Comcast Confessions 234
An anonymous reader writes: We heard a couple weeks ago about an incredibly pushy Comcast customer service representative who turned a quick cancellation into an ordeal you wouldn't wish on your enemies. To try and find out what could cause such behavior, The Verge reached out to Comcast employees, hoping a few of them would explain training practices and management directives. They got more than they bargained for — over 100 employees responded, and they painted a picture of a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit. From the article: 'These employees told us the same stories over and over again: customer service has been replaced by an obsession with sales, technicians are understaffed and tech support is poorly trained, and the massive company is hobbled by internal fragmentation. ... Brian Van Horn, a billing specialist who worked at Comcast for 10 years, says the sales pitch gradually got more aggressive. "They were starting off with, 'just ask," he says. "Then instead of 'just ask,' it was 'just ask again,' then 'engage the customer in a conversation,' then 'overcome their objections.'" He was even pressured to pitch new services to a customer who was 55 days late on her bill, he says.'
I wonder when... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder when customer service will start being more proactive by calling customers.
"Hello, this is Comcast. How may we upsell you?"
Re:I wonder when... (Score:5, Funny)
I think you misspelled upset.
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No no, upsell and upset are synonymous in this case. It's totally okay.
Re:I wonder when... (Score:5, Funny)
They are already doing that (Score:2, Informative)
They are calling people on cable-modem only and offering a cable box for 5 dollars more a month.
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I wish I could get this. When my local (Charter) calls me, it's always an up-charge of $40 or more. Of course they want to sell me phone AND TV, and pretend like it's such a great deal because, if I pay $40 for the TV, the phone is basically free. I don't want the phone, and I don't want TV for $40. I'd gladly take it for $5, though. No amount of fishing around has gotten me that offer, though.
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Re:I wonder when... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wonder when... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, they do that already, at least for their business accounts. I wanted static IPs so I bought a business account for my home. Every month or two I get a letter in the mail from Comcast offering "a free account review!" How kind of them to offer to upsell me for no extra charge, lol.
I have residential cable and business internet (yeah, for static IP). Every month or two, Comcast residential calls me up to get me to sign up for internet, and Comcast Business calls me to sell me cable TV. Both want me to sign up for phone service, too.
Re:I wonder when... (Score:4, Informative)
They'd discover the same thing phone companies did in the 1990s. Direct calling your customers for an upsell is a good way to create a cancellation.
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omg this. I remember back in late 90s being called up at minimum, once a week by each of them major telcoms asking if I want to switch (or with the one I was on, trying to upsell). I used to ask them, so if you are harassing me before I am even your customer, what are you going to do when I am actually your customer? I knew multiple people who disconnected all of their phone lines and switched to VOIP/Cell phones just to get away from the constant harassment. Seemed to go on for a year or so then abrubtly
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They'd discover the same thing phone companies did in the 1990s. Direct calling your customers for an upsell is a good way to create a cancellation.
They'll discover no such thing. In the telephone wars era, you could nearly frictionlessly change your long distance provider (if not your last-mile provider, at first). Most people can't change their cable provider, because that's the only possible provider of internet (above 2Mbps anyway), so they can call you all day and you can fume all day, but one thing you won't do is cancel.
They already do! (Score:2)
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Yeah I was constantly getting called up by charter for upsell. I had to log into my account and dig around for that checkbox that disables me from promotions.
I must be the outlier (Score:5, Informative)
I cancelled my Comcast cable service last week. Walked into the office, handed them my equipment and told them I wanted to cancel my account. The person behind the counter checked in the equipment, had me sign a form indicating I had returned all the equipment and pay the prorated amount I owed.
The only thing he asked me is if I was going with someone else to which I said no, I could no longer justify the cost.
I was in and out in just over a minute. I waited in line significantly longer than that.
Sidenote, I received a notice in the mail from Comcast that for a small additional monthly fee I could upgrade my service to one of the following. Obviously my cancellation hasn't worked its way through the system yet.
Re:I must be the outlier (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not quite sure why Comcast hasn't emiserated the in-store situation yet; but apparently they haven't, and it's not as though the front-line peons are fucking with you for their pleasure, so if they aren't forced to they generally won't.
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Re:I must be the outlier (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not quite sure why Comcast hasn't emiserated the in-store situation yet; but apparently they haven't, and it's not as though the front-line peons are fucking with you for their pleasure, so if they aren't forced to they generally won't.
