only charged so much because it sees itself as the Mercedes or Tesla of the cable industry:

"We kind of don't want to be Netflix. We don't want an $8 or $9 product," said Sree Kotay, Comcast's former chief software architect and now chief technology officer and executive vice president in the cable division.

"Not to knock them or anything, but we want to be a Tesla or a Mercedes and be a premium product," Kotay said. "The point of empowering our product and development teams is fundamentally not just about direction and ambition, it's also about tapping into their creativity, and that's how you make great products."

Yeah, not to knock a Silicon Valley company that has actually been innovative, but we're a luxury brand worth every penny because we say so. Obviously, reality doesn't work that way. Companies that deliver premium product also deliver premium support. Take a look, for example, at Comcast's rating on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (59), and then compare it to companies like Apple (81) or Amazon (83). Even the IRS scores higher than Comcast ever has. And that's thanks, of course, to Comcast having among the worst customer support in the history of modern American industry.

Still, the Philadelphia Inquirer proceeds to do yeoman's work insisting that Comcast's now a hipper, riskier, more innovative company. Why? Because it now has foosball tables and its pricey, locked-down cable boxes suck slightly less than they used to:

"It's part of a big transformation taking place at Comcast: converting a suit-and-tie cable company into a risk-taking Silicon Valley-like tech company that can drive revenue growth outside the cable bundle."

Except so far there's no indication that's actually true. While Comcast continues to claim its new, modestly successful X1 cable box is the evidence of a profound sea change at the company, Comcast continues rumbling along with a primary focus on turf protection and harming companies actually busy disrupting.

The cable giant has been fighting tooth and nail against the FCC's quest to bring more competition to the cable box, delivering cheaper, better set tops to all. It has been working tirelessly at capping and metering its broadband customers so that Netflix streaming is more cumbersome and costly. It lobbies for state laws that hamstring innovative public/private solutions to rural broadband gaps. It uses disgusting tactics to fight net neutrality rules protecting startups and consumers from entrenched monopolists. This is a company that thinks it has a right to charge broadband users more for basic privacy.

But yes, other than historically low satisfaction ratings, violent disdain for its customers, and a well-documented history of screwing real innovators and disruptors at every conceivable opportunity, Comcast is just like any other, hungry and innovative Silicon Valley startup. Congratulations, Comcast.

Filed Under: broadband, customer service, innovation
Companies: comcast, tesla

Comcast Incorrectly Bills Customer $1,775, Tells Him To Figure It Out With His Bank

from the customer-is-always-wrong dept

At this point it's pretty much a monthly event: Comcast does something stupid, then only bothers to correct the problem once the press gets involved. We then get a breathless explanation from Comcast about how this sort of thing is the exception instead of the norm, despite being able to set your watch to the dysfunction.

Comcast's latest screw up comes in the form of a $1,775 early termination fee (ETF) that the company admits should never have been charged in the first place. A Comcast business-class customer was incorrectly charged the fee after his long-term contract had already expired. When he contacted Comcast to complain, the company quickly admitted the error and stated that the check was in the mail. This continued for two years with no actual check ever being sent:

"Robert says that when he called Comcast, “the rep actually laughed when I told her I didn’t get a check yet. She said it would take three months." The check still didn’t come, and repeated attempts to get an answer or an actual refund from Comcast went nowhere. When he called again in June 2015, Robert says the response was “Ohh sorry, we messed up but the check is getting sent out now." He says Comcast repeated that sentiment again in Aug. 2015, then again in Jan. 2016: “We made a mistake and this time the check is really getting sent out."

The original ETF was incorrectly charged in 2014. But after two years of promising that the check was in the mail, the customer was suddenly contacted by someone in Comcast's "Executive Customer Relations" team who takes the screw up to another level. The employee informs them no check will be coming, and that the customer needs to tackle the problem with their bank:

"“[I]t does appear the Early Termination Fee (ETF) applied to your Comcast Business account was done in error,” reads the email, confirming what Robert had already been told, but at least this was in writing, so Comcast has to do something, right?

