Comcast Tortures Customer, Customer Busts Up Office With Hammer
By Greg L | 6 October 2007 | Local Economy, Humor & Satire | 54 Comments
Man, there are times before I switched to Verizon that I wished I could have done this:
After repeated attempts to change her phone service from Verizon to Comcast’s Triple Play during a week in August, the 75-year-old Bristow resident with a heart condition took out her frustrations at the Manassas payment center on Center Street.
Shaw was arrested for disorderly conduct after she took a hammer to several items in the office - all the while saying, “Have I got your attention now?”
I think I’d rather be detained in Club Gitmo than be subjected to Comcast Customer Service. If Comcast doesn’t drop the charges against Mrs. Shaw, we’re going to have one of the biggest demonstrations Manassas has ever seen protesting the way Comcast abuses it’s customers. I dealt with them once before on a short-term internet service contract with a former employer, and these asshats still robo-call me regularly on my cell phone.
Comcast is the worst company I have ever dealt with, bar none. Their standard of service is that they intend to resolve problems within five days, and they only manage to solve 2/3rds of the problems even within that time period. I’ll bet their new quality initiative will be to extend that period to ten days, and then they can tout they resolve 90% of customer problems within their quality service timeframe. That would be entirely consistent with my experience.
Never, ever, ever call Comcast for internet service. If 75 year old ladies are justifiably driven to attacking their offices with a hammer out of frustration, just imagine what your reaction might possibly be.
The opinions expressed here are solely the views of the author, and not representative of the position of any organization, political party, doughnut shop, knitting guild, or waste recycling facility, but may be correctly attributed to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. If anything in the above article has offended you, please click here to receive an immediate apology.
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I’ve got commercial internet service from Comcast. Its difficult to get customer support to do anything other than “schedule a truck”. You’d think this would be the more expensive option among those available.
If I had more problems with service I’d no doubt be as frustrated as others.
Personally I was dismayed that the Journal Messenger was excusing unexcusable behavior. Sometimes things happen and people (or companies) aren’t efficient or nice, but violence is not the answer.
No jury in the world that is made up of current or former cable subscribers (especially Comcast ones) would ever convict this woman.
I’ve had Comcast cable internet (not TV or phone) for about four years. I’ve found the internet service to be reliable & working probably 98% of the time.
I’ve never had to deal with “customer service” from a billing or account standpoint, but dealing with “technical support” has always been a positive experience for me. If the outage is long-term (like more than a few hours) they have almost always been bang-on as to when the problem would be resolved.
I just divorced myself from comcast yesterday. shifted to directv and verizon DSL. The directv channels knock comcast out of the water as far as quantity and quality.
The DSL is a bit slower, but I’m happy that my connection isnt getting cut off all the time. I guess they’ll start thinking about their policies a bit more when people cancel their cable and internet because they suck.
the great part, I’m saving about 70.00 month and getting more channels albeit slower internet service, I can live with that.
Great! Now the poor schmucks who have to deal with irate customers have to worry about being physically attacked in the office. This woman didn’t hit any human, but how can it be considered OK to wield a hammer in a public office?
Why does this site encourage violence? Why, indeed, is this even of interest on a supposedly political blog? Rabblerousing is totally unnecessary. For shame!
Krutis,
If you don’t like this blog, go somewhere else. Greg reports the local news far better than the Manassas Journal Messenger.
I don’t know why people still go the “cable” route when both DirecTV and Dish Network both provide a superior picture, choice of channels and lower cost. I dumped the old Cablevision who was bought by Comcast when DirecTV started up. Cablevision fed me a line for about a year as to why I was receiving a poor picture. Found out later from one of their techs that the reason they gave me was BS! They didn’t know why I was getting poor reception and and couldn’t find the problem.
Patty - If Greg is in the business of reporting news, he ought to start a newspaper and compete with MJM. I saw the HSM newsletter and was impressed. Very good!
As for going to another blog. No, I stay with this blog because it shows me a side of society I’m not very familiar with. I try to keep up and getting educated any way I can.
