To hear Comcast tell it, customer service is the company s no. 1 priority. But someone must have forgotten to tell the company s customer service representatives.
After his wife attempted to drop their cable service from Comcast, Spokane, Wash. resident Ricardo Brown recently found that the company had changed his first name on his bill to ***hole. As if it wasn t already clear what Comcast s representatives think of their customers.
I am shocked, Brown s wife, Lisa, told blogger and consumer advocate Christopher Elliott. This is unacceptable.
The Browns had attempted to reduce their Comcast bill, because they were having financial difficulties, Lisa Brown told Elliott. In a familiar story, Lisa Brown said that instead of immediately canceling her cable service, Comcast s representative transferred her to one of the company s notorious retention specialists, who instead tried to get her to sign a new two year contract.
It was after she refused, that the Browns received the bill with the profane name change.
Lisa Brown told Elliot that before approaching him, she tried to get Comcast s representatives to fix the name on the bill. She went to her local Comcast office and phoned company representatives their in Washington state. But to no avail. It wasn t until after Elliott started making calls that Comcast apparently started to pay attention and address the situation.
Comcast officials have now apologized to the Browns, promised to investigate the incident, offered to waive the $60 cancellation fee the company had threatened to charge them and even offered to refund offered their last two years worth of payments.
In a statement, Charlie Herrin, Comcast s senior vice president for customer experience, confirmed the incident and indicated that the company has fired the employee responsible. He also reiterated the company s line about how hard it s working to transform the customer experience.
Given that these types of incidents keeprecurring and Comcast has repeatedly received abysmal customer service ratings, I d hate to see how hard the company is working on things that aren t its top priority.
H/T to Wired.
Photo by Elise Amendola, Associated Press.