Comcast Shoots For New Image, Rebranding As Xfinity 356
artemis writes "Comcast is making efforts to repair and restore its 'former glory' by the act of transformation, rebranding itself as Xfinity. Hopefully step 2 is an actual change in quality and customer service. 'Comcast will use the Xfinity rebranding to talk up its improved customer service as well as its technical upgrades. “There’s a lot to be proud of,’’ said Steve Hackley, Comcast’s senior vice president for the Greater Boston region. “We want to take credit for it.’’ W2 Group’s Weber said such a rebranding is “a bit old-fashioned’’ and a new name is unlikely to impress consumers. “I think the public is smarter than that now,’’ he said.'"
Re:Xfinity equals... (Score:2, Insightful)
More like XTarded, never again will I use comcast.
NEVER AGAIN.
Yeah, and Blackwater is now called Xe. (Score:5, Insightful)
It ain't gonna help, guys. You're still in seriously deep trouble.
And Yet.... (Score:3, Insightful)
bad branding (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't see how a harder-to-pronounce name will make the company any more appealing to customers.
Name change = shame (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody changes their name because they "want to take credit" for things they're "proud of".
Comcast, do you really want to have your name mentioned alongside Phillip Morris ... errr, "Altria"? At least you're not *killing* your customers.
its still comcrap to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Xfinity sounds like it should be the name of a sports car company... or perhaps an adult film company.
Bad rep sticks anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
I say it's a fairly transparent attempt to shuffle previous bad behaviour under the carpet, not the hard work to seek redemption that they should be doing instead. Bad management is bad management no matter the name, it'll show every time.
You know (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your name is NOT your problem. I'm going to say that your problem is that you suck ass at providing service. You can change the name all you like, so long as your service blows, people are going to hate on you. Conversely, fix the service and it won't be a problem.
Seriously, I'm amazed how bad Comcast is. Where I live, both Cox and Comcast provide cable service of the TV, Internet and phone variety. Which you get depends on which part of the city you live in. I live in the Cox area. In general, I'm happy with them. They aren't prefect, but they are pretty good. They fix their problems, their speeds are good, etc, etc. My friends on Cox seem to feel the same way.
Not long ago my parents came to visit, and stayed in a condo owned by friends of theirs. This condo was in a Comcast area. I couldn't believe how bad it was. Not even dealing with tech support, just general usage. The net was amazingly slow, their DVR was a massive POS, etc, etc. I made very little use of it and I found it to be poor quality. I can't imagine how dissatisfied someone who uses it all the time is.
Rebranding won't fix shit. You have to fix your quality if you want people to respect your brand.
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
“I think the public is smarter than that now,’’
Everyone knows this isn't true. Why do you think Comcast still has customers?
Meaningless names (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is it with this trend of conjuring up completely meaningless words to use as company names?
On NPR in the mornings I hear about a company that used to be called Horn Murdoch and Cole (a sensible name that tells you they've been around for a while and actually means something) who for some unfathomable reason decided to call themselves "Acretive Solutions," or something. I mean, aside from the impossibility of being able to tell if it's "Acretive" or "Acrative" just by listening to it, what the hell is that supposed to mean? It sounds almost like "Excretive" which calls to mind images of someone taking a dump!
Accenture, Cingular, Elementis, Altria, I mean, what the fuck is that? At least the idiots at "Consignia" had the sense to revert back to the name that everyone understood and recognized for decades, i.e. 'Royal Mail.'
Sheesh!
There's a transcript here [igorinternational.com] of a BBC radio show talking about this very subject.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of people like me who live in an area where my choices are Comcast or Dial-up.
Re:Yeah, and Blackwater is now called Xe. (Score:4, Insightful)
Phone book (n): A giant slab of shredded tree that can be used to prop open the basement door.
