Comcast - The Worst Product Support in the World?

If you have Comcast, at one point or another you have probably had to try to navigate through their voice mail system. And you've probably experienced how it includes helpful suggestions such as, when you're calling over a loss of Internet connectivity, suggesting that you use their online support to address the problem. The navigation to product support is so cumbersome, and the hold times are so long, it seems as if they designed their phone support system to get people to give up and hang up long before they reach a real person. It can easily take half an hour to reach a live person.

As a basic rule of thumb, if you are having recurring problems with all of your services at the same time the source of problem will typically be somewhere between the utility pole and your in-home devices. If you are having problems with some services while others function well, and the resetting of your cable box or cable modem doesn't fix the problem, odds are the problem is Comcast's.

A while back I worked through their phone support to ask about a repeated problem with Internet and phone connectivity. Cable TV was working, so I expected to find that the problem was at Comcast's end. By the time I got through the problem had resolved itself, their "computer" didn't indicate that there was any work going on in my area, and they couldn't test for the source of the problem because the system was working. "Call back when the problem is still going on." So I did just that, via cell phone, again working through their ridiculous menu and tolerating their excessive wait times, and was told that this time their "computer" indicated that there was work going on in my area so that was "probably" the source of the outage.

I indicated that the problem had been recurring, that in the past I had difficulty getting through their phone system before the problems cleared up, and that it would be very helpful if they could provide a direct number so that I could more easily have somebody test for the source of the problem when it happened again. "We don't have a direct line." Well, I find that difficult - but not impossible - to believe. Many years ago I had phone service through a carrier that deliberately didn't assign direct lines to customer support so that you couldn't bypass their menu system (unless you're a VIP, because pretty much every company has special support numbers for special people, but ordinary customers aren't special). Intentionally terrible customer service. So here I am again, hearing a story that tells me either that the support person is lying to me or that Comcast is giving intentionally terrible product support for customers with repeat problems.

Now, let me travel back in time a few years. I had a cable installer come to the house to install high speed Internet and, as part of that process, he tested the completed installation including the television. He recommended setting a PIN for pay-per-view, both because that way we couldn't accidentally order a PPV movie and because children grow up and figure out how to use remote controls. Fair enough. It was a simple process, and the installer demonstrated it in action.

Fast forward to the present. My daughter, using the xfinity iPad app, manages to order a PPV show without entering the PIN. I check online and sure enough, the website suggests that this is not possible.

If the program is protected by your parental control settings, you will need to use your Comcast remote to enter the 4-digit PIN you have established.

The Internet is working so, why not? I'll try that online support they recommend over their inefficient phone support system. I explain the problem and get an obvious boilerplate reply, not responsive to the issue. I cycle through that a few times and then finally get a boilerplate reply indicating that their current system uses two separate PINs, both the parental control PIN and a purchase PIN. even though you won't find any mention of a separate "purchase PIN" in their Xfinity TV App FAQ, and even though this was a reprogramming of their system to effectively turn off the PIN protection I had previously implemented, I was at fault for not knowing that the system had changed.

Email support provides little but cut-and-paste answers, each from a new support person who identifies his or herself by "name" and then disappears into the ether. There's no continuity of service. Each email goes to a new person who has no knowledge of the history of the exchange, and no apparent interest in reading that history. Half don't even seem interested in, or perhaps it's capable of, understanding what you are saying.

Within that context, I received a cut-and-paste response instructing me how to set the "purchase PIN". So I go to the television to set the purchase PIN and, sure enough, the instructions are wrong. I find the exact same, incorrect instructions on Comcast's website. Wonderful. So I muddle around in the menus to find where they've buried the setting and create the purchase PIN. I then respond to Comcast explaining that their instruction was incorrect, that the instruction on their website was incorrect, and a walkthrough of the actual steps to set the purchase PIN. I also informed them that the instructions on their website for setting up a parental control PIN were also out-of-date.

The "helpful" response I received? Instructions on how to set up a parental control PIN. That's right, the one PIN that was set from the beginning. And the instruction on how to set that PIN? A cut-and-paste version of the same instruction from their website that I had just informed them was inaccurate.

The biggest problem, it would seem, is that Comcast has outsourced its email support services to the developing world and that although it's staff is competent to cut-and-paste simple answers to simple questions, many or most of their support staff lack the English language skills to respond to anything more than a simple question and instead scan for keywords or phrases to try to figure out what the customer is asking about.

At the end of this, having failed to understand my inquiry, failed to provide accurate information, and failed to correct their cut-and-paste "support" materials even after being put on explicit notice of their erroneous content, one of their reps not-so-helpfully suggested that I send feedback to some other division of Comcast to give feedback on my customer support experience. Here's the thing: When it's clear that they've dropped the ball on customer service, a customer service representative should take the initiative to pass along the issue to customer care himself.

Cue from above: A bluebird just flew past my window and, while not knowing if it is in fact the bluebird of happiness, it's time to move on to happier thoughts.

That's Helpful....

If your Internet service is out and you call Comcast, they tell you that you can avoid a wait for a customer service representative by... using their website.

Modern Customer Service

One of the biggest problems of the manner in which many businesses offer what presently passes for "customer service" is that there is no consistency in who is working to resolve a problem, and thus there is nobody who is responsible to resolve the problem. Some companies, such as (at last check) MCI, claim not to have individual extensions for their employees. (A phone company wihtout extensions? C'mon.) Even if you have the employee's name, you have to try to work your way through an invisible labyrinth of switchboards to be reconnected.

Some more recent examples of this phenomenon:

* My webhosting company, eager to make me wonder why I stayed with them after last year's experience, tried to pair customer service highs with customer service lows. The highs? Their employees are for the most part very good at dealing with increasingly frustrated customers. The lows? Pretty much everything else.

