Little Old Lady Hammers Comcast 416
WheezyJoe writes "The Washington Post reports that a little old lady took a hammer to Comcast.
Apparently fed up with the lousy service she received from a botched Comcast installation of "triple-play", and a completely humiliating experience at a customer service center, 75-year-old Mona "The Hammer" Shaw took her claw hammer back to the customer service center and bludgeoned the office equipment into tiny plastic pieces."
Comcast Is Deluded (Score:5, Informative)
For example, we've got a 30+ mile per hour windstorm going. My cable's still on. Don't know how a dish would be faring. But that doesn't mean I'm happy with Comcast.
Here in Washington, we had a program guide and DVR powered by Microsoft, a little nod from Comcast to the folks in Redmond. It wasn't in use anywhere else in the country. I found it to be very buggy and annoying. If I told the DVR to tape only new episodes of "Stargate SG-1" only on Sci-Fi, only at 8, besides putting the 8 p.m. Friday showing of new episodes in the "upcoming recordings" list, it would put in that plus every one of the 6 p.m. reruns all week long. On top of that, it loved to become unresponsive while fast forwarding. It would just fast forward along, well past the point where you wanted it to stop, buffering every key press sent by the remote, until it finally decided it was done and executed all those keypresses in quick succession.
When Comcast announced we'd be getting the program guide and DVR control software the rest of the country has, I literally jumped for joy, singing "ding dong, the witch is dead", because I thought ANYTHING had to be better than the Microsoft DVR software. I was soooo wrong. Comcast's is worse. Try to set a series recording for "Top Chef" on Bravo and you get every episode... sort of like the Microsoft DVR, but with one major difference. Microsoft put the recordings in the to do list well in advance so you could remove them. With the new Comcast DVR software, it doesn't add these things until the last minute, so the next time you look at your recorded programs list, there's a bunch of crap you didn't expect and don't want. And better than the fast forward that won't stop, the new software gives me fast forward that advances 10-20 seconds and pauses. If you hit the fast forward again, it jumps up to double-speed fast forward and you overshoot whatever mark you were trying to hit.
I contacted customer service and they just said they were sorry I didn't like it, but tough.
So my options... get a dish. Wait until Verizon rolls out FIOS TV in my neighborhood (they laid the cable this summer, but are dragging their feet on FIOS installs) and see if they're better. Shell out $800 + $12.95 a month for a dual tuner HD TiVO with Cable Card. I'm currently pinning my hopes on the second option. But when Verizon gets off their asses Comcast loses my $1800 a year for cable TV and cable internet.
The only reason Comcast can delude themselves that their customers are happy is because they've been spending millions to lobby the FCC to restrict Verizon's roll-out of TV via fiber and prevent their customers from having a second terrestrial alternative. As TV over fiber rolls out, if the telecoms don't cock it up (and that's a BIG if), you could see people leaving Comcast in *droves*.
Hooray for Mona Shaw. She took civil disobedience a little too far, but God bless her. We're all having a vicarious thrill from her exploit.
I'm entirely happy with Comcast. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Comcast Is Deluded (Score:5, Informative)
Both can be found a bit cheaper if you look around.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
here is a similar story (Score:5, Informative)
But the first thing I did on student government was try and tackle the "Comcast problem". The "problem" in question being massive downtime... over 120 calls due to downtime in one month. Keep in mind, this is a SMALL campus. The residence halls only had maybe a thousand students maximum. (And that is a liberal estimate).
Now when my internet went down, I actually followed the Comcast tech into floor's wiring closet, and saw a bank of cable modems hooked up to a switch. He located my room's modem, and power cycled it. Problem solved. And it was something that a user should be able to due themselves, but Comcast insisted that the students not have access to the modems, because we might steal them.
The thing is, the wait for a technician was two to three business days, if the technician even showed up.
Slowly I garnered support for a new provider, starting with Residence Life, and eventually the head of IT for the college arranged a meeting with all the Comcast bigwigs... the main guy was in charge of sales for the entire state I believe. Anyways, the Comcast posse promptly blew off everything the college had to say. When I brought up students having technicians pull a no show, I was told that my peers were exaggerating or lying. It took me stating that I had experienced a no show before they would even concede the point. Everything was like that... they wanted the college to PROVE they were incompetent. They ignored what me and the head of IT said (That modem's should be moved to resident rooms, and that anyone whose modem was missing at year's end would be charged for it) and insisted that the problem was due to illegal file sharing. When they were told that connections were already throttled to a point where that was not an issue, they insisted the college's wiring was faulty and brownouts were causing the problem. Comcast offered to install UPSs in all wiring closets. (And got a little miffed when I said they should have already had them).
