I'm starting to hate comcast too

I've spent the last 5 days trying to pay my Comcast bill. Last Friday, I couldn't get through to the call center, and the system wouldn't let me pay online (apparently, having an out of state cell phone number means you can't access your account via their phone system).

This morning, when I called in, their phone billing system was down, so I couldn't pay then.

I finally got through to a human and attempted to pay my bill tonight, only to find out
(1) they didn't even know my balance at the call center and
(2) paying through the call center costs an extra $2 on my bill

According to the phone person, the call center is an independent thing hired by comcast. I've had bad experiences in the past when I've paid places other than the exact company. No way was I going to do so again. Thankfully, the rep informed me that I could set up my bill online (which the paper bill I received conveniently forgot to mention).

Beautiful. I love online billing stuff. So simple and easy. Except . . . it doesn't work. It just keeps asking me to enroll later.

I'll try to pay again tomorrow morning. If that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do. I'm not happy about this at all. I don't have time to go drive over to the billing lobby and pay there, and I'm frustrated by this whole experience. I knew there was a reason I didn't get my own internet when I lived on my own.

Comments

[karen]

Well here, Comcast charges 4 bucks (not 2) if you pay through their call center (with the real people). They neglected to inform me of that the first time I paid my bill and like the uninformed person I was, I called to see what the hell this 4 dollar charge was for. That's how I found out. I also talked to a supervisor who removed the 4 dollar charge because they never told me there was any difference in paying them or paying through the automated system. She just said: would you like to go ahead and pay now -- and I said OK! LOL

[Standard Mischief]

I started using Bank of America's bill pay after teh anthrax attack. It's free, you can pay -anyone- with an address, and most utilities have agreements such that the money is deposited within 2 days.

If they don't have an agreement, BoA mails them a check. I've used this to settle cash with my siblings and pay for auctions (although it's not too hot for that. Most sellers treat it as a personal check, when it's really drawn on BoA's account, not mine) It's not a lot of cash, but BoA picks up the postage too. I don't even know what a first class stamp costs nowadays.

I've got an electric bill that's due on the 17th. It's in my in-box, and later today, I'll log in and tell it to pay by that date. BoA will electronically send the payment on the 15th, and my electric co. actually prefers getting paid that way because there's no one that they need to pay to physically handle the check, and they don't charge me for the privilege either.

My take on those third party payers is that it's a stupidity tax, or a tax on people who's banking history is so bad that no bank wants to offer them a checking account.

The only part I dislike is that in your payee list, there's not a way to organize every entry into folders. There's a few utilities I pay every month, and then there's insurance that I pay once a year. All those occasional payees clutter up the user interface.

Also- I upchuck my cookies after every browser session. It's better if you save the ones BoA wants to stay persistent. I use a cookie management tool to save just those cookies (and my special zeroed google cookie, and a few others).

[Leah]

My problem with doing online billpay is twofold:

(1) Ann Arbor is a weird corner of the universe, and we don't have any freaking decent national banks, so I went with the local credit union. Simple and easy. I'm oh-so-tempted to upgrade my Washington Mutual checking account, start direct depositing in there, and use the online billpay feature for everything.

(2) I've got a rewards credit card, and damned if I don't love putting things on it to watch REI rewards pile up (I'm saving up for a new sleeping bag). Since I can't put my farking rent on it, I'm hoping to put this regular $80 cable bill on there so that I can accumulate some rewards that way.

I keep trying to pay online, and it keeps saying it can't process my request. This afternoon, I'll call their little contact # and ask for help with this, because I really would like to pay my bill before I start accumulating late fees.

[Standard Mischief]

I've got a rewards credit card, ...

Yea, flex that card! I suppose I ought to investigate paying my utilities via my REI visa too.

[Jerry]

A comment from a member of the "mail it in" generation. Before the internet I went to the library, found out the name and address of the president of the corporation---wrote him (usually not a her) detailing the problem and asking to have it resolved. It usually worked and sometimes it even resulted in their owing me a few dollars!!! Now, I just look up their name and address on the web and most of the time get results. Same frustrations--just a different approach.