Nope.

“I understand you’re claiming that someone advised you Comcast would send a refund check for the last payment that was debited but this is generally not the way we handle these situations,” continues the condescending email. “We generally only issue a refund check for a disconnected account with a credit balance leftover. For your situation, you would have to dispute the payment with your bank."

In short, Comcast incorrectly billed a customer $1775, promised to refund the amount for two years, then backed away from the refund promise and effectively tells the customer to go to hell. As usual with these kinds of stories, it's only once contacted by the media that Comcast does an about-face and promises to really mail out a refund check (which still may or may not ever actually arrive).

While Comcast does appear to be making some modest strides in customer satisfaction ratings (recently going from apocalyptically awful to just abysmal), you'll know they've truly turned a corner when monthly reports on their blistering incompetence stop being as reliable as the full moon.

Filed Under: billing, customer service, early termination fee, etf
Companies: comcast

Senate Hearing Shows Cable Companies Routinely Overbill Customers, Do Little To Correct Errors

from the wrist-slaps-and-platitudes dept

If you've been distracted by something like a coma, you may have noticed that the cable industry has developed an atrocious reputation for poor customer service, built over a generation of regulatory capture, prioritizing growth over customer service, and just generally not giving much of a damn. By and large, a Congress slathered in telecom and cable campaign contributions has ensured that nothing much changes on that front, with most politicians taking every opportunity to in fact defend this dysfunctional status quo from innovation, competition, or change.

As such, it was marginally adorable to see Congress hold a hearing last week designed to deliver a few light wrist slaps to cable executives for their inability to seriously improve. Senators Rob Portman and Claire McCaskill simultaneously released a study (pdf) exploring how a number of large cable companies routinely overbill consumers, and do little to nothing to actually resolve such errors. In fact, a study released by the Senate found that Charter and its recently acquired subsidiary Time Warner Cable routinely overbill customers to the tune of around $7.2 million per year:

Between January and April 2016, Time Warner Cable overbilled customers nationwide an estimated $639,948. The Subcommittee projects that, in 2016, Time Warner Cable will overbill customers nationwide a total of $1,919,844. Charter has not yet completed the underlying work necessary to determine how much it has overbilled customers. But it has informed the Subcommittee that it overbilled customers by at least $442,691 per month.

What's more, the study found that these two companies specifically have a habit of doing even less than other upopular cable companies (read: nothing) after customers were overbilled:

During the six and a half year time period covered by the Subcommittee’s investigation, Time Warner Cable and Charter did not automatically refund or credit customers for equipment overcharges they discovered. By contrast, Comcast and DirecTV provided full refunds to overcharged customers, and Dish’s sophisticated billing system is designed to prevent these types of issues from occurring in the first instance.

And as a reminder: Time Warner Cable and Charter just merged, potentially creating a Voltron of errant overbilling. And thanks to binding arbitration mouseprint now buried in every cable and broadband contract under the sun, overbilled customers can't technically sue.

While both Time Warner Cable and Charter have promised to implement systems to avoid overbilling customers moving forward, such inquiries are usually geared toward scoring some cheap political brownie points among cable-loathing constituents, and rarely result in much of a follow-up (and there could be follow-up, since much of this technically constitutes false advertising). Still, to her credit, McCaskill also touched on the practice of misleading below-the-line fees used by cable operators to covertly jack up the advertised rate of services post-sale:

"We found that customers are being charged a host of fees that are not included in advertised pricing, some of which are for programming that used to be included in a customer’s video package. We also found that, just as many customers have long believed, some of these fees, like the HD and DVR service fees, aren’t a true reflection of the cost to the company of the service, but rather are based on the revenue goals of the company, and the price a customer is willing to stomach.”