Krutis: You are annoying as hell. You say you are an old man but you act like you are a 22 year old liberal hippy activist - at best. Grow up please and stop annoying us adults.
Josh: At least you have that option to switch. Here in the park we can’t get DSL so I am stuck to comcast. Over the years I have been through bouts of outages that make me so mad that I could strangle them myself. Since I NEED my internet service to connect to work to fix issues that may arise, I can not afford outages. Verizon will spend no money to upgrade their infrastructure in the park because they see it as a town full of dregs that would never use it anyway. Just another reason to not live in this fleabag town. I would switch to any other form of TV and internet service if given an option but comcast is the only game in town for the park.
“news” can be reported here anyway you want it to appear. No ethics involved. C’mon at least be honest.
Dave B. - What? Grow up and turn into an adult like you? Heaven forbid!
Krutis: Choose an adult to grow up to be. Anyone. Your choice, I don’t care. Just grow up and stop being the annoying horsefly that you are. You remind me of the punk kid that loves to sing nanny nanny boo boo after someone speaks just to annoy them. You don’t even come here to express your opinions as far as I can tell. You just come here to annoy and berate others for theirs.
Dave B,– Krutis is loving all this attention. He deliberately posts stupid things just to put the focus on him. He eats it up, poor guy.
I must not have the comcast curse. I have tv, internet, phone and fake tivo with them. Everything works 99% of the time. I hope I haven’t put a whammy on myself saying this.
Dave,
I was pretty lucky as far as DSL, i’m just within the limit to the Central office and got just under 3Mbps download which is not screaming but good enough
Comcast cut me off last month without a warning (remember those articles in the wash post? I was one of those people they chopped) the reactivated my line but told me to “stop downloading” since I dont download I was a bit perplexed but since the service is touted as “unlimited” I didnt think it mattered. Apparently there is a mysterious limit (they wont tell you what it is) that when you reach it, they disconnect you!
So after I got my line reactivated I pursued DSL, i NEED internet work as well since I telecommute sometimes, it’s much better than going to the government telecommute centers for sure. As soon as my DSL line was provisioned I called DirecTV and had them come out. My DSL and Directv was online the same day so I cancelled everything comcast. I got about 3 calls to confirm that was what I really wanted to do, I told them to cancel me and stop calling.
Funny thing, when I went to the local office to return my HD box, they still had my account active!
Verizon FIOS is just around the corner I’m told, hopefully it will come into my neighborhood soon and I’ll be all set
Josh
Verizon will never upgrade anything in Manassas Park. It really is discriminatory since I know the reason they won’t do it is because this town is known for being predominantly low income. You can bet that if this town cleaned its act up that Verizon would be willing to spend the money to satisfy its customers. I guess they don’t consider a town full of 80% illegals and 20% rednecks worthy of an upgrade…
Enjoy your DSL. I wish I could.
The reason Comcast doesn’t work is because they’re selling digital services that are running on analog pipes. Until we have a true fiber network coming all the way into our home, all we’re buying is a bunch of marketing hype and being gauged for services that they are unable to fully deliver.
Comcast and Verizon need competition. It’s time we insist on quality of service that can and should be delivered seamlessly county wide.
County Exec. Gerhardt is incompetent for accepting a franchise agreement with vendors that are technologically behind the curve. Ironically he had to have known it because if you look at your bill’s there is $1.18 FEE, it’s a tax that goes towards a 5.5 million dollar debt the county owes Comcast for 2 fiber optic networks that ONLY county government can access for high speed Internet.
We’re paying the bill and don’t get to use it!
I’m really getting sick and tired of our incompetitent government employees. Time to cut back the budget, I recommend we slash salaries by 20%!
Dave, I don’t understand how MP can be considered low income anymore! Your houses there are outrageously priced and your taxes have been the highest in the State ever since the town went city. WE couldn’t afford to live there!
Insofar as Comcast is concerned, that name is not permitted to be spoken in this house! It is considered profane and dealt with accordingly. Long story, but suffice it to say, if you ever have a costly problem which involves THEIR mistake, even if they admit it, expect this response when you demand your money back: “Sorry about that, but we don’t do that.” That’s an exact quote (they’re so eloquent).