[Brian]

I've been working with ComCast for over a year now. I work in a call center. When your pissed off, and nothing's working, i'm the guy who gets the brunt of it. The service you recieve from any given agent is like a doctor. They may word things differently, may have interpreted policy differently (we ARE human) and may have more working experience than others, but we do the best we can. Unfortunalty we don't have individual extentsions (or else i'd give you mine).
Try to kind of see things from our side. Of the 50+ calls you take in any given shift, 40 of which are incredibly pissed off, and occasionally ignorant, are itching to rip your head off. So unfortunately, if you call toward the end of any given shift, we may not be in the best of moods, but we do our job. Which is exactly what it is.
And last of all, its a free call. Which is why its sometimes a long wait to get through. In front of you is a grandmother who bought her first pc, wants to know how to work her email, but can't exactly see the monitor, and panics over everything. We are patient. We try to be thorough. And if its not a Comcast product, we can't help you. Internet problems? Unplug mdm for 20 seconds, restore power. You should be good to go. I'll post basic Trouble Shooting Tactics later. Hope yaw'll enjoy it, and spread the free advice. Or wait on the phone :)

[Leah]

dude, please spare me the basic troubleshooting. I appreciate the offer, but my complaint here has nothing to do with basic troubleshooting issues (if you notice, I complained specifically about the billing call center and not the support one). I used to work in tech support, so I'm pretty savvy about the whole computer thing. I don't have any problems relating to the internet connection. These are my basic gripes with comcast:

(1) It took me quite awhile to finally enroll in automatic billing via my credit card. They wanted me to *mail* some form in (in the meantime, do I just pay my bill at the store? How do I avoid getting double charged?). This is a process that _every_single_comcast_agent should be able to do, since it's common and saves comcast money. Technically, yes, you can do it online, but the website didn't work for the first two months that I had comcast.

(2) There's a few channels my TV hardly ever gets, despite them being regular channels. I know we should get them, since they work some time. ESPN and HGTV are the two particulars. I haven't even bothered to call in for them, but it is a pain. The worst? When we got the "channel will be on shortly" message for every single Michigan football game.

I'm not an irate person, and I don't call into companies just to scream. Again, I worked in tech support for quite awhile -- I'm pretty darn good at making a polite phone call, explaining the problem, etc. My issue is that comcast, so far, in Michigan only, seems to do things ass backwards. When I lived in Seattle, we had comcast service, and I think we had about two complaints in about 8 years (and both ended up stemming from a bad grounded line that ultimately got fixed).

[themouse]

Don't listen to jerry. He's just some jerk that's being paid to go to everyones website and write the same dumb crap the company tells him to. I seen your post elsewhere jerry. And CSR's DO have direct ext numbers. I've been given there's a number of times (from those who really want to help me solve my problems). What's worse jerry who comcast is using as a secret smooth it over, down to earth agent doesn't follow up online either. October ???? when are you going to come back, oh caring one who defends comcast/his beloved job with all his heart?

[Dissatisfied Customer]

Comcast is the worst cable company I have dealt with in my entire life !!

If I had the time, I would actually like to sue them in court for their poor service, and an even worse customer service.

[Leah]

re: bad customer service . . . I got charged a $20 fee for having a cable guy come out to check our lines. The rep on the phone told me it would be free. When I called back to dispute the charge, the new rep said "I have no idea why they said it would be free, because we always charge."

Sadly, comcast has a monopoly in my area, so I have no other option for internet/cable. I might ditch the TV service next year and try and buy wireless off a neighbor. We'll see how that works.

[Standard Mischief]

http://betterthaneveryone.com/?p=415#comment-4299

Check out that comment from "Brian", a poor suffering Comcast call center dude.

