slrebel
map-marker Sandy, Utah

Read this! Comcast is dishonest and corrupt, here’s why:

I have become so fed up with this company's prices and customer service, so I decided that I wanted to complain about them. When I started searching the internet, I started finding information that shows how dishonest they really are.

Comcast's proxy statement, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, put CEO Brian Roberts' 2010 total compensation package at $31.10 million. Steve Burke, who is chief executive of Comcast-controlled media giant NBCUniversal was awarded a compensation package in 2010 valued at $34.74 million. CFO Michael J. Angelakis received a package valued at $22.9 million. They are getting wealthy off of Comcast subscribers, many of which have lost their jobs, are forced to apply for welfare or have to clip coupons to feed their families.

This past February, Comcast decided to convert the call center in my area from a Customer Service call center to an outbound Collections center. All employees were laid off except for a couple of small departments. The employees were told if they wanted to keep working there, they would need to re-apply and IF they were rehired, they would receive a decrease in pay. 400 new employees were hired to replace those who were laid off. Comcast received a $2,500 tax break from the city for each new employee they hired. Those who were laid off received a severance package of one paid week per each year they were employed. Many of which were not employed more than one or two years. I heard this directly from one of those employees.

A few years ago FiOS applied to the local franchise which I happen to live in - to provide service to the area residents. Employees who lived in that city received an internal email requesting that they sign a letter drafted by Comcast which petitioned the city to not grant FiOS' request. They were also asked to attend city council meetings and plead with council members to deny FiOS petition. Their argument was that FiOS was planning to provide service only to the wealthy neighborhoods which was not fair to the less affluent areas. If those customers switched to FiOS, Comcast would stand to lose huge amounts of revenue. Guess what, Comcast is still the only cable provider in the area. Who knows what other cities this has occurred in.

Months prior to the NBC Universal merger, employees were told that no one would lose their job as a result of the merger. Surprise! Shortly before and after the merger, various departments and in some cases call centers were closed. Smaller call centers were consolidated into an existing larger call center, but there was not necessarily additional employees hired to handle the higher call volume. Many other jobs were outsourced either to the Philippines or to a contracting company. Do you think they care about your complaints? Not likely. Comcast saves millions of dollars by doing this because outsourcing costs them less in wages, plus they do not have to pay for benefits.

Every year during March Madness, The Consumerist has the "Worst Company In America" tournament. Not surprisingly Comcast is always nominated. Each year employees have received an internal email requesting that they vote for the other company in their bracket. This is an example of the email: "DO NOT vote for Comcast. When you cast your ballot, vote for the other company. Remember, you're voting for the "Worst Company in America." Feel free to vote from the office and at home on your personal computers and laptops. You can also vote via the web browser on your cell phones, iPads, tablets and other web-enabled wireless devices". Despite their attempts to throw votes, Comcast still won the 2010 "Worst Company In American" title and was in the top four in 2011.

Comcast is strongly anti-union. They have a history of attempting to dissolve employees' unions and firing labor organizers. Comcast has spent large amounts of money to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, the purpose of which is to strengthen workers' right to form unions. Pro-union employees have been illegally fired, harassed, wrongly disciplined, denied promotions and benefits. In some areas cable installers are forced to attend daily anti-union meetings, and company managers as well as anti-union workers have been brought in from other areas to ride in trucks with cable installers, urging them to vote out their union. Comcast has been charged with numerous violations of federal labor laws.

Many of you are already aware of this: Several years ago subscribers became suspicious about slow download speeds and began finding evidence that Comcast was blocking packets for P2P file sharing. Naturally they vehemently denied they had anything to do with the mysterious slowdowns. They were later exposed for throttling customers who were using bandwidth for P2P file sharing. The FCC formally ruled Comcast's throttling was illegal and in violation of the network neutrality principles. Comcast agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit for $16 million. The proposed settlement page (as of a year ago) states that those who submit valid claim forms will receive "a share" of the total settlement, however the amount won't go over $16 per share. The FCC has fined Comcast for many other violations as well.

