Epic Comcast CSR fail

[Shizzmoney]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/Veronica/status/488836129919991808

https://t.co/5TRpDmWQBU

"Are you punking us right now?"

Also reminds me of this:

[Lord of the Fraud]

Should'a let Martha do the talking.

[Dan Druff]

Pretty funny.

Reminds me of this situation I had to deal with when trying to shut off my CenturyLink home phone:

http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...ONNECT-SERVICE!

This guy and his girlfriend must be super-old-school Twitter users, having accounts names @Veronica and @ryan.

I liked this guy's responses to the overaggressive rep (especially repeating "Because I want to" and "If you need to understand why people are canceling service, you need to hire some consultants to research the situation").

I also learned about "task rabbits" from the call. At first I thought Ryan was being a douche and referring to an employee of his in a derogatory way, but there really is a company called Task Rabbit:

https://www.taskrabbit.com/

I might actually look into using this sometimes.

[Dan Druff]

Yeah Veronica joined in October 2006 and Ryan joined in March 2007.

Ryan has 80k followers and Veronica has....

 

1.69 million

I have no clue who this chick is.



Anyway props to them for recording this and humiliating Comcast.

[Shizzmoney]

Good retort here on why CSRs do this:

http://www.theawl.com/2014/07/sympat...-rep-from-hell

But overnight my sympathies shifted: If you understand this call as a desperate interaction between two people, rather than a business transaction between a customer and a company, the pain is mutual. The customer service rep is trapped in an impossible position, in which any cancellation, even one he can't control, will reflect poorly on his performance. By the time news of this lost customer reaches his supervisor, it will be data—it will be the wrong data, and it will likely be factored into a score, or a record, that is either directly or indirectly tied to his compensation or continued employment. It's bad, very bad, for this rep to record a cancellation with no reason, or with a reason the script should theoretically be able to answer (the initial reasons given for canceling were evidently judged, by the script, as invalid). There are only a few boxes he can tick to start with, and even fewer that let him off the hook as a salesman living at the foot of a towering org chart. The rep had no choice but to try his hardest, to not give up, to make it so irritating and seemingly impossible to leave that Block might just give up and stay. The only thing he didn't account for was the possibility the call would be recorded. Now he's an internet sensation. The rep always loses.

Of course, it's absurd that a company like Comcast is able to force two humans into combat like this in the first place. If you don't take the existence of a near-monopoly company like Comcast for granted—and why should we?—the situation is as clear as can be: The rep didn't abuse Block, and Block didn't torture the rep. Comcast, the organization, is tormenting them both.

Comcast and Time Warner are in the process of merging in a paper-swap worth somewhere north of $40 billion. They are doing this to consolidate power, to consolidate assets, and to make the relationships like the one they once had with Block not just deep, but permanent. Comcast's call script could not account for the possibility that a customer might choose to switch to another company that isn't "number one," as the rep repeated, out of distaste. A merger might fix that: It brings these companies one step closer to making sure there's no number two.

[Dan Druff]

Here is an LOL statement from Comcast about the situation, basically saying nothing:

We are very embarrassed by the way our employee spoke with Mr. Block and Ms. Belmont and are contacting them to personally apologize. The way in which our representative communicated with them is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives. We are investigating this situation and will take quick action. While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.

Tom Karinshak, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience, Comcast Cable

http://corporate.comcast.com/comcast...r-service-call

[Dan Druff]

Good retort here on why CSRs do this:

http://www.theawl.com/2014/07/sympat...-rep-from-hell

But overnight my sympathies shifted: If you understand this call as a desperate interaction between two people, rather than a business transaction between a customer and a company, the pain is mutual. The customer service rep is trapped in an impossible position, in which any cancellation, even one he can't control, will reflect poorly on his performance. By the time news of this lost customer reaches his supervisor, it will be data—it will be the wrong data, and it will likely be factored into a score, or a record, that is either directly or indirectly tied to his compensation or continued employment. It's bad, very bad, for this rep to record a cancellation with no reason, or with a reason the script should theoretically be able to answer (the initial reasons given for canceling were evidently judged, by the script, as invalid). There are only a few boxes he can tick to start with, and even fewer that let him off the hook as a salesman living at the foot of a towering org chart. The rep had no choice but to try his hardest, to not give up, to make it so irritating and seemingly impossible to leave that Block might just give up and stay. The only thing he didn't account for was the possibility the call would be recorded. Now he's an internet sensation. The rep always loses.

