So, about five days ago my internet provider (who is also a major cable TV provider) is out "auditing" my neighborhood. Basically, they're out looking to see which of their customers (in rental properties...and I don't rent) still live there, who's stealing cable TV, and generally door-knocking and trying to sell people shit they don't need. They knock on my door, standard sales pitch ensues, I'm not interested, they're insistent, I slam door in their face. Is this the end of it? Nope, not by a long shot.
I watch cable dude walk across the street, unlock a ground-level junction box, and fiddle with something inside. I go back into my office and notice that my cable modem's lights are flashing....basically an error code saying, "Hey, I'm not working." I look back out the front window just in time to see cable dude driving away. Is it a coincidence that my internet went out and dude was fiddling around out there? I think not. "Oh, slam the door in my face will yuh....I'll show him" type of shit.
Flash-forward a few days. After repeated phone calls with "tech support" (out-sourced to some third-world shit-hole...not that I'd expect anything less from a huge company) and their customer (dis)service, I discover that shithead not only went out there and disconnected my cable line, but also put a note in their system that no one lives at my address. The voice at the other end of the phone was both (disingenuously and lethargically) sympathetic and apologetic, but assured me that someone would be out to rectify the situation as quickly as possible....in three to four days. My response: "Motherfucker, I live on a hilltop and can literally see the fenced yard where your company keeps it's fleet of vehicles not five minutes away. Not only will you NOT be coming out to fix it AND you've LOST a customer, but you can also GO FUCK YOURSELF! Have a nice day." *click*
Five minutes later I'm on the phone with a smaller local competitor. Got faster internet service with considerably less damage to my wallet , they were there within the hour (46 minutes to be exact) to install their equipment, and carted off the old companies' equipment to boot. Hell, the service guy picked up the old cable modem with thumb and index finger, held it away from him with mock disgust (like it was gonna give him an incurable venereal disease) and said, "Damn, they actually leased you this ancient thing? What an eff-in' dinosaur."
During the time I had Comcast I found it rather odd that the two times I had them out for a service call (other than the last time) both service guys went out of their way to inform me that "Comcast is trying to improve it's customer relations"....in those exact words. Simply changing their name to XFinity (whatever the hell that means or implies) isn't going to change peoples perception...and neither are empty words drilled into the heads of their employees to be repeated to customers.
Nice when you've got a local competitor, most of us are stuck in duopoly land
ReplyDeleteEoR: Well, I can consider myself lucky in that respect. I use to live out in monopoly / dial-up-hell / banjo-picker land, where the nearest DSL line was 20 miles away, cable internet was 50 miles away, and satellite internet was the stuff that sci-fi films are made of.
ReplyDeleteI have WOW cable (WOW used to stand for WideOpenWest) at home; the alternative is Comcast. A Comcast salesman knocked on my door last March to try to get me to switch over.
ReplyDelete"You got Internet? What speed?"
15 Mbps.
"Ours is faster, 16 Mbps. And you can get everything for less money" blah blah blah.
Okay, I said. give me one of those price lists you're carrying, and I'll call if I like what I read.
Sure enough, the Comcast plan would pretty much duplicate my current WOW service while costing me less. (And don't forget that extra 1 Mbps!)
For the first year.
In the second year, the price would have gone up enough to the extent that over the two-year subscription period (he never mentioned that little detail) I would have paid more than I'm paying now. Furthermore, if I decided to quit rather than pay more, I'd be socked with an early termination fee that would have resulted in my paying yet more.
As you have probably guessed by now, they haven't heard back from me.
Anon: Saw the comment on the other post and deleted. No big.
ReplyDeleteYeah, similar thing here with compost....errrr, I mean Comcast. Little alternative company offerred 20mbps vs 16 with compost. I don't have cable tv...never had a need for it since everything I would normally watch on tv I can get online. Well, a day or two after the fact....a week at the most.
That's why we switched to AT&T. (Yep I'm back after 2+ weeks without a laptop.) My experience with Cumcast was less than bad. Every other day On Demand would lose the titles it has the day before, the customer service was crap (all they did was suggest a technician to come out to fix a problem that could have been easily done in 5 minutes with the right instructions) they were too expensive, the cable always got screwed up easily, etc. AT&T on the other hand is a lot less shitty. The customer service is incredible (people actually talk to you with respect), their second suggestion isn't to pay $100+ for a technician to fix a simple problem, they have a HUGE variety of channels, and much more. I'm glad you got your cable the way you want it. I hope Cumcast (or Xfinity) crashes and burns one day.
ReplyDeleteOh and in other news DA went on a rampage yesterday and the day before taking down every innocent piece of art they could find. At least four people I know got their images removed within a 1 day period. But hey they seem to have missed this one! http://darkshroomm.deviantart.com/art/tehehe-251125235 But you know what the real kicker is?
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Their bullshit rules clearly state that erections count as explicit pornography. If DA can't follow their own rules then how do they expect us to? Better yet, if they DON'T follow their own rules then why should we? And if you ask me I think this whole thing's got chix0r's name written all over it. As if the Cherub incident wasn't pitiful enough.
DH: Actually, I want to meet the marketing genius who, knowing that Compost's customer service and tech / install guys reputation is one of the lowest (if not THE lowest) in the industry, suggested the best way to solve their rep problem is to change the name of the company. Yeah, excellent name choice. XFinity is supposed to suggest what, they're now an "extreme" cable provider? Or maybe it's the "XF" part...special effects, smoke and mirrors, that sorta thing.
ReplyDeleteI tend to equate Comcast/XFinity to a '90 Yugo GVX: No matter how much you wax and buff it...it's still a fuckin' Yugo.
As for DA, I don't even bother trying to see/justify their mod-logic anymore. All legitimate art aside, I now view DA as just another social networking site. Eventually a bigger, better thing will come along, people will gravitate to it, and DA will find a place in....ohhh, I dunno, the Internet Archive. Several years ago many a media outlet said that social networking sites like MySpace were "unstopple". Yeah, just ask the 47% of Myspaces' workforce that got laid off back in January how stoppable they are now.
You see it's branding. Rather, Re-branding. When a company or product has had its ass kicked with bad PR for too long and too publicly it begins changing its name. At first by applying the new name to a specifice facet of the company, then slowly expanding that new name to encompass the WHOLE thing. In about three months time "Comcast" will be all but non-existant on the companies equipment.
ReplyDeleteIt really sucks because in my area I have no choice but to use Comcast... that or Satellite and in Florida, Satellite is a fucking joke. I worked in Broadcast TV, we had trouble getting proper signals with high-end receiving equipment, those piddly little dishes people slap on their roofs are worthless.
Anon: I actually contemplated getting something along the lines of Hughsnet, but after close review that up/download rates were...hmmmm...how should I phrase this? Shitty? Substandard? A Joke?
ReplyDeleteBack in '04-05 while in Iraq my unit pitched in a got Satellite service via a European company that was fairly decent. All said and done i think we shelled out $50 a head between 100 of us for six months. Actually, the main incentive for getting it was to get off the DOD's highly regulated, highly censored, and highly unreliable bandwidth. 14 months with no porn?! The hell you say! :P :D