Several organizations, including a network station, have accused Comcast of violating one or more of the conditions the FCC imposed when it approved the merger with NBCUniversal in January. Complaints have been filed with the FCC. Not a big surprise.

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6 comments
Guest

Yup...I will become another layoff next week, after 7 years. Everything in this post is true except for the part about Comcast asking employees to vote for the other company in the worst company poll.

Never saw or heard anything about that happening. If it did, must have been an isolated incident.

slrebel

nikalseyn sorry to disappoint you,(NOT) but I have never belonged to a union, never been on welfare or any type of government assistance, I work full time and my mortgage is paid in full. Envious of Brian Roberts success?

Give me a f-ng break - not hardly. Angry about the way they treat not only their customers but employees, h-ll yes. I am merely one among the hundreds who have posted a complaint about this company.

If you think they are such a great company, why don't you apply to work for them. You'll change your mind in a hurry.

Guest

nikalseyn is in management and gets bonuses for ripping off the workers. HOLY HYPOCRITE -PROBABLY waves a bible

Guest

if you thinks it's bad being a customer it's worse being an employee. A fat sup named Kim Edwards in the Lynnwood,WA call center sent email asking to work off the clock without pay.

we are winning a class action lawsuit. call the retention department and ask for discounts.

John N Mzy

Sounds like not only are you envious of others' success, but a mind-numbed union robot to boot. You really need to get a job instead of living off the dole. At least then you wouldn't have so much time to complain about other peoples' success.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of John N Mzy

Comcast is a criminal corporation. Its terms of service give it all the rights and the customer has none.

They lie about outages and have terrible service that is so bad compared to FIOS and other high-speed. They bribe politicians and have no respect for ethics, customers, or professional service.

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slrebel
map-marker Sandy, Utah

Read this! Comcast is dishonest and corrupt, here’s why:

