THE VERGE: When AOL executive and Comcast customer Ryan Block recently tried to cancel his internet service, he ended up in a near-yelling match with a customer service representative who spent 18 minutes trying to talk him out of it. […] Block posted a recording of the call online, where it has been listened to more than 5 million times. During the ensuing media frenzy, The Verge put out a call and sought out current and former Comcast employees, hoping to shed light on the inner workings of the largest broadcasting and cable company in the country. More than 100 employees responded, including one who works in the same call center as the rep in Block’s recording. These employees told us the same stories over and over again: customer service has been replaced by an obsession with sales, technicians are understaffed and tech support is poorly trained, and the massive company is hobbled by internal fragmentation:
The pay was great and everything else about the job was a nightmare. I remember when a 90-year-old woman called to add phone to her account and my boss told me afterwards, “She was probably senile… but you should have upgraded her cable. I don’t think you are going to be sitting in this seat for very long.” -Sales, 2011-2014, Massachusetts
[…]
Eighty percent [of our training] was sales training. From time to time they would pull us from the phones for in-depth training on how to sell. [They told us] to say how much better Comcast is than the rest of the competition. “Why wouldanyone leave us?” I would be frustrated because I would tell them we need customer service training as much as sales training, but it came from Philly [Comcast’s headquarters] so that’s what we had to deal with. [Managers] would listen to the call, even have secret shoppers call in. If we didn’t ask [customers] to get more products we would be spoken to. Eventually, selling became part of tech support and billing. -Tech support, 2003-2013, California
[…]
I was there for almost seven years. The last four years or so, everything went downhill. It all began with the “integration” of sales department into our customer service department. They told us we would never [have to] become sales representatives. [The sales department was] just there to help us grow. Well, that was a big fat lie. We slowly became sales. We were given quotas. We were at one point told if it’s not a sale, direct them to the 800 number. -Customer service, 2007-2013, California
[…]
You can only fail one scorecard. Then you’re fired. Most people live in permanent fear, checking their numbers after every call. I decided to quit before I shot myself in the head out of desperation. -Sales, February 2014 to July 2014, Florida MORE
PREVIOUSLY: COMCASTIC: The Customer Is Always Raped Wrong
PREVIOUSLY: Sign Petition, Help Netflix Find Its Spine & Stop The Internet From Becoming Another Cable TV Rip-Off
PREVIOUSLY: Comcast, Where The Internet Goes To Die
PREVIOUSLY: Spielberg In Town To Honor Comcast For Doing Something Nice And Un-Evil For A Change
PREVIOUSLY: WORTH REPEATING: 8 Reasons Why Comcast Sucks
PREVIOUSLY: WEASELS RIPPED MY INTERNET: Cowardly House Dems Cave On Net Neutrality, Cut FCC Off At The Balls
THE VERGE: In a perfect storm of corporate greed and broken government, the internet has gone from vibrant center of the new economy to burgeoning tool of economic control. Where America once had Rockefeller and Carnegie, it now has Comcast’s Brian Roberts, AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, and Verizon’s Lowell McAdam, robber barons for a new age of infrastructure monopoly built on fiber optics and kitty GIFs.We’re really, really fucking this up. But we can fix it, I swear. We just have to start telling each other the truth. Not the doublespeak bullshit of regulators and lobbyists, but the actual truth. Once we have the truth, we have the power — the power to demand better not only from our government, but from the companies that serve us as well. “This is a political fight,” says Craig Aaron, president of the advocacy group Free Press. “When the internet speaks with a unified voice politicians rip their hair out.” We can do it. Let’s start.
THE INTERNET IS A UTILITY, JUST LIKE WATER AND ELECTRICITY
Go ahead, say it out loud. The internet is a utility. There, you’ve just skipped past a quarter century of regulatory corruption and lawsuits that still rage to this day and arrived directly at the obvious conclusion. Internet access isn’t a luxury or a choice if you live and participate in the modern economy, it’s a requirement. […] It’s time to just end these stupid legal word games and say what we all already know: internet access is a utility. A commodity that should get better and faster and cheaper over time. Anyone who says otherwise is lying for money. MORE