When Captain Picard Loses Patience With Your Cable Service, You Need To Run A Tighter Ship

from the can't-make-it-so dept

As Time Warner Cable continues to lose subscribers and its CEO and others remain in denial over it, it is perhaps time for those in charge to take deep look at themselves. The reason many people end up cutting the cord is that they are tired of the level of disservice they receive for the massive price they pay. You can do web searches for various cable and satellite companies and you can see story after horror story of people's experiences trying to get television or have their current subscription serviced. This is a serious problem and it never seems to get better.

So it really shouldn't be a surprise to learn even celebrities can't get decent service out of TWC. Many of you probably heard the news about the tweet that Sir Patrick Stewart sent after trying to set up cable in his home.

All I wanted to do was set up a new account with @TWCable_NYC but 36hrs later I've lost the will to live.

That is quite the statement. You can even see some of the sympathetic tweets of some of his followers over at Twitter. TWC, for its part, responded to the New York Post with this statement:

There’s no doubt we have a lot of fans at the company, of the actor and ‘Star Trek’ in general. But the truth is, any customer that reaches out to us . . . we’re going to offer them help the exact same way.

That really isn't all that encouraging. If even Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the man who defeated the Borg, loses the will to live when faced with TWC's customer service, how does it think its everyday customers feel? Could this be part of the reason so many jump ship to either become cord cutters or subscribe to satellite, as was the case with Patrick Stewart?

It is time for TWC and other television services to really reflect on what they are actually doing to attract new customers. As the rising generation becomes a generation of cord-cutters and cord-nevers, they will have a tough time at keeping their place in people's homes if they do not change.

Filed Under: cable, customer service, patrick stewart
Companies: time warner cable

Netflix Provides 'Knock-offs' After Contract With Disney Ends

from the filling-the-void dept

We recently talked about the steady progression of cable cord-cutting occuring in this country. As that trend progresses, we're also seeing constant friction from the major movie studios about how they think they're offering enough in the way of online access to entertainment, so won't we all just shut up about it? And the truth is consumers will shut up about it, but not because they appreciate the studios' almost-effort at providing the product customers want how they want it (also known as being good at business), but because one way or another they will be satisfied. Often times these stories devolve into tales of piracy and woe, but that's far from the only option people have.

Forbes has a story of how those folks with both youngens and a Netflix account at home are dealing with Disney and Pixar electing to not renew the streaming portion of their contract.

Since the contract between Disney and Netflix came to an end, you won’t find any Pixar films on the Netflix streaming website. For a while you could watch Toy Story 3 and some other good Pixar titles but alas, those days have come to an end.

On the other hand, you can watch a host of Disney and Pixar knock-offs, as well as some really blatant rip-offs of DreamWorks movies.

Keep the terms "knock-offs," "rip-offs, " and "blatant" in your head, because we'll be coming back to them later. But, to demonstrate the point, here are some examples of what the movie industry likes to call "drafting films", a nod to a race car technique in which one sits behind a car to alleviate headwind and save fuel: I'll have to plead ignorance here, or perhaps plead lack-of-children, because I haven't heard of this one. But there are more obvious examples, like: And: Now, perhaps, like me, you're wondering what the legal status of these types of "drafting" movies is.  A couple of things should be noted here. First, as you can see, in the summary descriptions of these movies, they tend to flatout tell you that they aren't affiliated with the movie by which they're "inspired." Some, like the linked Forbes article, call this an admission rather than a warning, but this is another nugget to keep in the back of your head for further down the post. Secondly, the plot and characters in these "drafting" films have zero correlation to the movies they're "drafting". There's no copying of plot or characters. As the Forbes piece states:

To be fair, the movie looks (both graphically and plot-wise) nothing at all like Pixar’s fantasy. Indeed, one suspects it was produced as soon as the first trailers came out.

On top of that, the most recent litigation cited by the article ended up finding against Disney and for the film studio accused of "drafting".