Comcast's proxy statement, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, put CEO Brian Roberts' 2010 total compensation package at $31.10 million. Steve Burke, who is chief executive of Comcast-controlled media giant NBCUniversal was awarded a compensation package in 2010 valued at $34.74 million. CFO Michael J. Angelakis received a package valued at $22.9 million. They are getting wealthy off of Comcast subscribers, many of which have lost their jobs, are forced to apply for welfare or have to clip coupons to feed their families. This past February, Comcast decided to convert the call center in my area from a Customer Service call center to an outbound Collections center. All employees were laid off except for a couple of small departments. The employees were told if they wanted to keep working there, they would need to re-apply and IF they were rehired, they would receive a decrease in pay. 400 new employees were hired to replace those who were laid off. Comcast received a $2,500 tax break from the city for each new employee they hired. Those who were laid off received a severance package of one paid week per each year they were employed. Many of which were not employed more than one or two years. Ever wonder why Comcast has the worst customer service? The next two paragraphs explain why. Customer service reps are allowed to spend only 5-7 minutes per call depending on which department they are in. If the call lasts longer than 10 minutes, they receive a message every minute reminding them that they are over their 5 minutes. Roughly translated: get the customer off the phone! Occasionally a supervisor will stand at an employees' desk if they have been on a call for longer than 10 minutes and demand an explanation as to why they spent so much time with the customer. Employees are required to attempt to upgrade customers to a more expensive package or additional services on each call, even if they are complaining about their bill. Those who do not meet their daily goals are chastised in front of other employees and if they still have not meet their sales goals or phone metrics after a certain amount of time, they get fired. Employees are told to avoid transferring customers to a supervisor, instead they are instructed to advise customers that they will be called back in 24-48 hours (usually there is no call back). If you think you have been transferred to a supervisor, think again. There is a possibility you are speaking with someone who is not an actual supervisor. Months prior to the NBC Universal merger, employees were told that no one would lose their job as a result of the merger. Surprise! Shortly before and after the merger, various departments and in some cases call centers were closed. Smaller call centers were consolidated into an existing larger call center, but there was not necessarily additional employees hired to handle the higher call volume. Many other jobs were outsourced either to the Philippines or to a contracting company. Do you think they care about your complaints? Not likely. Comcast saves millions of dollars by doing this because outsourcing costs them less in wages, plus they do not have to pay for benefits. A few years ago FiOS applied to the local franchise which I happen to live in - to provide service to the area residents. Employees who lived in that city received an internal email requesting that they sign a letter drafted by Comcast which petitioned the city to not grant FiOS' request. They were also asked to attend city council meetings and plead with council members to deny FiOS petition. Their argument was that FiOS was planning to provide service only to the wealthy neighborhoods which was not fair to the less affluent areas. If those customers switched to FiOS, Comcast would stand to lose huge amounts of revenue. Guess what, Comcast is still the only cable provider in the area. Every year during March Madness, The Consumerist has the "Worst Company In America" tournament. Not surprisingly Comcast is always nominated. Employees received an internal email stating "DO NOT vote for Comcast. When you cast your ballot, vote for the other company. Remember, you're voting for the "Worst Company in America." Feel free to vote from the office and at home on your personal computers and laptops. You can also vote via the web browser on your cell phones, iPads, tablets and other web-enabled wireless devices". Despite their attempts to throw votes, Comcast still won the 2010 "Worst Company In American" title and was in the top four in 2011. Comcast is strongly anti-union. They have a history of attempting to dissolve employees' unions and firing labor organizers. Comcast has spent large amounts of money to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, the purpose of which is to strengthen workers' right to form unions. Pro-union employees have been illegally fired, harassed, wrongly disciplined, denied promotions and benefits. In some areas cable installers are forced to attend daily anti-union meetings, and company managers as well as anti-union workers have been brought in from other areas to ride in trucks with cable installers, urging them to vote out their union. Comcast has been charged with numerous violations of federal labor laws. Many of you are already aware of this: Several years ago subscribers became suspicious about slow download speeds and began finding evidence that Comcast was blocking packets for P2P file sharing. Naturally they vehemently denied they had anything to do with the mysterious slowdowns. They were later exposed for throttling customers who were using bandwidth for P2P file sharing. The FCC formally ruled Comcast's throttling was illegal and in violation of the network neutrality principles. Comcast agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit for $16 million. The proposed settlement page (as of a year ago) states that those who submit valid claim forms will receive "a share" of the total settlement, however the amount won't go over $16 per share. The FCC has fined Comcast for many other violations as well. Several organizations, including a network station, have accused Comcast of violating one or more of the conditions the FCC imposed when it approved the merger with NBCUniversal in January. Complaints have been filed with the FCC. Not a big surprise.
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slrebel
map-marker Newark, New Jersey

Comcast is dishonest. Here’s why

Updated by user Oct 23, 2011

Comcast\'s proxy statement, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, put CEO Brian Roberts\' 2010 total compensation package at $31.10 million. Steve Burke, who became chief executive of Comcast-controlled media giant NBCUniversal in January, was awarded a compensation package in 2010 valued at $34.74 million.

Do you really think they care if we can\'t afford to pay for cable service or if we have constant issues with our service?