That's easy. Someone deliberately screwing with you to prevent your cancellation in person could escalate the situation to violence. Over the phone, the most that can happen is a shouting match, and if the customer gets frustrated enough, they hang up, which is a win.
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That's easy. Someone deliberately screwing with you to prevent your cancellation in person could escalate the situation to violence. Over the phone, the most that can happen is a shouting match, and if the customer gets frustrated enough, they hang up, which is a win.
Every cable company office I've ever been in - every single one - all the employees are behind bullet proof glass that would make a bank teller envious.
Re:I must be the outlier (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not quite sure why Comcast hasn't emiserated the in-store situation yet
There are practical limitations in a brick-and-mortar situation. There are a limited number of behind-the-counter folks, and having to hassle a not-gonna-be-a-customer for an extended amount of time makes the lines at the counter grow and grow. Since it's the same counter (and workforce) used to generate business by selling hardware and service, it's counterproductive to sabotage that by extensive "retention" operations. Not to mention that the desperate, wheedling, infuriating conversation that results would be witnessed by everyone else in line; and no matter how dumb, most of the mammals in line may notice that and wonder if doing business with Comcast would be such a good idea.
Whereas a boiler-room telemarketing op has none of these risks and liabilities.
Moral of the story: deal with Comcast where they have some incentive to deal decisively: their own showrooms.
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I'm not quite sure why Comcast hasn't emiserated the in-store situation yet; but apparently they haven't, and it's not as though the front-line peons are fucking with you for their pleasure, so if they aren't forced to they generally won't.
The last time I went to a Comcast service center there were no fewer than a half-dozen people waiting in line, perhaps as many as a dozen and only 4 employees.
The lack of strongarm tactics in stores is probably deliberate to avoid the kinds of arguments and chaos that wou
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My local Comcast office employes an off-duty Sheriff's deputy!
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Re:I must be the outlier (Score:5, Informative)
You're not an outlier, but you did do exactly the right thing. You cancelled in person, instead of over the phone.
The people you call on the phone are highly incentivized to keep you as a customer. The ones working behind the counter are not.
If you want to quit ANY cable service, then disconnect all the equipment, load it in your car, take it down to their local office, and tell them that you wish to drop their service immediately. No one will argue with you; at that point you have bypassed their normal customer retention script.
Re:I must be the outlier (Score:5, Informative)
Comcast is closing those customer centers in most towns to avoid this.
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Not just to avoid this. Maintaining customer service centers also cuts into their profits.
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If you think they will not modify that agreement when the time comes to renew it, you are silly. in my town it was a requirement to carry public channels and OTA local channels unencrypted. They simply had their lawyer remove that from the last one they signed.
when your town is ran by a bunch of morons (only morons want to be politicians in power) you get this kind of stuff happening. And 99.976% of all american cities and towns have complete drooling morons in charge.
The mayor here is so stupid he dema
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You're not an outlier, but you did do exactly the right thing. You cancelled in person, instead of over the phone.
In my town, there's a perpetual 45-minute line of people at the comcast office. Even though the lady that works there is helpful and friendly, I'd rather talk to an idiot on the phone for 20 minutes than waste an hour or more driving to the office, waiting in line, and dealing with the issue in person.
Is the line shorter in other towns?
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And yet, the use of that hour is probably among the best than the 20 minutes on the phone. Because you'll try and try, and then you have to return the equipment to the store anyways (or send it back by mail).
A
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In which case send the cancellation in writing, along with the returned equipment, and send it signature required return receipt so they can't claim they never got it.
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AND you can leave with a receipt for your returned equipment, plus the names of people you dealt with face to face. That could be extremely useful if they want to play the common game of "we never got your stuff and you still owe us monthly payments".
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Who the heck takes the equipment back to them when cancelling?!! I'm not wasting my time with that. Did I have to go pick it up at the office when I signed up for the service? If the answer is no, then you can bet I'm not driving it back and standing in line either.
If they want their equipment back, they can either send me a pre-paid box to load it into and ship back them, or send a technician out to pick it up off my porch.
When I cancelled DirecTV, this is how they got their receiver back, they shipped
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This is my exact experience as well. I couldn't convince the customer service rep that their "system" also showed that I was an Internet customer for 2 years before they started trying to charge me a modem rental fee. How was I receiving service before that time? Did their system show me ordering a modem? Did their system show them shipping me a modem? All of these questions fell on deaf ears.
After cancelling service with them, their automated phone service would no longer recognize my account number as
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I cancelled comcast basic cable service over the phone last week. I didn't get much pressure to continue with them, just a brief question or two.