Again, that has been a problem for years in both cable and telecom, thanks in part to Senators and regulators that have a nasty habit of pretending it's not happening. From "broadcast TV fees" that bury the cost of programming below the line, to bizarre, nonsensical charges like "internet cost recovery fees" -- most of the "innovation" in telecom and cable these days occurs in the realm of adding misleading charges to your bill, not in improving actual service or support.

A second study presented at the hearing goes into more detail, examining how cable providers also make it difficult if not impossible to comparison price shop (another benefit of below the line fees). McCaskill even offered up a recording of her recent call with DirecTV, made after she realized the company for years had been charging her an $8 per month "protection plan" fee she neither wanted nor asked for.

"I said, 'well, were you going to tell me this?' They said, 'no you have to call in and ask,'" McCaskill said at the hearing (you can find a full video of the hearing here). "If I hadn't called in and asked, that $10 could still be on my bill today based on the billing practices of the companies represented at this hearing."

And while cable's best and brightest spent plenty of time at the hearing claiming they've learned the error of their ways and are doing everything under the sun to change, that's the same promise they've given every year for more than fifteen years. Surely this wrist slap will be the wrist slap that sends them running back to the drawing board with a heartfelt desire to change?

Filed Under: cable, claire mccaskill, customer service, fraud, overbilling, tv
Companies: comcast, directv, time warner cable

Study Shows Comcast Sucks Just A Tiny Bit Less This Year

from the from-awful-to-just-really-bad dept

The good news for Comcast? The latest edition of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) indicates that the nation's largest cable company actually has a slightly better customer satisfaction rating than last year. The bad news? Comcast remains among the worst-rated companies of any industry in America thanks to limited competition. According to the firm's full ratings for cable providers, Comcast saw an eight point rise in customer satisfaction, thanks in part to crazy ideas like actually showing up on time for appointments and a website that actually works.

However, Comcast's score of 62 still falls notably below the industry average score of 65, and even further below companies that people actually like -- such as Apple (81) or Amazon (83). Still, Comcast's improvement shows that the company's now annual promise to improve customer service isn't entirely hot air, even as Comcast relentlessly pursues ideas that customers loathe -- like usage caps, or the $50 per month fee Comcast now charges to avoid them.

Overall, the report notes that the cable and broadband industries continue to struggle with low satisfaction ratings due to the general lack of competition, especially in the broadband sector. And as companies (like Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks) continue to merge, the ACSI issues a warning that things can, and usually do, get worse:

"Charter Communications and Cox Communications each fall by 5% to 60 and 59, respectively. Time Warner Cable, on the other hand, surges 16% to an ACSI score of 59. Despite this big jump, TWC’s score is still low. The Charter-TWC-Bright House merger will bring together more than 25 million customers—making the new entity the second-largest pay TV operator after Comcast. ACSI improvement notwithstanding, both Charter and TWC still lag the majority of the industry. This does not bode well for customers, especially those of Bright House, as mergers tend to cause customer satisfaction to deteriorate, at least in the short term."

And while Comcast certainly should be applauded for actually trying, a company going from incredibly awful to just really bad doesn't exactly warrant champagne.

Without improving the volume of competition Comcast faces in the lion's share of its broadband markets, there's just no real incentive to work too hard to make consumers happy or spend much more on customer support. And despite pockets of progress courtesy of municipal broadband and Google Fiber, overall things are actually getting less competitive in many areas. AT&T and Verizon continue to back away from unwanted DSL customers they refuse to upgrade, providing many cable providers with a stronger local monopoly than ever before.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, customer service
Companies: comcast

Cable Company Admits It Gives Poor Credit Score Customers -- Even Worse Customer Service

from the from-bad-to-worse dept

As I've noted a few times, telecom sector investor conferences are amusing for the simple fact that many cable executives -- notably those of the old guard -- haven't yet figured out that what they say at them can be heard by the general public. As a result we'll often see companies make candid statements they'd never say otherwise, forcing PR departments to then try and backpedal away from the comments.