Dave B 11:58 - I have expressed my opinions. 1. The woman with the hammer was in the wrong!
2. Greg’s statement that “if Comcast doesn’t drop the charges against this woman, we’re going to have one of the biggest demonstrations Manassas has ever seen…” Promise or threat? My opinion: totally uncalled for! If one decided to be nitpicking, it might be called “inciting an uprising”, but I won’t go that far. BTW, who would lead the demonstration? Greg?
As Dave B can see, I do state my opinions (and, man, do I have a lot of them) and you’re lucky to have a chance to be partaking of them. (You’re supposed to be LOL right about now.)
AWC: Try us now since the prices have been dropping. I’ve lost about 80k or so in equity this year alone and at this point couldn’t sell it for 10 dollars most likely. The town has a terrible rep as an illegal sanctuary and therefor nobody wants to live here, other than illegals of course, and they can no longer get financing to buy here. Sort of a catch 22 eh? I am still paying 4k a year in taxes on a house that is nowhere near the value that they assessed it for. We are in for some bad times here in the park when the revenue from real estate values dropping kicks in to the city coffers. Bankruptcy is the only option for this town that I can see if something isn’t done in the next 12 months to recoup the lost revenue.
Comcast’s outages even have almost driven me to sell my house a few years ago because they were so bad at the time. I would go a week here and a week there for months with no service and had to take half days off from work to meet their people at my house. What a PITA that was. The last month has also been bad as well with many hours of down time. I don’t know what I will do now if their service goes down because there is no way out of this town for me with the real estate market being what it is.
Their customer service is the worst. We’ve been repeatedly over-billed for 6 months. Each month we call and get it “fixed”, but the over-billing appears on the next month’s invoice again. Sigh.
As far as cable/internet/digital voice - top notch!
They really need to concentrate on their customer service.
Dave B., if you are interested… my understanding is there is a public hearing in Manassas Park about award a second cable contract to Verizon on Tuesday. Since I believe competition is good, and I have my own axe to grind with Comcast, I am going to speak in favor of it.
“AWC: Try us now since the prices have been dropping.”
Sorry Dave…the County tax rates and government structure, no matter how many problems there might be, are far superior to the Park. I’ve live in the County for 46 years and, if we ever move, it will be after my husband retires and to a much cheaper area. You may have noticed my tongue firmly in cheek with that previous comment.
Park’d is back! Welcome back, neighbor!
Rob: park’d is Dave B. I just post from multiple machines and never bother to change the moniker on any of them. Sorry for the confusion.
Anon: I hope verizon comes here and offers service. They would have to build a CO to do this which would take significant time. I wouldn’t think that they could do that in less than 3 years and God willing I will be out of this dump town by then.
AWC: I was tongue in cheek when I asked that you come back to the park. I know nobody with any smarts would want to be caught dead in this town now unless they didn’t have any other choice.
Dave
Having dealt with Comcast customer service, I can understand her frustration, although I can’t condone violence. Abut three years ago I was a cable customer. They got rid of the program guide on their regular cable service and tried to upgrade me to the digital service. I told the rep that I couldn’t afford the upgrade, and without the scroll I was missing the programs I was paying for. His response was, it’s gone and it’s not coming back. I said then I’m going and not coming back. I switched to the dish the next day.
When I returned the cable box the Comcast’s Manassas Park office, the women there were very nice, and told me if I had talked directly with my local office instead of calling customer service, they could have got the scroll back for me. The dish was already a done deal, so I thanked them for their help and left.
So Comcast customers, if you have a problem deal with the local office in the park. They are courteous and helpful.
Speaking of customer service, I just had a call from Sears about an appliance delivery tomorrow. I told them that I insist that every member of the delivery crew speak English, since I have the right to be able to communicate with everyone who works in my home. I also said that anyone they send must have be working in this country legally. I will do this from now on anytime I have workers in my home. I realize I have no way to check this, but it at least lets businesses know that people are fed up.
