DEAR COMCAST…
Dear Comcast:
It has been quite a few months since my last letter - a fact that no doubt has caused you to heave a sigh of relief. Allow me to take this opportunity to apologize for some of my more - shall we say - enthusiastically boorish remarks that, while reflecting exactly how I felt at the time, have since caused me to regret if not the substance then certainly the enjoyment I got out of skewering your company.
When I referred to Comcast as “a conniving, evil, money grubbing, anti-capitalist pox upon decent commerce” I may have overstated my case a bit. And when I called your corporate leaders, “greedy, acquisitive, loutish babbits with no more concern for the customer than a drunk ocelot” I suppose I could have chosen my words more carefully.
So let’s just look at that as water under the bridge and move on, alright? Besides, I have a favor to ask and I think it important that we start with a clean slate.
The favor I ask is simple: Please buy Mediacom.
Now, far be it from me to give you business advice in these troubled economic times. But really, you’ve been buying up just about every other cable company in America so purchasing my cable provider shouldn’t put you out too much, right? And given the level of service and the meager lineup of products Mediacom offers, they certainly can’t be worth very much. I’m not saying you could take them over by depleting your petty cash account but how expensive can these jamokes at Mediacom really be?
I never thought I would say it - never thought in a million years that I would ever utter the words “I miss Comcast.” But it’s true. I didn’t think there was a company in America who could match your disregard for customer service, your piss poor delivery of products, the constant problems with equipment, the interruptions in service, the service reps who learned their craft at some school they found on the back of a matchbook, or those cheerless voices on the phone who made your customers feel they were prisoners at Abu Gharaib rather than well, you know, the people who paid your salaries.
But then, we moved here to Streator, IL and discovered Mediacom.
Now, I would never accuse a company of being run by crooks - at least on this site. But what else do you call a company that takes your money and gives so little in return? Weekly internet outages, extraordinarily niggardly choices in products, a 19th century technological plant (do hamsters turn the generators that fail so regularly?), interruptions in all services, half hour to hour waits to get through to talk to a human being who turns out to have little or no knowledge of what is going on and tells you so with the manners of a goat, and a colossal cluelessness that permeates their corporate culture at every level.
At least you had about 50 HD channels, crystal clear reception on non-HD channels, and an on demand library that featured 1000 free movies and programming from other channels. Mediacom has less than half the HD channels, analog broadcasting on most non-HD channels that makes me want to look into buying rabbit ears in order to get better reception, no free movies, few free programming on demand options from other channels, AND NO NFL NETWORK!
This forces me to try and watch Thursday night NFL games on my computer using their pirated broadband signal. At least I think it is pirated. All I know is I am paying $60 bucks a month for 15 MBPS and by the time it is squeezed through their jury rigged, spit, gum and bailing wire, Rube Goldberg devised broadband cable, it is slower than DSL (according to various speed tests I’ve taken) and the picture keeps freezing and pixelating on me. This is common with all broadband video I try to watch - including any high quality porn I wish to enjoy. I mean, what’s a classic porn addict to do when Christy Canyon freezes in mid-moan?
You may suggest that I look into the dish. I have. From what I’ve heard from my neighbors - many of whom tried the dish and have since returned to cable - the folks who contract with Dish Network to install the hardware are, if anything, more clueless than Mediacom’s techies. After several visits trying to clear up an unwatchable picture, one of my neighbors just gave up (it is as flat as a pancake for hundreds of miles around). Besides, getting the dish won’t solve my internet problems although I am getting to the point where if I can be promised uninterrupted service I may just go for satellite broadband.
So, Comcast, you can see my dilemma. You are a gigantic corporation with massive resources. I have no doubt whatsoever that if you were to purchase Mediacom, you’d be able to elevate their service to at least the rock bottom level you offer. I eagerly await your reply.
Your friend,
Rick Moran
Omigawd, what a thought! After living with Comcast in the Washington DC area for many a year, I moved to the outskirts of Bloomington a few years ago and took some comfort in having Mediacom while my staff inside the city limits moaned about Comcast’s awful service. Then I got permission (from the spouse) to buy a flat-screen HDTV a while ago, but haven’t yet gotten around to contacting Mediacom to up the service to HD - am I going to wallow in angst after I do? Heaven forfend!
Realistically, I shouldn’t expect so much from Mediacom. Where I live is the boonies. And what I am slowly figuring out based on the quality of service and products from other big companies is that we out here are the last to receive upgraded technology and that the quality of food, consumer goods, and everything else is uneven at best. Three times since we moved out here we have opened a brand new item only to find it damaged. That says to me that we get the stuff no one else wants or that they think they can pawn off on a small market.
ed.
Comment by David Smith — 12/6/2008 @ 10:43 am
I just moved from Italy back to the States in part for internet. We were in a rustic location and as best I can figure out they used a microwave connection to pick up signal from a distant mountain. It took three hours to download a half hour sitcom. Every Saturday night service would slow . . . and slow . . . until by Sunday internet was out. (No one works on Sunday in Italy. You want to have a heart attack? Do it on a week day.) Hulu’s blocked for reasons of copyright, so we had to use a reach-around that slowed service further. We’d watch “The Office” with pauses, stalls and delays that more than doubled the running time.
Comment by michael reynolds — 12/6/2008 @ 11:13 am
I will be happy to share the feedback and the request!
Thanks,
Frank Eliason
Comcast
Comment by ComcastCares — 12/6/2008 @ 2:24 pm
Oh man, I feel your pain. When I was in MN we had MediaCom for our cable ONLY. When the time came for us to get high speed internet, the Logical Husband suggested we talk to MediaCom. After five minutes of hysterical laughter on my part, I said I could not (for business reasons) trust my internet connection to a company with the service record that MediaCom had (our cable was down half the time). Their service in MN was so poor that they had been sued by our town several times.
