Customer Disservice
As Mike Arrington says, Comcast mostly doesn't have to care about your connection issues (or TV issues, for that matter), because they have a local monopoly in most places (I suspect that I have things a bit better here because Verizon laid down fiber - and started offering a real alternative). Having said that, what possesses them to tell outright falsehoods? Like airlines, are they operating under some bizarre belief that "we can't handle the truth"?
As Arrington relates the story, they told him that the outage he had was "California wide" (even though he was getting online at other people's houses nearby). It was only when he started the tweetstorm that Comcast called him, and then came out and fixed his problem. On the one hand, it's good that they monitor corporate references; on the other, they end up looking stupid due to the earlier behavior.
This kind of thing drives people nuts, and makes them feel like a prisoner rather than like a customer. Does anyone at Comcast see that? From here, it looks like the answer is a resounding "no".
Comments
Customer Disservice?
[Tom Sattler] April 7, 2008 8:28:39.548
Definitely go with Verizon FIOS. Everyone should go with Verizion FIOS. My wife worked at what is now Verizon for ten years, and we have a boatload of stock, so DEFINITELY go with Verizon. Get the most expensive package they offer, too, even if you don't need it. Do it for our children's college funds!
Same With Any Monopoly
[W^L+] April 7, 2008 14:41:17.437
About three years back, one of my employer's field offices experienced a total network outage. Calling the DSL provider (one of the two biggest phone companies), they were told the problem had to be at their end, so I made a couple of hours drive to find out that it was the provider's problem after all.
With a competent tech on the phone, they admitted that most of Orange County CA was disrupted by a router failure beginning the previous evening. Shortly before quitting time, service came back up, and I got paid overtime to sit in Los Angeles traffic.
The problem? Customers don't have much choice, so a provider needn't be honest or dilligent in confronting outages. I guess the only thing one can do is get a secondary provider (e.g., DSL, cable, FiOS, city-wide WiFi, etc) to use if/when the main provider has an outage. That's more expensive, but if you do business from home, it may be preferable to being hung out to dry for hours while your provider stalls for time. Unfortunately, in a lot of areas, that choice does not exist.
Alternative Comcast Experience
[] April 7, 2008 20:20:13.553
My Comcast service on the westside of Portland, Oregon, became stable well before Verizon Fios arrived. That's the main reason I've not switched to Fios - Comcast services has been good and fast enough for our family's purposes. Why risk the switch when Verizon is pretty much just advertising parity, cost-wise, across all the Fios services.
If the two would actually *compete* then I'd consider switching. Both appear to be too comfortable to really go after the other's market. Oh, but talk about community-funded telecom and they get all up in arms about how "gomint" can't provide all the benefits of private enterprise. Maybe that's true, but I wouldn't mind a third party in this (barely) competition.