The latest case in point is Phoenix-based cable provider Cable One (formerly owned by the Washington Post), whose CEO crowed to attendees of an investor conference last month that the company has figured out a way to identify poor credit customers and somehow provide them with even worse customer service than the cable sector usually provides:

"According to company CEO Thomas Might, the Phoenix, Ariz.-based MSO has deployed a "very rigorous FICI credit scoring process" on its video customers since 2013. "We don't turn people away," Might said, but the cable company's technicians aren't going to "spend 15 minutes setting up an iPhone app" for a customer who has a low FICO score. "What we found is that through lifestyle and billing analysis, we could start to pinpoint where churn and bad debt was coming from, and credit scoring started to be a really good test," Might said.

Again, that's a cable executive bragging that he's now identifying you based on your credit score, and then refusing to give you quality support if you score doesn't meet an entirely non-transparent standard at the company. While the CEO failed to detail just how deep the practice goes at CableONE, there's several problems with this, not least of which is the fact that many people with bad credit scores may be born into such scores by no fault of their own. And many of those customers may pay their bill every month -- yet under such a system would still find themselves being treated as a second-class citizen, refused even a standard level of customer service.

I spoke to several telecom sector lawyers that had mixed opinions on whether or not this is illegal. I came away with the general impression that while you might be able to hold a company to legal account for targeting customers in this way, such a case would be a steep uphill climb. Still, many of them argued that the practice was no less ugly, in that it could tend to unfairly single out communities of color:

"The use of credit score to screen potential customers is already a barrier to home internet adoption that disproportionately impacts communities of color," says Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner. "But what Cable ONE is apparently doing takes this to a much more dangerous territory. Because there are systemic biases that impact the credit scores of communities of color, Cable ONE is in essence adopting a policy that will result in inferior service for customers based solely on the biased credit score metric, and as a consequence, people of color will disproportionately receive this inferior service," he added."

Consumer advocate and telecom lawyer Harold Feld notes that as the FCC pursues new privacy rules for broadband customers, it's possible that the rules could cover potential discrimination of this type:

"The FCC has an ongoing proceeding to apply Section 222 (47 U.S.C. 222) to broadband. For those unfamiliar with the statute, Section 222 prohibits a provider of a “telecommunications service” from either disclosing information collected from a customer without a customer’s consent, or from using the information for something other than providing the telecom service. While most of us think this generally means advertising, it means a heck of a lot more than that — as illustrated by this tidbit from Cable One.

ISPs opposing the FCC's broadband privacy push have tried to argue that the FCC is unfairly singling out ISPs while ignoring the data collected by the likes of Google and Facebook, which companies like Verizon and Comcast hope to increasingly compete with on the ad front. However, this (usually quite intentionally) ignores the dramatically different, uncompetitive nature of last-mile broadband versus more competitive internet services markets. Feld argues that the CableONE efforts perfectly illustrate how broadband customers can't vote with their wallets or flee to less privacy-intrusive companies, often because the cable company will be the only competitor in town:

"While broadband providers want to make this an argument about competition with other advertisers, Cable One shows us how broadband providers can — and do — use information obtained from customers for much darker, harmful purposes. Google can certainly obtain enough information about you to get your FICO credit score. That’s certainly bad and a privacy violation. In theory, however, I can use things like encryption and flushing cookies to protect myself from Google — or even avoid Google entirely. In the case of my broadband provider, I have no choice. I must turn over to my provider information usable in obtaining a FICO credit score to my broadband provider so my provider can actually come out to my house, activate my connection, and bill me on a regular basis."

So at the end of the day, a cable executive bragging about his company's plans to use credit scores to provide worse support -- may find himself a cornerstone of the FCC's broadband privacy rulemaking process. If there's a positive side to the whole affair, it's that cable customer service is so aggressively abysmal already, it might just be physically impossible for cable companies to do any worse.

