Comcast: Oopsies, our bad

Oh, wait...

As an unemployed customer service manager, their response to this problem has been driving me nuts!

Stuff happens. I get it. Maybe they properly tested this upgrade ahead of time, maybe they didn't. Either way, they should have had a communications plan in place for just such emergencies. Hold times in excess of an hour (if you could get through), chat waiting lists well over 1000. What they should have done was issued a multi-platform statement to users at the time of the outage. I can't help but wonder how many customers with other issues were simply out of luck getting assistance due to all the X1 users clogging the hold queue who probably would have been at least partially mollified by a simple "We're aware of an outage in your area" recording.

And the canned "don't forget to watch [Fill in the shows which I'm sure have paid for such advertising] tonight!" postings on Facebook were just insulting to the customers looking there for any scrap of official information.

But suuurrrrreeee! Let's let Comcast and Time Warner merge! What could possibly go wrong?

According to this blog post http://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/our-mistake-making-it-right-... Comcast will credit users accounts. They don't to state how much users can expect or if this will be automatic.

She was miffed that there was nothing in the news about it. Then again, without service she couldn't watch the news.

She did ask me about RCN. I'm sticking with Comcast for now, but if my chain was being jerked, I'd be ringing RCN in a heartbeat.

After TV service went down, going to comcast.com and using their "Check your service" tool that showed that, to the contrary of what our TV was showing, our cable was doing just fine.

I got a feeling I won't be seeing any of the supposed "credits", but at least my internet didn't go down. At least that's the bright side?

I called them up. No wait.

"Hi, do you guys have any internet outages reported in < my neighborhood >? "
"Yes, we do. "
"Any estimate on when you'll be up again?"
"Not yet ... "
"OK, thanks" (thinking I'll go do something else for a few hours)

Now, that's the kind of customer service I want. My sympathies with all you Comcast customers.