IamA Comcast customer account Executive AMA!

You acknowledge in your post that many people call Comcast "The Devil". How aware of their reputation do the higher-ups seem? Do they care, or do they operate business as usual knowing that most of their customers don't have any alternative?

Well they don't really care at all they carry on business as usual. Sometimes they will try to make you feel a little better throwing a promotion here and there but at the end the higher ups only care about themselves.

Man, I hope this AMA doesn't get you in any trouble. But...Comcast did give my girlfriend and I quite a hefty bill for no reason after we canceled our service, so fuck the way it's run

That's why I'm trying to keep my identity hidden. Highly doubt this could be traced back to me.

Well is your ISP Comcast?

Nah funnily enough where I live I get no services at all I'm just rocking good old unlimited 3g data courtesy of sprint :)

comcast is a multi-billion dollar corporation, they essentially don't give a damn about individual consumers

Pretty much.

Can you confirm that you'll be answering this IAMA for between 1 and 6 hours?

I'll do my best as long as there's questions to be answered :)

Your IAMA is very important to us. Please stand by.

*Cue classical music or funky music with a comcast ad every 30 seconds *

Why do you feel that you'll be fired soon?

Haven't been the same for quite a while now, I haven't been performing as well as I have been before, honestly I stopped caring due to most of the bs we as representatives have to deal with not with customers but with the higher ups.

Sounds like Comcast's really got you lagging these days.

Been lagging for a while now.

I used to work for Insight BB before Comcast bought them out. Which office are you working out of?

I'd rather not answer this one to conceal my identity better. Sorry :)

Hey thanks for doing this AMA!

So when you go to hell, which of the 9 circles will you choose?

Pff after February of 2013 I've got my spot secured right beside Satan himself.

This needs clarification

Gather round children for this is a long story: Back when I was young and happy, there was a team of 30 people called sales force (to this day I hate the name) we were basically the best of the best of the best sir! And February of 2013 was when that team was the best in the world for sales with a close rate of about 25 sales per 100 calls that came in (to give a point of comparison there's people that can't even do 1 sale in whole month) me personally on a bad day I'd make about 5 and personal record being 18 in one day. That month we got so much money and we went and partied like there was no tomorrow that was on a weekend and blew most of our money off on alcohol and illegal substances and women we even went to the beach and skinny dipped on a private beach at 4 am and we bought weed from the little 12 year old girl at a gas and honestly don't remember half the trip I just know I'm going to hell for it.

Did the 12 year old smoke with you?

No that would have been weird but weed is not the only thing she had when we asked her she said she had meth and cocaine too... So idk what was her deal.

What training to customer service reps go though? Is it shitty? Do they teach them to be aggressive and bitchy?

Depending on to what campaign you're going to, I'm my time there I've been to about 5 trainings the longest one being about 1 month to learn cable tech support and billing, then a 2 hour training for customer retention, then another 1 and a half month training for VIP accounts and tech support for phone and Internet, then couple trainings here and there for new stuff. And we work with very outdated material mostly from 2010. About bitchy reps most of them are probably just d*can as in training they pretty much brainwash you to empathize to a molecular level with the customers.

Why is it every time I finish a sentence, the CSR parrots back some made up antcedote about how they have the same problems? I swear the fake bonding is not only obvious but feels super condescending and obviously insincere.

It's like "Hi my router just exploded and killed my family." Agent, "I'm sorry to hear your router is exploding and killing your family. It's always terribly inconvenient for me when my family is killed by exploding routers, it really ruins my day when that happens."

Even worse when is something super mundane, like my password needs to be reset. Instead of spending like 3 seconds resetting the password, you get a 5 minute story about how this one time they needed their password reset and they ended up on the phone with customer service all day and it was so annoying.

Former AT&T U-Verse tech support here. It sounds phony because we were forced to bloat our calls with such unnecessary shlock or else the folks listening in on us would write us up for not following the guideline the management set up for us. Even if it turns a five minute call into a ten minute call.

We couldn't really be genuine with it because they had script snippets for us to follow and would dock us points if we didn't do it verbatim.

You share (at least used to) my pain. They wanna make you a breathing IVR that's what I hate the most about QA feedbacks :(

Ugh, right? It's like, come on. If you wanted the customer to talk to an IVR the entire time, don't even bother with human employees. To be honest, the few calls that I actually enjoyed were the ones where I basically had a cool bonding experience with the customer on the other end of the phone. Usually that happened when I started to care less and less about verbatim as I got closer to quitting.