Filed Under: broadband, credit scores, customer service, fico scores, thomas might
Companies: cable one

Millions Annoyed As Frontier Bungles Acquisition of Verizon Customers Across Three States

from the dysfunction-junction dept

In February of last year, Frontier Communications announced it would be buying Verizon's unwanted fiber (FiOS), DSL, and phone customers in Florida, Texas, and California for $10.5 billion. The deal was yet another chapter in Verizon's effort to give up on fixed-line networks it no longer wanted to upgrade, as it focused on more profitable (read: usage capped) wireless service. The deal was, as Frontier's CEO stated at the time, a "natural evolution for our company and leverages our proven skills and established track record from previous integrations."

As it turns out, that "established track record" didn't mean all that much.

Shortly after Frontier began attempting to integrate 3.7 million customers in the three states starting April 1, things began to unravel. Numerous customers complained they couldn't use phone, broadband or cable TV services -- at all -- for weeks. Company apps no longer worked. Some DNS servers stopped responding. Voicemail services no longer functioned. Customers left without service for weeks say they called customer service lines only to be yelled at or ignored by Frontier support representatives.

As the outages and problems continue throughout May, politicians and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi had to intervene and begin the traditional practice of light wrist slapping for the screw ups:

"The ones that are most disturbing to me are our senior complaints that only have a hardline and they can’t call 9-1-1 if they need too. Many people, they’re internet is down so their alarm systems aren’t working,” she said. “This is unacceptable that this has happened. We’ve told them that, first of all people who have been out cable service, should not have to request a refund; they should automatically be given a refund."

Frontier's also now under fire in California, where lawmakers recently held a hearing to press Frontier on its incompetence. At the hearing, Frontier blamed "corrupt Verizon data" and a particularly dysfunctional overseas support center obtained by Verizon for the problems:

"Another key issue was the temporary use of a Philippines-based call center. Frontier used that call center because it was the same one Verizon used to handle customer issues and the company assumed those customer service representatives worked with California customers before."

Except "corrupt data" doesn't explain the depth of the problems (like broken DNS servers), and most of these issues should have been prepared for during the fifteen months between the deal's announcement and the customer integration.

The real problem is that Verizon (who no longer wanted these customers) sold them to a company focused on growing for growth's sake -- but unmotivated to seriously invest in customer support because there's just not enough competition to warrant it. And this isn't the first time this has happened; both Fairpoint Communications and Hawaiian Telcom went bankrupt when they bought massive swaths of unwanted Verizon territory. In the Fairpoint deal, the ISP acquired Verizon's customers in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, but then imploded from the support strain -- and the debt from the deal.

In short, regulators keep seeing how these lose/lose deals go south quickly, but keep signing off on them anyway. Usually that's because they figure that an utterly incompetent company is better than an utterly apathetic company when it comes to delivering barely adequate service. It's just par for the course for an industry where abysmal service is the norm -- because there's little to no real competitive pressure holding any of them to a higher standard.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, customer service, dsl
Companies: frontier, verizon

Comcast, Which Wanted To Become Even Bigger, Leads The ISP Pack In Consumer Complaints To The FCC

from the comcan't dept

We've talked a lot about Comcast here at Techdirt, mostly because between the company's broadband cash-grab caps, its great big middle finger to the concept of net neutrality, and its (haha) customer service, there's just a never ending wealth of stories to write up and Mike only lets us out of the dungeon for porridge after we write enough posts. And, as we bring 2015 to a close, it's kind of fun to remember that Comcast wanted to be an even bigger corporate thing with its intended merger with Time Warner Cable.

Especially when you consider that Comcast is already the ISP most efficiently producing customer complaints with the FCC. ArsTechnica filed an FOIA request with the FCC to get an idea of how many complaints were lodged against which ISPs. Turns out Comcast is outpacing them all.

So we filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC, seeking information on three major types of Internet provider complaints: availability, billing, and speed. In those categories, Comcast received 11,812 complaints so far this year (from January 1 to November 9). AT&T got 3,896 such complaints, Verizon got 1,588, and TWC had 1,240. In total, AT&T, Verizon, and TWC received 6,724 such complaints—5,000 fewer than Comcast alone.