Disney lost a lawsuit claiming that Good Times Entertainment had been packaging its videos – this time specifically its version of “Aladdin” – to resemble Disney’s own films, and that this caused confusion among consumers. Good Times Entertainment had released its own versions of “Aladdin” and “Beauty and the Beast” among other popular Disney films.

Judge Miriam Goldman Cederbaum ruled against Disney, arguing that a resemblance simply wasn’t enough unless all of Disney’s own packaging was distinctly uniform. In other words, unless each Disney film was packaged in a very specific way and that style was copied by Good Times Entertainment, Disney didn’t have enough proof to build its case.

So, in case you weren't playing along at home, we have "drafting" films filling the void for consumers in the Netflix streaming service, these films do not reproduce any semblance of core plot or character devices, and the court has previously ruled that without copying the packaging the "drafters" are in the clear. On top of that, the summary descriptions of these knock-off movies tell you flat out that if you're looking for the feature film from a studio like Disney you're in the wrong place. 

Remember all those tidbits I asked you to keep in mind? How these movies were "blatant knock-offs"? How including a non-association disclaimer in the summary was "an admission" that the film's marketing had been inspired by the feature film? Because, with that in mind, here's the conclusion the Forbes piece reaches:

And while the law may be on its side, there’s something unsettling about all these drafted films. Is it ethical to market your product in a way purposefully designed to confuse consumers?

Forgive me, but that's just completely wrong. You can't call something a "blatant knock-off" in one breath and worry about customer confusion in the other. Particularly when the first line in most of these films' summaries inform people to avoid such confusion. Indeed, many of the films in question are built off of Public Domain material, which often times might eliminate any need for such a disclaimer. As Joe Cayre, former President of Good Times Entertainment, an alleged "drafting" film studio, says:

“If [Disney] spent so much money to create a big to-do, what better time to put [Good Times' Aladdin] out? And it being a public-domain vehicle, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

I'd suggest the major studios dive back into streaming and compete with these "drafting" films rather than attempt any further litigation. Because customers are going to get some flavor of what they want. And, if the movie trailers are any indication, and if given a level choice, they'll pick the major studio's product most of the time for reasons of quality and brand. If they have a choice.

Filed Under: confusion, customer service, drafting, knockoffs, movies
Companies: good times entertainment, netflix

DailyDirt: People Are Stupid, So They Don't Question Sky Law...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you're traveling for the upcoming holidays, you might think that a "passenger bill of rights" is supposed to have kicked in already, so you don't have to worry about being stuck on a plane sitting on the runway for more than 4 hours. That probably won't happen, but if the weather is bad, be prepared to have your flight canceled instead. Here are just a few interesting links on airline operations.

• A while ago, an open letter to American Airlines pleaded with them to re-design their website. A few years later, it looks like aa.com has become a bit easier on the eyes. (Too bad Mr. X had to be fired in the process, though.) [url]
• Ryanair got some attention for floating the idea of in-flight porn. But any flight with an internet connection already has porn... [url]
• The US govt has issued its first hefty fine ($900,000) for an airline keeping passengers waiting for more than 3 hours in a plane. However, airlines are simply canceling a lot more flights to try to avoid these kinds of penalties. [url]
• To discover more interesting business-related content, check out what the deal is on StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: airlines, customer service, traveling
Companies: american airlines, ryanair

Woman Kicked Out Of A Restaurant For Complaining About Bartender On Twitter

from the customer-disservice dept

As a few different folks have submitted, a woman in Houston was apparently ejected from a bar/restaurant after the general manager saw her complain about something the bartender had done. The woman, Allison Matsu, had apparently gone to Down House, and overheard the bartender talking to two other employees and making fun of another restaurant owner/bartender. She didn't think that was appropriate and used Twitter to call the bartender "a twerp." Apparently, after that, she actually had a good conversation with him, but about thirty minutes later, the General Manager of Down House (who was not there that night) called the restaurant and asked to speak with her. Apparently, he had read the tweet and called to kick Allison out of the restaurant. There's a bit of a dispute over the nature of the phone call, but both agree that the end result was that she was told to leave because of the tweet.