JM, let me know how that works out for you. The last people to deliver from Sears I was busting out the college Spanish on to get them to take the old appliance as agreed. As for legal status, I assumed that they worked for Sears and not a subcontractor before they arrived. I have learned a lot as a homeowner these past few years. *Shakes head*
“The reason Comcast doesn’t work is because they’re selling digital services that are running on analog pipes.”
No, the reason Comcast doesn’t work is because they let their outside plant go completely to hell before they do anything about it.
I’ve seen them bypass BAD underground coaxial trunk cables with orange RG6 drop run along the ground and leave it that way for MONTHS. In one particular instance of that, it was running across a street and two sidewalks.
They are completely reactive and not proactive when it comes to maintenance.
Cox is far better and guess what, they use the same technology Comcast does. They just take much better care of it.
Let’s face it. Everything in PWC or the park sucks. Nobody cares about us. It’s sad but true. We are the red headed step child of the nation’s capital.
Were you here when this area was served by Contel? Talk about a telephone company run on a shoe-string budget.
It used to cost 5 cents a minute just to call Centreville from here. You could shell out $130/month for a “metro” line, which gave you a phone number local to the rest of the metropolitan area.
Oh, and caller-ID used to not work between C&P (Bell Atlantic) and Contel because, apparently, the interoffice trunk lines were still analog and trust me they sure sounded like it.
I’ve been living here almost 20 years. That’s how things were back then.
We didn’t get cable here till 1985–I wasn’t here then, but I read the original cable franchise documents. Did you know that MP required the cable company to locate their headend on Manassas Drive in order to get the franchise agreement? Usually, headends are located in remote areas in the middle of nowhere, where the land is cheap.
I was here then and remember the phone bills well. Every utility in the park is wayyy more than it would be in fairfax. Gas and electric are much higher. Let’s not even mention that absurd water bill for the most disgusting and toxic water imaginable. I haven’t had a drink of tap water in 10 years and my hair is like a brillo pad because the water is so hard. This town is a mess.
Just to clear up confusion. Dave B. did you say that you are Park’d? Just want to make sure.
By the way I use Verizon Broadband and it’s good enough for me. Hey, I was still using dial up and this broadband is a whole lot faster.
Anonymous 7:51 pm
We will see. I had a stove delivered two years ago, the guys did not speak English well enough that I could communicate with them, and when the left it was not level and all the packing material was still inside the oven. When I pay for delivery and installation, I expect the thing to be ready to use when they leave. I called the store and read them the riot act. They sent out different people who spoke English and took care of it to my satisfaction. I hope they learned their lesson. This is Sears last chance. This time I will go over the job with the delivery men before anything is brought inside, and if I am not happy with the crew they send, I will turn them away and cancel the order.
Correct. Dave B. = park’d
Gas: I have Washington Gas, it seems about normal. You have Columbia Gas, I think.
Electric: NOVEC is contractually bound to buy power from ODEC. They have been trying to get out of this contract because ODEC’s power is expensive, being generated more and more by peaker plants (gas-fired).
Water: Manassas Park has shut down one of the wells and is feeding PWCSA water into that side of the city. Long term they are trying to have PWCSA take over the operations of the water and sewer system, which would result in the shutdown of the wells and the water source changed to PWCSA water. Should also result in bills going down due to PWCSA’s economies of scale.
Sears just left, and the delivery went fine. Both deliverymen were foreign born, but I had no trouble communicating with either of them. They were careful, professional, and once they were done my refrigerator was ready to use. They showed me hoe to use the ice and water dispensers and change the filter. There was one tense moment when they had gone out to there truck to load the old fridge, and I noticed the water dispenser was dripping. I ran out to ask how to stop it from dripping. He had a look, and told me to run one gallon of water through it and it would stop. They were gone before the gallon was filled, and I was thinking that was only a ploy to give them enough time to escape. But the drips stopped!
All I can say is demand English speaking, professional service, and maybe you will get it.
