Bye Comcast, Hello DISH??

Update 10:15pm 12/10 ET:I got a call from Andrew at Comcast at around 5:30pm and he apologized for my experience and offered to continue my promotion (don’t know for how long) if I continued with cable. But I told him this experience was enough to keep me away from cable and also that cable didn’t offer much in the way of Hindi programming in Charlottesville. He also assured me that my bill has been fixed and I will get a statement in the next couple of weeks with the corrected information and gave me his direct number if I had any more questions or if I decided not to keep DISH and return to cable.

I also got a message from our local Comcast manager! Lesson – if you have problems with comcast that customer service doesn’t solve, post your problem publicly! If that doesn’t work, try calling 703 730 2225 and the email addresses for customer service are:
Customer_Connect1@cable.comcast.com
We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com

Update 1:40pm 12/10 ET:I shot another email to the national comcast folks and supposedly someone will resolve the issue and call me today. See comments.

Update 1:10pm 12/10 ET:So far I have received no calls from the National folks who commented on this post, nor from the local manager and definitely nothing from the supervisor of the rep who actually cut my cable. I really didn’t expect anything better from Concast (really Concast is what they are)

Update 9:45pm 12/09 ET: See the comments on this post for a response from Mark Casem from Comcast customer service to this blog post. I’ll keep the blog updated with any additional responses from Comcast.

I returned my Comcast box today and missed the local office manager who it seems is the only one who can make the decision at the local office. I was hoping to fix my bill then. I left a message for her and let’s see if I hear back from her again.

Post orignally made on Dec. 9:

Today I got a shocker bill from Comcast. $198 and change. My usual bill is $37 and change, where the change part fluctuates each month.

They retroactively changed my November bill from the 37.xx to 90 something. The claim made by comcast customer service is that my promotional period ended in the middle of the month and their systems can’t handle that kind of change until the day of the change itself so they just add it in to my next bill. I told the CS lady that if I would have known that my bill would go from 37 to nearly 100, I would just cut cable and that Comcast deceived me by sending me a small bill in Nov and then retroactively charging me more in Dec. for the Nov. period. The lady even told me that since I already used the service I must pay whatever they say I must pay.

The supposed promotion that I was on was for 29.99/month plus tax but the rates kept going up by a few cents to a few dollars each month. The lady asked if I knew I was on a promotional rate, which I was so I said yes. But I told her I had no plans of continuing with all the stuff I had beyond the promotion and had I known a.k.a got a correct bill in Nov I would have cancelled or modified service.

But the rep. just got annoyed with me and I was getting inreasingly frustrated trying to explain to her that the whole problem in this situation is that November is done and gone and I’m not paying more than the original November bill, which is my usual Comcast bill. Anyway she refused to modify anything in the bill and refused to forward to a supervisor (saying she was the most senior person there) and promised that a supervisor will call me in 48 hours. In the meanwhile, while this was going on without even informing or confirming with me she cut my cable.

Parchayi noticed the clock on the cable go off and I asked the CS lady if she cut my cable. She said yes and that I had said I wanted to cut my cable (which I clearly told her I wanted to do when the next billing cycle starts after she fixes my November bill). At this point I was maybe 20 minutes into arguing with her and I just gave up on her and on Comcast.

Until I get DISH (another post altogether), I’ll find out how it is to live without TV for a few days!