At CES last month, I covered Comcast CEO Brian Roberts' keynote speech, in which he promised to improve customer service and "fess up" whenever anything's their fault.
The irony isn't lost on me: Comcast's been bugging me and my family for money I do not owe it. It will not stop billing for service cut off in December, and nothing we say stops it.
In December, we moved from a rental into our new house, just up the
road. We called to have our cable service transferred. It was cut off
three days before the scheduled date (imagine if it could do
installations so promptly!) at the old place, leaving us without
service until we moved into the new one.
The installer at our now home was professional, helpful and
competent. The service quality is fine. However, Comcast is now calling
every other day to try and collect payment for the original address,
which it thinks it is still serving.
It's billing us for the same service in two locations. Since we moved our old equipment to the new address as per Comcast's instructions, it's billing us for cable boxes and a modem that do not physically exist.
We called first to ask what was up with the double billing. An agent
called back the same day, and told us to disregard the bill it sent. Since then, however,
three agents from its collections division have called, introducing
themselves by asking if we'll be paying them today via debit or credit.
After explaining the situation at length each time, we're always
told that we won't get called again, and that the problem will be
resolved. Snap!
We have a few ideas why it won't stop with the shakedowns: we kept
our phone number from the old account, so maybe something got messed up
with the transfer of service from one address to the other. One of the
agents told us service was improperly discontinued "at the pole."
It seems that Comcast is so institutionally screwed up that nothing
it promises has any bearing on the windy currents of reality. No-one
cares if you can 'fess up if you can't fix it.
