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A welcome trend may be emerging, as people are discovering the power and many uses of of Twitter. Michael Arrington made a post after much frustration with Comcast's often difficult customer service. Seems a Comcast representative at their Philadelphia HQ was monitoring Twitter for any comments regarding Comcast, and jumped right on the case, and was able to help with his problem.
Here are some more comments on the situation, and a herat-warming story about the crappy service I usually get from them.
This really hit home for me. I've used Comcast broadband for the last five years, and have been extremely pleased with the overall reliability and performance. But what really drives me nuts is the way they handle customer service. On the few occasions their service has been down, I've been unable to get a quick answer about the magnitude of the problem, or when it would be fixed.
I'm a professional web developer and programmer, and absolutely need reliable service. I'm often called upon to solve problems for clients at odd hours, and also rely on the Internet as a primary source of information. If service will be down for a short time, then I need to know.
If I contact customer service, it usually takes me ten minutes to get to a first level support person, who usually cannot tell me anything, or gives me incorect information. Getting bumped to second level support is usually little help; at best they can tell me there is a problem, but don't have any details. I'm usually told to try reinstalling Windows (even if I'm using a Mac). Dug. If I do get to a qualified person who can ping my router, the situation is sometimes better, but there seems to be a general inability to know when things will be fixed.
The worst time I had was last January, when I was without service for five days! To be fair, it was the worst wind storm in the last fifty years, and they had lots to do. They claimed it was a widespread outage, and all customers in my area were down. After two days, I started talking to my neighbors, and discovered they all had service restored by then. The problem was three shouses down from me. I finally got a call a few days later from the service tech, who found the problem to be very simple and got me back up pronto. Gee, why couldn't I have spoken with someone like him on day one? The techs who do the actual repairs and installations have been very good, very professional, and speak my language.
If I didn't have a cell phone to call them with, the problem may have taken even longer, since I made the mistake of using their VOIP phone service. It is about on par withVonage, except Vonage has a voicemail system that is actually easy to use.
What I'd really like would be able to have a level of service where I could immediately get to a qualified tech rep who I can discuss networking issues with. Most of the problems I've had have been related to their routing and BGP problems, which are usually easy to resolve, once they know about them. I'd also like to get a text message on my phone if they have a known issue. And preemptery emails about possible service outages and routing changes. Maybe their business level service has this available; I know I'd pay a little extra for better communication. However, even after writing them a letter of inquiry two months ago, I haven't heard back from them. Maybe they don't want my business?
My neighbors have DSL from the phone company, and they were back online in six hours after the storm. Their service is slower than Comcast Broadband, and of course there are always issues when the phone company in the mix, but you can always count on them for top quality service. As much as I hate to go back to Ma Bell, it may be my only option.
How could they handle this better? Be responsive to my communications with them, notify me of problems, give me a smart human to easily speak to in an emergency. And since the five days I was without service cost me a few thousands dollars in billable, it wouldn't kill them to give me a refund for lost service.
If they want to play with the big dogs as a service provider, they should act like one.
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