I’ve had our office’s Internet connectivity provided by Comcast’s business services division for about a year now and I love it. It’s less than $200 per month and speeds average between 6-8mbps down and are always 1mbps up. It’s hard to beat.
However, I recently tried to change my billing address, and that was a different story.
1. I login to my account online and after poking around a little find out where to change my address. I enter my new information into the online form and submit it. But I get an error telling me I need to enter a valid first name and valid last name. There’s just one problem–there is nowhere to enter a first name or last name. That’s right. There are no fields for such things.
2. So I call Comcast. The menu system instructs me to dial 1 for English, 2 for high-speed Internet, and so I choose #2. It then asks me to enter the phone number listed with them. I enter in the number. Then it asks me to enter it again. Then again, and yet again. Then it reads back the number for me to confirm by pressing 1. I press 1. It then asks me to enter my phone number again. Finally, it accepts my number.
3. The first thing the customer service representative asks me for is my phone number. I calmly give it to her. I then tell her I’m calling to change my billing address because the website won’t let me do it. She politely tells me she’ll need to connect me with the Internet division of Comcast and they can take care of me. Wait…I thought I already pressed 2 to select the Internet dept. ages ago?! But fine, transfer me over.
4. I am put on hold and wait a few minutes. The rep comes back on, tells me she’s got the Internet dept. on the line and they will be able to take care of me, at which point she disconnects me.
So the way I see it, I have a few options. One is to commit suicide. Another is to use this negative experience as motivation to change my life, so maybe I’ll go climb Everest or something like that. You know, turn a negative into a positive. Or I can call back and go through the whole process again. Well, this is really a toss-up, so I think I’ll need to go lie down for a while and consider my choices.
***UPDATE***
So I finally got a hold of Comcast. I talked with someone who was very nice and seemed quite competent and they scheduled the install between 8 am and 12 noon on Thursday. So Wednesday night I disconnected my cable modem at the office, which means our phone system went down since it’s Internet based. My thinking was that we would only miss 3-4 hours at most of business hours, so no big deal.
So I waited at home. Nobody came at 8. Nor at 9. Nor by 10. But the guy at Comcast had told me they would call me a half hour before so I figured I could go run errands nearby and easily get home if they called. So I went out and 11 passed and then noon with no call. 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, and still no call. I called Comcast and left messages, but couldn’t get through to my contact. The day came and went and still nothing. No call, no return of my messages, no installer. I finally called a different number at Comcast but was told the people I needed to talk to weren’t there anymore and I would have to call back the next day.
I call this morning and I’m told the appointment was cancelled and they have a new appointment for 10am today. Well, that’s swell, but I wouldn’t be home today at 10am, but figured if they called me I could talk to a neighbor and arrange to have the neighbor let them in.
10am came and went and what do you know, no phone call. Finally, at 3 pm today I got a hold of somebody in the right department. What do you know, the reason the install was cancelled yesterday was because they came by at 11 am and nobody was here. Now, I actually think I was here, but maybe I wasn’t. Either way, I didn’t get a phone call as promised, which is what I was counting on. Oh, but it appears they did make a phone call, but they called the office number, which is disconnected because the Internet is down, and that’s why they couldn’t get a hold of me.
Really, it’s all my fault. They did call as promised, and they did stop by during the correct time. It just so happens that they couldn’t get through to me on my phone, and I wasn’t there. Well, it would all be my fault, except that I called Comcast THREE TIMES and made sure they had my cell phone number so that when they called me they could get a hold of me. But somehow that message didn’t get through despite them promising it would, and so they were calling the wrong number, the number I specifically told them wouldn’t work.
In other words, the entire system broke down because of what appears to have been a small communication error. The guy did call as promised. The guy did show up on time as promised. But he had the wrong phone number, despite me contacting Comcast three times. And so here I am today, having lost two entire days of phone calls and who knows how many thousands of dollars from deals that won’t happen because somebody tried to call and couldn’t get through.