Digging in, the biggest factor in complaints by Comcast customers is the company's broadband caps and the overage chargers incurred should users go over the caps. For the largest player in the field, and one that wanted to become even larger, it's interesting that the company has a customer-angering policy that limits broadband usage at a time when data usage is growing and not shrinking. Keep in mind that Comcast itself admitted this was all about cashflow rather than capacity on the network. Its difficult to imagine how a company that is bucking the demand of the market could exist, never mind thrive, except in the barely-competitive marketplace that's been setup in the United States.

That point is driven home even more so when you consider that Comcast is both the largest ISP and the most widely despised along with the fact that it has the most FCC complaints levied against it per customer.

It isn’t surprising that Comcast received the most complaints, since it’s the largest ISP in the US and has regularly ranked at or near the bottom of its industry in customer satisfaction. Comcast also is the subject of much negative media coverage and attention from consumer advocacy groups, which may encourage more customers to file complaints.

Whatever the reason, it’s clear Comcast receives far more complaints on a per-customer basis than do other top ISPs. Comcast has 22.9 million broadband subscribers, compared to 15.8 million for AT&T, 13 million for TWC, and 9.2 million for Verizon, Leichtman Research Group reports. For wireline broadband, that means AT&T, TWC, and Verizon have a combined 38 million customers—about 15 million more than Comcast, even though the three firms together receive far fewer complaints.

And this is the company that sought government approval to become even larger, more unwieldy, and better able to thumb its nose at its customers? Please. While it was nice to see the merger denied when it happened, missing is the dropping of the other shoe, which ought to have been the realization that the ISP market is suffering from a severe lack of options and competition. No business so reviled should be so successful as Comcast. It's the hallmark of a broken system, yet we hear little about any attempts to repair it.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, complaints, consumer complaints, customer service, fcc, television
Companies: comcast

Why Does The Press Have To Keep Fixing All Of Comcast's Screw Ups?

from the sisyphean dept

By now you probably know the drill: Comcast will do something incredibly stupid, and a customer that has been struggling to get the company to fix it for a year (or longer) will have absolutely no luck getting the issue resolved. They'll subsequently contact the media out of frustration and (especially if the screw up goes viral) Comcast will finally resolve the problem -- usually within a day. The company then trots out claims that this is simply an "anecdotal" experience and not representative of the great care and skill with which it manages its beloved customers. Rinse, wash, repeat.

The latest story of this type comes from a Comcast customer of eight years who was incorrectly over-billed for service by the cable company. Not recognizing its own error, the company also sent collection agencies after the customer to obtain money never actually owed them. And, as always, the user attempted for eighteen months to get Comcast to realize its screw up to no avail:

"I called Comcast a total of 10 times beginning 5/31/2014 and wasted at least 10 hours of my life trying to fix a problem that they created,” Mueller told Ars. “In making those calls I was hung up on, transferred, and dismissively told to just wait it out.” The problem was seemingly fixed in November 2014, yet almost exactly one year later Mueller got a letter from another collection agency. More calls to Comcast this month didn’t fix the problem immediately, and Mueller contacted Ars out of frustration."

A problem that never should have happened in the first place? Check. Apathetic and incompetent support? Check. Being forced to contact the press in the hopes somebody can light a fire under Comcast's ass? Check. It's not hyperbole to state that this sort of thing happens weekly in news outlets all over the country, and the negative public sentiment and press generated by this incompetence lambada was a big reason regulators scrapped the company's attempted acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Even magician and top Comcast lobbyist David Cohen couldn't fix what was broken.

Of course, as the story always goes, once the press was contacted it was a trivial problem for Comcast to fix:

"It blows me away that the burden is on me to fix their mistake and that it is taking so much of my resources,” Mueller told us. “I really would like to bill them for my time.” Mueller was also worried the collection agencies' involvement would harm his credit rating. After talking to Mueller, we reached out to our contacts in Comcast’s public relations group on Thursday last week. A Comcast spokesperson researched the issue, and the very next day someone else from Comcast called Mueller to tell him that the problem was fixed for good."