I was having some problems with a server, so I requested that they reboot the server. The site didn't come back online, which isn't a particularly good sign - but also one they should catch. When they did get the server restarted, it wouldn't run Apache, which is to say it wouldn't run any websites. They ran a diagnostic and, surprise, the hard drive was failing

I asked the technician who called with that news how long I could reasonably expect one of their hard drives to last. "We use Seagate drives." Yes, but how long should they last? "I've seen them last a month, and I've seen them last five years." Yes, but how long should I reasonably be able to expect them to last? "If you need to be absolutely certain that your data is always online there are systems which can do that. For $100,000.00 you can set up a...." I'm aware that if I spend an unlimited amount of money I can get a much more reliable system; I'm asking about this hard drive on this system. I know I'm not one of your heavier users, so what can I reasonably expect? "I've seen them last for years, or sometimes just a month or two." Egad....

Rather than sticking a new hard drive into the old system, I contacted customer service to upgrade to newer, more capable hardware. "You're aware that we won't be able to transfer your IP's over to the new machine?" Well, not ideal, but I still wanted to upgrade. I made clear that I wanted to cancel the old machine, as it wasn't running anyway and I wasn't going to bring it back online even if they put a new hard drive in it. I added on their backup solution which, although in my opinion a bit overpriced for what you get will perhaps save me some grief the next time my hard drive fails after a period of time they cannot approximate.

So I go to the new server's administrative interface and start setting up the websites. At which time I notice that the only IP Addresses I can assign to websites are those from the old server. I contact customer service. "The new block of IP's should have been assigned to your server." Well, yeah. "Hey - you say you're cancelling the old server. We can transfer that block of IP's to your new server if you want." I thought you couldn't do that. "It's pretty easy. I'll take care of it for you." It should be done in about sixty to ninety minutes.

Later that evening I still can't work with the IP's, so I call back. "It says here in the notes that everything is fine." What does it say if you attempt to verify the notes, rather than just reading them. "Oh. It looks like it wasn't completed. And the guy who does that went home for the night." So? "He comes in about 8:30 in the morning. I'll put a sticky on his screen and he'll probably take care of it first thing."

At 9:00 the next morning.... "That was done last night." Did you see the sticky on your screen? "Yes, I did, but the notes say it was done." Did you attempt to verify the notes, rather than just reading them? "Oh. Let me look into this." [Insert 40 minutes on hold here.] "It was done yesterday." If it was done yesterday, why isn't it working now? "Our system has to reset itself for the changes to take place, and it reboots every six hours. So everything should be working by noon." Didn't the system reboot, then, at 6 AM? And for that matter at midnight last night? And at 6 PM yesterday? "Um, the system will reboot at noon and it should work after that."

That was accurate - shortly after noon, everything seemed to be working... except for the fact that I couldn't access the server by FTP or POP or SMTP. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out if there was a problem at my end... nope. Back to technical support. "The ports are closed." Yes, when I called you I told you that the ports were closed. I need them open, so I can set up my websites." "I don't know why they are closed." I don't care. I need them open. "It may be a security reason, because they should be open." Well, find out if there is a security problem then, fix it, and open them. "I can't see from the account history if you closed them or if we did. If you closed them there will be a charge to reopen them." I'm telling you right now that you closed them. "Let me check something. Can you hold for a couple of minutes?" [Insert a couple of minutes on hold here.] "We can't figure out who closed the ports, so we'll open them without charging you." You closed them. Thank you for agreeing to reopen them. "I said we couldn't figure out...." Well, as I said, I didn't close them, which leaves you.

"Which ports do you want open?" How about the ones which are supposed to be open by default? "I can't advise you as to which ports to have open." I'm not asking for advice, just the default settings. [Insert tedious discussion of ports here.] "We can have those open for you in one to two hours, and I've made the note extremely clear so that they will do it right." Is this something I can fix from my end? "No, this has to be changed here... wait, yes. On your machine you can open these ports yourself." Can you tell me how? "Sorry, I can't do that."

Two hours later, a return call to indicate that the SMPT and POP ports (those for email) remained closed (although I had been happily transferring files to the server to bring the sites back on line). "Let me tell you how to fix that yourself" (Less than thirty seconds later....)

Although the summary doesn't necessarily convey it, that last technician was highly professional, courteous, and knowledgeable. He was unable to be more helpful because company policy is to charge by the task for as much support as possible unless a customer is paying a monthly fee to have support included with their server. So even though every single problem I had was the fault of the webhost, their own policies prevented their technicians from providing actual customer support... because I hadn't paid them for the privilege of helping them troubleshoot their own screwups. It says something that at the end of the day (well, actually, the end of the second day) their own technical support representative was sufficiently exhausted with their system to break the rules by giving me instruction, rather than issuing yet another ticket to have things fixed in-house "in an hour or two."

* I sent an inquiry to Comcast over some email problems, noting that AOL was rejecting emails I was sending. In the first email I described the correction that AOL requested they implement in order to resolve the problem. In the second email I summarized the problem and pointed out a minor incorrection in the first email.

The response to the first email explained that they could not make individualized changes to Comcast accounts, then presented a lengthy (and entirely irrelevant) description of how to configure email for an Outlook Express account. (Even if I used Outlook Express, that wouldn't be the problem....)

The second email, which by any sensible measure should have been sent to the same person, went instead to a different person. That second person, looking at exactly the same problem, indicated "We are aware of this issue and we apologize for any inconvenience that it may cause you. Our engineers are in contact with the email administrators at AOL, and they are working together to resolve this issue."

In my opinion, they're working a bit too slowly at one end or the other, but at least the second communication was relevant and helpful. However only the first communication was given a customer service ticket number, so I can't follow up to the second without being routed to yet another random customer support person.