WTF is going on over at Comcast?

[dlevere]

By Mary Beth Quirk

While we all spent yesterday shaking heads and commiserating with Comcast customer Ryan Block in his exhausting effort to get a customer service representative to disconnect his service, it’s always good to stop and remember that there are actual humans on the other end of that line, people who are hired to do a job. And in the case of call center workers, we’ve heard from many past and current Comcast employees who say that type of effort might’ve been a bit much, but it all comes down to meeting quotas.

https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service

Comcast apologized yesterday for how things went down with Block, saying “the way in which our representative communicated with him is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives.”

Meanwhile, Consumerist has heard from Comcast call center workers both past and present who agree that maybe while this guy went a bit far, it’s only because that’s the culture at the company, and that customer service reps are actually trained to do just what he did.

As multiple tipsters are telling us, CSRs can only have a certain amount of “discos” — or disconnects — on their personal tallies each day, and must meet a certain quota of “saves,” for which they can earn bonuses and/or commission.

That “save” might just mean hanging up on a customer so the disco goes on another CSR’s list, or in Block’s case, a relentless attempt to keep the customer. Many employees said that with a low hourly pay rate, these saves are the only way to boost their paychecks.

“That rep, (may God have mercy on his soul) was doing exactly as he was told to do,” writes former Comcast call center employee and Consumerist reader M. “Comcast reps make about $12/hour, but they get bonuses for every account that they save.”

That forced reps to either tell customers to go to a Comcast store — which can be a whole other inconvenience in itself — or to keep pushing until customers give up. This is probably what the CSR dealing with Block was told by his supervisors, he surmises.

“Frustrate the customer so that they hang up, and call back to another rep and get them to do the disconnection,” M. explains. “It wouldn’t affect you, and someone else would be at the door. Plus, the longer you stay on a call, the less likely you are to disconnect more customers.”

He adds that if reps disconnected more customers than they were supposed to — he was allowed three disconnects per 8-hour shift — after three days in a row, they “were shown the door.”

M. says he walked out after disconnecting five accounts in one day, as he was told he didn’t “gather enough information regarding their decision to leave.”

He adds that even the lengths this CSR went to might’ve even fallen short of expectations.

“I will say this rep did a great job of what was expected of him, but he more than likely received a whipping from his supervisor for not getting enough info,” M. says.

Then there’s Tipster A., another former employee of Comcast, who admits that the CSR in question did go “way too far,” but that it’s “no doubt for his ‘save’ quota.” And now that A. is no longer with the company, it’s not like the experience is any better.


“I thought I would never want to leave Comcast services but when I worked there, I prided myself on great customer service, and I just get angry every time I call them because I’m not shown the same respect,” A. writes.

And while this scenario is “absolutely the normal day-to-day expectation” that is put on retention workers, writes former call center agent N., that doesn’t mean workers are happy about it.

“It is very competitive and can drive the wrong habits,” N. tells Consumerist. “I resigned from Comcast because it was a hopeless situation.”

There are good people out there, however, who will try their best.

“If you got lucky you got a good supervisor that coached you to retain business and probe effectively with empathy for what the customer was experiencing,” N. says. “I was an interim retention supervisor and I always pushed my agents to handle every call with empathy – NEVER cut the customer off and never talk over them (everything this guy did).”

That sense of desperation listeners might get from the Block call is very real, according to N., because of the “sad hourly rate” that CSRs are paid and the increasing pressure every month to retain customers. All while there are less promotions available to offer those customers, she says.

“So the opportunity to make any commission only becomes more and more difficult, increasing the employees desperation to not disconnect the services for the caller.”

Or heck, maybe he’s just new on the job, adds a current worker for Comcast.

“We are asked to try to retain them with specials offers. We have to hit certain speaking points in our conversation,” writes tipster R. “But this guy was way over the top and pushy. Quite frankly, I thought it was amusing. It sounds like he is new.”

We’ve reached out to Comcast for comment on these save quotas and disconnect limits for each call center, as well as the training our tipsters say they received to push customers to the hang-up point, and will let you know if we hear back.

