Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist

Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Md Troopers Assoc #20 & Westminster Md Fire Dept Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Showing posts with label Media Comcast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media Comcast. Show all posts

Monday, March 28, 2016

This is where a consumer may file a complaint about Comcast with the FCC


This is where a consumer may file a complaint about Comcast with the FCC

Chapter VIII of Part 1 of Don Quixote is titled, “Of the valorous Don Quixote’s success in the dreadful and never before imagined Adventure of the Windmills, with other events worthy of happy record.”

According to Cervantes, the first encounter between the windmills and Don Quixote went like this: “Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”

“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza?

“Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them have arms well-nigh two leagues in length.”

“Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone.”

Hat Tip: http://quirkyberkeley.com/don-quixote-and-the-windmills/ among multiple media sources…

Monday, March 28, 2016

In regard to a friend’s Facebook post on March 9, 2016 regarding Comcast customer service….


I was amused that many folks recommended FIOS. Take a memo, there is no difference between Comcast’s customer service and Verizon’s.  

Actually, every time you see a commercial by Comcast about how easy it is to move an existing Comcast service from one home to the next when you move; please realize that it is excruciatingly difficult to move your service and when folks move is when most folks ‘cut the cord’ because the customer service involved in moving your service from one home to the next is so horrific.

Sort of like walking into the office of a service provider, such as a medical health care office and you are greeted by a large sign that explains that customer service is so important to them – it is because that office has horrid customer service – and some faceless bureaucrat exercised corporate creativity and decided to solve the problem in true Orwellian fashion by posting a sign.

It is called “paper performance.” Solving a problem by checking-off a box that says that the problem has been addressed. Of course, nothing has been solved and if anything the customer service gets worse.

All that said, several years ago I called the Maryland Public Service Commission about a horrid customer service challenge with Verizon and talked with a very nice person who explained that she understood my complaint and admitted that the PSC receives many such complaints, but there was nothing that could be done. In the end, I solved the problem by cancelling my land phone line and DSL service.

A close friend explained that calling Comcast was like having a root canal without anesthesia. Extremely painful, but once it is over you feel better… Whatever.  

Currently, I have to call both Verizon and Comcast about a family member’s service issues and I am absolutely dreading it. I guess, you might say that both Verizon and Comcast have attempted to solve the number of customer service complaints by making it so horrid to call them that folks simply do not call.

Meanwhile, it has been said that the greatest hoax in life is the hope for safety. I simply have lost any hope that government or the regulatory agencies will address the horrid customer service of Verizon and Comcast. And sadly the marketplace will not solve the horrid service by Verizon and Comcast anytime soon. There is no incentive to improve the services they provide. Eventually it will be solved. But I am not holding my breath.

Maybe the only satisfaction that we may receive is to inundate the FCC with complaints. It may be a quixotic exercise at tilting at windmills but we may simply get some therapeutic benefit from the primal screaming. Just saying.


Filing a complaint
If you experience a problem with your broadband service, first try to resolve it with your provider. If you cannot resolve the problem directly, you have multiple options for filing a complaint with the FCC:


By phone: 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322); TTY: 1-888-TELL-FCC (1-888-835-5322); ASL Videophone: 1-844-432-2275

By mail (please include your name, address, contact information and as much detail about your complaint as possible):

Federal Communications Commission
Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau
Consumer Inquiries and Complaints Division
445 12th Street, S.W.
Washington, DC 20554

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19330000-Paris Flammarion

Edward Hopper: Don Quixote, c 1899


18740000-Boston Lee Quixote
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Sunday, July 27, 2014

Jordan Weissmann: A Former Comcast Employee Explains That Horrifying Customer Service Call

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/07/16/comcast_customer_service_an_employee_explains_why_they_won_t_let_you_cancel.html?wpisrc=obnetwork

No exit....
....
Comcast says it’s "embarrassed" by the recording of a customer service rep desperately refusing to cancel a subscriber’s account that had the entire Internet gawking in horror yesterday. However, the company would like to assure us all that this was simply a case of a single, misguided employee leaping over the edge.
Jordan WeissmannJORDAN WEISSMANN
Jordan Weissmann is Slate's senior business and economics correspondent.
"We are investigating this situation and will take quick action," the company told the Hollywood Reporter. ... 
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Friday, July 25, 2014

Comcast 'Embarrassed' By The Service Call Making Internet Rounds by ELISE HU July 15, 2014

Comcast 'Embarrassed' By The Service Call Making Internet Rounds by ELISE HU July 15, 2014   

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/07/15/331681041/comcast-embarrassed-by-the-service-call-making-internet-rounds?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140720&utm_campaign=mostemailed&utm_term=nprnews

