Oh, the ire of being held hostage by the cable company, but I recently cut the cord. Often times, we unfairly have no other option than to test our patience and our mental limits by using local cable companies, whether that be Comcast (the worst I've had to deal with), Bright House, or Time Warner. These cable companies do not compete against one another for customers, as only one provider can exist in one area. Thus, our options as consumers seeking excellent customer service are severely limited.
Just the other day I called Comcast and told them to stick it where the sun doesn't shine. Okay, I was much nicer about it than that, but basically told them I have had terrible service and my internet issues were to a point where no technician could not help (there is a major bird nest with tiny chicks inhabiting my cable box). Thank you, but I no longer require your service and there is nothing you can do about it. Mind you, this termination of service call followed an extremely long (hour long) phone call with customer service agents who tried to blindly and ignorantly solve my cable issues they were not qualified to diagnose. I actually got hung up on during this call by an inept associate (which made me wish I had dialed #1 for wanting to participate in a post call survey). Later, I had a service tech to my apartment, and unfortunately he (due to no fault of his own) was not able to help because of the animal control issue. As a result of improper note taking, a lack of follow up, and information on my service call and issues not being available to all levels of customer service, no one could help me. In addition, on every subsequent phone call to Comcast, an employee not familiar with my problem needed me to start from square one in explaining the issue. I had to answer the same questions all over again. No, sending a service tech to my apartment will not help the issue. As I have stated, the issue is now with an unresponsive and likely overworked Animal Care and Control.
So, I was left to seek other options. And there are other options out there. I went with adding a mobile hotspot that would link my phone and laptop data usage by turning my cell phone into a modem. This plan ended up being cheaper for me (partly due to discounts) than what I paid when with Comcast. This is a suitable option for now. I will need to seek a more permanent solution, but seeing how Comcast couldn't and wouldn't touch the hardware needed to fix my internet issue until Animal Care and Control got down to the line for eradicating a birds nest, this will do well for now.
Poor customer service and inadequate knowledge by associates should not be tolerated. It shouldn't matter what day of the week a customer call, you should never be made to feel like you've gotten a hold of the third tier employees just because it is a Sunday (which is the day that I got hung up on). You should receive prompt service and any guarantee given should be delivered upon. You should not have to follow up and nag the company to make sure they do their job. In the end, these are the issues that caused me to cancel my service. Sure, the birds nest was largely inhibiting my ability to receive an internet signal, but it is how associates dealt with my account that made me want to run in the other direction.
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