[MathUser]

I didn't know they'd be allowed to rebute them that much tho. The call center I worked for only let us rebut people twice.

[dlevere]

Comcast is a pain in the ass, which is why I fired them in April and went with Verizon Fios.

[Pyriel]

Comcast is awful. I cancelled my service with them mostly because the internet connection dropped about 6 times a day for several minutes, and about twice a month for hours. That's completely unacceptable when you're trying to get work done that requires a stable VPN connection.

My biggest issue with them was after I'd moved to other providers for services, though. Comcast only cancelled the phone component when I called in, and, in retrospect, I believe the representative did that deliberately. I didn't pay attention to the envelopes I got from them, because I had received their marketing materials even while I was a customer. After three months, I got a call from a collections agent that set me off, and I wound up calling Comcast to shout down one of their managers. At the time, I figured it was partially my fault for not triple-checking that they'd done what I wanted, so I agreed to pay part of the charges—to the tune of about $400—for service that wasn't even connected.

After that, because every injury deserves an insult, they mysteriously reinstated my service two months later for only Basic Cable. I caught it after two months this time, and called them up yet again. I started off nice, explaining that I wasn't about to pay $70 for service I couldn't possibly have been using, and the representative assured me they'd handle it. I spent a week or two thinking the problem was resolved before getting a bill for $22.16. Comcast apparently considered this a collections negotiation, so I cracked out my best negotiating tactics. I think I gave the poor girl I talked to and her manager PTSD, which I consider a small price to pay for four years and counting of not hearing from Comcast.

[Helder]

We need that god damn google internet in more places to get rid of these bozos. I watch a few amount of channels on TV and usually are either cartoons (myself and my son) and the Science and History channels and the occasional DIY channels. So I can live without TV and alot of it is online nowadays but need that internet.

[dlevere]

Comcast Admits Rep Was Doing "What We Trained Him To Do"

A Message From Dave Watson,
July 21, 2014

You probably know that there has been a fair amount of media attention about a recording of a phone call between one of our Customer Account Executives (CAEs) and a Comcast customer. The call went viral on social media and generated news headlines. We have apologized to the customer privately and publicly on Comcast Voices, making it clear that we are embarrassed by the tone of the call and the lack of sensitivity to the customer’s desire to discontinue service.

I’d like to give you my thoughts on the situation.

First, let me say that while I regret that this incident occurred, the experience that this customer had is not representative of the good work that our employees are doing. We have tens of thousands of incredibly talented and passionate people interacting with our customers every day, who are respectful, courteous and resourceful.

That said, it was painful to listen to this call, and I am not surprised that we have been criticized for it. Respecting our customers is fundamental, and we fell short in this instance. I know these Retention calls are tough, and I have tremendous admiration for our Retention professionals, who make it easy for customers to choose to stay with Comcast. We have a Retention queue because we believe in our products, and because we offer a great value when customers have the right facts to choose the package that works best for them. If a customer is not fully aware of what the product offers, we ask the Retention agent to educate the customer and work with them to find the right solution.

The agent on this call did a lot of what we trained him and paid him — and thousands of other Retention agents — to do. He tried to save a customer, and that’s important, but the act of saving a customer must always be handled with the utmost respect. This situation has caused us to reexamine how we do some things to make sure that each and every one of us — from leadership to the front line — understands the balance between selling and listening. And that a great sales organization always listens to the customer, first and foremost.

When the company has moments like these, we use them as an opportunity to get better, and that’s what we’re going to do. We will review our training programs, we will refresh our manager on coaching for quality, and we will take a look at our incentives to ensure we are rewarding employees for the right behaviors. We can, and will, do better.

Thank you for your support, and many thanks to the thousands of exceptional employees all around the country who work so hard to deliver a great customer experience every day. I am confident that together we will continue to improve the experience, one customer at a time.

Dave Watson
Chief Operating Officer, Comcast Cable

[Pyriel]

What load of waffle. I'm sure they'll be reviewing their procedures. They'll do a cursory review, yell at the representative for getting caught, and then return fully to the status quo when the heat is off.