Original review Oct 22, 2011
I am like many others who complain about services and prices and get no satisfaction. I feel like screaming every time I get off the phone with this company. I tried to get a reduction of my bill, but the person on the other line said if I don't like it, I can always disconnect my services. If you think Comcast cares about your problems, keep on reading. This past February, Comcast decided to change our local call center from a Customer Service call center to an outbound Collections center. All employees were laid off except for a couple of small departments. The employees were told if they wanted to keep working there, they would need to re-apply and IF they were rehired, they would receive a decrease in pay. 400 new employees were hired to replace those who were laid off. Why you ask? Because Comcast received a $2,500 tax break from the city for each new employee they hired! The local newspaper ran a story about Comcast hiring 400 new employees, but there was no mention about all the people who were laid off; many of which are still out of work. Prior to the NBC Universal merger, employees were told that no jobs would be lost. Surprise! Shortly after that various call centers were closed and those jobs were outsourced; some to the Philippines and others to Convergys or similar companies. Comcast does not have to pay for benefits for outsourced jobs. A few years ago FIOS applied to a local franchise which I live in, to provide service. All employees who lived in that city received an internal email requesting that they sign a letter drafted by Comcast which petitioned the city to not grant FIOS' request. They were also asked to attend city council meetings and ask council members to deny FIOS petition. As a result, Comcast is still the only cable provider in the area. Every year during March Madness, The Consumerist has the "Worst Company In America" tournament. Of course Comcast is always nominated. Employees received an email stating "DO NOT vote for Comcast. When you cast your ballot, vote for the other company. Remember, you're voting for the "Worst Company in America." Feel free to vote from the office and at home on your personal computers and laptops. You can also vote via the web browser on your cell phones, iPads, tablets and other web-enabled wireless devices" Of course that didn't stop Comcast from winning the 2010 "Worst Company In American" title. Comcast is anti-union. They have a long history of attempting to break employees' unions and firing labor organizers. Comcast has spent huge amounts of money to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, which aims to strengthen workers' right to form unions. Pro-union employees have been illegally fired, harassed, wrongly disciplined, denied promotions and benefits. Comcast has also spread misinformation about CWA and the IBEW, and coerced and intimidated workers who showed any interest in becoming a union member. Comcast has been charged with hundreds of violations of federal labor law. Comcast was accused of throttling P2P file sharing which they adamantly denied. They were later exposed for throttling customers who were using bandwidth for P2P file sharing. The FCC formally ruled Comcast's throttling was illegal and in violation of the network neutrality principles.
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1 comment
Guest

FTC hits Comcast CEO Brian Roberts with $500,000 fine. So what he makes over 30 million per year.

Brian needs to reread the Comcast code of conduct where he tells employees he will not tolerate dishonesty from us. Why is he on Obama's jobs council? He should be fired. Do as I say, not as I do.

Obama's slogan about "change you can believe in" should really be "the more things change the more they stay the same".

It's worse being an employee. At the Lynnwood, WA call center a fat sup named Kim Edwards sent an email requesting off the clock work. We are winning a class action lawsuit against them. Our lawyers are experienced and successful at winning this kind of case and we have the evidence.

Comcast thinks that hiring a Perkins Coie lawyer will intimidate us. It just proves that they know they are going down and have a lot of money to waste.

slrebel
map-marker Salt Lake City, Utah

What really goes on in a Comcast call center

As a very recent former employee who left voluntarily after 7 years of witnessing underhanded and deceptive practices to not only customers but employees as well, I decided I would rather be unemployed than continue working for Comcast. The constant daily verbal abuse from customers that I had to put with was also a contributing factor. I am now a regular paying customer and I hate having to deal with them because unlike most customers, I know what really goes on there.

In the past year they closed multiple call centers with the reason that they were small, inefficient and non productive, which resulted in the unemployment of thousands of employees. The calls that used to be handled by those call centers have been routed to other areas, but Comcast did not hire additional people to handle the increased call volume. I heard a manager tell some employees to increase their productivity or they could lose their jobs to an outsourced company. Comcast outsourced all incoming Spanish calls to Mexico and the calls for internet and telephone support for field technicians (as well as many of the customer calls) has been contracted to an outside company in the Philippines. Comcast does not have to pay for employee benefits for ""˜outsourced" jobs. The employee cost for medical and dental coverage increased and the 401k company match decreased. Shortly after all of this occurred, the media broke the news that Comcast was planning to merge with NBC Universal.