Obviously, a restaurant/bar has the right to refuse service to anyone. But it really makes you wonder what Down House general manager Forrest DeSpain was thinking. It clearly marks Down House as a place where any sort of criticism is not at all welcome. That's not going to attract a lot of customers. Sure, it sucks to have someone say something (very slightly) mean about an employee, but why not just try to understand it, or respond defending the guy without kicking the woman out of the establishment entirely.

Honestly, the part that struck me as most interesting in the article was another restaurant owner explaining how he used Twitter in a much smarter way (and almost entirely the opposite of the way DeSpain used it): to invite people who had bad experiences at other restaurants to his place instead:

"However you feel about Twitter, it makes a big difference," says Kevin Strickland, owner of Ziggy's Bar & Grill and an avid Twitter user, who runs the account for both of his restaurant's locations. "I depend on it. It allows me to have a dialogue with my customers, and they'll usually get a response from me."

Strickland emphasizes that Twitter should not be used by restaurateurs eager to take a crack back at unruly diners. "I've done the opposite," he points out, referring to times when he's seen patrons Tweet about a bad meal elsewhere, and inviting them in to have a better meal at Ziggy's on him.

Which approach seems better for business?

Filed Under: complaints, customer service, twitter

Can Google Get Past The Big Faceless White Monolith Stage?

from the up-the-customer-service dept

I've discussed in the past that one key area, which I think has been Google's Achilles heel, is its customer service. To most outsiders, Google comes off as something of a big, white monolith. When things go wrong, it's often nearly impossible to reach someone there, or to get any sort of actual contact with a human being, who is trying to help. We've argued in the past that if Google doesn't fix that, it's a huge opportunity for a competitor. I've been told that people inside Google recognize that this is an issue, and that they're really trying to fix that. In fact, one of the things that has really impressed me about Google's latest social networking play, Google+, is that it's actually afforded Google an opportunity to show this in action. A bunch of folks at Google have used Google+ as a way to make the company seem much more human, accessible and responsive. I was pretty amazed that the few times I've mentioned bugs or problems with something in Google+ that often within minutes Google employees responsible for the project would respond and be quite helpful.

However, it looks like Google is definitely still sorting through some problems with this -- and being responsive on Google+ alone won't satisfy those who aren't on Google+... especially if Google has completely locked you out. A guy named Dylan wrote up quite a complaint letter to Google detailing how the company completely shut down his account -- which he used for just about everything -- and then all he could do was face the big, white monolith with every attempt to figure out what happened and get his life back.

On July 15 2011 you turned off my entire Google account. You had absolutely no reason to do this, despite your automated message telling me your system “perceived a violation.” I did not violate any Terms of Service, either Google’s or account specific ToS, and your refusal to provide me with any proof otherwise makes me absolutely certain of this. And I would like to bring to your attention how much damage your carelessness has done.

My Google account was tied to nearly every product Google has developed, meaning that I lost everything in those accounts as well. I was also in the process of consolidating everything into my one Google account. I had actually thought through this a few months ago and determined Google to be a trustworthy, dependable company. So I had imported all of my other email accounts, hotmail, yahoo, etc., into that one gmail account. I had spent roughly four months slowly consolidating my entire online presence, email accounts, banking info, student records, etc., into that one Google account, having determined it to be reliable. That means in terms of information, approximately 7 years of correspondence, over 4,800 photographs and videos, my Google Voice messages, over 500 articles saved to my Google Reader account for scholarship purposes (a side-note: when I closed my original Reader account to consolidate everything in my one reliable account bearing my name I re-saved several hundred of the articles myself, by hand, one by one to this new account. The one you have closed and from which I have now lost all of the articles.) I have lost all of my bookmarks, having used Google bookmarks. I had migrated my bookmarks from computer to computer, a couple hundred of them, for maybe six years and I finally uploaded them all to Google bookmarks, happy to have found a solution to migrating them and happy to be safeguarded from their loss. I have also lost over 200 contacts. Many of which I do not have backups of. I have also lost access to my Docs account with shared documents and backups of inventory files. I have also lost my Calendar access. With this I have lost not only my own personal calendar of doctor’s appointments, meetings, and various other dates, but I have also lost collaborative calendars, of which I was the creator and of which several man hours were put into creating, community calendars that are now lost. None of the calendars were backed up either. I have also lost my saved maps and travel history. I have also lost in my correspondence medical records and a variety of very important notes that were attached to my account. My website, a blogger account for which I purchased the domain through Google and designed myself, has also been disabled and lost. Do you really think I would knowingly do anything to jeopardize that much of my personal and professional information? And I am sure as the days continue I will realize other things that Google has destroyed in their unwarranted disabling of my account. I am only too angry right now to think straight and realize them all. Why anyone would entrust anything to “The Cloud” after what I have gone through is completely beyond my ability to comprehend.