Of course, it's absurd that a company like Comcast is able to force two humans into combat like this in the first place. If you don't take the existence of a near-monopoly company like Comcast for granted—and why should we?—the situation is as clear as can be: The rep didn't abuse Block, and Block didn't torture the rep. Comcast, the organization, is tormenting them both.

Comcast and Time Warner are in the process of merging in a paper-swap worth somewhere north of $40 billion. They are doing this to consolidate power, to consolidate assets, and to make the relationships like the one they once had with Block not just deep, but permanent. Comcast's call script could not account for the possibility that a customer might choose to switch to another company that isn't "number one," as the rep repeated, out of distaste. A merger might fix that: It brings these companies one step closer to making sure there's no number two.

Anyway, while I understand the above, I think it's only half correct.

No doubt this customer service rep was trained to aggressively try to avoid cancellation, and in the case of being unable to do so, acquire a reason for cancellation to feed to the research department.

This is basically how they figure out how big of a discount to offer canceling customers, and if such discounts are actually an incentive to stay. Offering discounts to canceling customers can be self-defeating, as often customers with no intention to cancel simply call up and demand lower prices, and are actually willing to accept whatever is offered to them. So this all goes into a big research database and they figure it out.

So back to the rep.

Clearly he was instructed to sing the praises of Comcast service and extract a cancellation reason out of the customer. That I completely believe, and in fact you'd have to be an idiot not to believe he was somewhat acting under a directive from above.

Unfortunately, this particular rep had the complete inability to realize when he had run into a brick wall, and literally turned it into a 20-minute pissing contest (keep in mind that the call had been going for over 10 minutes prior to being recorded).

I've run into tons of these pissing contests before, as well chronicled by my customer service related postings over the past 10 years on these forums.

Where the customer service rep erred -- and you can't blame this on corporate policy -- is not realizing right away that Ryan wasn't going to play ball. Only a complete moron wouldn't have immediately gotten the clear message that Ryan absolutely, positively wasn't going to provide a reason for cancellation. So instead of just chalking it up to a loss (as he eventually did after 20 minutes of a cringe-worthy sales spiel), he kept banging his head against the wall attempting to force Ryan to say something different.

I don't even think the customer service rep was stupid. He wanted this reason so he could check the box on his form, ran into a customer who wouldn't give it, and then did his best to hold the customer's cancellation hostage until he got that reason.

I say that both Comcast and this particular rep are to blame for this debacle.

[ToasterOven]

The guy probably called before and knew this was going to be a shitshow. I'm not saying Comcast isn't horrible, but this is pretty obviously set up to be viral.

I've canceled Comcast before and the last thing you want to do is say you are going with another company, or apparently, choose not to answer. I just told them that I was getting married and moving into my wife's place where she already had Comcast. So, my cancellation was nothing like this.

This guy is intensely into social media and probably practiced this call so it would be a big deal.

[Dan Druff]

The guy probably called before and knew this was going to be a shitshow. I'm not saying Comcast isn't horrible, but this is pretty obviously set up to be viral.

I've canceled Comcast before and the last thing you want to do is say you are going with another company, or apparently, choose not to answer. I just told them that I was getting married and moving into my wife's place where she already had Comcast. So, my cancellation was nothing like this.

This guy is intensely into social media and probably practiced this call so it would be a big deal.

While it's 100% true that Ryan could have fired off any BS reason and ended this mess far earlier, the point is that he shouldn't have to do that.

Was this a setup? Maybe, but I kinda doubt it because it begins in the middle of the call without a lot of context. If this was a setup, he would have recorded it from the start, with the backstory of, "I heard it's difficult to cancel Comcast so I decided to try for myself", and everyone would have bought it.

I'm usually the first person to suspect social media hoaxes/setups (and I have to admit that his showbiz-wannabe girlfriend with the 1.7 million Twitter followers seems like a HUGE self-promoter), I have to believe this was legit, and he got the idea to record it for social media lulz midstream when he realized he had gold running through his phone line.

[ToasterOven]

The guy probably called before and knew this was going to be a shitshow. I'm not saying Comcast isn't horrible, but this is pretty obviously set up to be viral.