Want to know why customer service is so horrible? For one thing, many - but not all - reps are so burned out from taking verbal abuse (i.e. screaming, vulgarity, name calling etc.)& complaints from customers for 8 hours a day that they cease to care about taking care of the customers' issue and second, many employees don't last more than a year so chances are you are talking to someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. Management places the emphasis on productivity & sales rather than customer service. I was told by several different managers that the company would rather make the customer schedule an appointment for a service call, take time off from work and spend time at home waiting for hours for a tech to show up instead of allowing a rep to spend extra time on the phone to try & get their issue resolved. This causes a backlog on service appointments & results in making customers wait longer than 3-4 days for a technician. There are many issues which do require a technician to fix the problem, but there are also many service calls that could & should have been resolved over the phone. Ever feel like the person you are talking to doesn't care about your problem or is trying to get you off the phone as quickly as possible? Phone reps are allowed to spend an average time of 5-7 minutes per call depending on which department they are in. If the call lasts longer than 10 minutes, they receive a message every minute reminding them that they are over their 5 minutes, so reps will say anything they think will get the customer off the phone. Sometimes a supervisor will stand at an employees' desk if they have been on a call for longer than 10 minutes and demand an explanation as to why they spent so much time with the customer. On one particular occasion I spent over 30 minutes on one call, but I was able to resolve the problem to the satisfaction of the customer. After the call, I was confronted by my supervisor who actually told me it was more important to stay within the 5 minute timeframe rather than go over the 5 minutes and resolve the issue. I was also told to not let it happen again or I could be "written up". After a certain amount of time, if the reps' average time spent with each customer goes over 5 minutes, they receive a warning. If they do not make the daily sales goal, they receive a warning, so reps will tell the customer anything in order to get "a sale". After a specific amount of time if reps still have not meet their goals, they get fired. In the sales department I saw a sign posted stating one of their daily goals is "customer mind control" (this is no joke)! If a local market is not meeting corporate sales goals, managers will walk up and down aisles to find out who is not meeting their sales quota for the day. The company's goal is to sign up every customer in a Triple Play digital bundle. During new hire training, two entire days is devoted just on overcoming objections from customers who don't want additional services or higher priced packages. There is very limited incentive to provide good customer service, however there are plenty of incentives to sell services (such as not losing their job). Policies, procedures, billing changes & prices can change daily and reps are informed (if at all) of those changes via email or in their team meeting, so if they don't bother to read their email or they don't attend a team meeting, they give customers the wrong information. (Ever wonder why every time you call you get a different answer or you feel like the rep doesn't know what they are talking about?) A standard joke amongst the employees is that for a communication company, Comcast sucks at communicating information within their own organization. Ongoing training for new products, services and billing is not held in training rooms, but on the employees' computer. Each course lasts an average of 5-20 min and is in the form of a PowerPoint presentation. (And customers question why employee's knowledge about their own products is so poor)

Have you ever asked for a supervisor and felt like you got the run around? That's because supervisors are hardly ever at their desks, they are busy writing up employees or trying to resolve the dozens of escalated customer complaints. Supervisors HATE taking calls from customers. Phone reps are told to avoid transferring customers to supervisors. If the customer insists on speaking to a supervisor the reps are told to advise customers of a 24-48 hour call back time frame and there is no guarantee there will be a callback. Many times when customers think they are talking to a supervisor, they are actually talking to "floor support" (level below supervisor). The stress the company puts on each employee is unbelievable. Not only do the employees have to deal with the pressure of talking customers into adding services they don't want, as well as the constant fear of being fired for not meeting their insane metrics, but also deal with disgruntled, angry and screaming customers throughout the day. The morale is extremely low and many employees stay with the company simply because there are not a lot of available jobs and they have families to support.

As far as installation and service appointments go, in my local market jobs are not pre-routed, so technicians usually have no idea what type of work they will be doing ahead of time. Because the phone reps can spend a limited amount of time on each call, they cut corners on setting up work orders, such as not listing what equipment or services the technician needs to install, leaving off discount codes, not scheduling an appointment with a valid date and/or time and on service orders many of them are setup incorrectly or don't even state what technical problem the customer is having. The technician may have no idea what the customer is expecting until they walk in the door. The work order may show he is installing one line of service or one cable box, but the customer is expecting something else, and that can make the technician run late to the rest of his jobs. Many of the installations and upgrades are done by contracted technicians. Do not assume that by requesting an "in house" technician that you will get one even if the phone rep promised one would come to your home. The people who route the jobs usually do not read any of the job comments. The reps are required to-but in many cases do not- advise customers that A) The technician can show up anytime during the scheduled timeframe or what the appt. is scheduled for B) Someone 18 or older must be home and C) That there will be a pre-call before the technician arrives (in my market the majority of pre-calls are made by dispatch, not the technician). On service calls for technical problems if the customer does not answer the phone after two attempts are made, the job gets cancelled. This policy was put into place because of the large number of times technicians would drive to a customer's home and no one would be there. A very common problem is that when phone rep sets up appointments, they don't always verify with the customer what telephone number the customer can be reached at, so when the pre-call is made, the correct telephone number is not called. Customers should not assume the correct contact information is listed on their account. Each market may have different policies for installation and service appointments.