I just received a UPS box and label to return my equipment. (I had just received unrequested equipment because even basic
cable is now going to be encrypted in my area.)
So, so far so good.
But, the second person I talked with on the phone who was handling the equipment return (at a contractor
company, not comcast itself) thinks I also have a modem. But I don't as I ca
Re:I must be the outlier (Score:4, Insightful)
Watch out, they may have accidentally reactivated your account and you are being charged for something. your only warning will be a credit collections company contacting you.
It was a very common thing back in 2006 that Comcast did to customers that successfully cancelled their service.
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That's the trick - convince salesfolk that there is no money in your pockets and you are dead to them. Sometimes it's worth them thinking you are an utter loser just so that they will leave you alone.
Asking telemarketers if there are any jobs available where they are used to be a good one - until those jobs moved offshore and now the trick no longer works.
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I wouldn't consider your journey done just yet.
If your experience pans out like mine has, in about 4 months you will start getting e-mails and letters from Comcast attempting to bill you for the equipment you haven't returned yet.
Attempting to explain that you don't have any more equipment to return, will get you empty promises that they will fix the error in their computers, along with another e-mail and bill next month.
In my case, they continue to attempt to bill me $70 for a cable modem that I have never
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I cancelled my Comcast service a couple of years ago. Mainly because I had their DVR service and they absolutely refused to make it work. They just kept sending me new DVRs. After replacing six DVRs in a year, which pretty much defeats the purpose of a DVD, I got fed up and went to Verizon FIOS. The sales rep from Verizon told me I’d have less hassle if I just turned in my equipment locally than if I tried to call them. He even very nicely gave the address of my nearest Comcast facility and their hou
How do investors react to such info? (Score:2)
.
Re:How do investors react to such info? (Score:4, Interesting)
They'll fall over themselves for it. Current tax laws reward reckless short-term profiteering, that's why you see shit like Hostess and RMoney where executives flat out vampire a company into bankruptcy and then take a golden parachute to the next one. Just a few decades ago tax rates were such that it was much better to develop a stable long-term profit at a lower level and consistently reinvest the rest back into your employees and customers.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Would you be more or less inclined to put your money into a company whose seemingly sole focus is profit? I mean focused well over and above happy employees, happy customers, delivering a product/service they can be proud of, and other such trivialities. .
Why yes. That's the AMERICAN WAY. Only the dollars and cents you can add up today matter. Actual quality of product, customer satisfaction, responsible citizenship, future consequences, those are things we've been taught to sneer at. After all, what do they matter when it comes time to do a leveraged buyout?
Anything else is just socialisms and Commie Talk. It's not like capitalism is supposed to facilitate business. We're supposed to worship it for its own sake.
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Note that "profit" is misleading in this context. What they seem to mean, based on TFA is "income" or "revenue".
Admittedly, income generates profit (usually. See "loss leader" for an example of income with no profit attached). But they're not synonymous, as any taxman can tell you.
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You seem to think these items are disconnected.
The company is responsible to its owners only.
If it is in the best interest of the shareholders to piss off the customers then that's what they should do.
It is more likely that it's in the best interest of the shareholders to do as you suggest, have happy employees, happy customers and a product/service with which they can be proud.
As an investor I will put my money in those companies that give me the greatest return. Just because a company's sole focus is prof
Nothing New (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of companies have engaged in this practice over the years. I've worked for a Credit card company in the past, and they did the same exact thing. It's basically preying on the weak. Those who tended to overspend and could never pay off a debt were the most vulnerable to the sales pitch to keep the card open and active. This used to be called the "sub-prime" market, but that term fell out of good graces back in 2004 - 2006 when the word "sub-prime" referred to poor people; which was true. The original intent of sub-prime was to help people with bad / no credit establish a foundation for building good credit. Just like everything else, it got corrupted by corporate greed.
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OK. I live in a city where the city itself maintained a special number for the sole purpose of accepting complaints about Comcast.
But the shenanigans reported are neither new nor unique to Comcast. Lots of companies have "Customer Retention Departments" whose sole purpose is to make cancelling as miserable an experience as possible.
I don't like seeking after misery, so I avoided opening a Comcast account to begin with. They may own almost all the market, but there are still less obnoxious alternatives.
Moved and still they call (Score:2)
So I moved out of a Comcast area. It was 3 rounds of what can we do to keep you, to cancel. Apparently I no longer live in a Comcast area is to hard to process. I've since gotten a call trying to get me back.
