[63687] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Finding clue at comcast.net
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sirius F. Crackhoe)
Thu Oct 9 13:05:02 2003
From: "Sirius F. Crackhoe" <sirius@crackhoe.com>
To: <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 12:39:28 -0400
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
=20
-----Original Message-----
From: Sirius F. Crackhoe [mailto:sirius@crackhoe.com]=20
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 12:37 PM
To: 'Howard C. Berkowitz'
Comcast's Technical and Customer Support is outsourced to EDS and is =
based
in the EDS call center in Hallifax. I believe they were also taking =
calls in
the Winchester, KY call center, which was an old MCI/WorldCom Outsourced
Call Center that they sold to EDS a few years back.
They are setup the same as MSN, WebTV and RoadRunner. I used to do
implementations for WorldCom's outsourced call centers and call tell you =
for
sure, they have no access to the NOC or their staff. They are merely =
paid
phone operators. :)
Sirius=20
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of
Howard C. Berkowitz
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 11:21 AM
To: nanog@merit.org
At 9:29 AM -0500 10/9/03, Austad, Jay wrote:
>Comcast's phone support department is the *worst*, WORST, I've ever=20
>dealt with. I think they are outsourced, they have to go by a script,=20
>and many of them probably hardly know what a computer even is. Once I=20
>called because of a problem on their network, and I told the person on=20
>the phone that there was a problem on their network, and I pinned it=20
>down to a couple of routers where the problem may be, and she=20
>responded, very sternly, "Sir, WE DON'T HAVE ANY ROUTERS"
Same thing here. Last night, I was told that no escalation personnel =
were
available.
On the couple of occasions where I got escalation, I once had an =
informal
conversation with a 3rd level. Their phone center is in Halifax, NS --
didn't find out if it is outsourced or not. While the person with whom I
spoke was reasonably clueful, he told me that customer support had no
interactive communication with network operations -- at best, they could
send an email about a routing, SMTP, etc. problem and hope somebody =
would
respond.
At the time, I was paying for their "Pro" service, intermediate between
regular residential and full business. My contact said that while that =
was
supposed to get better customer support, an early plan to route it to
business Comcast failed, and there really was NO separate Pro support
organization. I dropped the Pro service after I learned that residential
service no longer insisted you remove any local routers and firewalls =
before
deigning to troubleshoot. They still ask you to do that, but repeated NO
responses can get them to proceed.
A few NANOGs back (Atlanta), I did a presentation on customer =
satisfaction,
which, frankly, was in many respects a case study of how I'd reform =
customer
support at my then ISP/DSL, cais.net. If NANOG ever did formal =
documents,
I'd like to see a guideline on how to run customer support.
>
>In any case, if you manage to get the call escalated a couple of times=20
>(after lying about rebooting your computer 47 times),
You forgot reinstalling Windows. On a Mac.
>you'll get someone
>good. Also, there are some good people who read this list. But=20
>calling their phone support to get anything useful is like trying to=20
>squeeze blood from a rock.
>
>-jay
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Howard C. Berkowitz [mailto:hcb@gettcomm.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 7:36 PM
>> To: nanog@merit.org
>> Subject: Finding clue at comcast.net
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm rapidly beginning to believe this is equivalent to finding the=20
>> pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. When my broadband alternative=20
>> is Verizon and it's looking better, this is scary.
>>
>> Sometime today, their SMTP server started bouncing messages with=20
>> more than 3 addressees. When I called customer support, I was told=20
>> "we only handle troubleshooting, not mail service." The operator=20
>> "guessed" they might be doing software updates on the mail service,=20
>> had no information, and said there was no person to which it could be =
>> escalated.
>>
>> She insisted that I call my local cable office to find out when the=20
>> "server repair" would be completed, because "they schedule all=20
>> repairs."
>>
>> Is this a bad dream?
>>