If you think it sucks being a Comcast customer, it is 100 times worse being a Comcast employee.

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74 comments
Guest

I had a TCI supervisor who told me to lie to the customer... Wow. That is TCI/Comcast ethical standards in action.

Guest

I was a TCI employee in the 1990s. TCI was purchased later by the old AT&T and then spun off to merge with a smaller company called Comcast.

I was a CSR, TCI called us CSSRs. We had a crooked manager in the Chenault Street call center in Dallas who had his "force management" transfer calls out of the Automatic Call Distribution system and on to the second phone lines of the CSRs. By transferring the calls the true answering stats were not known. I would have a customer waiting to talk to me while I am talking to another customer and I would see that the ACD monitor said that there were no calls waiting to be answered.

The Dallas call center would not train CSRs to handle the Arlington system so the new CSRs did not know how to handle it and it caused much customer dissatisfaction. I stayed on the phone as long as it took to resolve the issue that I was presented. Management did not like my staying on the phone as long as I did on average.

I was fired because I was sick too much. The call center had very bad ventilation and we were asked to sit near other CSRs so the supervisors would not have to walk too much to get to the CSRs.

Because of the corruption and stupidity of management Supervisors were being run ragged. When someone had a cold or other illness then we would all be at risk and because I had a bronchitis problem I would get what was going around. If the management was not so pig headed, ***, and dishonest then it would have worked out very well.

The company stole my vacation pay that I would have had if they were not a bunch of crooks. I am not surprised that Comcast (Also known as Comcrap) is still considered dishonest.

When a dishonest manager is allowed to stay then they become the standard. Now the dishonest manager is an employee of Time Warner.

Guest

Hey you really need to get this out there. I read the whole letter and everything you said is true.

Let the people on the internet read your letter. Comcast needs to be taken down and put in their place and you can do it.

Guest

I worked for outsourced call center for companies such as sprint, at&t, telstra(australian account) and comcast. we handle west division of comcast.

comparing all the accounts i handled i felt like they are almost the same, you have target scores for quality assurance, customer surveys, average handling time etc etc, which limits the things you can do for the customer. but for comcast where i was a tech support for cable and internet quality assurance is a joke, and the only thing that they are serious about is... SALES!, they will give you a coaching for bad surveys but they wont take it seriously, they will push for sales more than any other metrics or goals. fraud is not allowed but to be honest the only fraud that is not allowed are the obvious ones like adding new line of business without the customers consent, any other techniques will be considered as a sale.

supervisor will do anything to avoid a supervisor call and yes that is correct you will be talking to a floor support and not the supervisor, and to be honest, most of the supervisor doesnt know anything about the process, they are just trained to talk like a supervisor and has more access on the system while us agents has a limited access like requesting for an early schedule for technician. my supervisor before even gave me his log ins to access his account on the tools so i can do the early schedules my self. that is how lazy most of the supervisors are. one supervisor doesnt even know how to transfer correctly.

comcast is about sales only and call quality just comes in second or sometimes on third. im pretty sure our management knows how to give a good customer service but the accounts demanding metrics really limits the capability of the agents.

Guest

Hi guys i am a comcast employee from an outsourced company as well, i am a Technical Service Rep for couple of years now. To tell you guys the truth most of the people you talk to are all burnt out 8 hours of taking in calls with to avail time, at one day minimum number of calls would be around 40, I am a multiple split rep i handle cable,internet,phone,x1 and sales, If you called in and asked for a supervisor you may have already talked to me.

