Comcast becomes her lesser of two evils
By adamg - Mon, 12/01/2008 - 7:13pm.
Pahkcah02 details the story behind her assertion that, when it comes to high-speed broadband:
Comcast may be slow, dull, and expensive compared to Verizon, but at least they have never flat out lied to me in order to make up for incompetence. Buyer beware to anyone considering the switch.
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When we switched over to
When we switched over to them (Verizon Fios) we found out that a significant chunk of their "hundreds of free movies on demand" are actually the trailers for their $4.99 movies on demand.
FWIW, I got dissed by Comcast
Look, any of these cable companies can diss you, so don't think you're special - it just happened to be your turn with Verizon. When I originally got cable from Comcast years ago in Westwood, I had exactly the story you just told. I stayed home from work the whole day, the guy said he showed up, and I never saw him. And they just don't care.
Bottom line: Give FiOS another shot if you think you'll get a better product for the money.
And here's a tip: I got FiOS about 18 months ago, and I had questions on at least the first 6 bills I got. Some I got credit for, and others were explained to my satisfaction. On one of the calls, the rep asks if I want faster service for no charge. Being the cynic I am, I asked at least 3 times how this works making sure I wasn't sucked into anything. It was a $10 charge with a $10 credit, and I check my bill every month to make sure I don't get scammed. Ask them about it.
One more thing.....
As I said, I was calling Verizon every month for the first 5 or 6 months with questions about my bill. Every customer service experience with them was downright excellent. I know, those words "excellent" and "customer service" seem like a contradiction (try calling Bank of America sometime), but I can honestly say it. The people were helpful, patient (some calls were quite long), personable, and knowledgeable, and every call ended with a problem resolution. Hey, I was looking for a reason to hate these guys as I'm paying > $100/month, but they really were good.
But if the customer service was so good ...
why did you have to keep calling them every time you got a new bill?
The erroneus bill wasn't CS's fault
CS handled the problem well. If the billing dept. (or some computerized billing program) keeps screwing up the bill, it's not CS's fault. And sometimes when I called, the bill was correct, I just wanted an explanation. Long ago, I was a programmer for an insurance company and am very familiar with how these bills are created. ;-)
Look I'm no Verizon fanboy. My point is that she's trashing Verizon when Comcast service is no better. I'm sure she can find just as many people that have had problems with Comcast as she can with Verizon.
Verizon v Comcast
I'm sure that there are lots of people out there who have had issues with Comcast, Verizon, RCN, etc. What made me so angry about my experience with Verizon was the fact that they flat out lied to me.
I'm in sales and I make my living by making explicit promises to customers and then delivering on them. I was scheduled for an installion the Monday morning following a holiday weekend. I can certainly understand that an activity like my installation might have been delayed. However, rather than tell me that they forgot about my installation and they would send someone out by the end of the day they chose to give me the runaround. If I was over two hours late for a sales call, didn't call the client, and then was rude to them my boss would fire me. As such I see no reason to reward a company like Verizon with my business.
My experience with Verizon might very well be different then someone else's. There's also a good possibility that other people have had similar experiences with Comcast, RCN, etc. I was just ticked off enough about my experience with Verizon to blog about it.