Comcast's Idiocy

It was only a post ago that I ranted about the way airlines in this country treat their customers. Well, I had just been through another horror encounter with a greedy, corporate monopoly that has become a victim of its own corporate success. I am talking about Comcast, the omnipotent cable/internet/phone provider in my great state of Illinois. In the last few years, Comcast has gotten a reputation on Wall Street as a tough competitor which had bought up many smaller companies all with the purpose of delivering great service to its customers. Yeah, right!

If you want a high-speed internet connection and cable TV in my area, you HAVE TO deal with Comcast. You have no choice. I first installed my internet/Cable service in June, but I recently moved, and that's where all hell broke loose. I called Comcast to ask for a service transfer the first day of August and they scheduled the transfer for August 16, which was more than two weeks away. Considering the fact that they are THE ONLY provider that offers internet/cable packages and that August is the move-in month in Champaign, I understood that they were busy.

In the meantime, a representative from Comcast called me on August 7 to let me know that my service had been moved up to that Saturday, August 9. I was out of town but they assured me that I didn't have to be home for the service to be started. My girlfriend was at home and had hooked everything up waiting for the service to start. Nothing: no Internet, no Cable. I called the company a few days later only to be told that they had never called me to move up my date! So, I either had imagined the whole conversation from the few days before, or they had missed their own appointment and were now lying to me. They assured me that the service would come on August 16.

This morning, as soon as I got up, I called them, asking for my service. A cheerful representative said that the service had been switched on. After connecting my box and my modem, I realized that there was not a trace of either Internet or Cable in my apartment. I called them again, only to be assured that I must have done something wrong, since their records showed the service had been switched on and the technicians "had already been in the area." After the tech department walked me through the installation, we both realized that indeed, there was no service. So they said a technician would be coming by. I waited for most of the morning and the afternoon, and they never showed up, or even bothered to call me.

So, once again, I reached for the phone and after getting through a maze that is their customer line, I got a hold of a human being. They said that my service had not been switched on since I had canceled it! What!!!! This is when I completely lost my cool to the amazement of my friends in whose presence I was making the phone call. I had been delayed, put on hold, lied to. In short, I had been treated like any other American consumer. (In fact, there is an entire Internet movement to bring the Comcast down. They congregate on a blog with a telling name: http://comcastmustdie.blogspot.com/).

After apologizing to the service representative for my tone (and assuring her that I knew it was not her fault), I proceeded to ask what I should do to get my internet and cable working. She said I should walk to the college bookstore and meet with their representative tomorrow morning and my service would be switched on 24 hours following the meeting. Unbelievable!

So, I am still Internetless and Cable-less. This really has very little to do with my spoiled ways of needing my Internet and Cable fix, but more to do with the way the whole system treats consumers in this country. It is amazing to me that in a country that boasts on a daily basis of being a consumer paradise, and a country whose economy is run by the ever-rational "market forces," which always favor the consumer, this kind of thing not only happens, but increasingly seems to be the norm.

Comcast is another example of a de-regulated monopoly completely out of control. It is another evidence that we need heavy government regulation of businesses, a strong anti-monopoly watch, and a strong federal-level consumer protection agency that Nader has been advocating.

This experience has made me look nostalgically on my experience of getting Internet in East Mostar. But I will leave that for another post.