MP Resident,
entirely correct! Comcast is selling services that their infrastructure cannot support. They are so oversubscribed it’s pitiful. What they advertise and what they can deliver are two different things.
Comcast banks on customers not utilizing their services to the full extent that they advertise. For example, they boost internet speeds (and heavily advertise) but then shut people off for using the connection as they wish (even though it’s advertised “unlimited”)
In their effort to compete with Residential fiber services (FIOS) they are going to tax their networks even more. In areas where FIOS exists Comcast boosts internet speeds up to 16mbps. However you’ll get cutoff if you “download” too much. That doesnt make too much sense to me at all. Which is another reason why I left them.
You definitely dont get what you pay for. Check out Dslreports.com, you’ll find tons of Comcast hatred there.
Josh
I know it was referred to before, but what is this downloading too much notion?
anon
comcast cuts off people who download too much, they wont tell you what their limit is however. There are numerous articles (including a few from the wash post) on the subject. Go to DSL reports, they have the scoop
anon,
forgot to mention…it’s not a notion, it’s the truth…they do it all the time
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090602545.html
check this out…
Josh, thanks for the explanation. I should not be shocked but I am. Wow.
From the Manassas Park City website:
http://www.cityofmanassaspark.us/Public_Documents/ManassasParkVA_BBoard/01116158-000F8513
NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING
CITY OF MANASSAS PARK, VIRGINIA
Notice is hereby given that the Governing Body of the City of Manassas Park will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 7:00 pm, or as soon thereafter as possible, for the purpose of receiving public comment and considering the following:
An ordinance granting to Verizon South Inc. a cable franchise in the City of Manassas Park. Pursuant to the cable franchise and Sections 15.2-2108 et seq. and 58.1-645 et seq. of the Code of Virginia, the City will receive 5% of gross revenues of the franchisee annually, and a per-subscriber educational and governmental cable television programming grant.
Public hearings are held in the Council Chambers at City Hall, One Park Center Court, Manassas Park, Virginia. The public is encouraged to attend this hearing and provide comments on the agenda items.
Information concerning this hearing is available for review on the City web site at www.cityofmanassaspark.us and in the City Clerk’s office at City Hall between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday - Friday.
Glad to see the above post, albeit it may be too little too late. Comcast has enjoyed a sanctioned monopoly for years and delivered what one would expect of a monopoly; substandard, over-priced, inferior sevice. Take out all of the foreign language channels, shopping channels, and the public over the air channels, and you’re left with four or five channels for a lot of money per month. That is, when the cable works. Unfortunately I’m perhaps too lazy to go to satellite TV and DSL internet, but for $70 a month savings as an earlier poster stated - wow! Shows what a rip-off Comcast is.
I’ve noticed that Comcast doesn’t even bother to secure their pedestals anymore. The one in the back of my house looks like someone drove over it with a truck. I guess they’re no longer concerned about cable theft. Just more evidence of how they let the outside plant rot.
Comcast is the worst company I have ever dealt with, bar none.
Huh. Never had to deal with AOL, have you?
I have me mostly satisfied with Comcast for basic cable and internet. I don’t ask much of it, Comcast doesn’t deliver much.
I had Cox internet for a year and had an outage of five weeks while they tried to get their database in Norfolk to stop telling their database in Fairfax to cut my modem off. To their credit, they refunded me for all of the time where I was without a connection.
I had intermittent service for about 3 months until Comcast finally fixed it on August 31, according to the logs I have. Comcast never told me they fixed it–I just went back and noticed that the cablemodem’s transmit power went crazy on August 31 and then settled down to a consistent value and has stayed there ever since. I assume that they did indeed do something to fix the problem on that day.
For all of that annoyance involving 10 tech visits, I got a $60 credit.
I read somewhere that it costs, on average, $75 for an MSO like Comcast to roll a truck.
That’s $750 that Comcast spent for tech visits that didn’t fix the problem.
If Comcast doesn’t have the in-house expertise or manpower to fix the problem, which is/was in their outside plant, I wonder how much a contractor would’ve charged to fix it.