I ready did not have much of a problem with internet from them, though my new Optimum service is faster and cheaper (75/25)
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I sorta did that with AT&T, ordering DSL I specifically told them that the phone line was down from the pole to the house and they needed to dispatch a tech to correct that. Was using my own DSL modem and waiting to see that they had come out and fixed it. I got a bill for service and took nearly an hour and 2 escalations to figure out the wire did not connect to my house yet meant they had not provided service yet.
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And then they bill you $200 for the visit to the address they have no rights to modify.
Possibly they go ahead and break your existing equipment, too.
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What comcrap needs is the full experience of corporations being people, starting with getting executed by texas.
as opposed to the other kind of corporation? (Score:5, Insightful)
...painted a picture of a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit
Or for short, just "a corporation".
Lost the "tech" in tech support (Score:2)
I can understand wanting to save money by putting tech script as the first line of tech support, but it gets a little tiring when want to skip to the advanced folks and still they want to stick to their script and ask me to reboot the modem as if I hadn't done that 3 times already. If it isn't low hanging fruit for the script readers it's not going to be a very successful or efficient support call.
Seems some DNS issue that isn't solved by reboot kept all of the devices in my network from getting reliable
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I tried the Google DNS servers with no luck. At first I too thought it was the intermittent Win7 stuff coming out of hibernation because that was my use case, but my wife's iPad and our cell phones were also taking forever to load a page, mostly hanging at the very beginning of the request.
Anyway just cancelled Comcast yesterday and my pages load blissfully fast at 15Mbps as opposed to taking forever at 50Mbps.
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Oddly, it's not just from hibernation. After four years, I'm still having that same bug myself, and my desktop doesn't hibernate. I have to bounce the network interface to fix it.
I always assumed it had something to do with constantly having a VirtualBox VM running.
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I have my own script.... Yes, rebooting now... yes still the red blinking light. I am waving a dead chicken over it now... yes it's facing north. No the red light did not change.
Yes I moved all holy relics away from the modem... No it's still a red blinking light. Yes I'll wait....
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well (Score:2)
"...painted a picture of a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit"
Is there some other type of corporation?
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There are - there are *occasional* corporations that actually seem to be driven by the desire to share their love of a great product and delivering that product to their customers. It's rare, but I can think of a few. Granted, they tend to also be much smaller corporations than the Comcasts of the world, but that doesn't mean they have to be tiny local companies.
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There are - there are *occasional* corporations that actually seem to be driven by the desire to share their love of a great product and delivering that product to their customers. It's rare, but I can think of a few. Granted, they tend to also be much smaller corporations than the Comcasts of the world, but that doesn't mean they have to be tiny local companies.
I'll have to ask you for examples of corporations that care more about anything than profit, as I don't believe they exist.
I could believe that privately held corporations might do so - but not public ones.
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Your second hypothesis might well be true, as that is kind of what drives publicly-traded companies. None of the handful of companies I could think of off the top of my head are public. Most notably, the Sprint MVNO Ting, which could easily charge more than they do and still be one of the cheapest around, and who totally don't technically NEED to make it so easy to talk to a competent person on the phone if you call them for help (nobody else does...).
Fresh & Easy, the west coast supermarket chain, also
It's systemic (Score:4, Interesting)
Posting anonymously since I need to remain employed...
Comcast has two mantras. Increase sales and cut costs. As has already been pointed out, the customer service staff are heavily pressured through careful sifting of metrics to see how adept they are at saving a customer that's identified that they want to flee. They're also incentivised to push new product to anyone they interact with on the phone. All the better if they can sell you something "at a discount" that you won't even use...like voice services as people are switching to cell-only phone service in droves. Pump the earnings, while adding almost nothing in operational cost. And while a "positive customer experience" is often discussed, it has little to do with your compensation. It's all about increasing sales, reducing costs, and truck rolls (minimizing truck rolls is likely tatooed on the private parts of all the supervisors and management types so they don't forget). This constant drum beat of cutting costs has resulted in:
Hiring "lowest bidder" outsourced staff to manage the phones
Reduction of overall customer service staff over time vs number of subscribers (no wonder the hold times are so looooong)
Slow infrastructure for internal staff (sometimes they really ARE waiting for their screen to update while you tap your foot for 2 minutes)
Slow and outdated services (DNS/Email in particular) for customers. Fast pipes seem glacial when it takes 20 seconds to resolve a hostname.
etc...
