Currently I am still on hold with Comcast. The reason I called is because Showtime isn't coming in on my Tivo through the CableCard, but Showtime is working fine on all of the other TVs in the house.
So after being on hold for about 15 minutes, my call was answered by a woman named April. As usual, it took me about 5 whole minutes to explain that I wasn't calling about a cable box, but rather a cable CARD, used in Tivos and some TVs. The comcast phone representatives are usually completely confused, puzzled and uninformed that this technology even exists, let alone how to help troubleshoot it with a customer. So after April put me on hold to go ask her boss how to do her job, I was disconnected from the phone call.
So I called 1-888-COMCAST once again. My little trick is to choose the option for "cancel my account". That usually gets me through to one of the unqualified idiots pretty quickly. It doesn't matter because the buttons and choices you push on the phone menu aren't relayed to representative anyway. (My personal favorite is when the automated voice tells you to enter you phone number, and the person asks you for the number again anyway). If the marketing department at Comcast would stop making the cheesy commercials and spend a little money on upgrading their customer service department's phone menu system, maybe they wouldn't have worse customer approval ratings than President Bush had.
Anywho, the next service representative that I had the pleasure of speaking to explained that he couldn't help me because the first woman I spoke with was already accessing my account. So I asked if he could transfer me to her again, since she didn't bother to attempt to contact me after we were disconnected. He wasn't able to do this because they were in different call centers across the country, but he gave me an extension to enter and transferred me to "the other call center". After another short hold, I was looped back into the main phone system "Thank you for calling Comcast, for English, press 1".
Needless to say, after another short hold I was connected to yet a THIRD comcast representative. I am currently on the phone with him still, and I was able to write this entire blog entry while on hold with Comcast.
Hopefully this guy will get my Showtime HD (ch. 339) working by tonight so I can watch "Weeds" at 10:00pm EST.
Comcast needs to seriously revamp their customer service department, as well as their entire business model and personnel. Words can't describe my frustration over the years with this excuse for a company.
I'm excited for the day when I have the option of choosing a different cable and internet provider (u-verse?), but Comcast continues to hold an illegal monopoly on most markets in America.
