The trick to cancelling Comcast

[AnsleyPark]

I know it includes Family Channel, HGTV (yay!), CNN, TNT, Travel, Food Network and ESPN. More to follow, hopefully. Grab yourself a digital antenna to pick up local stations, and you might just be good to go.

[Larry X]

Originally Posted by tikigod311

Dish SlingTV is going to be offering live ESPN and ESPN 2 streaming for $20 a month. The days of sports being the only reason to keep cable are thankfully coming to an end!

you can get a good cable or satellite package for $29.99 or less though. like i said earlier, just switch between Comcast and Direct TV every two years.

[bUU]

Originally Posted by noah

This attitude is why Comcast received a F in the latest ratings on the industry.

No. The reason why large companies receive such poor customer satisfaction ratings is that customers share mostly negative information with each other about the companies with which they do business, mass media profits on the effect of its sensationalism of complaints, and negativity feeds on itself. Unless you spend $1 billion a year on advertising to try to dupe weak-minded sycophants into thinking you're a wonderful company (like Apple does), the just-plain-normal-amount-of-problems regular companies have gets magnified so it looks like an excessively large amount of poor quality. Big telecommunications companies, big banks and insurance companies, and big discount retailers are the scapegoats for the American consumer's excessive sense of entitlement, and lack of reasonable perspective.

Originally Posted by ToucheGA

Does that package also include Fox, NBC, CBS, NFL Network, and the other stations that carry sports programs?

No. None of those.

Originally Posted by AnsleyPark

More to follow, hopefully.

You can assume that more channels will be offered in tiers of 10-20 channels per package, each additional package costing another $10-$20.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by bUU

No. The reason why large companies receive such poor customer satisfaction ratings is that customers share mostly negative information with each other about the companies with which they do business, mass media profits on the effect of its sensationalism of complaints, and negativity feeds on itself. Unless you spend $1 billion a year on advertising to try to dupe weak-minded sycophants into thinking you're a wonderful company (like Apple does), the just-plain-normal-amount-of-problems regular companies have gets magnified so it looks like an excessively large amount of poor quality. Big telecommunications companies, big banks and insurance companies, and big discount retailers are the scapegoats for the American consumer's excessive sense of entitlement, and lack of reasonable perspective.

While this is mostly true, I have praised Comcast for years for the service we got. IN fact, you can probably do a search of my name and Comcast and find several posts about it.

But, then I had to cancel our cable for financial reasons. It took hours. If you count the call backs for bill issues and equipment they claimed be still had, it took days. They can't seem to just be an honest company. Everything is about duping you into paying more.

I said flat out that I want to drop cable and keep internet. I said "I don't want your specials. I don't want your deals. I want to cancel cable and keep internet. Period." So their offer was so-and-so package with this many channels and so-and-so internet, and "you'll be saving $500 per year!" Yeah, but that's still costing be $125 a month. Again, I said "I don't want to keep cable right now...I want only internet". The next offer? So-and-so package with this many channels and so-and-so internet, and "you'll be saving $800 per year!". It took almost two hours and one hangup on me to get it down to what I wanted all along, saving me $1,680 per year.

Is that entitlement to just ask for a service they offer without being tricked into paying more for things I don't want? If you can't just be an honest company and listen to your customers' requests and have to make your money off of confusion and sleight of hand, you deserve the reputation you get. Call it entitlement if you want.

And really...big banks and insurance companies are your examples of fine, upstanding companies just getting a bad rap???

[bUU]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

While this is mostly true, I have praised Comcast for years for the service we got. IN fact, you can probably do a search of my name and Comcast and find several posts about it. But, then I had to cancel our cable for financial reasons. It took hours.

There is far less profit in making disconnecting service more efficient as compared to taking that investment and making the sales and connection process more efficient. Of course a company will focus on optimizing revenue generation and shift costs (in this case, hours of work on your part). Consumer are so notoriously disloyal that there isn't even any significant concerns to be had regarding pissing off a departing customer who may someday return.

I think a lot of people judge situations based either on the assumption that they are a more valuable participant in the system or on the assumption that they are the prototypical example of the agent on their side of the transaction, neither of which may be true.

Originally Posted by samiwas1

They can't seem to just be an honest company.

Ascribing the fact that your side of a transaction felt like an inefficient use of your time and effort to dishonesty is irrationally self-aggrandizing.

Originally Posted by samiwas1

I said flat out that I want ...

But you're not the only customer in the world, and there is no way to know that you would not be positively inclined toward an offer that the company wanted to present to you. No one likes advertising. Yet advertising continues. It continues because it is effective.

Originally Posted by samiwas1

Is that entitlement to just ask for a service they offer without being tricked into paying more for things I don't want?

