{"id":137882,"date":"2014-08-21T15:10:41","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T15:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=137882"},"modified":"2014-08-21T15:10:41","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T15:10:41","slug":"comcasts-epic-fails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/sicence-technology\/comcasts-epic-fails\/","title":{"rendered":"Comcast’s Epic Fails"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Amy Kroin<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Florida resident Benny Druin needed Comcast to come out for a service call. No big deal, right?<\/p>\n

Well, the first technician couldn\u2019t do the job. Nor could the second technician, who was\u00a0supposed<\/em>\u00a0to arrive first thing in the morning and instead didn\u2019t show up until 6:45 p.m.<\/p>\n

If this were a fairytale, the third technician would have proven the charm, but he too didn\u2019t know what to do. He left Druin\u2019s house to call his supervisor \u2013 and never came back.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter three days of not going to work and over eight hours on the phone \u2026 I am still without Comcast service in my house,\u201d Druin\u00a0told\u00a0The Verge<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a Comcast customer, this story likely feels all too familiar.<\/p>\n

If you\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0<\/em>a Comcast customer, don\u2019t breathe a sigh of relief just yet: Experiences like Druin\u2019s could be in store for you if the government signs off on the company\u2019s merger with Time Warner Cable.<\/p>\n

Comcast is already enormous, and if this deal goes through its service area will cover nearlytwo-thirds<\/em>\u00a0of the U.S. \u2013 giving it the power to dictate prices and practices throughout the industry. That\u2019s why\u00a0The Verge<\/em>\u2019s \u201cComcast Confessions\u201d series reads like a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n

The Verge<\/em>\u00a0interviewed Druin and many other frustrated customers \u2013 and more than 150 current and former Comcast employees \u2013 for the series. And the piece \u201cWhy the Cable Guy Is Always Late<\/a>\u201d shows that we actually shouldn\u2019t blame technicians for those botched service calls.<\/p>\n

In fact, it\u2019s all Comcast\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

Employees told\u00a0The Verge<\/em>\u00a0that Comcast fails to train people properly and overschedules technicians to the point where it\u2019s impossible for them to make every appointment. Tech-support reps told\u00a0The Verge<\/em>\u00a0that they get anywhere from three days to eight weeks of training \u2013 and even the longer trainings focus much more on products than on, you know,\u00a0learning how to fix things<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Comcast\u2019s customer-service staff faces similar pressures. As\u00a0customer Ryan Block\u2019s infamous call to Comcast<\/a>\u00a0shows, even something as straightforward as cancelling service is not necessarily an easy matter \u2013 thanks to Comcast\u2019s push to turn every interaction into a sales pitch.<\/p>\n

Consider the story of former Comcast billing specialist Brian Van Horn, profiled in \u201cWhen Every Call Is a Sales Call<\/a>.\u201d He explains how the standard sales pitch got more \u201caggressive\u201d over time \u2013 to the point where selling products was the only thing that mattered:<\/p>\n

Van Horn says he \u2018couldn\u2019t sell water to a man dying of thirst in the desert,\u2019 but his other metrics were good: He had high scores on \u2018first call resolution,\u2019 meaning that customers\u2019 issues were often fixed in a single call, as well as \u2018attaboys,\u2019 where a customer asked to speak to a supervisor in order to compliment him for a job well done. But after repeated reprimands for low sales, Van Horn was fired.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And just imagine how much worse things could get if Comcast succeeds in its $45 billion bid to take over Time Warner Cable and has that much less incentive to offer reasonable rates, build out access to underserved communities or protect free speech online.<\/p>\n

Comcast likes to trot out promises to sell the government on its mergers. In 2011 it launched its Internet Essentials program, which serves low-income customers, to woo regulators in its bid to buy NBCUniversal.<\/p>\n

The gambit worked then, and so \u2013 just in time for the government review of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal \u2013 Comcast\u00a0renewed the program<\/a>, which was set to expire. (It\u2019s probably no coincidence that Comcast also recently began offering\u00a0six months of free service<\/a>\u00a0to those who sign up for Internet Essentials by Sept. 20.)<\/p>\n

The problem is that Internet Essentials has\u00a0significant barriers<\/a>\u00a0to enrollment \u2013 and it serves just a small percentage of those who are eligible to enroll. It’s not a comprehensive solution for those caught on the wrong side of the digital divide.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s\u00a0Comcast\u2019s claim<\/a>\u00a0that the merger would provide \u201cfull\u201d Net Neutrality protections to more Americans. As a condition of the NBCUniversal deal, Comcast agreed to abide by the FCC\u2019s (recently overturned) Open Internet Order. But that merger condition expires in 2018, and in any case the Open Internet Order didn\u2019t come close to providing full Net Neutrality.<\/p>\n

Still think we should trust Comcast\u2019s promise here? Well, the company\u00a0has misbehaved<\/a>\u00a0while ostensibly operating under these rules, favoring its own content over others.<\/p>\n

In short, Comcast doesn\u2019t have a leg to stand on. This is a big bad company and we can\u2019t let it grow even bigger. There\u2019s no way a merger of this size would serve the public interest.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t already,\u00a0tell the FCC<\/a>\u00a0why this merger will benefit no one but Comcast. Comments are due on Aug. 25.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amy Kroin Florida resident Benny Druin needed Comcast to come out for a service call. No big deal, right? Well, the first technician couldn\u2019t do the job. Nor could the second technician, who was\u00a0supposed\u00a0to arrive first thing in the morning and instead didn\u2019t show up until 6:45 p.m. If this were a fairytale, the third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-137882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-sicence-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}