So themouse was right, Comcast is such a piss poor bastard of a company that they hired someone to astroturf for them.

http://polarbearsblog.wordpress.com/2006/11/22/tivo-updatei-hate-comcast/#comment-807

http://noel.weichbrodt.org/why-i-hate-comcast-and-have-a-loathing-for-bellsouth-too/#comment-179

[London]

Hi, it's funny, our senior clothing firm has over 9000 contacts in our database and about a thousand or more of them are comcast customers. We do not spam, at all. We have an optin list and we send mail twice a month to our customers AND we opt them out if they request us to do so via email OR they can opt out themselves very easily from our website or from the emails that we send them BUT we are constantly getting our mail to comcast customers bounced.

It wouldn't be such a bad thing if it was only the specials emails we sent that were getting bounced but its also our customer product shipping tracking notifications, customer order confirmation emails, customer password recovery emails, our own customer inquiry responses and more.

I now have to forward all the bounces I get from comcast addresses to my gmail account and forward the original email to the intended comcast customer with this message:

Hello faithful 'Our Company' customer.

I am sorry to have to inform you that your internet service provider (ISP) has blocked your important mail from 'Our Company'.

That is the reason I am emailing you the message that was intended for your through this Gmail Account.

There is a way to overcome this however and that would be to add the following email addresses to your address book or list of acceptable email senders:

orders@ourdomain.com
news@ourdomain.com
webmaster@ourdomain.com

or in some cases all mail coming from ourdomain.com.

Also, I suggest that you call your internet service provider (ISP:Comcast) and let them know that you are having problems getting your email from a trusted company - namely 'Our Company' and that they are hindering you from receiving your important order information. They may be able to re-route your mail from 'Our Company' into your inbox.

For Comcast you can call 1-800-266-2278 (if it works)
For Verizon you can call 1-800-643-0997 to speak to a customer support representative.

Lastly, below is a transcript of the email that was originally intended for you but was blocked by your ISP (Comcast). If you requested a new password it is there as well and can now be used.

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you and I but I believe it is very important that you be able to receive specials, orders and password notifications.

Kind regards,

---------

So basically that is the email I send out through my Gmail account to Comcast customers to try and tick them off that their important mail is getting blocked. Hopefully Comcast will hear these out crys and do something about it.

-------

Lastly, here is a list of links of Comcast Complaints and it seems the list keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Comcast Problems ~ Chris Pirillo
HIDDEN-TECH:HT Comcast problem
» And you thought you had Comcast problems? | An Internet Consultant Speaks | Scott Hendison
Vonage Forum - Comcast Problems?
Invision Power Services > Comcast problems
My3cents.com - Comcast Complaint - Reception Problems, Reception Problems
[PLUG] [OT] Comcast problems anyone?
Comcast Problems
KyleBits: I Hate Comcast
Tivo Update/I HATE Comcast « Just talking out loud…
Barely Legal Substance: Why I Hate Comcast, And Have a Loathing for Bellsouth Too
HATE COMCAST -- aulax@...'s comment on "Comcast should surcharge bandwidth hogs, Torrents downloaders" | TalkBack on ZDNet
a crank’s progress : I hate Comcast: intermittent outages likely
Everything and Nothing At All: I Hate Comcast
penn: I'm starting to hate comcast too
THIS , is why comcast sucks... - SpeedGuide.net Broadband Community
Comcast: Horrible Service Reps, Terrible Phone Service and Less Than Appealing Prices - Associated Content
Thrashing Through Cyberspace: Comcast Sucks

Enough?

OUR CUSTOMERS ARE COMCASTS CUSTOMERS AND WE'RE NOT HINDERING COMCASTS BUSINESS BUT THEY'RE HINDERING OURS.

Terrible. Terrible Comcast. Just TERRIBLE Service.

[Mike]

I have TV COMCAST only, and ATT/BELLSOUTH internet dsl access. For the last 2 months i have not being able to pay through the web on comcast, because i get an internet error. I only get this problem on the comcast webiste, no other problem with any of the other websites i access. I am wandering whether COMCAST is behind this problem, i tried calling the comcast telephone number, and it is $2 and $4 fees for phone auto pay and representative pay. I do not like COMCAST, i hope they disappear, stay away from them, i am switching to satellite.