I've canceled Comcast before and the last thing you want to do is say you are going with another company, or apparently, choose not to answer. I just told them that I was getting married and moving into my wife's place where she already had Comcast. So, my cancellation was nothing like this.

This guy is intensely into social media and probably practiced this call so it would be a big deal.

While it's 100% true that Ryan could have fired off any BS reason and ended this mess far earlier, the point is that he shouldn't have to do that.

Was this a setup? Maybe, but I kinda doubt it because it begins in the middle of the call without a lot of context. If this was a setup, he would have recorded it from the start, with the backstory of, "I heard it's difficult to cancel Comcast so I decided to try for myself", and everyone would have bought it.

I'm usually the first person to suspect social media hoaxes/setups (and I have to admit that his showbiz-wannabe girlfriend with the 1.7 million Twitter followers seems like a HUGE self-promoter), I have to believe this was legit, and he got the idea to record it for social media lulz midstream when he realized he had gold running through his phone line.

Yeah, maybe you're right. I'm just not the kind of person to dick around with these people. I'd rather just throw some bullshit at them and complete my business. Which doesn't mean I think Comcast isn't terrible.

[Dan Druff]

While it's 100% true that Ryan could have fired off any BS reason and ended this mess far earlier, the point is that he shouldn't have to do that.

Was this a setup? Maybe, but I kinda doubt it because it begins in the middle of the call without a lot of context. If this was a setup, he would have recorded it from the start, with the backstory of, "I heard it's difficult to cancel Comcast so I decided to try for myself", and everyone would have bought it.

I'm usually the first person to suspect social media hoaxes/setups (and I have to admit that his showbiz-wannabe girlfriend with the 1.7 million Twitter followers seems like a HUGE self-promoter), I have to believe this was legit, and he got the idea to record it for social media lulz midstream when he realized he had gold running through his phone line.

Yeah, maybe you're right. I'm just not the kind of person to dick around with these people. I'd rather just throw some bullshit at them and complete my business. Which doesn't mean I think Comcast isn't terrible.

As much as I hate when customer service reps fuck with me and really give them shit back when they are intentionally difficult, I do have to admit that even I wouldn't have gotten into this spot.

When the guy asked for the reason, I would have just made up some BS and been done with it. In fact, I have been asked for a reason every time I canceled, and I usually just gave the most innocuous-sounding answer ("I really don't need the service anymore, I'm too busy") to end everything quicker.

What I really hate is when it's a matter of money, and there is no "easy way out" aside from eating the money on the bill that shouldn't be there. That's the mess I got into with the disconnect fee with Centruylink, which you can find posted in my first response on this thread. It was actually kind of similar to this call, where idiot employees with scripts kept trying to get me to just accept it and get off the phone, and it literally took 3 escalations for them to remove the fee.

[Crowe Diddly]

Been comcast-free for 10 years, thank god.

There's a pretty easy way to avoid this shit when cancelling cable. Just gather up all your equipment, cable boxes and modems and shit, and drop them off at the nearest comcast office. Cancel your shit in person, and get rid of everything all at once. They wont put you on hold for half an hour (unless there's a massive line or some shit I guess), they won't back-talk you, you won't get disconnected, you get a receipt for all your rented shit so there's no funny business afterwards, none of that shit. Plus, at least the person you will be talking to is guaranteed to be in the US, if not exactly guaranteed to speak English. Small victories.

[Baron Von Strucker]

why is comcast so bad? I was thinking about getting internet at my cabin in W.A. (Blane) and as far as i know they are the only option......I guess I don't need it that bad my neighbours yifi is not bad. i more or less wanted it for apple or some internet TV suggestions would be appreciated, thanks

[Crowe Diddly]

why is comcast so bad? I was thinking about getting internet at my cabin in W.A. (Blane) and as far as i know they are the only option.

You pretty much answered your own question. In most places, they're the only option. They don't have to be any good. It's either comcast, or some sort of dish/dsl combo, for most people.

[BeerAndPoker]

Here comes the Crapcast Apology:

http://thehill.com/policy/technology...r-service-call

[Hockey Guy]

[Shizzmoney]

"You're telling me that if I didn't have a recording of that call, you wouldn't have been able to do it?" he says.

"Yes, that is correct."

http://gawker.com/heres-the-awful-se...ium=socialflow

[lol wow]

Lol druff had century link

[lol wow]

Bruh can you tell us story's about your cricket wireless service next