Posted on 10/09/2007 9:43:10 AM PDT by BGHater
Mona Shaw had heard and seen enough from Comcast, her local cable television provider.
After repeated attempts to change her phone service from Verizon to Comcast's Triple Play during a week in August, the 75-year-old Bristow resident with a heart condition took out her frustrations at the Manassas payment center on Center Street.
Shaw was arrested for disorderly conduct after she took a hammer to several items in the office - all the while saying, "Have I got your attention now?"
While Shaw's actions Aug. 20 were extreme, the inability of the cable company to finish the job they started at her house is a story told many times over by Manassas customers.
The city is negotiating an updated franchise agreement with Comcast, as well as a new cable agreement with Verizon.
Customer service is one of the main issues the city examined in its recent review of Comcast's old agreement. In June, the council held a public hearing and residents had virtually nothing good to say about Comcast. According to Councilman Jonathan Way, it hasn't gotten any better since then.
Way said the gist of resident calls he has received recently is still negative.
"They [Comcast] keep passing the buck off to other departments, and the other departments don't come back in a timely fashion," Way said. "It's a shameful and unmanaged operating business over there."
Both Way and Prince William County spokesperson Liz Bahrns said that when local government leaders raise individual issues or concerns from their residents to Comcast, the cable company responds very promptly. But Way feels like it's only when these issues are taken up with upper management or with their elected officials that the cable company responds quickly to residents' concerns.
"The quality problem is with the routine customer service, where customers expect to be managed effectively but are not," Way said.
During the public hearing, Comcast said it has been upgrading its system in the city and that has resulted in periodic cable blackouts late this summer.
According to statistical data from 2006 provided by Comcast to the city, the cable company resolved two-thirds of the 570 calls referred to the maintenance department in five days or less, a number that jumped to 75 percent during non-winter months.
Comcast resolved 90 percent of all other service calls in five days or less during that 12-month period. But counting the winter months, that still left more than 500 people out of 4,270 waiting for a resolution after five days.
A Comcast representative was not able to speak about the incident in Manassas, but the company issued a lengthy statement, saying, in part, "We recognize that there is room for improvement and that even one bad customer experience is one too many. It is our goal to continue bringing customers in Northern Virginia the most advanced products and services we offer ... and to
ensure that they have a great experience at every touchpoint."
Shaw's problems began when she and her husband, Don, waited all day Aug. 13 for a Comcast worker to come to their house to install its much-publicized Triple Play service, which includes digital cable, digital voice and high-speed Internet service. The Shaws were Comcast customers already but wanted to upgrade.
No one came Aug. 13 but two days later, a representative arrived.
According to Shaw, the Comcast worker didn't finish the job, told her that he needed a third party to finish it and left his equipment there.
Before leaving, the cable guy gave her the option of changing her phone number, but Shaw said she didn't want to change a number that she has had for 34 years.
The next day the Shaws couldn't receive calls but were eventually able to make calls.
That Friday, Shaw spent the morning on the phone with Comcast and made a frustrating trip to its Manassas office that resulted in no assistance from a company manager, she said.
When the Shaws returned home, they discovered they had no phone service at all.
A cell phone call to Comcast resulted in their receiving a new number and a promise that someone from the company would call on Monday. In the meantime, the Shaws figured out on their own how to plug their phone directly into the equipment the worker left.
That weekend, Shaw called the State Corporation Commission, the regulatory agency with authority over Virginia businesses. She says she spoke with the SCC's Larry Kubrock and was promised that someone from his agency would contact Comcast.
The Shaws waited Monday for a call. Finally, around 4:30 p.m., Mona Shaw put a hammer in her purse and returned to the Manassas Comcast office.
"I smashed a keyboard, knocked over a monitor ... and I went to hit the telephone," Mona said. "I figured, 'Hey my telephone is screwed up, so is yours.' "
Shaw said she was panic-stricken the previous Friday when they came home to no service because of her need in the past for emergency medical help. Their house on Bristow Road isn't close to a neighboring house.
"It's totally not like me to do stuff like this," she said. "But it is so irresponsible and so disrespectful [what they did]. I can't think of any company reacting that way. It's like they got you in their clutches and they'll do what they damn well please."
The day after her arrest, Comcast called her husband and said they could switch her to the Triple Play service but the couple would have to wait a week. He demanded that the company come out the next day and remove their equipment and told the company they were returning to Verizon for phone service.
Comcast did as her husband requested, but several weeks later the Shaws received a letter from the company thanking them for subscribing.
That was typical Comcast, Shaw said.
"They are so confused, they don't seem to know what the hell they're doing. You begin to wonder how well they are trained," she said.
In a public statement, Comcast said it holds all its employees, whether they are in-house or contracted, to the same standards and expects them to provide quality service.
Mona Shaw's disorderly conduct case will be heard in Prince William District Court in December.
We’ll lose the signal for no reason and I am in Arizona! It takes about five minutes before it is up and running again. I would love to get out of that contract as we never had these problems with Cox.
Just wait if the Dem’s get all three branches of government
this next election....taxes will go sky high, crime will sky rocket, regulations will increase.....AND NOTHING WILL WORK. Just like COMCRAP!
Voice quality on our VoIP service was poor for the first three months, to the point where an international conversation was impossible (poor analog segments added to the problems there). Firmware upgrades and a router change (principally setting up the VoIP box as a demilitarized zone) made all the difference in the world and the voice quality is now near perfect.
If you work for a larger company who can afford to invest in good equipment and SW then I see no reason to have bad service. The residential market isn’t there yet though.
She should ask for a jury trial...
Horror stories. Here’s mine. Had Verizon phone service and needed to make some changes. Nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to deal with them. Horrible service. Switched to Fibernet and it’s great. Had Charter Cable/Internet service. They recently were bought out by Suddenlink. Service is still good. When our Modem went out, they came right away and replaced it. We seldom lose connection, even in storms. Pretty happy with what we now have.
If just one of those Democrats running in ‘08 realizes that crappy customer service is the single issue he can ride to the stars, we’re screwed. The other candidates can haggle over gay marriage and stem cells all they want - nobody’s even going to notice them.
HATE COMCAST and dumped their service last month. We now have verizon phone, DSL and DirecTV.
We’ve had no trouble with verizon...directv was easy and now we have everything on one bill.
hubby is thrilled with Directv and their NFL ticket.
Locally here in SoCal Comcast was bought out by Time Warner. I would have to say I’m not pleased with Time Warner. Comcast was better.
Interesting. Our switch from Comcast to Time Warner showed a marked improvement. I hated Comcast. (Internet only. DirecTV is awesome and I trust Verizon with my phone.)
I have Verizon for my BB service. It really has the best coverage.
“Have I got your attention now?”
LOL!
Ah, the stories I could tell about Sprint’s local phone “service.” Why, the day I finally got fed up and dialed the Utilities Commission for my state, the line worked just long enough for someone to pick up the phone at the other end...
This is typical of how a phone/cable company operates. I used to do contract work for Sprint and I’ve seen how these businesses operate, or lack thereof. The entire customer side of the business is like a massive bureaucracy. One hand has no idea what the other is doing, or if it even exists at times.
These places try to run a local business from hundreds of miles away and they do a horrible job at it. The management of such companies believe that all they need to serve their customers are a bunch of call centers and work at the customer’s premises will just magically happen as soon as the customer service rep hits the Enter key.
I work in IT now, and when we require the phone company to do something during a project, I always advise that whenever the phone company provides a date for when their task will be complete to not expect anything to be working that day and to plan accordingly. I’ve only been wrong once with this. lol
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