Comcast Screws Up But Then Makes It Up To Me

It looks like Comcast is in the news again but not for the best of reasons. So today seems like a good day for me to share my latest Comcast experience. I recently moved and subsequently signed up for Comcast’s all-in-one package (TV, Internet, and phone). I didn’t really need the phone service, but the way the marketing department has things, the same services I wanted without phone service are the same price as having the phone service included. Bundling and all that, go figure.

So I take the glass-is-half-full approach and assume I’m getting a good deal, like phone service for free! (Rather than the glass-is-half-empty approach: overpriced other services with something I don’t need included.) But then the phone calls start coming in. I’ve given my phone number to no one and yet, I’m getting an average of 2-3 phone calls per day with people calling me “Mr. Caswell.”

The most ironic phone call was the one from a Comcast competitor, Dish Network, trying to lure me away. I didn’t give Dish Network my phone number, so who did? Well, I called Comcast to find out. It turns out that unless I ask for a special service that stops these calls from happening, they happen.

Actually, there are two different special services, as it was explained to me. But I already forget their differences. All I know is that if I pay Comcast another $2 per month for these two services (nothing, considering I’m paying them over $100 already), then I don’t get 2-3 bonus phone calls per day.

Of course, I also had to change my number in order to stop the current onslaught of solicitors, and there’s a feel for that, you see. But the Comcast rep on the other side actually did a pretty good job at empathizing and waived the fee since, as she put it, “I should have been offered these services when I first signed up.”

The services in questions, you know, the ones that add up to another $2 per month charge, well, they have non-descript names (I can’t remember them). To be honest, I might not have signed up for them even if I had heard about them before. What I told the rep and what I’d like to tell Comcast now is the following:

Offer the services this way: “Would you like 3 solicitor calls per day or a $2 monthly charge? Your choice.” I could be wrong, but I think most Comcast customers would prefer to be charged $2. And if the “decide later” alternative is a change fee and a new phone number, well, that won’t be as painless a process as it was for me (no fee and no one I cared about knew my number yet).

Whatever the case, thanks Comcast, for taking care of me. Now try and figure out how to take care of the rest of your customers out there.