Maybe right around $750? Who knows. I bet I wasn’t the only one who had tech visits, either, so add another $75 for each one of those, too, and it probably would’ve been much cheaper for Comcast to deal with the problem back in May.
The funny thing about all this has to do with perspective. Take me for example - I had a horrible experience with Washington Gas at my Dale City VA location many years ago. To this day I cannot help but shudder when I think about that experience. Now, let me ask a reasonable question: Is Washington Gas a bad company? Possibly. I bet I am not the only one to “suffer” by their incompetent customer support.
The problem we have here is two fold with one common denominator - 1) you have ignorant and demanding people. We live in a day and age where we are told “get it your way” and the like. For reasons I cannot understand we, the consumer, feel like we can treat anyone-nameless-person working for the big-bad-company-who-makes-billions-of-dollars any way we want. Why, because we pay them for service. 2) people working for these companies can be uncaring and self centered. The common denominator is this: People.
See, I can say that Washington Gas did me wrong. But at the same time, they can say they did what they could to resolve my issue and make me a happy customer. But, I acted the ass thinking it was my right, forgetting there is another human at the end of my phone who has feelings, families, worries, and the unfortunate circumstance of dealing with an unreasonable “customer”, whom they are required to treat with respect and empathy, yelling at them and being insulting.
Look, there is a lot to my argument that is being left out. I am doing this for the sake of actually hoping people will read my rant. Let me wrap up with this: People are fallible. If for a moment someone would come to their senses and realize there is more to life than pleasing yourself, we may - just maybe, get somewhere. In the meantime I would cahllenge anyone to deal with the “me first” mentality which has blinded this wonderful country into thinking we do no wrong and it is everyone elses fault.
Simply put, this “lady” should pay for the damaged equipment she took a hammer to and be prosecuted according to the law. Comcast then needs to make ammends for their abvious lack of ability to provide support for this customer’s needs. In other words, both sides need to admit fault and fix their problems. And both sides need to own up to what is their responsibility and settle it. And please do not tell me Comcast forced this lady into acting like a lunatic. Anger can comes to us all, it’s an emotion, one we cannot help but experience. It’s what we do with that anger that seperates us from animals. This woman acted the animal. And I bet if she were a single male of any age between 18-55 she would be in serious trouble, not made into a national sensation.
Fellow consumer, fellow laborer, we cannot applaud what this woman has done. We also cannot say leave Comcast alone. Shoot, I believe this organization needs to step up to the plate and take care of these on going mishaps we read more and more about. But as we do let’s not forget people are people. Let’s have a little compassion for one another. Who knows… the day may come when it is YOU who are the angry customer or the poor sap trying to resovle the angry customer support issue. Regardless, it sure ain’t fun. Like we all have heard said, “You never know what it’s like until you walk a mile in their shoes”. Like anyone else witnessing this sad display of human depravity I am with an opinion and I have already admitted to my hypocrisy. So I say be reasonable.
One last comment and then I will crawl back into the hole which I came from, call it an extention of what I have already written.
It is this: I see a lot of people reasonably expecting services to work at all times. I work hard for what I own and pay for, so I understand this. But, let’s be real - stuff breaks. And if you are able, think about this - you break, too. What I mean is this:
I have served in a computer repair occupancy for many years. During that time I was amazed at how people think computers should work all the time, the way they want, and without fail. Are we forgetting that things break? Don’t believe me? Look at your car… how about your home… how about you very body??
I like my things to work. I hate it when I pay good money and come home to cable outages. But it happens. Someday I will be perfect. When that happens I will come back and tell all of you how wrong you are in sit in perfect judgment of you. Until then why don’t you join me in realizing things happen. It breaks, I break, we all break. If this world was perfect, it wouldn’t need a savior now would it? We would be without funeral homes and life insurance.
Life is short. I hate companies who promise and don’t deliver. I hate people who think they can insult and attack and they are in the right. What a drag.
You’re right, AA, and of course this story resonated with so many and was so absurd that it made us chuckle. But, bottom line, it was wrong and people should take personal responsibility for their actions.
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