When a customer service call is described as "Kafkaesque" and "hellish," you pretty much know how it's going to go down before even taking a listen. But in case you haven't heard the condescending, tedious call that's lit up the Internet, here it is:
The recording starts after the call has already been in progress for about 10 minutes, according to the caption on SoundCloud by Ryan Block, who was trying to cancel his Comcast Internet service. Block writes:
"The representative (name redacted) continued aggressively repeating his questions, despite the answers given, to the point where my wife became so visibly upset she handed me the phone. ...  http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/07/15/331681041/comcast-embarrassed-by-the-service-call-making-internet-rounds?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140720&utm_campaign=mostemailed&utm_term=nprnews
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

A 1st. Told ya Microsoft is behind the cable software Its got the cust service


A 1st. I had never received the "blue screen of death" before on my cable TV screen... Told ya Microsoft is behind the cable software. Cable TV - Comcast has got the horrid customer service down pat. Now comes the blue screen death. Next will come the invasive upgrades from heck. I'm just saying.

last year it was the Comcast digital cable box hardware upgrade - from hell. It took an enormous amount of time, several false starts and lots of time on the phone with "customer service." Now comes the software upgrade...
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Friday, May 20, 2011

Washington Post: Tweet about FCC member’s new job at Comcast sets off firestorm

Tweet about FCC member’s new job at Comcast sets off firestorm By Cecilia Kang, Published: May 19 http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/tweet-about-fcc-members-new-job-at-comcast-sets-off-firestorm/2011/05/19/AFZNiP7G_story.html?wpisrc=nl_tech


Comcast has absorbed a lot of criticism since its decision last week to hire Meredith Attwell Baker, a sitting member of the Federal Communications Commission.
But one critical remark really got under the company’s skin.
When an employee of Reel Grrls, a nonprofit educational program in Seattle, sent a tweet questioning Baker’s hiring after the commissioner voted to approve Comcast’s mega-venture with NBC Universal, Comcast’s reaction was swift and harsh.


The company cut off funding for Reel Grrls’ summer camp, where 15 teenage girls learn documentary script writing, editing and filmmaking.
The reaction to the funding cutoff was also severe — and added to consumer advocates’ criticism of Comcast. Some are trying to drum up a congressional investigation into whether Baker’s new job pre­sents a conflict of interest. Baker had criticized the FCC’s review of Comcast’s joint venture with NBC Universal for taking too long and voted in favor of the merger in a
4 to 1 decision in January.
[...]

Turns out that a Comcast executive in charge of sponsoring the Reel Grrls summer program was reading and wasn’t pleased. Last Friday, Comcast Vice President Steve Kipp wrote Reel Grrls an e-mail with a link to the tweet, saying the cable giant wouldn’t contribute the $18,000 it had promised for the film camp.
“I am frankly shocked that your organization is slamming us on Twitter,” Kipp wrote. The tweet “has put me in an indefensible position with my bosses. I cannot continue to ask them to approve funding for Reel Grrls, knowing that the digital footprint your organization has created about Comcast is a negative one.”
[...]
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Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Tribune Co. creditors court Michael Eisner and Jeff Shell for top jobs

Tribune Co. creditors court Michael Eisner and Jeff Shell for top jobs

August 25, 2010

Former Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Michael D. Eisner is in discussions that could lead to his return to the media spotlight – as chairman of the now-bankrupt Tribune Co.
The media company’s largest creditors are having preliminary conversations with prospective candidates who could operate Tribune once it emerges from bankruptcy, according to several people with knowledge of the situation.
Eisner, who has been dabbling in the digital world as an investor since stepping down from Disney in 2005, is among the candidates under consideration to replace Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell as chairman of the reorganized company.
Discussions about new management at Tribune are still exploratory, people close to one of the creditors cautioned. Senior creditors can’t make changes until a plan is in place allowing the company to emerge from its nearly two-year legal morass.
Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, KTLA-TV Channel 5 and 22 other TV stations and six newspapers.
Under one scenario being discussed by the senior creditors, Eisner, who is 68, would be joined by Jeff Shell, a former News Corp. cable executive who is now in top management at Comcast Corp., according to four people with knowledge of the talks. Shell would become chief executive of Tribune, replacing Randy Michaels.
Eisner was unavailable for comment, according to his spokeswoman. But he told Variety in a wide-ranging interview Monday that he has been accumulating Tribune debt. “You are talking to somebody who is buying debt in the Tribune Co. The salvation of the newspaper is some kind of pay arrangement [online], which will evolve into something significant,” Eisner said in the interview.
Shell, 44, a Los Angeles native who runs Comcast’s cable channels group from the company’s headquarters in Philadelphia, declined to comment. Earlier in his career, Shell worked for Disney on the strategic planning staff when Eisner ran the company.
Tribune and its creditors are still struggling to negotiate a settlement around charges that Zell’s 2007 leveraged buyout was a case of "fraudulent conveyance," meaning the transaction rendered the company insolvent from Day One. That settlement would serve as the basis for a plan of reorganization, but depending on how negotiations go, it could be months in coming or the case could easily devolve into litigation...  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/08/hold.html

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