Comments

A good example of lack of brand harmony. The harmony is in the making not in the projected image.

Posted by felix gerena at June 7, 2005 7:01 PM

My husband and I work from home, and spend most of our lives on the phone. During more than three years of Comcast's dropped calls and poor connections, we called almost 50 times. About half the times that I called, I was able to place a service request because I was The Wife; the other half I had to give a password because I was not the first name on the bill. It was just the luck of the draw.

We had more than a dozen no-show service calls, replaced every piece of cable and equipment, were told that we were having phone trouble consistently over three years BECAUSE IT WAS RAINING (we live in LA, not Seattle) and just got it fixed. The latest guy knew that a particular piece of the equipment was not supposed to be grounded. He clipped the wire, and reception is now perfect.

After we finished weeping with joy and held a parade and dance festival in his honor and gave him gifts and invited him to live with us, we asked him how he knew - was it covered in his training etc. - he said no, he just picked it up along the way. If he'd had the day off, we'd be going nuts for another three years.

Telecommunications is their core compentency? Maybe. Training their staff about servicing their telcommunications equipment sure isn't. KM, anyone?

Posted by Jennifer Warwick at June 7, 2005 9:18 PM

Felix, I disagree with you. They are in harmony. The problem is that is their own version of harmony. In their (Comcast's) world, the angels sing over our frustrations of issues such as this. Pity. It is companies like this that ultimately go by the wayside, dragging down at least some quality employees in the process. Anyone remember WorldCom? :) Occasionally, some companies get internal makeovers. Hopefully, someday, some CEO with some guts comes in and says, 'sorry, this just isn't right. We can do better.' Until then, let us try to influence that change in perspective.
Ciao,
Tony

Posted by Tony May / Mayday Media at June 7, 2005 10:08 PM

Amen to that Steve - someone is listening!!!

Maybe I should send them a copy of my book 'Simplicity is the Key' :-)

Really good organisations that are GENUINELY SERIOUS about being in touch with their customers keep it simple and share openly with their customers the route map to the most suitable package for the customer - not confuse their customer with too many choices.

Sometimes when I approach telecom companies I get so fed up with the complexity of it all I either fall asleep or simply give up.

A 'conspiracy of silence' about the best package would make me ask basic questions about the ethics and principles of any company

Greetings to all on a wonderful sunny English early morning 7.40 am 22 degrees ...Ahhh the English summer - nothing better :-)

Posted by Trevor Gay at June 8, 2005 1:40 AM

Tom, I hope you send a copy of this transcript to whoever runs corporate communications in Comcast, along with a copy of Re-imagine and a proposal for a seminar.

Posted by Noel Guinane at June 8, 2005 1:44 AM

I still think that Scott Adams (creater of Dilbert) is right about charges and competition. The Economists view is that increased competition drives down prices - his view is that vendors create confusopolies that because no one actually understands which company is the cheapest they stay where they are.......

Posted by PaulH at June 8, 2005 2:10 AM

Maybe Virgin Mobile is one exception.

Posted by Noel Guinane at June 8, 2005 2:14 AM

Tony, strange way of understanding harmony, but i understand your point. Anyway, if the brand is the opinion of the customer, the harmony should be the harmony of the customer too. That gap between the customer´s way of living that brand, the service Steve gets, and the management´s assumed opinion about it can only lead to a clash. At least if there´s a degree of competition in that market.

Posted by felix gerena at June 8, 2005 3:21 AM

Steve - have an assistant call Comcast and tell them there was an oversight since 9 cents must have been the request or add on to your account - they should buy that to please the customer [eventually] ... may have to talk to a manager.

Take care in Israel - PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, et. al create homicide bombers like Doans makes pills, like MTV slings hip-hop, like John Kerry gets D's at Yale, [your quote here], like Aruba locals abscond innocents ...

Posted by Sean at June 8, 2005 5:13 AM

Does anyone else like the new italic style on TP site? - thumbs down from me I'm afraid :-(

Posted by Trevor Gay at June 8, 2005 6:17 AM

I preferred the "old" style. Is this part of an innovation process? Sometimes innovation comes from casualty...

Posted by felix gerena at June 8, 2005 6:38 AM

thanks for nice opportunity to brush up my rusty latin, steve.
i really had to use the dictionary.
thanks.

Posted by jens at June 8, 2005 8:44 AM

Forget going through channels. Call the CEO's office (and write them). In my experience, this gets results from virtually any company and saves a lot of your time.

Under yhe "be afraid, by very afraid" heading, I just got my first bill for my new wireless service with Verizon...which included a tri-fold detailed "how to read" your bill. Uh-oh...I already know the phone companies can't figure out their own bills (just for fun, call your local company sometime and ask for clarification of a charge, chances are at good the rep won't be able to help.) I'm getting nervous already...and I've just had the service for six weeks...