Why, after a decade of stories like this, is the press still responsible for fixing Comcast's screw ups? Because Comcast customers are either too lazy to switch, or don't have an adequate TV or broadband service to switch to. And as the industry continues to consolidate into just a handful of players (AT&T buys DirecTV, Charter buys Time Warner Cable and Bright House), the incentive to compete on both fronts decreases further as geographic dominance grows. These giant, publicly traded companies then usually look to customer service budget cuts first when trying to please Wall Street with relentlessly better quarter over quarter results.

To be fair, after the merger fracas Comcast is trying some new support tricks, though whether they'll ever materialize as wholesale improvements is uncertain. In Portland Comcast is experimenting with a pilot program that tries to reach out to customers before problems are even detected by them. This is all being spearheaded by a "Customer Experience" VP who was hired last year with one, full-time purpose: to stop Comcast from sucking.

The problem is, no matter how many times this pattern has repeated over the last decade, Comcast never seems to get any better at its job. Claims that it recognizes its own dysfunction and promises to improve are now a yearly phenomenon for Comcast, yet customer satisfaction studies never budge. It's pathetic that it takes press intervention to routinely fix fairly basic mistakes that balloon into legendary annoyance; if Comcast can't get its household in order perhaps it can start paying those folks (be it Reddit users or the media) who keep having to play the middle man.

Filed Under: broadband, customer service, press coverage
Companies: comcast

The Weather Channel Finally Gets The Message: Announces Plan To Actually Cover...The Weather

from the brilliant-ideas dept

Over the last few years, The Weather Channel has been slowly but surely veering away from its core competency in a ham-fisted attempt to cater to the lowest common denominator. While its TV channel now offers a rotating variety of relative-awful reality TV only tangentially related to the weather, (ranging from Prospectors to Fat Guys in the Woods) its website often focuses on non-weather related subjects like kooky buffalo and hard-hitting analysis of the world's "sexiest" beaches. Having anchors stand stupidly around in thundersnow storms is another favorite channel pastime.

But then something interesting happened. When The Weather Channel executives tried to up the rates on cable operators like DirecTV and Verizon FiOS, both companies balked -- and pulled The Weather Channel from their lineups, replacing it with channels, apps and services that actually reported the weather. Apparently, threatening to pull your product from the market if you don't get more money -- only works when people give a damn about your product. Meanwhile, cable companies are having a harder time pushing off programming rate hikes to consumers awash with alternative options.

Initially, The Weather Channel executives responded by trying to claim DirecTV and Verizon were threatening public safety by pulling access to an invaluable public resource (an argument that fell flat on its face since most realize the channel doesn't actually provide that). Then, the company amusingly tried to attack competitors like AccuWeather by actually claiming it offered too much fluff. But with a little time to think about it, The Weather Channel executives appear to have finally learned something.

The company this week announced a notable restructuring that will, amazingly enough, involve refocusing The Weather Channel on actually covering the weather:

"The plan calls for a singular focus "on our unique strength -- and that is the weather." With the cable channel bundle coming under increasing pressure, and "skinny bundles" becoming more common, "it's inevitable that channels will be cut," Weather Company CEO David Kenny said in an interview. With this in mind, "we need to be really clear who we are," Kenny said.

That means paring back its original programming investments (shows like "Prospectors" and "Fat Guys in the Woods") and lifestyle coverage. The priority is essential, live weather coverage -- particularly during periods of severe weather -- and local information.

Granted there's only so many ways you can monetize a quick glance at the five-day forecast, and filling twenty-four hours of eyeball-grabbing airtime in the smartphone era without catering to nitwits will likely be a continued challenge. But it's at least a positive sign that the company sees the cable TV landscape changing and needs to either change with it, or be left behind.

Filed Under: customer service, tv, weather
Companies: the weather channel, weather channel