His description of the "help" he got from Google's preferred customer support system, it's forums, seems all too representative of how the company has dealt with customer service in the past:

I’m not upset that Google would put my account on hold if they think it was compromised, but I am absolutely furious that they would disable my account without notice, without giving me a reason, and without giving me any way to re-enable it, and then ignore all of my attempts to speak with someone. No other online service provider behaves this way. I understand that Google can’t offer support for every little thing, but when a company like Google has monopolized sectors of the internet they need to demonstrate some responsibility to their customers when things like this happen. I have exhausted the help forums. And that has only made me much angrier. I will not bother to quote the nonsensical exchanges I have had, there are too many and they will only aggravate me further. The breaking point came when a “Top Contributor” moved my thread from the original help forum in which I posted it, into another forum without my permission. Then a few days, and 34 responses, later, another “Top Contributor” posted that my thread was in the wrong forum and closed the conversation, thus preventing me or anyone else from posting to it or making any more progress. The user forums are not the informative places that Google may think they are. And the only time a Google employee posted in my thread was to say that my question was in the wrong forum, and to tell me that I should have posted in the forum that it was originally posted in. This came after being asked over, and over, and over again the same questions. Here’s an example:

ME: Please help me my account has been disabled and I don’t know why.
USER1: Just log into your dashboard and do [something.]
ME: I can’t, my account has been disabled.
USER2: Hi I just saw your post. Can you log into your account and tell me what [something] says?
ME: NO, I CAN’T LOG INTO MY ACCOUNT.
USER1: OK calm down, can you do [something which required me to log in]?
ME: NO! I CANNOT LOG INTO MY ACCOUNT!!!!

After four days of this I nearly gave up, until another “Top Contributor” stopped by to mention that my thread was in the wrong forum and I should have posted it in another forum, the original forum that I had posted it in. Then the conversation was closed by someone and I gave up, after five days.

Dylan appears to have spent much of the day alerting people to this story on Twitter. And hopefully it's working. I saw that Google VP Vic Gundotra has replied to Dylan saying:

You bet on Google. We owe you better. I'm investigating.

Other Google employees have also said that they're trying to figure out what happened as well. I imagine things will get fixed before long, but it's unfortunate that Dylan had to go through this at all.

But, of course, fixing Dylan's situation and making sure it doesn't happen again are two different things. I am hopeful that Dylan's experience will make more people at Google realize what an issue this is for many people, who rely on the company.

Now, obviously, some will point out that (a) there are ways to back up many of these things (though, perhaps not all) and Dylan did not do so and that (b) many of these services are free (though Dylan has paid for extra storage and some other things via Google). In some ways, just as you were always told to "backup your hard drive" in case it crashed, today you'll have to "back up" your cloud data in case Google or someone else randomly shuts you off.

But I still don't think that's a reasonable excuse. Google has created a ton of excellent and useful products (some of which are world changing), and I'm impressed with how much more responsive and human the company seems to have become via Google+. But it still needs to figure out how to be human when it comes to customer service. I recognize that Google's culture is about being as algorithm-driven as possible (just see this story about its venture investing process), but some things really do need a human touch. I know that plenty of people inside Google realize this, but until that becomes evident in how it handles customer service issues, it still seems like a key weakness for the company.