You're again falling into irrational self-aggrandizement by trying to characterize the presentation of standard marketing presentations as "tricks" and insinuating that your time is more valuable than the additional revenue that presentation of standard marketing advertisements may gain for the company from other customers in the same situation as you. If you don't like being marketed to, then pay someone to be your agent in interactions with other companies. Or live without the mass market products and services that patronage of may result in being subject to the kind of interactions you hate so much.

Originally Posted by samiwas1

And really...big banks and insurance companies are your examples of fine, upstanding companies just getting a bad rap???

Yes. Unlike you, I've been on all three sides of this matter: As a consumer, as a seller, and as an independent auditor of such interactions. Your perspective seems to be strictly a consumer perspective and reeks of one-sided bias.

[Sprial]

Originally Posted by bUU

Yes. Unlike you, I've been on all three sides of this matter: As a consumer, as a seller, and as an independent auditor of such interactions. Your perspective seems to be strictly a consumer perspective and reeks of one-sided bias.

Comcast has left me several messages about equipment I do not have and the call back number is a non-working number....as in, "beep beep beep, we're sorry the number you have dialed has been disconnected or changed". This was as recently as yesterday. That's not bias or $ spent per whatever metric you want to cite - it's the apathetic incompetence that has rightly earned the company its top spot upon an unenviable list.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by bUU

There is far less profit in making disconnecting service more efficient as compared to taking that investment and making the sales and connection process more efficient. Of course a company will focus on optimizing revenue generation and shift costs (in this case, hours of work on your part). Consumer are so notoriously disloyal that there isn't even any significant concerns to be had regarding pissing off a departing customer who may someday return.

I think a lot of people judge situations based either on the assumption that they are a more valuable participant in the system or on the assumption that they are the prototypical example of the agent on their side of the transaction, neither of which may be true.

Ascribing the fact that your side of a transaction felt like an inefficient use of your time and effort to dishonesty is irrationally self-aggrandizing.

But you're not the only customer in the world, and there is no way to know that you would not be positively inclined toward an offer that the company wanted to present to you. No one likes advertising. Yet advertising continues. It continues because it is effective.

You're again falling into irrational self-aggrandizement by trying to characterize the presentation of standard marketing presentations as "tricks" and insinuating that your time is more valuable than the additional revenue that presentation of standard marketing advertisements may gain for the company from other customers in the same situation as you. If you don't like being marketed to, then pay someone to be your agent in interactions with other companies. Or live without the mass market products and services that patronage of may result in being subject to the kind of interactions you hate so much.

Yes. Unlike you, I've been on all three sides of this matter: As a consumer, as a seller, and as an independent auditor of such interactions. Your perspective seems to be strictly a consumer perspective and reeks of one-sided bias.

Alrighty. I can see that you are Mr. Corporate Apologist here, especially seeing that you've been an "independent auditor".

So what if I'm "not the only customer"? What does that have to do with anything? Because I'm not the only customer, I deserve a two-hour sales pitch after explicitly stating the plan that I want?

If I call a company saying flat out that I am having financial difficulties and that I need to cut everything out of my bill except for the one essential thing I need, just ****** do it. If you make me an offer and I say "No, I don't want your offers, I want this and only this", just ****** do it. Do you really need to drag me out for two solid hours making sales pitch after sales pitch, each of which I get more angry saying no to, only to end up right where I said I wanted to be? Some people might want to listen to your sales pitches. If I say from the beginning "Do not give me any sales pitches" then give up, especially when I say that it's because I need the extra money to be able to pay for my special needs son's therapies. Yeah, how self-aggrandizing of me.

If we finally settle on a product, and then when reading back to me, you slip in something new...that's a trick. Why, when we've decided on the $39.99 internet-only package, does a tv package suddenly make its way in for an extra $20 when we're confirming things? To you, that might be "good business", but that's trying to slip one by your customer.

If you went to a restaurant and ordered a burger and they surreptitiously added a milkshake in there and changed you for it, would you call that good "marketing" on their part? No, because it's stupid. But that's exactly what you're implying.

Like I said, if your business model revolves around literally refusing to acknowledge what your customer wants, or trying to quietly slip extra things in that they don't want, then you have a really crap model, at least from a customer standpoint. And to say that not giving the customer what they are asking for is the customer being "self aggrandizing" says all I need to know.

Yes, you make big profits. Yay. But, I guess that's all it's about in the end, right? Ain't 'merica grand?

[bUU]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

Alrighty. I can see that you are Mr. Corporate Apologist here

No. You can see that I'm Mr. Only Adultintheroom. I'm sorry that my comments didn't placate your apparent need to have an unrebutted soapbox, but when you stoop to name calling it's time for you to take a breather.