They'll lay the blame on the representative, but it's really not his fault, when he's pressured to make quotas that may be impossible, and the dinks who make the rules think they can assess things with very specific metrics week-by-week.

I worked at a catalog call center when I was in college, and they did similar garbage to improve their profits. Diverting people to more expensive products (not saying much since the company would sell you $12 trousers for $2 during sales) and mandatory up-sell at the end of every call. And they meant mandatory; no discretion was permitted at all. I had a woman call in who started the conversation by calling me a "retard" and telling me to shut up in the middle of me greeting her. To say it went downhill from there would be an understatement. She was trying to load up on $2 slacks, $4 blouses, $10 jackets, and $5 shoes from a clearance sale catalog that had been out for a week or so, and she only got ruder and angrier as every item she tried to buy was sold out. She just did not understand the meaning of "clearance", I guess.

By the end of the call, she was shrieking with rage, and I had no idea how to calm her, since any attempt I made to speak was immediately cut off with insults and racist slurs that mostly didn't apply to me. She actually called me an "octoroon" when she ran out of the big ones, and then invented some new ones on the spot. When she was done with her order–about 5% of which we were able to fulfill—I just thanked her for calling and she hung up before I got all the words out. About a second later, my screen was replaced with a supervisor message asking why I hadn't tried to up-sell her and reminding me that I was required to do so. I was stunned and speechless for a second. This was my first job outside of small warehouses in town, my first experience with this sort of inflexible bureaucracy, and it was unbelievable. After a moment I stood up, turned toward the supervisor's station, and just yelled, "did you actually listen to that call?!" She gave me a little talking to about how the company knows best, and a week later I got dinged in a performance review for not up-selling 100%.

[dlevere]

Comcast Caught Lying To Customer On Tape

By Chris Morran

Most of us have been in this situation, and probably once or twice with Comcast. You’re told by the first person that something is free, then you get a bill for it and when you call to find out why, everyone you talk to tells you you’re up Turd Creek sans rowing equipment. If only you had recorded that first call, right?

That was the smart move made by YouTuber Tim Davis [via Reddit] when he called up Comcast to complain that Internet service at his new home was spotty.

In the video above (warning: a few instances of NSFW language), Tim explains that he had moved his Comcast service with him when he relocated. At his new place, he did a simple self-install, called up the automated line, and all was well.

Then things went south within a couple of weeks and he was losing his connection for a few minutes at a time every few hours.

A call to Comcast confirmed his issue and determined that it was a problem with the cables running to the building, not anything he’d done when setting up his system.

In the video, Davis includes a brief recording of the Comcast rep telling him there will be no charge because it’s an outside issue.

The tech eventually shows up, is rude, but appears to get the job done. He does some work on the outside lines then quickly pops in to check that everything is working.

All is fine until a week or two later when Davis receives a bill that includes $99.99 for “Failed Self Install,” another $32 for “Failed Video [Self Install Kit], and $49.95 for “Wireless Network SET Up.” That’s $181.94 in total:


But, insists Davis, the problem wasn’t that he failed to do the self-install correctly or that there was a failed self-install kit, since the problem involved cables entering his property that he never touched. Similarly, the tech never set up or did anything with Davis’s WiFi system, so the set-up charge is bogus.

During his first call to Comcast customer service, a rep tells Davis that the tech installed a new coaxial cable jack. Davis not only claims this didn’t happen, but that the tech would have been required to get the landlord’s permission to do that install.

The CSR also asserts that the tech did indeed set up Davis’s wireless system, in spite of Davis’s insistence that nothing had been set up during the tech’s visit.

After being put on hold for an hour, Davis hung up and tried again, this time reaching a supposed “supervisor,” who points out that the $49.95 WiFi setup charge is offset by a $49.95 “service discount,” so that’s free… even though it shouldn’t have been charged to begin with.

She also says there is a $49.99 discount on the supposed “Failed Self Install,” meaning Davis is being charged $50 for the nonexistent failed install, plus the remaining $32 for the failed self-install kit charge. A total of $82 that is still being disputed at this point.

