Three strikes for Comcast Triple Play

My Comcast service is out at home.  I am a triple play subscriber.  This means:

1. No TV (not a big deal)
2. No internet access (a hassle)
3. No telephone (potentially a big deal)

Here's the transcript of my chat session.  A quick summary:  "Oh hai.  Can't help.  Here's some spam.  Ok bye."

user Peter_ has entered room
P:  My comcast service is down - no internet access, phone calls, or tv.  When will it be fixed?

analyst Eric has entered room
E:  Hello Peter_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Eric. Please give me one moment to review your information.
E:  I am very sorry to learn about the difficulties that you have experienced.  I will be happy to assist you in resolving them.
E:  One moment please while I see if there is trouble in your area.
E:  I apologize for the inconvenience. There is an outage in the area. Our technicians are currently working to resolve the problem. At this time we do not have an estimated time of repair.

E:  Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
P:  No.

E:  Thank you for contacting Comcast. If you need assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us through Live Chat or E-mail (available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). Thank you again for choosing Comcast we appreciate your business.  To visit our local support page including links to contact us via Email, as well as  many downloadable forms,and FAQ pages, please visit:  http://www.comcast.com/nesupport/

Did you know that Comcast offers its customers a variety of free benefits?  These include McAfee Antivirus, Firewall and Privacy software as well the Comcast tool bar that lets you take Comcast.net with you while you surf, and the Desktop Doctor to help you restore lost settings...plus much more, please visit http://www.comcast.net/downloads/ to see all of the extras that we provide.

E:  Get tips from the FBI on how to protect your family online and watch an overview of the McAfee security suite! Please join us for “Online Safety for the Connected Family”, a free live webinar, September 12th, 2007 at 8pm. A live question and answer session will follow the presentation. Visit www.comcast.com/getconnected for more details and to register!

Don’t forget Comcast offers its customers many free benefits McAfee Antivirus, Firewall and Privacy software as well the Comcast tool bar that lets you take Comcast.net with you while you surf, and the Desktop Doctor to help you restore lost settings...plus much more, visit http://www.comcast.net/downloads/ to see all of the extras!

Thank you very much for contacting Comcast electronic support.

If you require additional assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us again; we appreciate your business!
To visit our local download page please visit:  http://www.comcast.com/nesupport/

Analyst has closed chat and left the room
analyst Eric has left room

Comments

[Mike Spataro]

Nice to see they are trying to sell you while you're offline Peter.

[patmcgraw]

And I wonder why marketing has such a lousy reputation?! Somewhere, locked far away from reality, someone thought "Let's cross sell services during customer service chats - after all, our customer is right there and it's free."

Why can't they just focus on consistently delivering quality service that meets and/or exceeds my expectations? Why can't they make up a time frame for the repair to be completed - or even tell the tech crew that they have 4 hours to fix it and that they are locked into that time if, at the 3 hour mark, they do not report into management with a request for additional time that includes more than 'cause i don't want to work too hard'?

Then service could contact the customer - email to a secondary account? Call a cell phone? Call a work number?

Then we, the folks that pay $100-200 per month for these services, would be serviced instead abused?!

Ahh, but why bother - Comcast is a monopoly in most places. :(

[Becky Carroll]

This is what a chat session looks like when contact center reps cut and paste from a script! Not very friendly!!

A Customers Rock! company would craft a more personal response to each customer, try to figure out how to assist them better, maybe even proactively let customers know about the outage in the area, and follow-up afterwards. A Customers Rock! company would not try to upsell or cross-sell when there is a problem or issue to be resolved. They would perhaps provide some kind of compensation as well for the outage time.

Let us know how it worked out!

[Peter Kim]

@Pat - well, I'm waiting for Verizon FIOS to become available and then there will actually be a choice!

@Becky - it's back on...that's it. Not very Comcastic in my opinion.

[Andrew]

Comcast is by far the least customer friendly company that I have ever dealt with. I have had internet outages for weeks at time and had technician after technician come out and not be able to fix it. Worse, Comcast makes you call them back and ask for credit for the down time as opposed to it being automatic!

Thankfully, about a year ago, I was able to get Verizon FIOS. Much more reliable and less inexpensive - what a concept.

[christina]

how lame!
i had a good experience with nordstorms' online chat to find items, which was really helpful :)