Filed Under: customer service, google+
Companies: google

Community Is About Enabling People To Be Heard; And You Need Community To Succeed Online

from the enabling,-not-silencing dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in Paul Ford's recent essay entitled The Web Is a Customer Service Medium, which I've been thinking about the past few days. I think the title is somewhat misleading, and might have turned some folks off, but I believe there are (at least) three separate (but related) points that Ford makes that are worth highlighting and discussing. And they all touch on points that we regularly discuss around here. Let's take them in order. The piece starts off with a response to the standard Andrew Keen/Nick Carr-style elitism about how the web is so full of riff raff that it takes away from the value of the really smart people (i.e., the people who matter). He highlights how these people who play up some sort of cultural elitism as being important, and how it's missing the point of the web:

I call the people who say such things the Gutenbourgeois. They believe in the cultural primacy of writers and editors and they feel good--even a bit superior--about working in publishing. They believe it is their job to drive culture forward. The web, they are a little proud to admit, confuses them. They say: "We gave away all those short stories on our website but it sold no books." Or: "We built a promo site for our famous author who does the crime novels and it was just a total boondoggle with no traffic." Or: "The magazine can't get enough pageviews, even after we hired the famous blogger. Now management wants to make people pay for access."

"Look," I say, "maybe you're doing it wrong."

"But," they say, "we tweet."

This sounds all too familiar, though in other areas we deal with. We'll discuss a musician successfully building up a business model involving a huge following and community -- and we'll hear from someone saying "but I use Twitter and I didn't have the same success, so you're wrong." The problem is that they're doing cargo cult copying -- copying the superficial aspects (using Twitter, hiring a famous blogger, putting something out for free) without really understanding the underlying reasons why communities form online. They just see that others have done one or another of these things, and think that this single action is the key step, rather than recognizing what it takes to actually enable a community.

Why? Well, that's where Ford's second key point comes in. The web is often seen through the prisms of what came before. As each new industry jumped on the web, it tried to reinterpret the web in its own image. As Ford notes:

A medium has a niche. A sitcom works better on TV than in a newspaper, but a 10,000 word investigative piece about a civic issue works better in a newspaper.

When it arrived the web seemed to fill all of those niches at once. The web was surprisingly good at emulating a TV, a newspaper, a book, or a radio. Which meant that people expected it to answer the questions of each medium, and with the promise of advertising revenue as incentive, web developers set out to provide those answers. As a result, people in the newspaper industry saw the web as a newspaper. People in TV saw the web as TV, and people in book publishing saw it as a weird kind of potential book. But the web is not just some kind of magic all-absorbing meta-medium. It's its own thing.

Again, this is a point we've discussed before (less eloquently), in noting how the entertainment industry keeps trying to remake the web into a broadcast medium, when it's power is really in the fact that it's a communications medium that also does other things (such as broadcast). But if you ignore the communications element, then you're in trouble. Of course, too many people think that adding a communications element means "just add comments." But, that's (again) a form of cargo cult copying. Yes, comments can be a component of building a community, but comments alone do not a community make.

And that brings us to the third key point that Ford raises: the one thing that the web does really really well is answer the "Why Wasn't I Consulted?" question.

"Why wasn't I consulted," which I abbreviate as WWIC, is the fundamental question of the web. It is the rule from which other rules are derived. Humans have a fundamental need to be consulted, engaged, to exercise their knowledge (and thus power), and no other medium that came before has been able to tap into that as effectively.

This is such a good point that cuts through to the heart of why so many people have trouble understanding what makes a real community online. It's not just about turning on a set of technologies or "using Twitter," it's about actually enabling people's voices to be heard. I imagine some will still get this point confused, but there's a difference between allowing people to speak and helping people get heard, and I believe that's the key that Ford is getting at with his WWIC concept.