She then offers to give him “BLAST+” Internet service for 12 months free of charge instead of simply taking off the remainder of the questionable charges. This semi-upgrade only has a retail value of $60, meaning he’d still be on the hook for $22 for a call that he’d been told would be free.

Davis, understandably, doesn’t want a cheap Internet service upgrade spread out over 12 months. He wants and asks to have the full $82 refunded.

The rep balks, saying she can’t issue him the credit because it is a “valid charge.”

“Every time we send out a technician there’s a $50 charge for that,” she explains.

“Well, I have a call recorded where the agent tells me in no uncertain terms that there will be no charge,” counters Davis. “You can not bill me for something that I did not authorize. You can not tell me that it’s free, then bill me anyway and then tell me that you can not un-bill me or credit me for the bill.”

“I apologize for that, but there’s no way that I can credit the account,” says the rep, desperately trying to jump back on to her script. “We value you as a customer, that’s why I am trying to check what I can give you.”

She grudgingly agrees to listen to Davis’s brief recording of the initial call. He then points out to her that even if there is indeed a policy of charging customers $50 for every service call, that he is being charged a net $82 that he was never told about and had never agreed to.

The rep promises to look into the issue then call back in up to an hour. She eventually calls back later than planned, and after escalating his call one final time she tells him that the full $82 will actually be credited back to his account.

When Davis asks why she couldn’t simply do that during the earlier call, her explanation is enough to make you pound your head through a wall in frustration.

“We try to negotiate, and again, that is a valid charge,” she answers. “But since I advised my manager that there is a recording and you were misinformed, then she’s the one who can approve that $82.”

Seemingly flabbergasted, Davis asks to confirm, “You’re telling me that if I didn’t have a recording of that call, you wouldn’t have been able to do it?”

“Yes, that is correct,” answers the rep, confirming that the only way to get Comcast to erase a bogus charge from your account is to have recorded evidence that you were promised in advance that the call would be free.

Lesson #1 when dealing with customer support: always record your calls. dlevere.

[luigi]

They don't always charge to send a tech and the fee should have been waived if it was outside wiring. You prolly got an out source rep. A lot of people here seem to have the worst experience with Comcast. Mine works great. Remember when you call Comcast that they have thousands of employees, do you think that every single one of them is stellar and knows all policies and procedures? Is every Target and Walmart employee good? How about every fast food employee? Every rep at Tmobile? Microsoft? Yeah, if you take thousands and thousands of calls then some go sour sometimes the customers fault and sometimes the reps. We only talk about the bad experiences, does anyone ever talk about the good ones? Like the hundred million customer kudos hanging on my wall where people were ready to cancel their service. Or all the people that asked to speak to my supervisor to say that I fixed and made right what no one else could? Sadly, these people probably did not get the right person on the phone, and I can confidently say that they probably didn't speak to me. I am customer service rep pretty much (but we like to think of ourselves as tech support). I diagnose, fix, and clear up a lot of issues every day and most of the people that I speak to enjoy talking to me.

[dlevere]

Post your contact number, so that we can call you the next time that we have a problem with Comcast.

[luigi]

We don't have direct numbers and I can only access accounts in the greater Baltimore region (Bmore, parts of delaware,dc, parts of va and west va) You are in the freedom market If the location on your profile is correct, however, some procedures are standard and I know them pretty well if anyone here needs help. If you don't feel you are getting anywhere with the people that you are getting then I might be of some help showing you how to bypass red tape (everything has a procedure there though not everyone follows it).

[dlevere]

O.K.

[Hacc]

@luigi: You're the more tolerable one of the SMB duo. Kudos to you, on handling the D.M.V. area so swell.

I remember having Comcast (temp use it on my travels now). My service was decent at the time. I wasn't doing heavy browsing, streaming, etc back then. The only woe I had were the power outages. Luckily, a friend of a relative worked for them, and addressed any issues ASAP.

Fun fact: a nightmare of being subjected to the recent Comcast issues prompted this post. Scary!

[luigi]

Yeah, outages are a problem. I rarely am ever in one but some areas seem to be plagued with them. My wife (BlackGoddess) works int the department that declares and dispatches the techs for those.