I do have a question for you. Did you ever feel hard core depressed while working the phones?

For me personally, after working over 40 hours a week repeating the same thing basically over and over while attempting to assist reasonably angry customers and ultimately not being able to help in some cases due to the limitations placed upon me by the higher ups, I fell into a really bad funk. It just wears on a person. Thankfully I got out of there and wound up much better off in the end.

You're also getting an unnecessary bit of flak from people that think you're the reason for shoddy business practices, but you're keeping a positive attitude so kudos to you. Must be all that customer service training eh?

Could be that plus maybe some time I shared with Canadian people. Made me a nicer person.

More than likely new people they are training those like robots man :/ I'll usually get in trouble for not doing that sh*t but I don't care I just wanna keep it real.

Op this question is orthe you. A couple of weeks ago I called to cancel my service since another ISP finally is in my area. After getting through the automated system I was talking to retention. The rep asked all my information, etc then asked why I was leaving, to which I replied I signed up with a new ISP; the call then disconnected. I called back and got the same representative (I think) and was again asked a series of questions. Eventually the rep again asked why I was leaving, to which I again replied I signed up with someone else. The call disconnected again.

I called yet a third time and instead went to the account/billing dept. I asked politely to speak to a supervisor and was refused. I didn't take no for an answer and insisted. The rep put me on hold for 10ish minutes then came back and said she was still looking. She then put me on hold again for 15 minutes and came back to say she still can't find a supervisor and offered to stay on the line during my call with retention. I finally relented and said ok after she verified I'd be speaking with the retention supervisor. She began the "transfer" and the call disconnected.

I called again and went to the add service department. I asked to speak to a supervisor. She explained that her supervisor couldn't help due to what department she was in. I then exhaustedly explained my previous efforts and she finally transferred me to someone who got my service cancelled (albeit two weeks before I requested).

During this time I wasn't hostile or rude; I was very kind the whole time and just wanted to get my service cancelled. I would like to file a complaint with Comcast but due to the fact that none of the reps will even let me speak with their supervisors I don't know what to do. Do you have any suggestions?

Pm me

With all of the hate that Comcast receives, as well as a long history of shady practices, do you believe there is any hope they will start to turn things around to be more customer friendly?

Honestly no. The way Google fiber is taking over is a death a sentence for comcast. I mean you could dress up a monkey in a suit it'll still be a monkey.

Google fiber isn't taking over or coming anywhere remotely close to taking over. Google themselves doesn't have plans to "takeover". They hope their limited rollout shows other companies it can be done.

If anyone thinks Google fiber itself will ever legitimately be large competition for any cable MSO they are deluded as even Google doesn't think that is going to happen...

Maybe not any time soon but I can confirm when Utah got Google fiber I personally disconnected about 20 accounts per day, when I asked them why did they wanna cancel services their answer was well Google is in town now and... I'd just tell them OK I'm not even gonna try have a good day the account has been cancelled. I'm not the ex-girlfriend kind if retention dude.

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It's not just the higher ups it's the whole way we operate from shitty schedules to overnight shifts, no transportation for employees, the health conditions of the office we work at, the most bullshit thing I believe we have is the way they want is to do everything without any tools available and if you don't do it their way they make your life miserable until you are basically forced to quit.

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I would have quit more than a year ago, truth is I can't afford to quit. :(

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If you've been with comcast you know you get a price adjustment twice a year. I've come to realize at the end of the year they are about the actual services and around the middle about equipment. Also depending on your area at the beginning of the year you should have gotten a speed increase if you're part of the performance or blast services (and have a d3 modem) other than that not very much has changed.

Guys I'm gonna call it a night I'll do my best to answer your questions when I wake up :)

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Well as far as coffee nope tastes like a burnt up sock, no company day care available. Maybe the amount of people you meet and how no one will judge you for wanting to get drunk after work on a Tuesday and most of the time they'll join you. Also they sell pop tarts at the Caffè.

When I call to complain about a bad experience with another employee, do you really log those claims somewhere for a higher up to see? What about when I ask Comcast to stop sending me mail based on racial profiling? Do these claims get taken seriously?

I've been trying to get Comcast to stop mailing me things in Spanish for the past 5 years. I have a last name that means different things in Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Korean.

Yes it actually is we have a tool where we report like for example if the previous representative was a d*ck without a reason they will listen to the call and see what's going on, I've had a lot of friends fires because of similar reasons, as far as mail I'm not 100% sure how to stop those I'll look into it and give you a good answer on Monday evening :)

How does it feel to talk to people who resent you and your company every day?

