Just when you think you can go a month without a Comcast support horror story making headlines, a Comcast support horror story makes headlines. The Consumerist notes that one Comcast customer was surprised to see that his first name had been changed to "a**hole" when he received his monthly bill. The customer claims neither she or her husband was impolite with the company's support, and in traditional Comcast fashion getting her name changed back became an arduous process.
You might (or might not) be surprised to learn this isn't the first incident of this type for Comcast. The company
made headlines back in 2005 when a rep changed a customer's name to "bitch dog."
As for this latest instance, Consumer advocate Chris Elliott contacted Comcast, who finally changed the customer's name back and apologized for the apparent low quality of their customer support. Again:
quote:
"We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change,” he said. “We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened. We are working with our customer to make this right and will take appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again."
Comcast has repeatedly proclaimed that it's working very hard to improve customer service, and while these kinds of stories are anecdotal, they're supported by customer satisfaction studies that show Comcast support
actually appears to be getting worse. The problem is, like the subcontractor issues that have plagued Comcast
for years, to really improve support quality at scale takes significant money. Money Comcast simply isn't going to spend when the company lacks the competitive incentive to do so in most of its markets. Some bad press in the media doesn't have much of an impact when a massive swath of your customer base can't vote with their wallet.