How about changing it to "XSucksALittleLess" (Score:3, Insightful)
More accurate, anyway. At any rate, I'll believe something has changed when I can talk to somebody who's not in India, knows something, can make a decision and can understand words like "I measured the Comcast line signal strengh for the last 24 hours and it dipped to just above zero 7 times in that period for a total of 95.4 minutes of non-functioning internet time so GET AN ENGINEER TO YOUR SWITCH AND DON'T SENT OUT THE LOCAL DUMBASS AGAIN."
Cheers!
Re:Oh lemme try one! (Score:3, Insightful)
Xfinity = the number of customers they want to have locked into their monopolistic areas so they can jack their prices up.
As opposed to Comcrap: It's Crapatastic, which referenced their crappy service.
Big step (Score:3, Insightful)
.
That step is going to be a huge one for comcast who, in the past, has proven they are unable to traverse to chasm.
Re:And Yet.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Verizon? Sure, that would be nice, but what I can't wait for is Google's gigabit to the home [slashdot.org] service.
You know, even if Google itself doesn't roll out to all markets, I really think this could be a game-changer. Anyone else here remember pre-Gmail days, when your ISP or a service like Hotmail may give you all of a whopping 5 MB or so for free, and we were told that that was a lot?
Google came along and said, "Screw that. You get a GIGABYTE." The webmail world changed, and now, any webmail service that gives you less than a gigabyte or so of storage is antiquated.
Point is, is Google starts rolling out gigabit to the home, other Internet services will move to catch up. Not so much because of the immediate competition, since Google's market will probably be very small to start with, but so that they won't look like antiquated idiots, offering a server that is literally orders of magnitude slower than what's available out there to others.
Re:How stupid do they think we are? oh, wait ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Verizon, formerly known as Bell Atlantic (and GTE)...
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do you think Comcast still has customers?
Because they have an effective monopoly in many regions.
"Competition" (Score:3, Insightful)
Alas, the exclusivity agreements were a requirement to get the infrastructure built, noone wanted to invest the millions to string cable unless they were confident of recouping their investment, and as a one way network, installing it as a "shared resource" where competitors could access the lines after the installation investment was recovered isn't practical.
I suspect part of the real reason Verizon and other Telcos are stringing fiber to compete with the cable companies is because:
1) Their cable infrastructure needed major updating anyway, and simplifies management significantly
2) Their landline business is drying up as consumers move to cell services. This allows them to capture more $$$ per household using the infrastructure they want to install anyway.
Just spent a week at a friends place with Comcast, their cable internet went out about every hour with use, the techs say a modern spec cable needs to be run to teh house, but Comcast won't do it. I wonder how long it will take once the "Verizon FIOS in here" flyer shows up on their door?
Re:Xfinity equals... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Xfinity equals... (Score:3, Insightful)
I call BS on this. Usually a duoploy is just as bad as a monopoly. Considering the cost of rolling out cable, a lot of providers wont enter a market because what happens is a natural monopoly or duopoly forms. Both carriers exceed at poor service and slow upgrades because they know the government wont intervene.
Ironically, its the government with its line sharing laws that forced the competition to actually get off their laurels. Forcing telcos to sell service to third parties helps the consumer, thats how excellent ISPs like Speakeasy can even exist. So youre 100% wrong. The problem in telcos isnt the regulation its the lack of regulation and the lack of more line usage buying enforcement.
Not to mention, regulation was put there to curb corporate abuse not to limit corporate growth. A lot of what youre railing against was put in because these companies were doing an ever poorer job for the consumer.
Re:Xfinity equals... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hi, my picture looks funny." They then read from their script and do the things you have already done. You can't do it out of order, or they get lost. Then finally. "Ok, it looks like it is a problem on our end, I'll send someone out."
I know that sucks for us people who are technical...but it makes sense. No one with real technical experience is going to work that job. We would all get better paying ones elsewhere. Just have to know how to talk to them to minimize how long you are on the phone with them.
Re:Meaningless names (Score:1, Insightful)
I expect the invented names are easier to trademark and to find in search results (for those who can spell them more or less).