Posted by Mary Schmidt at June 8, 2005 2:27 PM

trevor and felix,
what happened is someone didn't close an html tag and so the rest of the page followed the italics instruction. i think that's been fixed and roman style has been reinstated.

Posted by Erik Hansen at June 8, 2005 3:37 PM

Does anyone really think Comcast, and the majority of telephone companies, will make their billing simpler? That's a revenue model for them. They actually make money off of confusion. Go ahead and try to figure out which of the fees added to your bill are required by regulatory agencies like the FCC, and which are just padding for the phone company.

I do marketing for a small telecom. Two of the major points of diversion from traditional telephone companies?

1) Simple bills with no hidden fees.

2) No contracts... period.

They keep customers through superior customer relations, not by handcuffing them with a contract. Sure makes marketing easier.

Posted by Dustin at June 8, 2005 3:45 PM

Steve are you tele-communications challenged?

Maybe you didn't have any idea that international rates are higher and maybe you didn't know you had to be on an international plan that has some sort of monthly fee. Maybe instead of sputtering indignance, you could take some responsibility for not bothering to find out what your international rates are. When this happened to me ($80.00 for twenty minutes to Japan) I called Sprint, apologized for not being more aware, and kindly asked for help in fixing the charge. They issued me a credit for $60 of it.

For those of you who work internationally, I have found some amazingly inexpensive resources in the commoditized world of telecom. best viagra deal online

For International Dialing from Home, I use 10-10-629.
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For dialing home while travelling abroad, I use Cognicall.
http://www.cognicall.com

For teleconferencing with international dial-out, I use Accu-Conference.
http://www.accuconference.com/

Hope these help!

Posted by Paul Davidson at June 8, 2005 4:36 PM

Very nice, Sean. :)

Posted by Tony May / Mayday Media at June 8, 2005 7:26 PM

Only fair to mention: I got a rep in the Comcast billing department to re-rate those calls down to 9 cents/minute. It was easy to get him to do it ... in fact, it was so easy that I wondered if their strategy is "try to rip them off because most of them will never call us but if they do call us roll over really easily and give them their money back."

Posted by Steve Yastrow at June 8, 2005 7:34 PM

Steve,
I hate to think how accurate that might be. :)

Posted by Tony May / Mayday Media at June 8, 2005 10:22 PM

Just be thankful you don't live in Belgium. They have managed to turn customer service into a profit center! Here's the story:

I ordered cable TV through the local monopoly provider. While watching TV on a Sunday morning, the cable stopped working. Of course, customer service was not open until Monday morning.

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When I looked up the telephone number, I was shocked to find that it was a pay number, charging me .45€ per minute for the privilege of telling them that their service was out.

As you will have guessed, I was on hold for 10 minutes and after 10 more minutes of testing, I was told that the problem was "outside" my house and that a technician would be sent out to conduct repairs. The customer service rep then informed me that the service call would cost ME 15€. When I asked for a refund and to speak with a manager, the rep refused. Calls to the company's central line yielded only a message machine. The cable was working again in a few hours. Hmmmmm.

In conclusion, it cost me about 25 Euros (or 30 USD) to inform a local monopoly that my cable was out.

My reaction to this situation vacillates between awe and anger. As a business person, I'm impressed that they managed to turn customer service into a profit center. As a consumer and customer service trainer, I cannot believe they actually treat people this way and get away with it.

When I asked some locals about this "outrageous" situation, they just shrugged their shoulders and said that's the way it's done here.

Makes Comcast look good in comparison.

Posted by brucanuck at June 9, 2005 2:24 AM

Another disgruntled telecomm customer -- this time, with NTL (UK): http://tinyurl.com/dfnqn

Don't mess with smart customers, I say!

Posted by femmebot at June 9, 2005 1:19 PM

I had the same thing happen 10 years ago in San Francisco with Working Assets the "Green" card (or whatever it was they call themselves).

A friend from Australia was visiting, and called home a lot. It wasn't until mid way through the second month that I saw the first month's bill, and that was over $500! I bitched and moaned and wrote dozens of letters directly to Laura Scher about it. Let me tell you, Laura didn't want to hear from me.

There's no reason they can't figure out that you've made more than $5 worth of calls to someplace in a month, and automatically sign you up for the plan...except that they're robbers.

Don't use Working Assets, they're crooks, and I'm out over $850 for what should have been under $100 worth of calls. (oh right, there's probably something hidden in their pages of legalese that makes them not actual criminals, just thieves by another name).

Posted by Frank Leahy at June 9, 2005 8:45 PM

AT&T called us up and offered us an international calling plan based on their analysis of our calling habits. Our tolls went from $3 per minute to $.05 per minute. That was the cool part. The not-so-cool part was that they couldn't get their act together when we moved and it took several long, difficult, and somewhat futile phone calls to get our calling plan reinstated. (The phone company can't run a call center--unbelievable!) Good and bad mixed. I stay with AT&T because nobody else has offered me anything better.

Posted by ike at June 13, 2005 6:55 AM