I stopped caring about 2 weeks into the job.

thanks for the AMA!!

Do you have any suggestions for me on how to terminate my comcast service with the least possibility of being *ucked over like in stories you frequently hear about on the Internet or YouTube?

I've been lied to so many times about credits and deductions that will be made to my account that I just want to have a quick , easy break from Comcast.

Definitely don't believe everything you hear :)

Do you have any significant memories of actually being able to help a customer or you or a manager higher than you (not sure your job-level) doing something kind and maybe against the rules for someone?

Once a Comcast technician gave me a shit ton of free HDMI cables when I asked him. I could tell he didn't give a shit but I was happy, those things are fucking expensive.

I do nice stuff all day all the time as long as you're nice too, just this month I gave a woman who lost her job and still was meaning to make her comcast payment a break by applying at least about $400 worth of credit on her account, easily could have been fired but I didn't care and as I said I know how to play with the system, free channels, lowering bills just by applying a few codes here and there, free installations, backdates for when I cancel accounts ( you'll get a refund check from comcast for the last 2 or 3 months you had services etc.) And yeah any cables are actually cheap for us so enjoy those, also if you ever need splitters, any more coax cable or any other cable just take a trip to your local office and they'll give it to you for free :)

Edit: I kinda forgot about this but I can easily remove any early termination fees without any problems :)

Does it suck to know people think you're responsible for comcast's shitty service?

Example: the bottom of the page.

Sometimes but you get kinda used to it as long as I can always make someone understand I'm just an employee not the CEO I probably won't be shot on the streets.

What's your worst horror story of customer service? I understand you can only do so much without getting fired but there has to be some occasions you wanted to defy the rules to help out people getting bent over

I've had a good share of those, as weird as it sounds I can't really recall a specific time most of the time when a customer is a d*ck I just stop caring, follow the procedures, and carry on. Also most of the time someone is giving anyone a hard time our goal is to pass a customer off so much into they ask for your supervisor. If you've ever heard a phrase "I wish I could but I can't" that was probably me or a friend of mine just waiting for you to ask for the supervisor. Saves a lot of stress. And I actually have many times defied the rules to help someone out, never been caught and probably never will, I know the system too well and perfectly how to play with it... For good or bad :)

Surely you understand though the pain of the circumstances that makes people become dicks? I've been on both sides of customer service and sometimes the system only rewards you for being a dick.

Oh of course but I mean basically the way we run things is more karma based than anything, it's not my fault "your 3 year old son ordered big black booty b*tches accidentally" so why are you yelling at me? Now if you just call in and calmly explain what happened you'll get the credit without even asking me for it. Also when game of thrones comes out with the new season everybody that was gonna buy HBO gets it for free for 6 months. Makes me feel like Oprah :)

Why did the Comcast guy at Best Buy tell me that he could hook me up with a great deal, but that I'd have to return all of my gear? Is he for real?

Yeah pretty much what Andromansis says he's probably gonna close your account and open up a new one so he can nail you with some sort of weird triple play bundle and have 3 sales for himself which when the promotion expires you're gonna call in and have us figure out what the hell the guy from best buy did to you. I wouldn't go for it if I were you.

Would you mind sharing tips on getting a better deal or a discount? I am paying way too much with Comcast right now.

Depends really in what you have, what you want and what you really need, as what you can afford could you tell me what services you have? Maybe I know a trick or two

1) How do you personally feel about Comcast from being one off the employees there?

2) I hear comcast pays off commissions or some other strange plan which probably explains why customer support is so terrible, where employees will make false promises?

3) Personal thoughts on CC's outsourcing jobs to call centers and homes in the Philippines? (Manila) [one time the customer supp agent had her kid in the background screaming]

1- It sucks pretty bad and they do have very shady ways to do things. 2- We get bonuses based on performance and commissions for sales (I'd say I used to be one of the best at sales) our bonuses can get to be up to an additional 40% of our paycheck and the sales commissions can range from 3 to 7 dollars each. My personal record being 112 sales made in a month paid at 7 dollars each. 'twas a good month. 3- It's good but they could care a little bit more about the employees. Does create a good opportunity for people with no education or disabilities to make a decent living.

How does it feel to work for the company with the biggest building in my city? +1 internet points if you can guess what city it is.

I don't really have to guess there's pictures of the Philadelphia building in our director's office :) And honestly it sucks.

Do you agree with the public outroar against Comcast recently?

