House burned down? We've heard that one before
Because
of course they did this:
A fire destroyed a 66-year-old man's house in St. Paul and everything in it, including the TVs, but his cable service? He couldn't get it canceled, at first.
Jimmy Ware lost all his possessions in the wind-whipped fire in St. Paul's North End on April 1. Since then, his daughter said, she had been calling Comcast but was unable to cut off his service until Tuesday, when the company did so and issued an apology.
You can say,
hey who knows what crazy things people tell Comcast to cancel their service? If canceling your cable service was as easy as burning down your home and all of your possessions
everyone would do it! Comcast has a fail-proof way of dealing with
that conundrum.
I've said to Comcast, 'Here's your choice, disconnect the service or send someone out to fix the cable, because it's not working,' " Schmidt said. "The (Comcast) guy said, 'That doesn't make sense, because the house burned down.' I said, 'Exactly, shut the service off.' "
Now, in Comcast's defense, the reasoning for the snafu is that they have a very legitimate policy safeguarding customers from unauthorized individuals mucking about with their accounts. The above quote highlights a larger problem of corporate accountability that most every company employs to defend themselves against having to be sympathetic, and in
many cases, criminal, in their abuse of consumers.
The man/woman on the phone at customer service has very limited powers to do much of anything. Companies like Comcast want you to become frustrated and take the easier road, go away and pay your bill.
This is part of why Comcast (and others) always rate terribly on customer satisfaction.
Temkin noted there are also good reasons why companies like Comcast, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, Time Warner Cable, Coventry Health Care and Charter Communications get the lowest scores.
The groups at the bottom of Temkin’s rankings tend to cluster around three industries: TV, Internet and health plan providers. “These three industries have had a hard time focusing on customers,” said Temkin. “And, even the best of these companies have scores so mediocre [compared to other businesses] that there’s not a lot of competitive motivation to improve customer service.”
[bold my emphasis]
That's a link and quote to a Forbes' article. I highlighted the "analysis" because they got half of the sentence right—there's not a lot of competitive motivation to improve customer service. It isn't because they are sad and it's hard to get people to like their cable provider, it's because they have monopolies and don't care what the consumer feels about the goods they provide. What are you going to do, watch everything on your phone? Not with telecom prices you ain't.