There's more in Ford's piece in terms of how people might go about setting up these sorts of communities, by thinking of the web as a customer service medium, rather than a publishing medium, but I actually think that point isn't as strong as these first three. Still, the whole thing is worth reading, especially all of his examples of sites that have succeeded by focusing wholly on the WWIC issue. While there were certainly a lot of key points in the article that I'd thought about separately, I hadn't really put all of them together, and it's definitely making me think about how best to enable successful communities online.

Filed Under: being heard, community, customer service, enabling

Does Google Design AdSense Contract So You're Almost Forced To Break Its Terms?

from the seems-kinda-evil dept

We've noted numerous times in the past that one of Google's major faults is that it's absolutely dreadful at customer service. To much of the outside world, Google represents something of a big white monolith, with very little human face. When something goes wrong, such as people locked out of their documents or a blogger having his blog deleted with no recourse, the company often appears to be nearly impossible to reach in a human way. People send emails that never get answered, or get answered in a highly automated way. Decisions are made with absolutely no recourse or real explanation. This is most clearly true in cases involving getting kicked out of Google's advertising programs. Now, it's no secret that there are a lot of folks out there looking to game the system, and Google appears to have taken a low tolerance approach to dealing with just the potential for wrong doing. Many users might actually appreciate that, but if you're suddenly kicked out without clear evidence of why, and almost no human contact to help work through the details, it certainly feels extremely cold.

The latest such example of this, as sent in by a few different folks, is from a rather successful freelance journalist who was just kicked out of Google's Adsense program, which he'd been using to make a fair amount of money in posting quite popular videos about trucks and slightly less popular videos about sailing. As the guy, Dylan Winter, explains, he feels like he's been fired by an algorithm. The piece is really kind of long -- but the crux of it is that the guy has a huge following around his truck videos, and a much smaller following around his sailing videos. But the community who view his sailing videos are pretty committed to what he's been doing with those videos, and it appears that they may be clicking the AdSense ads much more than is standard. Google's response, without any warning whatsoever, was to shut down the account. The guy complained, and got back a notice saying that after reviewing his account, the decision stands, that's it. Oh, and by the way, the guy won't be getting the thousands of dollars he'd earned in clicks since October.

We've heard this story, or variations on it, plenty of times before. I'm sure Google's response is that it has to act this way to avoid scammers from figuring out how to game the system, but it still seems really exceptionally cold. The other part that's quite interesting is that Winter claims that the AdSense terms of service -- especially if you use them on YouTube -- is written such that it's impossible to avoid violating the terms -- meaning that Google always has an excuse to kick out whoever it wants to kick out:

The contract is designed so that it is almost impossible not to break the Google rules. If you disclose site data then you are in breach. YouTube discloses just the sort of site data that would have me thrown out -- but YouTube is Google which is Adsense.

If your subscribers are clicking on adverts and not buying, then you are in breach. This is a new concept -- do not look at an advert unless you intend to buy.

[...] The website owner is to be held responsible for the activities of his site users. Imagine that being applied to cars or baseball bats or hamburgers.

Here is a great one -- if you are an Adsense account holder and you hear of another Adsense account holder who is breaking the rules then you must report them to Adsense, otherwise you too are guilty by association and will have your account disabled.

Presumably since Youtube appear to be breaking the rules as well and I have not reported them to Adsense then I am breach of the contract I ticked.

This is probably a bit of an exaggeration. I don't think the AdSense contract forbids the release of all "site data." Looking at the actual terms suggests it's a bit more limited. It does say that you agree not to disclose Google confidential info, and among the things that includes are:

"click-through rates or other statistics relating to Property performance in the Program provided to You by Google"

That appears to only apply to the clickthrough rates on ads -- which is not the sort of information that YouTube makes widely available, contrary to Winter's claim.

