101–110 of 356 posts
Its a corrupt market. Their job is to lie to you, your job has to be to lie right back. "I'm moving to (insert name of city owned by competitor)"
>"I'm moving to (insert name of city owned by competitor)" Unfortunately, that's becoming harder and harder to do... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast-Time_Warner_Cable_mer...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The guy who he was talking to works for Comcast, is pursuing Comcast goals (which aggressively punishes agents who don't have high enough retention rates), and is recorded and often monitored by Comcast. The Comcast agent clearly has a list of complaints/responses that they use to try to defuse all complaints -- not that they've actually solved your problem, but rather that they made you think the call was no longer…
I was able to cancel my account with comcast, just two weeks ago, in under twenty minutes. Are you saying that if he had hung up, and called again, he would have faced an equally long phone call? My point is that he did not have to put up with this. Obviously there are going to be some bad apples amongst the thousands of comcast customer service employees. He could have hung up on this guy, called back, and gotten a…
the only correct response to any sort of intrusive question by a customer service representative is "thank you for your time. transfer me to your supervisor"
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Yeah, this is actually amazing. I don't think I would have lasted more than 2 minutes answering the same question over and over again.
He wasn't answering the question over and over; he was refusing to answer the question. Which is, of course, his right. And maybe it would turn out that the rep would refuse to recognize his answer. And there is some social value in there occasionally being a crank who refuses to play by the rules just to expose them for the silliness there is. But realize he wasn't trying to get through this call easily. He was tryi…
This is a great example for how setting goals can do more harm than good. If you start measuring people, they'll optimize for what you are measuring.
-Hi, I'd like to cancel.
-Cool, we are upgrading your account so you don't need to. -Umm, just cancel it please.
-Today only, you get 5GB for free
-I don't care, I want to cancel.
-Why?
-Because I don't need your service anymore.
-But what about the free data!?
-I don't need you, I am moving country.
-What country and when? Do you want another month before you leave?
-I am leaving tomorrow.
-But what about the free 5gb?
-If I say yes to the free 5gb, then what happens?
-Well we can't make more than 1 change to your account in a day, so you can't cancel if you accept our upgrade.
-Then just cancel.
-Ok putting your through to the right department
line goes dead
Next attempt, they take my number in case line goes dead, it does, they ring back, after one ring, line goes dead.
Third attempt, they cancel it.
After a month of no service I called to cancel, and after 45 minutes on hold I gave up. I tried again. And again. Eventually I got through to someone who processed the cancellation. I got an email saying "To confirm your intended cancellation, send an email to cancellation-confirmation@..."
That address didn't exist. The next month they started to charge me for a service I wasn't getting. I had a different ISP by this point. I called and got the money back. They took it again the next month. I called and got the money back. The third month I got a letter saying I hadn't paid for three months, so they took three months money from my card. This time I called and got the money back and demanded they remove me from their systems. Eventually someone said OK.
Six months later I got a demand for 9 months service charges. I called and told them to stuff it. Another six months later they started demanding even more money and making threats. That's when I started the official (UK) complaints procedure. You start by writing a long email setting out your demands, end it by saying "This will also be sent by registered mail, and you have 30 days to resolve this until I report you to the communications ombudsman"
The first response I got to that was a letter saying "We understand you'd like to cancel your service?" So I sent another letter, stating my demands and that no, there had never been a service to cancel, and by the way this is being sent by registered post and you have 18 days before I contact the ombudsman.
I think by the third letter it had been resolved, almost 18 months since I first tried to cancel the account. I had to move house shortly after that though, and I've worried since then that one day they're going to turn around and say "hold on, this guy owes us for ten years of broadband! Let's ruin his credit rating!"
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Yeah, of course this guy didn't have to put up with a phone call like this. Comcast has bad service, but I highly doubt this is the norm. He could have hung up and called again, no problem. But he stayed on the phone because after ten minutes, he was already drooling thinking about sending this recording to his buddies at Techcrunch. So yeah, maybe he's a bit needlessly overdramatic about this, but personally I'm tha…
The guy who he was talking to works for Comcast, is pursuing Comcast goals (which aggressively punishes agents who don't have high enough retention rates), and is recorded and often monitored by Comcast. The Comcast agent clearly has a list of complaints/responses that they use to try to defuse all complaints -- not that they've actually solved your problem, but rather that they made you think the call was no longer…
And that is why businesses should push for legislation making it illegal. It is rare for me to sign up for a service using my credit card, and I'm not the only one. The bottom feeders make it hard for legitimate companies to get customers.
OMG is Comcast brainwashing their staff? This guy sounds like some Scientology nut.
No, this guy works in the cancellations department, to which you are connected when you indicate that you want to cancel your service. That means it is his sole job to convince persons to not cancel the service. He also receives a bonus for every phone call he makes that does not result in a cancellation. For you it's 15 minutes of time wasted, for him it means 15 minutes of hard work that came very close to paying o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this is actually amazing. I don't think I would have lasted more than 2 minutes answering the same question over and over again.
He wasn't answering the question over and over; he was refusing to answer the question. Which is, of course, his right. And maybe it would turn out that the rep would refuse to recognize his answer. And there is some social value in there occasionally being a crank who refuses to play by the rules just to expose them for the silliness there is. But realize he wasn't trying to get through this call easily. He was tryi…
Also, the caller was not a "crank who refuses to play by the rules." There is no rule that says customers have to fill out a survey upon canceling service. It was clear to me that the Comcast agent was also not asking those questions honestly. He was using them as a rhetorical trick to get the customer to eventually say, "Fine, don't cancel my service."