Another Customer Service Disaster - Comcast

Lillian is not having good customer service experiences lately. Last Saturday it was Sears. Today it's Comcast.

Lillian's mom lives in a apartment in Miami. She just got a very nice flat screen TV and wants to get some of her favorite shows from Comcast. She needs cable installed and a cable box. Until she gets Comcast installed, all she can do is watch DVDs.

Lillian is her mom's go to person for things like this. Lillian had made an appointment for her mom last week. Comcast showed up and needed to get into a locked closet on the building's roof. No one with a key to the closet was available so, no cable for mom.

Lillian called Comcast back. Turns out (as we suspected) they new they would need to get into the closet because they do all the apartments over there. They did not let Lillian know that in advance. Lillian makes another appointment for Comcast to come back today (Monday). She calls her mom and tells her mom to call the apartment office so they will have someone there with the key. Apartment office agrees to be there and tells her mom to make sure Comcast sends an employee, not a sub-contractor. Seems they once sent a contractor and the contractor caused some damage on the roof. Comcast refused to accept any responsibility for the actions of the contractor and it created a real fiasco. Now they won't let contractors up on the roof, just Comcast employees so they can go after Comcast directly if there is a problem.

You can tell where this is going, right?

Lillian calls Comcast back and tells them they must send an employee, not a contractor. Comcast tells Lillian they already have this information in the file but will make sure it's more prominently displayed. Everything is set for today's big install.

Today comes, Comcast shows up and, they sent a CONTRACTOR, not an employee!! The apartment manager won't let them on the roof. Lillian's mom gets no cable, again.

Lillian's mom calls her and leaves a message (side note: I had bet Lillian her mom would call with a problem before noon - she did). Lillian calls Comcast. Comcast says the file showed to send an employee, not a contractor and that something must have been messed up during the dispatch. Lillian tells them to send someone over right away, to just make it right. Comcast says no deal. They can't come now until Wednesday, another 2 days. It's not like this is going to be a big install, the wire is already hanging out of the wall in the apartment. All they have to do is turn it on.

This is the type of service that just drives people crazy. How much non-value added cost is added to the system every time something like this happens?

I'll have an update on this later in the week along with an update on Lillian's gargare door opener installation also scheduled for Wednesday. Lillian is trying to handle the garage door opener install AND a windshield replacement on her car both on Wednesday. The windshield took a hit on I95 a week ago and has a long crack in it. So far it looks like the windshield company is on the ball. I'll update you on all of these customer service experiences soon.

Whether you are giving or getting complaints, give us a call, we can help.

John Schneyer

Boca Consultants