Letter to Comcast About Frustrating Experience

Mr Eliason,
I am writing to express my extreme frustration with technical support at Comcast.  I spent almost 5 hours with technical support yesterday, and one of your representatives was maliciously putting my modem in walled garden mode.  I intend on posting this email with your response on my blog.   

I have been experiencing a slow connection for a couple of months, and finally decided to contact technical support to address the issue.  I have 10 years of experience in the IT field, I trouble shot the issue my self before calling in, and had eliminated all of my equipment as not being the problem.  In my orignial email I detailed what I had done to trouble shoot so I would not have to repeat the exercise.  I was immediately sent a form letter with instructions to troubleshoot, all of which I had already done.  I was then directed to try the live chat feature to work the issue further.

The first rep I got was Britney.  She could not find my original case or email so I had to again repeat the troubleshooting with her, At this point I was getting frustrated and was probably a little condescending, but not rude. After about 30 minutes Britney simply disconnected the chat session with out  notice.  I have attached my original chat session with her.  I then re-opened a chat session and was connected with a different representative.    I went through many of the same steps with this gentleman he was unable to help me either.  He said he wanted to have me reset my modem again and reboot my computer, which obviously forced me to sign off chat again.  On a side note this rep ended his chat session with me with two “advertisements” for Comcast on demand and norton internet security.  I don’t feel it is wise to end an unsuccessful troubleshooting session with a  frustrated customer by advertising to them.   

After rebooting I ran the speed tests again with the same results, so I again initiated live chat.  I was connected with Britney once again.  She asked how I was, I replied frustrated. Why did you disconnect our previous session?    She didn’t reply.  Over the next 5 minutes or so I type Hello, and are you there 4 or 5 times.   I then said You cannot simply igore a customer with a legitimate problem I am going to contact a customer support supervisor. Britney disconnected the session again.  (due to the fact my internet went out I lost the log of this chat session, but I believe you can pull this up to verify!!)  

Less than a minute later my internet started redirecting to http://actsvr.comcastonline.com/landing_filter.html.  Suspecting she was messing with my modem I immediately contacted phone support and requested a supervisor.  I talked to Megan who was very nice. She determined my modem was in Walled Garden and was able to put back the boot file.  She then scheduled a Tech to come out and look at my problem on site.

A few minutes later my browser started redirecting to the same page. I called back support and walked through the menu again. The tech again determined my modem was in walled garden mode, and fixed the boot file.  10 minutes later the same problem appeared, again I called tech support.  30 minutes later my modem was again in walled garden mode.  I called back and requested a supervisor again.  After explaining my problem the supervisor was able to indentify that the same tech (Britney) who I originally spoke to was repeatedly accessing my account. The supervisor agreed to immediately call her supervisor, and, said he would monitor my account for the rest of his shift.   I did not encounter any further problems last night.

Both of the supervisors I spoke to were competent and professional.  However, I am appalled at the  way this incident was handled by your technical support staff.  I canceled my comcast cable service three years ago after 2 weeks of repeated unsuccessful attempts by technical support to get a DVR working.  I am currently evaluating my options for high speed internet with the intention of leaving Comcast all together.  I refuse to give money to a company that treats their customers like this!!

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Keith Ganger