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Comcast Merger: Getting Bigger for the Sake of Getting Bigger

Comcast's historically abysmal customer customer service has many causes, not least of which is the company's fairly obvious lax standards when it comes to subcontractors, which over the years has resulted in installers falling asleep, murdering people, digging in the wrong yard, blowing up laptops, dishwashers and homes or even animal cruelty. But to hear many Comcast insiders tell it, another major reason for Comcast's problems is the fact that the company has spent much of its existence growing for the sake of growing.

That results in a collection of discordant dysfunctional systems Comcast never really spends time or money fixing or integrating, because they've already got their eye on the next prize. Or, as one former Comcast employee tells The Verge in a good piece on the merger:
quote:
“This is not getting bigger to provide cheaper service, or economies of scale, or to provide better service,” the onetime Comcast staffer explains. “This is getting bigger for the sake of bigness. This is really like, ‘I own 10 Subway stores and now I want an 11th one.’… Well, if your 10 Subway stores have Cs from the health department, I don’t know if you should get an 11th one. Maybe you should work on getting them cleaned out."
Granted growth for growth's sake is an investor-driven disease that is not unique to Comcast, Comcast's just exceptionally gifted when it comes to gobbling up companies and then being immensely, undeniably bad at customer support. The full Verge article is a must read, as is this ongoing article allowing Comcast employees to dish internal details.

Most recommended from 52 comments



josephf
join:2009-04-26

2 recommendations

josephf

Member

It is their right as private parties to merge

The companies are not governmental entities (and thankfully for that much) and it is their rights as private property owners and parties to a business transaction to decide to merge with each other. Any of us being dissatisfied with their services does not give anyone of us or the government the legal right to prevent the businesses from engaging in a merger transactions of their private properties that they've agreed to - however foolhardy any of us or the government may think it is. They are not competing with each other and thus there are no anti-trust laws here being violated. Keeping TWC as a separate corporation from Comcast will not result in improved customer service.