On a certain level I do.

after reading the AMA I think you do on all levels

I doubt he agrees with the oft-voiced sentiment that Comcast representatives should be killed.

Yeah please don't kill me :)

is satan in your nuclear family or is it a more distant relation?

Actually my neighbor. But close enough he comes over to drink and play videogames frequently.

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I get paid for the hour about 14.34 an hour I will usually work 32 hours weekly and that's more than enough for me :)

Since you're leaving Comcast cheers (clinks glasses).

Do you have any plans after you leave? Different job right away or taking time off for yourself?

Definitely taking some time off for myself, go to school, finish paying up some debt, and just overall spend some time with my loved ones before finding another job that's as far away from comcast as possible. :)

What is one good the about Comcast? (If there even is one)

If you can get a package without a contract I'd say the Internet. It's pretty damn good maybe de x1 boxes when they work the way they're supposed to.

What are some of the corporate lingo and buzzwords used inside Comcast? I've noticed different sections or departments are called "campaigns." Do other phrases have similarly militaristic undertones?

Campaign is the only one I can think of right now our direct supervisors are called coaches and their superiors are the operations managers. We have weird words man. Or ninja? Monkey? Idk I'm confused...

What are the thoughts on the TWC merger from within Comcast?

My only thought is "sh*t more people calling, more stuff to learn and do and no raise".

so, hows satan? i hear hell is nice this time of year.

He's been a little under the weather lately but I'll forward your best to him :)

You mention VIP packages.

Why are these so infrequently offered? I tried for months to get a different package offered at a house I manage valued over 5mil. You guys were rude to my inquiries for different options and insisted there was only one Internet plan despite this Ama and clearly contrary evidence online. It lost my business.

It pretty much depends on where the property is located and what can be offered there. The specific VIP accounts that I handle are bulk accounts (for whole apartment complex, retirement communities etc.) Bills that can be easily more that 50k a month, highest I've seen was about 85k a month. Now if you were trying to get business class service that's a different story

Has anyone ever treated you differently in your personal life after learning you work for Comcast? How so?

Not really I mean not a lot of people know about it and I'm not prancing around town with a comcast shirt on.

Is it a subject you deliberately try to avoid in conversations?

Not necessarily I mean if someone asks me what do I do I'll tell them I work for comcast but I'm not going around at a party telling everyone about it.

Does Comcast purposely make the information they send with their products incomplete and impossible to understand? I recently installed a new router/modem because Comcast emailed me that my old one wasn't going to be supported.

I followed the instructions exactly. Internet worked. But then my phones didn't. And the online forums are of no help.

So I call. Go through 2 people and 3 automated menus. By then I'm irritated. I tell the woman that. I figure I'd give her a heads-up, it's not her fault her company annoys people.

First, she tells me that with this modem, I can only use my phone service by connecting to the back of the modem, not my phone jacks in my house. Um. No. That's not acceptable.

Then she tells me she needs to send out a tech. Fine. But I'm not paying for that. I already paid Comcast to set up my phones. I'm not doing it again because they made me get a different modem.

Then, MAGICALLY, she figures out I just have to connect one wire from my router/modem to my phone jack.

Seriously? That couldn't have been included in one sentence in the information on setting it up.

So my question is, does Comcast just do this to get even more of our money by sending out techs to do essentially nothing at exorbitant prices?

Honestly the connect the arris D3 emta to the phone Jacks is kind of a hidden thing not a lot of people know about it can't really blame the girl for it, but yeah it should be somewhere in the manuals. I personally didn't hear of it until one of our best trainers told me. About 6 months in to tech support.

Seems sort of important! It's the only way to be able to actually use your phone service anywhere in your house other than off your router/modem. I meant to post this in the forums and didn't, but this is motivating me to.

I don't understand why Comcast doesn't make this stuff common knowledge. I blame the company, not the woman.

Yeah you really should also I'll see what sort of escalation I can make for this to be more common knowledge maybe by 2016 no one won't know about this.

Your proof is weak.

Lol nobody in their right mind would buy a Comcast shirt. That's the most solid proof I've ever seen.

LOL I thought so too. Plus I probably couldn't wear it anywhere without getting shanked. Could make a pretty good Halloween costume though...

Just cut out little nipple flaps.

You deserve more upvotes my friend :)

Please enlighten me what would be a better proof? I haven't been able to get it touch with a mod so if you're one and reading this please pm me :)

Are you secretly Alex from Target?

Nope.

Why don't you go fuck yourself?

Comcast is already doing that for me mate ;)