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Man spends 4 hours on the phone trying to get his Comcast service fixed… and it still didn’t work

Published Jan 1st, 2015 5:00PM EST
Why Is Comcast So Bad

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As we saw last year, Comcast has come up with an ingenious way to keep subscribers — namely, it makes unsubscribing to its services such a torturous and miserable process that you’ll eventually just cave in and decide to stick with them. Comcast subscriber Gern Branston recently attempted to cancel his Comcast customer service and a retention agent made him an offer to stay that he thought was too good to pass up. In retrospect, however, he probably wishes he hadn’t taken the bait.

FROM EARLIER: Comcast ends 2014 with one last epic customer service call debacle

After accepting the offer to stay with Comcast, Branston was told that he would be getting a confirmation email outlining the terms of his offer. When he never got one, he called Comcast back and talked to a different representative who amazingly had no record of his call with the retention agent and no record of the offer he agreed to. He was then transferred to a new retention specialist who agreed to match the other specialist’s offer and vowed again to send a confirmation email.

Surprise: The email once again never showed up! Even better, he ran a speed test on his home Internet service and found that it was maxing out at 30Mbps when he was told he would be getting 50Mbps.

So he called Comcast back again and, wouldn’t you know it, the customer service representative had no record of his two previous calls. What’s more, Comcast’s records showed that he’d been signed up for a plan that was even more expensive than the one he’d had before trying to cancel.

Finally, he got through to a retention specialist who offered him 50Mbps Internet service along with a TV package that included HBO for just $39.99 for 12 months. This time, the specialist actually did send a confirmation email and Branston’s Internet speeds were actually boosted to 50Mbps… but he had no TV service.

“Finally got working internet at the right price but the TV service is still not working, and I am so wary of rocking the boat and having them screw up my account again that I haven’t authorized them to correct the TV issue,” he writes on Reddit. “I simply don’t trust them to not screw it up further.”

You can listen to an condensed edited version of Branson’s four-hour Comcast nightmare below.

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.