How To Get Ahold Of Comcast Customer Service

A frustrated Comcast customer has evidently discovered one way to avoid terrible service from a cable visitor: Record every conversation you lot accept with it.

An Oregon man, who goes by "Tim Davis" online, on Sunday published a recording of a serial of phone calls he had with Comcast customer service representatives after his Internet went on the fritz. Those recordings saved him from $182 in artificial charges, he claimed.

At first, Comcast told him that he wouldn't be charged for fixing his service, just then gave him a surprise bill for $182. The visitor insisted he pay that beak -- until he told client service that he had recorded all their past conversations.

Comcast customers around the country consistently have nightmarish client-service experiences. Comcast is currently seeking regulatory approval to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, a deal that would make the largest cable company in the globe fifty-fifty bigger. Critics of the deal contend that a telecom so large would have fifty-fifty less reason to offer decent client service.

When Tim, who declined to share his real last name to protect his privacy, moved to a new apartment in Eugene, Oregon, nigh a month agone, he installed his modem and set his Wi-Fi himself, he said on his YouTube account. Shortly after, his Internet connectedness began to end working for 5 to 10 minutes at a fourth dimension.

"I do a lot of piece of work from dwelling house, and it was an consequence not having Internet," Tim told the Huffington Post over the phone. He said he works as a senior It annotator for a large company.

He called Comcast. Tim and the representative figured out that the trouble was caused by the cable outside of the apartment and that Tim hadn't washed anything wrong. The rep said Tim wouldn't be charged for the repair. He recorded this call and all his subsequent ones, which yous can listen to below. The story was offset picked up past the Consumerist.

Warning: This video contains profanity.

But after a Comcast technician fixed the problem, Tim was billed $132 for failing to install his modem properly, which was never the upshot. To boot, he was charged another $50 for having Comcast prepare his Wi-Fi network -- something Tim had already done himself.

comcast bill

So he chosen upwardly Comcast again. Tim said he was put on hold for an hour earlier he hung up. When he called back, a rep named Daisy said she had good news: Comcast had subtracted $100 from his nib for "service discounts."

But that left Tim however on the hook for the remaining $82. When he protested, Daisy offered to upgrade his Internet connexion instead of refunding him, arguing that at that place was simply no fashion she could remove the charges or reimburse his business relationship.

Tim said he had a recording of a phone call in which Comcast told him he wouldn't exist charged. Finally, afterwards i more than phone call, Comcast backed downward and gave him back his money.

"Why were you not able to do that before?" Tim asked.

"Again, that is a valid charge," Daisy said. "But since I advised my manager that there is a recording, and you were misinformed, and then he'due south the one who tin can corroborate that $82."

"You're telling me that if I didn't accept a recording of that call, you wouldn't take been able to practice information technology," he said.

"That is correct, yes."

Comcast told HuffPost that it'due south investigating the calls.

"This is not the type of experience we want our customers to take, and we will reach out to Mr. Davis to apologize to him," Comcast representative Jenni Moyer said. "Our policy is not to accuse for service visits that are related to problems with our equipment or network. We are looking into this to understand what happened and why it happened."

As an It specialist, Tim said that he has trained tech support teams earlier. "The reason I recorded this call is that I expected this," he said.

What he didn't look was the tremendous reaction to his video on websites similar Reddit, where his video became the top postal service shortly after it was published.

"If you look at the comments on Reddit, hundreds of people accept had the aforementioned experience," he said.

Last month, Comcast made headlines afterwards another client recorded and published a phone call with client service. In that call, a Comcast rep refused to let a couple abolish their service when they wanted to switch cable and Internet providers.

Internal documents after published by The Verge show how Comcast'south "retention specialists" systematically try to dissuade subscribers from canceling.

Before this year, a survey of seventy,000 U.S. consumers found that cablevision companies and Internet service providers each constituted the two most hated industries in the entire U.South. economy. Comcast, which is in both businesses, was rated the second-everyman in customer satisfaction in the two sectors.

This post has been updated throughout to reflect comments from Tim. It has also been updated to include a warning about profanity in the embedded video.