Fortunately we did have a choice as our local telecom’s switching office was a whopping 5 blocks away from our house!
You have my condolences.
LL
Comment by The Lady Logician — 12/6/2008 @ 11:20 pm
It is all about the bottom line and shareholder satisfaction.
Government caters to monopolies or near monopolies. Until recently, Florida Power & Light was pushing for a fuel cost increase on the bills. Doesn’t matter if you’re urban or rural, they screw you. I am unhappy with comcast high speed internet, AT&T (formerly Bell South) and the ever-increasing water bills, which are subject to a cost of living adjustment every year, on top of various other “improvements”. At least the state did away with the annual car inspections. All I know is that the various utilities ignore their decaying infrastructure and wait to repair each item as it breaks down, such as when a worker told me all the lines in my phone box area were going bad.
Thank god the Obamamessiah will spend some tax money on infrastructure because we all know how well government drones work. And real nice how it takes numerous road crew workers standing around watching one or two actually do work.
Bah humbug.
Comment by HE HATE ME — 12/6/2008 @ 11:36 pm
Rick, for once we’re in near agreement. Comcast is on my list of worse customer service companies in America. When a right-winger bitches about government inefficiencies and poor service I counter with Comcast and they usually shut up.
It’s one of the few companies whose service was so incompetent and rude I, like you, wrote a very nasty letter to their management. For example, when I had cable installed a neighbor with some digging equipment had to bury the cable for me because Comcast let it lay there for months. Later, when they over-billed me and I complained to a customer service rep she admitted they screwed up but was so pissed off she screeched “Next time we’ll get you!”
In my experience, once Comcast gets my service running it is dependable and of reasonable quality. However, change anything at your own risk. A friend and I picked up a digital package special at the same time. We literally called within two minutes of each other canceling the service, got two different service reps, and - huge surprise - got two entirely different responses on billing.
Want more horror stories? I’ve got plenty of ‘em!
It’s beyond the case of a monopoly leading to incompetent, lazy service. Where I live there are 4 choices. Of course, there’s always satellite providers Dish and DirectTV. But, in addition to Comcast, there’s Verizon’s excellent FIOS.
With many of the people I know dumping Comcast (mostly in favor of FIOS which offers faster/cheaper/more reliable Internet), I thought for sure they would learn to compete. Nope. Their prices just went up and rarely a month goes by without someone I know griping bitterly about a bad Comcast service experience.
My main reason for not switching myself is the hassle of giving up my email address (I got the exact address I wanted by picking them when they started Internet service and sincerely doubt I’ll ever be that lucky again) but there are even limits to that. How much am I willing to be price gouged by Comcast for that privilege?
From what I understand Comcast’s problems are rooted in your request for them to buy Mediacom. Comcast went though a huge growth spurt gobbling up local cable providers (what they did in my area) and paid huge premiums per subscriber leading to huge price spikes followed by never ending price hikes.
Comment by sknabt — 12/7/2008 @ 12:47 pm
I had Adelphia until the crooks (Rigas assholes) were jailed. I had hoped that Comcast (which bought them) would be the salvation… everybody is still waiting. When my internet went out unexpectedly, customer service told me that they would have a tech out in (and I am not kidding here) TWO WEEKS!
Switching to BellSouth DSL took less than a week (the bandwidth is not that great, but they are always on).
Monopolies (or near monopolies) suck.
Comment by lionheart — 12/8/2008 @ 10:05 am
I’ve ripped on Comcast for years but have to say that my last two customer service experiences were actually positive (both dating back about 6-8 months ago). It was evident to me that there had been training and real management concern - and since perfection ain’t happening that’s an A in my book.
I have both internet and cable. If the next experience goes as well as the last two I’m going to add phone.
Two remaining issues with Comcast for me:
1) the HD box is a disgrace. It runs hot and when it does so everything’s sluggish. I might press a button and it can take as much as two minutes before the box acts on it. But I can understand that Comcast made a big capital investment in that particular box so they’re loath to make a new investment in a better box when the current ones work. So this is one I’ll live with as I can understand where Comcast is.
2) Comcast needs to advertise it’s successes more. I see HD channels pop up in my guide every month or two these days. There’s almost never an announcement. I read in the business section of the paper about the Big 10 Sports network getting added - if I hadn’t read the article (in the BUSINESS SECTION!) I never would have known! They just added it to their $6.99 sport tier - an outstanding deal for anyone that likes College Sports (and you get NFL, NBA and NHL networks too).
I also have one complaint about the industry: once television is fully on the internet, a la carte pricing will reign. Why not get ahead of this customer service enhancement while you have a built in customer base? The technology is there now. The customers want it - at one time 200 channels seemed like a good thing but now it’s just unnecessary clutter in the guide (which is hard to navigate when the box is hot).
Comment by East Bay Jim — 12/8/2008 @ 1:19 pm
Rick,
Why not give DirecTV a try for the TV and HD aspect? I have no proposed solution for your Internet connection probs.
I have used DirecTV for over 10 years with zero issues — unless I get behind on my bill
In fact, I just moved three weeks ago and had zero problems setting up the satellite dish myself, again. Their HD DVR is awesome!
Don’t cancel your Mediacom HD until you try the DirecTV for a week or two. I highly doubt that if you are not satisfied that you would end up out one penny. For new subscribers, all equipment and installation is usually free.
Sounds like you have little to lose…
Take care,
DA
I am edging toward the dish - either DTV or DN.
ed.
Comment by Drill_ANWR — 12/9/2008 @ 5:39 pm