Then they insisted it was a firmware issue with the modems and replaced every modem in the halls. Finally they admitted they needed to move modems into the rooms so users could power cycle on their own, and that was only after the college administration threatened to end the contract early and find a new ISP, and I threatened to write to Consumerist.
End result? What could have been a fifteen minute "whoops, our bad, thanks for the suggestion" type meeting, it became a five month process, where every user complaint was dismissed unless not only a specific user would testify to it in writing, but any bad experiences with rude techs, or techs who never showed up were not owned up to unless the user had the foresight to have a witness wait for the tech with them. Even when the college pointed to the acceptable downtime limit in the contract, Comcast refused to turn over logs and insisted that the college either sue or accumulate documentation.
And during the process, every word I said was met with derision or waved away since I was "only a student". It was made clear to me by Comcast that my opinion did not matter. And quit frankly, I think only the threat the college finding a new provider or possible lawsuits for breach of contract prompted them to act.
Re:Gotta love the older folks, they remember Ameri (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe English isn't the mod's first language, but even if you don't get the joke, it's hardly off-topic.
Somebody woke up on the grumpy side of bed I guess.
Rich CEOs talk only to other millionaires. (Score:5, Informative)
Another quote: "Manassas police spokesman Sgt. Tim Neumann says there have been other police calls to that Comcast office..." I would love to know why.
Quote from the parent comment: "I called Comcast and started screaming. This got me somewhere as I finally got escalated to the CEO's office where they had a customer care executive assigned to me."
You never get to the CEO's office, I'm guessing. They just say that to try to make you think they believe your complaint is important. In 2005, the Comcast CEO made $14.3 million [forbes.com], just for that one year. I know, I know what you are thinking: "I'm sad. He had a bad year!" But, don't worry, in 2006 he made $27.8 million [usatoday.com].
I think that it is safe to assume that someone who makes millions each year for doing a bad job has no concerns whatsoever about any troubles you have with his company. Any phony expression of concern is handled by people who barely make a living.
In case you want to express your horror that he only makes tens of millions instead of hundreds of millions each year, contact the Comcast CEO directly: Brian Roberts [consumerist.com].
Why is being rich considered by rich people a license to be evil?
Re:Comcast Is Deluded (Score:5, Informative)
My parents have Dish and my inlaws have the Charter DVR, both of which are total crap compared to the Tivo software. Even it's not perfect but the updates over the past years (series 2) have been for the better and have actually made me keep it over the PC DVR I had build using various linux DVR software packages, none of them were that much better than the Tivo. And when I finally had the weather and streaming audio working Tivo came out with the same features built in. The only drawback I have now is the movie collection and youtube browsing features I had with the PCDVR have to be used in the media room and not in the living room or the bedroom where the Tivos take care of everything else. Amazon Unbox isn't great but it's a pretty good option so far.
Re:ComCast alleged customer service (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Whats the tune? (Score:2, Informative)
My Story (Score:5, Informative)
I was a business class customer of a local cable company that comcast bought out. Back then, I was pretty much forced to pay extra for that service because they blocked all inbound smtp and http (which I provided on my servers). But, the commercial service was actually nice, and when I had a problem, they were very responsive and I had a direct line to L2 techs who knew what they were doing.
Comcast then bought the company. I only found out when my bill arrived and it was now from comcast. They never told me I needed to change anything, and my service was still working and the bill amount was the same, so I didn't really care.
One weekend, I lost connectivity. My own end seemed fine, as I was seeing the typical stream of ARP requests flying by on comcast's network. It looked to me like my default gateway was down. I called and explained the symptoms.
The tech was confused and thought I should own a comcast router (I didn't...I run my own firewall with a regular linksys cablemodem). This would be a matter of contention for the next 2 months.
Anyway, the problem persisted intermittently. To their credit, I did finally get through to a support rep who actually discovered the real problem: My modem was being intermittently filtered for some reason. He did explain that comcast was moving to using their own routers for all business class customers (same service, they just give you a static IP address in a 'good' netblock). I continued to use my old ISP config, and it worked, so I didn't care.
Problem came back, but this time I knew the likely cause. This time the support lady was a total asshole demanding that I owned some form of comcast equipment, and that they would need to send a technician out (after explaining to her several times what was really going on) to remove that equipment and install their new solution. At this point, I was sick of paying extra for service I was not receiving so began the process of going back to residential service.
Long story short, I had to sign some form to give comcast permission to cut my commercial service and go back to residential. They mailed this form to me in such a way that my server dropped it (their server was on the spamhaus block/exploit list!). I finally got the form and filled it out.
