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An entire city tells Comcast it’s not wanted thanks to ‘deplorable and substandard’ customer service

Published Oct 16th, 2014 7:45AM EDT
BGR

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Comcast’s awful customer service has rightly become the stuff of legends and now one city in Massachusetts is telling the company that it wants nothing to do with the cable giant’s unique blend of wallet-incinerating prices and customer service agents who would make Kafka novel bureaucrats blush.

RELATED: Comcast’s infamously bad customer service isn’t incompetence — it’s a choice

Ars Technica points us to a new report in The Worcester Telegram that informs us Worcester’s city council has taken the rather unusual step of telling Comcast that it isn’t wanted in the city thanks to all the horror stories of it treating customers horribly. The council voted 8 to 3 this week in favor of a resolution asking the city’s mayor to not allow the transfer of the city’s cable television license from incumbent provider Charter to Comcast. One councilor who voted for the resolution said he did so because of Comcast’s “deplorable and substandard” customer service.

“It’s a terrible company,” he said according to the Telegram. “In my opinion, they should not be welcome in this city. Comcast is a wolf in wolf’s clothing; it’s that bad. They are awful, no doubt about it. Maybe we can’t stop it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t speak out.”

The resolution is purely a symbolic vote as the council doesn’t have the final say over whether the license is transferred or not, so this is mostly an advisory vote. Nonetheless, one city councilor said that she hoped the vote would send a message to the Federal Communications Commission that it needed to block Comcast’s proposed merger with Time Warner Cable.

“This is not a paper vote, this is not an empty vote,” explained councilor Konstantina B. Lukes. “This is a very clear vote that we are not going to tolerate the kind of responses we got from Charter and Comcast.”

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.