That said, it is true that Google does seem to have an itchy trigger finger, and a pretty broadly worded terms of service that it can almost certainly claim almost anyone violated, and it provides little real recourse. This is, of course, Google's right to do this, but I still keep wondering if this is going to come back to haunt Google. The company never seems to think that its poor customer will hurt its reputation, but this is the kind of thing that can snowball pretty fast, and it's not the sort of thing that you can just fix on the fly. This situation here may have other issues behind Google's decision to terminate (6% clickthroughs seems ridiculously high), but Google's failure to respond in a human way is getting attention again, and it still seems like a major weakness in Google's efforts.

Filed Under: adsense, customer service
Companies: google

Broken Monitor Still Under Warranty, But Samsung Won't Fix It, Because You Don't Live In Canada

from the blame-canada dept

A guy who bought a Samsung monitor at a Sam's Club in St. Louis, Missouri, had it stop working after a couple years. He found the model number, and saw that it was supposed to have a three year warranty, so he called Samsung. Samsung is refusing to fix it, claiming that the monitor is Canadian and the warranty only works in Canada, unless he has his receipt from two years ago as proof of purchase. It's not clear why Sam's Club was selling Canadian monitors, but should it really matter?

Filed Under: canada, customer service, monitors, repairs
Companies: samsung

Comcast Cares: Pay Us The $0.00 You Owe, Or We Cut You Off

from the customer-service dept

Years back, I was a Comcast cable modem subscriber. That was until they spent a whole month cutting off my service, every single day, from 10am until about 4:30pm. Each day I would call to ask what was up, and I was told it was "scheduled maintenance." I asked for said "schedule" so I could plan around it, and was told that there was no schedule -- which made for an odd form of "scheduled maintenance." I also asked if it would be happening the next day as well, and was always told that I wouldn't be able to find out until the connection disappeared again. I dropped Comcast and switched to DSL. Even though Comcast is now much faster than my DSL, that experience so soured me that I have no interest in ever going back.

While Comcast has received a lot of attention for its "Comcast Cares" initiative (the head of which recently left the company), it certainly looks like they have a few kinks to work out. Phil Anderson points us to the story of Comcast demanding the $0.00 a customer owes and threatening to turn off service if it's not received.

It's not hard to figure out how something like this happens. For whatever reason, the customer didn't owe any money that month -- perhaps a credit, or he had overpaid in a previous month, or something like that. But, Comcast's system is probably set up with the recording of "a payment" separate from the amount, such that not receiving any payment sets off a red flag, with no simple check to see if the reason is that no money is owed. You would think that this is something that Comcast would have caught a lot earlier...

Filed Under: billing, cable, customer service
Companies: comcast

Towing Company Continues To Stand By Its Misplaced Lawsuit Against Angry Customer, Despite Losing Half Its Business

from the time-to-cut-bait-and-apologize dept

Back in April, we wrote about a towing company that got so upset about a Facebook page that it decided to sue the page's creator for libel. As pointed out at the time, this only served to draw more attention to the claims made by the Facebook page -- claiming that the towing company often towed legitimately parked cars. In fact, the controversy has brought out many more people who claim they had legitimately parked cars towed. An anonymous reader let us know that the Detroit Free Press has checked in on the towing company again, and it's now lost half of its accounts due to this controversy. You might think, at this point, the company would wise up, admit that it was wrong, apologize to the guy it sued, and try to focus on building its reputation back up. But... no luck. The company sticks by its stance. The owner's lawyer blames the lost business on the "hostility" the situation caused. Um. Or, perhaps it was towing legitimately parked cars, and then suing someone who complained about it. That might have something to do with the lost business too. Oh, and it's probably worth mentioning that the company, T&J Towing, has an F-rating at the local Better Business Bureau, due to 20 complaints in the last three years... of which it responded to only three. Maybe, rather than suing critics, T&J should learn to respond to them.

And, of course, it appears the situation is getting even worse for the company. Because of all this attention, many others have been stepping up to complain about their own experiences with T&J, leading the lawyer representing the guy T&J sued to look about filing a class action lawsuit against the company. It seems like the company would have been better off apologizing and giving the original guy back his money. Or not towing his car in the first place.

Filed Under: customer service, defamation, streisand effect, towing