Tech Journalist Puts Comcast Customer Service On Blast

A couple of weeks ago we saw an exceptional example of commitment to customer service, and now Comcast brings us another one – an exceptionally bad one, that is. In a Telecommunications and Information press release, the American Customer Satisfaction Index listed Comcast among the bottom of all paid TV firms, and Ryan Block’s experience shows why this is so.

He called to have his service disconnected – a simple enough task, one would think. Instead, he was treated to over eight minutes of “but why?” from a persistent Comcast representative and this was after his wife had already endured ten minutes of the same thing. At one point, Block gets so fed up that he says “This phone call is a really actually amazing representative example of why I don’t want to stay with Comcast. So can you please cancel our service?” but even this direct request was to no avail. He decided to record the ludicrous phone call and post it on SoundCloud. You can listen to it here.  Block, a product manager at AOL and former editor-in-chief of Engadget, has over 83,000 followers on Twitter, so it’s no wonder the story quickly went viral. The call recording has been streamed four million times already and counting.

His experience prompted others to come forward with their own Comcast horror stories, and in an effort to remedy the situation, the company has extended a public apology to customers. How far this will go in fixing their reputation, which at this point seems irretrievably damaged, remains to be seen. It may even be too late. However this plays out, one thing seems clear, that brands now need to keep in mind that customers are not only always right, but that they are more than happy to take bad experiences right to their social media accounts.