On the video side of the company, they're bleeding video subs steadily (and so is Time Warner). This is causing a panic. Video infrastructure and licensing is expensive fer chrissakes! Who's going to pay for all that? Well...you are. They haven't clued into the reality that a lot of people want to consume specific bits of content AT THEIR LEISURE. Paying for the hundreds of channels of obscure content that you just don't want is ludicrous when there are so many alternatives out there on the interwebs. That's why you're seeing Comcast kick and scream about content owners paying to ride their last mile to your doorstep (unless, of course, it's NBC Universal content...then it's ok and given a fat pipe). I know...a shocker.
Does this make them any different than any other megacorp with quarterly earnings to meet? Probably not. However, when you consider that they'll be the 800lb gorilla of ISP and cableTV service in the US after they ingest Time Warner, it does give one pause about the future of the quality and cost of those services. Someone is going to pay to keep those quarterly profits up, regardless of the actual cost to deliver the services. Buckle up. It's going to be a rough ride.
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Comcast is cr*p at doing the latter. Why did it take a callout to my house in order to get my cablecard working? The online system and their attempt to authorize the cablecard when I called in both failed, but why? All that happened during the callout was that the technician called his buddy to send the signal to authorize the cablecard. Then he changed a few connectors in the wiring -- probably to justify the callout.
Understaffed? (Score:2)
They fired most of the technicians and now 90% are subcontractors to get around most of the labor laws. Around here the guys that do Comcast have a magnetic sign on their rust bucket and will swap out for Dish when they go to that next job. They barely train these guys and they pay them a flat rate per job so they want to be in and out as fast as possible many times half assing it because they average out to being paid less than $7.00 an hour on most jobs.
Get smart ... (Score:3)
You know what these people are going to do, right? For cancellation, you gotta have a brick wall they can't navigate around.
Them: "WHY DO YOU WANT TO CANCEL?"
Me: "Because work is paying for a teleworker account from another ISP."
Them: "Which ISP?"
Me: "Heck, I don't know."
Them: "We can beat the other (speed, service, etc.)."
Me: "Not if you're not hooked up to my house."
Them: "We will give you 3 months free service just to keep you as a customer."
Me: "I've always back-billed my company for this service. They will not accept the charge in the future."
Them: "Are you dissatisfied with our service?"
Me: "WHAT? Heck, no ... I love you guys." .... ....
--
Go in prepared for it. Your parents died and you got no money. You're heading of to federal prison. Your house burned down.
Don't Bother Anymore (Score:2)
My credit has been crap for years mostly due to a steady flow of medical and therapy bills for my "special needs" child that far exceeds my ability to pay. But one benefit of not giving a fork about my FICO score is that I don't even bother to deal with the BS from cable, cell phone, internet, gym memberships, "free" trials, or anything else. When I want to change or drop a service I find it much more convenient to just close my bank account and open a new one than to deal with "Customer Retention Counsel
At&t sucks too. (Score:2)
No means No. (Score:3)
There's a saying in organizations like Comcast that "salesmanship begins with the customer says no."
Interestingly, "when the other person says no" is also a common definition of when rape begins.
Gives an interesting look.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is a problem all over the world with ISP's providing "smart" devices now often incapable of running in dumb mode. Buy your own modem 60-100 bucks at staples solves a lot of hassles since the tier 1 guys do know how to activate a customer owned cable modem (or DSL box for that matter). Frankly the concept of my ISP running my firewall scares me.
Psychotic customer service is rampant (Score:2)
Logically, how can this policy be the result of a decision made by professionals? If a customer really wants to end service hiding the exit door is just an inconvenience. If a girl wants to break up with her boyfriend and the boyfriend won't "let her" it's a serious psychological problem, nevermind illegal.
Yesterday I cancelled my newspaper delivery subscription (yeah I actually had the paper delivered on Sundays). I went to the web site to unsubscribe but guess what - it's impossible. There's not even
Canadian translation (Score:2)
Obligatory Jeff Dunham (Score:3)
[Cue Voice of Achmed]: "SILENCE! I bill you!"
This isn't just Comcast, and it isn't new (Score:2)
Better enemies (Score:2)
You don't know my enemies! Loan me a few Comcast customer service reps and a catapult, and I'll be a happy man.
a corporation (Score:2)
a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit
This is (and should be) the goal of all corporations. There are many strategies for achieving this goal. A corporation can bribe legislators for laws giving them special benefits and extra restrictions on their competitors, it can try to achieve a monopoly and exploit it, it can lower the cost of operation at the expense of quality, hope no one notices. It is our job as consumers to choose the companies we want to survive. It is in our interest as consumers to vote with our wallets for companies whose s
Cancel? I'd be happy of they could upgrade (Score:2)
robot (Score:2)
Rep: I’m just trying to figure out here what it is about Comcast service that you’re not liking.
