More fun and games with Comcast (aka the A&P of my Cynicality)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/02/20 10:16 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/02/20/7816533.aspx

Nothing technical, and yes, more Comcast stuff, different from the earlier stuff, but even so, sorry!

It suddenly occurs to me that someone from Comcast might be paying attention, if this comment is accurate (Gwyn doesn't think so, but even so....).

My Comcast high speed Internet just went down. It went down and although I called right away I was told that they knew about a problem in my area and were working on it.

They told me it should be up some time by 6:30 AM (it is 3:03 AM right now).

Yes my hours are strange. Why do you think my blog is? :-)

It is weird when the high speed Internet service is down (which it is right now) but the cable service is up, which it is right now, an Angel rerun on TNTHD, not much on this time of night beyond uninteresting reruns and softcore adult stuff on Skinemax I'd rather skip. Angel is also a niche fetish kind of thing too, but the moral depths are more appealing to me (and as the poem says, deep roots are not touched by the frost).

Unrelated point, but does anyone else in Seattle notice now the HD cable channels are the East Coast feeds while the regular non-HD versions are the West Coast? I guess I don't really care that much at home but it was annoying in a hotel room a few weeks ago at the last UTC meeting since the schedule is just off on stuff!

Oh yeah, I was talking about weird. Like that last paragraph wasn't? Hmmmm.

I personally prefer to talk to the cable folks than the high speed folks when reporting an outage, they both have the same outage info even if they have different troubleshooting steps when it's not a known outage, and frankly they just seem nicer. Some have suggested that is just that when the high speed goes down I am more strident, but when I talk to the cable folks when the high speed is down, I am just as anxious. They just seem more patient, you know?

One very important part -- when they tell you on the line that they know about an outage that affects you and that you don't have to talk to someone? Wait to talk to someone. Give me a second and I will explain why this is a Very Good Idea™.

A moment later someone is on the line. They verify my address -- that is, they make me repeat mine and I say it fast enough that it is easy to verify but impossible to look up. That's just me, always working to make sure I can see a few moves ahead.

So anyway this is when I am told that everything should be up by 6:30 AM. Sigh.

He heard my sigh, I think. It was not exceptionally loud but all he has is my voice on the phone so it makes sense that he'd hear my frustration.

He points out that he will credit me for the day.

That's nice, actually. I mean since it will be up all day when I'm not here but down for like three hours when I am not, this is a very nice gesture. I say so, and thank him.

This is why it was a Very Good Idea™ to stay on the line, by the way.

But then I am curious.

I ask whether I would have been credited that way for the down time if I hung up when the recorded message told me I could and that I did not have to wait to talk to someone.

He admits that I would not have gotten credit for the day, in that case.

Ah, my cynical nature is assuaged nicely here. There are two "flaws" in this design from the overall me-as-the-customer satisfaction standpoint.

• Even without my call, there is a known outage in the area but they do not credit the people who are affected. Or more accurately, people are billed for the service even though they are known to not be getting it;
• With my call, they have verified that I know of the outage and am calling about it, yet I am still going to be charged unless I talk to someone.

Now both points are excusable when there is no known outage, but when something is out both are a bit more suspect.

It is perhaps my cynical nature again, but I would feel much more comfortable never being charged when the service is down and always being charged when it is up -- even though I'd only get a few hours credit rather than a day, I am sure that over the course of a month there would be enough random outages that it would all even out.

Because although the gesture was nice, this is just a perk that the person on the phone is empowered to give a customer who might be unhappy. It is not an institutional thing designed to get people the best service, but a way to help customer satisfaction at a micro level -- in a framework to allow anyone in the country to be helped out this way.

I suppose it looks like I am being cheap here, but it is more complicated than that. I am very much a value-for-value guy, who will not even blink about being charged for weeks of high speed service while I am out of the country but would be unhappy to know that for three hours of those weeks the service was down.

Clearly I am not trying to save money so much as just trying to get what I pay for.

But maybe this is intentional. Perhaps the bean counters at Comcast have calculated the issue both ways and this way is just more profitable.

Or even more deviously, perhaps it is not about the money at all, at least not directly. Maybe the Comcast bean counters were charged with figuring out which way would lead to more customer satisfaction in the long run. Maybe they calculated that there would be much dissatisfaction if people found out how often the service was down, after the fact. Plus if the credit is automatic then the implied sense of entitlement kicks in and no one is especially interested, but if those who are especifically unhappy enough to have a conversation are given a perk then they might actually be converted from unsatisfied to satisfied.

You know, while I was typing this the high speed service has gone up and down a few times.

I knew there was no sense using the RAS to get back in just yet. They weren't done fixing and there is no sense frustrating myself while they are still working on stuff. They kind of have a free pass for the day anyway. right? I mean, if the service goes down tonight I can hardly call and expect them to credit me twice for the same day, right?

Well, I guess I could. But I wouldn't (the whole value-for-value thing again).

I am reading this post over and I can already hear some of my friends pointing out how I am thinking about this way too much. Which might be true, but I am up anyway and Basic Instinct 2 (which to be fair is on Showtime right now and not Skinemax, er Cinemax!) is just not crying out to me to be watched. And the stuff I have to work on at this moment kind of needs that RAS connection.

This is actually how I am -- I do tend to really think all the way through stuff, perhaps in part to make up for the occasional impulsive act that I do without thinking. Which is not to say that I do that, but....

Back to the whole Comcast thing.

In the end, I don't expect Comcast to change how this works. For whatever reason they ended up giong with, they ran a bunch of numbers and made a decision that they felt was best for the company overall. On the whole I can't even claim to be dissatisfied since the whole appeals to my cynical nature (to compare, I used to love to stay in Grand Cayman the week before, the week of, and  the week after Christmas, just to watch the rates go from low to high to low for the exact same room and meals, unapologetically -- you can do the same thing in Las Vegas though I have a much easier time getting rooms comp'd there!).

On the other hand, my kind of satisfaction is decidedly not what Comcast is looking for, since mine is the confident recognition that someone is running a good scam and running it so well that the masses don't notice. No company wants people to think they are the bad guy, even if they give tacit (yet cynical) approval. Especially since people like me talk to others (or to be more accurate, more popular versions of people like me talk to bigger groups of others than I myself can reach), and that monkeys with the whole "satisfied customers" end of the scam....

In any case, my hat is off to Comcast, for coming up with the best way to make the most of their non-service for themelves. Which in the end has a lot more to do with customer satisfaction than their service does. Off the top of my head I can think of many times that both Unicode and Microsoft have managed to handle such situations much more terribly (perhaps topics for future blogs, some other day!).

Looking at the cable modem, the connection has been up solid for long enough now -- it is only 4:30 AM but it looks like Comcast underpromised and overdelivered on that expected fix time. Excellent, I think (in my mental Mr. Burns voice).

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