2 days later, service is dead again. #$!@$#@!$. Again, they claim that I own some sort of comcast gear (b/c I was a commercial customer, and they have a certain way to do that...but I was transplanted from an ISP that they bought out...this is like the 20th time I've explained this to them). They will schedule a time to send a technician out. I agree, for now, and then call back to cancel the nonsense (hoping to speak to somebody with more clue)
When I complain about this, I finally get the rep to concede that they don't need to send anybody out, and that they will transfer me to residential class service. They *FINALLY* understand that I don't have any of their equipment. I continue to use my old static IP address, which still works (go figure), because they have not given me any connection information yet to change (this is for a change that they were definitely going to force on me...and I have yet to hear any official news of this, other than when I call to report problems with my service).
I did eventually get changed to residential service. Biggest hassle is that I have to smart relay through comcast's SMTP servers. Luckily they don't block inbound ports, so I can get away with paying less.
Here's the fun part. Last week there was a router from comcast sitting on my porch. Inside was a letter about them changing my commercial service (which I no longer have due to the frustrations with my connection and horrible customer service). This thing showed up about a month after I started having problems, and AFTER I changed to residential service! These people obviously have a serious lack of internal communication that rivals even that with their customers!
If they ha
Heh (Score:5, Informative)
In a nutshell it just means that they'll do a honest job and not defraud the investors to enrich themselves. That's it. They have the respeonsibility to do a honest job... the same as everyone else.
Every single employee in the company is held to the same expectation. (If less sometimes less formalized.) The lowly janitor too isn't supposed to let himself be bribed to install a few keyloggers and sell the company's secrets to the competition. The database admin too isn't supposed to export the production database and sell it to the competition. The accountant isn't supposed to invent new taxes payable to his own account, either. Etc. They're all, simply put, expected to do a honest job.
Shouldn't they be paid millions per year too, then?
Do you genuinely think that paying them tens of millions a year is the only way to keep upper management honest?
1. That's such a bad opinion of them, that it stands out even on Slashdot. But more importantly,
2. Repeatedly it didn't really work. Enron and WorldCom sure weren't kept honest by high management salaries, for example. Or I can remember at least one case where one guy gutted a company just for the hell of it, and actually cooked the books to make it look like his cost-saving measures were doing anything positive at all.
3. Even more importantly, you can look at continental Europe or Japan, places with much more reasonable GINI indexes. Meaning that the difference between a director's wage and the janitor's wage is a helluva lot less than in the USA. If what you say was true, then both should see some massive corruption and have their economies ran into the ground as everyone who gets to the top starts defrauding the company to fill his own pockets. And somehow, while such cases occasionally do exist, they tend to be rather isolated, few and far in between.
Contrary to somewhat popular misconception, there isn't some income limit at which people suddenly become honest because they already have all the money they might ever need. The guy with 2 million a year, wants 3 million a year. The guy with 20 million a year, wants 30. If you paid someone 2 billion a year, the only effect would be that he'd want 3 billion, so he can buy an aircraft carrier as his personal yacht.
You can see that for as long as we have a recorded history. Whoever was an earl wanted to be a duke, whoever was a duke wanted to be a king, and whoever was a king wanted to be an emperor. It's just human nature, and it's how the human brain is wired.
The brain sees differentials, not absolute happiness values, so there simply is no point where you'll say "ok, I have enough, I can stop now." And if you had an inclination to supplement your income by dishonesty when you had only $100,000 a year, you'll have the same inclination at $10,000,000 a year.
Simply put, past maybe the poverty limit, more money doesn't make one more honest.
All that's maybe changed is the sum that looks like an acceptable bribe, but no more. But even then, if the only thing that keeps a director honest is that the company is paying him more money than he could steal from it on his own, then that company just replaced an illegal drain with an even bigger drain that it called legal. It's a Baldrick-class cunning plan akin to giving each bank robber a million a month, 'cause it's more than they could find in any bank in cash to rob.
So to cut this long rant short, I might even swallow the argument that such a big pay is needed because of their uber-l33t skills, and the rarity of such skills. Tell me that you need the 0.1% best managers and economists that ever walked the Earth, and I might even see how such a salary would be warranted to secure their services. (Though, then again, the top 0.1% physicists don't make tens of millions a year.) But that they need tens of millions in compensation for doing their job honestly? Heh. Gimme a break.
Re:Comcast Is Deluded (Score:2, Informative)
SELECT PLAY SELECT 3 0 SELECT
The skip-to-hash button on your remote will now skip forward 30 seconds during playback.
If your TiVo get rebooted due to a power outage or a software update, you will need to re-key the sequence.