Block: This phone call is actually a really amazing representative example of why I don’t want to stay with Comcast. Can you please cancel our service?
Rep: Okay, but I’m trying to help you.
Block: The way you can help me is by disconnecting my service.
Rep: But how is that helping you? How is that helping you? Explain to me how that is helping you.
Block: B
Re:Every single day (Score:5, Insightful)
We live in an era where people in charge have very little accountability to the masses. "The Mob" no longer puts fear into politicians or business community. As such "maybe I shouldn't do this nefarious yet legal deed because it could end up with guillotine" check is no longer there.
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We live in an era where people in charge have very little accountability to the masses. "The Mob" no longer puts fear into politicians or business community. As such "maybe I shouldn't do this nefarious yet legal deed because it could end up with guillotine" check is no longer there.
All things considered, that's probably for the best. "The Mob" has a spotty record when it comes to serving justice.
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If it bleeds, it leads. You could get it passed around long enough to get talked about, at least, even if the vast majority of people never see the source material.
Re:Every single day (Score:4)
Yes. It's easy to convince yourself that you did something, when in reality what you did was worse than doing nothing. You actually made yourself think that you tried to make a change, and as a result if nothing happens, you have a "well, at least I tried" excuse.
Which is why this is the reality:
http://www.princeton.edu/~mgil... [princeton.edu]
If you don't know what that is - that's the study of democratic impact of things like "desires of the masses" on actual legislative process. The study that concluded that US is de facto oligarchy, because when masses want something and capital wants something else, capital almost always gets what it wants.
And if you want to know why that is, all you need is to look in the mirror. "Just write your [legislative representative] (so he/she can ask for a bit more money in donations when he/she makes the opposite decision as to have a bit more to finance his/her re-election campaign)" is the solution that is worse than doing nothing.
At least doing nothing makes you feel guilty about it, and may eventually push you to act in ways that may actually bring about a change. What you are advocating is status quo. As a result, you're part of the problem.
And while "sawing people's heads off on youtube" is also a terrible solution, yours isn't that much better.
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So, pray tell, if writing your representative is worse than useless, what's the action that would actually work?
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So the poster asks for what would work, and you give them something you don't expect to work?
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No, he tells you one of the things that would indeed work.
Unfortunately, since most people instead follow the original advice, they get no results while remaining under the illusion that voting for incumbents from two main parties would bring some kind of a change.
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As long as we allow this behavior it will continue. Also if you are going to murder people ... Murder people who vote based on letters of TV commercials.
If you are not going to take the time to truly understand an issue keep your fucking opinion
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Getting things done in the Senate/Congress is a skill, one that I think is bolstered by experience..
The problem isn't so much that they serve too long, it's that they see their position as a way to advance their concerns, not those of their constituents. Force them out every couple years, and we'll have a hopelessly inept, ineffective legislature. (which isn't so different than what we have now).
What we really need is for them to be more accountable to us, and not their campaign donors. It's a more compl
Re: (Score:3)
You think the legislature is inept and ineffective. You are wrong. They are incredibly effective at getting laws passed to keep themselves in power.
A weak, mostly useless Federal government is a major step up.
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They are sticking for people that elected them. That's the entire point. It's just that ignorant people like you think that masses elected them.
In reality, their campaign donors elected them. Masses merely did what election campaigns paid by said donors told them to do.
Re: Every single day (Score:5, Insightful)
See how effective that was?
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30, 2014 @08:49AM (#47564927)
by ajegwu (1142365) on Wednesday July 30, 2014 @08:54AM (#47564957)
You're right, trying for more than five minutes was too much to ask. Off with their heads.
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Nice job ass-hole.
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And they don't badger you when you visit in person, given that you can recognize faces and wait for people to get into their cars and follow them home. No, mega corporations prefer to rip you off from a very safe distance with no way to identify the front-line "retention specialists".
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I'm definitely not a fan of global "corporatism" having undue influence and leverage over local and national governments or over the lives of private individuals. But when you say that people should be content with what they have and be happy, understand that the philosophy of Primitivism advocates this as well, and free internet is not a per-requisite.
If we're talking basic human rights, shouldn't the right to food, shelter, clean water, sleep, growing your own food, selling your own products and services