Our metrics are insane 600 seconds of handle time for 1 call, And if you are complaining about us sounding like robots its not our choice its required that we follow a set of steps of questioning or we will fail at Quality Assurance and the target for that is 90%-100%. We have to say all that *** to pass and for that i would like to offer an apology.Lastly our surveys 90% target most of all the people that i started out with got fired because of this. One zero survey is equivalent to four 100% surveys to reach 80%. So as you can see they expect as to be robots and just follow everything by the book.

As i have mentioned i am a Tech Rep and now they are moving me to Billing which will be another venture for me,the management did this without my consent and it is involuntary i had no choice, and what we earn 18$ a day.

That is not even enough for the racial slurs and abuse we get through the phone and everything is taxable even our allowance and performance bonus, we cant even file a leave without begging for them to approve with. I lasted this long in this *** trade because i need a job to survive its not that easy to get a job here nowadays.

Well this is for shedding a bit of light on why you feel like we do not care. Well how can we?

Guest

This entire article is bull. I've worked for Comcast for several years and so have many others.

Many of my co workers have been with comcast for 14, 20 and one even 40 years. If the company is so bad why do employees make this opportunity a lifelong career? In regards to customer calls, comcast allows us to stay on the phone until we've done everything we can do to assist the customer.

I can go on and on addressing all of the galaxies in this guys' story, but I have better things to do. Please do not believe the words of an ex disgruntled employee.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-970600

No, Mama. In the call center where I'm at, we are only allowed to be on the phone with a customer for only 9 minutes ..

which is not a lot of time if the customer talks for 4 minutes before giving up any information to be identified, and we are not allowed to interrupt. 9 minutes is not enough time to take care of the customer's problem, especially when that customer is having problems with all 3 services (phone, internet & cable). In my call center, after 9 minutes, you are written up.

Other parts of comcast might be a "dream" to work in, but I do not recommend working in the call center. Not only do you have to deal with customer abuse, you're also dealing with the constant threat of being fired.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-970600

I have never gotten worse customer service from any company I have ever dealt with, in any industry. It is a disgrace and I dread calling Comcast for any reason because I know it will start atleast an hour pursuit and likely not resolve my problem.

What kind of reputable company does not only not empower the operators, but then won't put a supervisor on the phone?

Comcast is the worst company, period. I make sure that anyone who is considering signing up, knows how stressful the hole process will be.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-970600

Why to people stay in abusive relationships where they'll continue to be abused? Because it's known and somehow feels safe.

If people need jobs and feel they don't have similar earning prospects elsewhere, they'll stay ... even it it's sucking the life out of them.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-970600

No....The entire article is accurate.

As a current employee for Collections the only way I can describe the general atmosphere of the office is something between "Kafkaesque" and "***"

We're given a transfer number that apparently only even routes directly back to us - even if the customer is current or has made payment arrangements, even if they sincerely need tech support, even if a tech set their house on fire and they want to make a complaint. The mentality is "Shut the *** up and pay us"

There are often between 10 and 30 new representatives coming in every week to replace ones who have either given up or found greener pastures, which means often they *** something up and then a customer has to spend the better part of 4 hours trying to get someone competent. Some are outright rude to customers, I've heard many shouting and screaming back at someone on the phone, of course they didn't get in trouble, but if you aren't on the phone for 90% of the time with no downtime between calls you get "assistance".

Some supervisors are entirely worthless and we're even prohibited from trying to flag them down to assist on a call. We're supposed to email them, even though they spend more time *** with one another than at their desks. The one or two that do care about the customer's experience have very little that they can do - they're literally only supervisors because they've lasted longer than anyone else.

Most of my day is spent handling things that Customer Service or Billing *** up - how is it that any time Billing has to make an adjustment, they manage to take something like half of a past due balance and shove it into the current balance? This leaves a customer under the impression that they just got billed $300 when they really just have two $150 bills. Try explaining that to someone who is ripshit mad after having spend a whole day on the phone with immature children whose major qualifications for the job are "Can you dress nice when Corporate comes in to check the center?" Oh no, this post is accurate. I can attest to this.

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