Finding money is my best consumer experience while Comcast customer service is terrible

By Rita R. Robison

Luckily, I found some money this week, but my experience with Comcast was awful.

My best consumer experience: Finding money among my receipts

This spring, I’ve been really busy. When I prepared my tax return, I usually go through my receipts in addition to reviewing my check and credit card records. However, I skipped going through my receipts.

Since I had company coming, I was organizing my office. I had two 8 x 10 envelopes of receipts. I debated on whether to divide them up between business and other expenses or just filing them as is.

I decided, despite being rushed to get my house in order, to organize them.

I was ecstatic to find $40 folded up in a receipt. Apparently, I’d put the money with the receipt, then transferred it to my receipt pile without noticing the money.

I happily kept filing. Then I found another $5. Again, I was tickled.

The whole experience of getting my house in order has made me want to keep up with my filing. The $45 was a nice reward.

My worst consumer experience: Customer service with Comcast

My daughter is visiting and wanted me to install wifi. I went to Office Depot and bought a router.

It looked complicated, and we had trouble at her house in Miami installing wifi. So I decided to contact Comcast, my Internet service provider. A big, big mistake.

I paid $5.95 for Comcast’s Signature service to help me. I worked with one customer service representative, Blake. We went at it for an hour, but we were cut off.

Then I called back. I worked with Tom. He was slower than Blake, but I thought he might be able to help me. When he wanted me to access an Internet address, he slowly explained the http:// address indicating the : was a colon. Come on. I’m a journalist. I’ve known what a colon is, as in writing, for years. I spent another hour with him.

He was terrible. At one point, he yelled at me. I was confused about which color cord to plug in, and I wasn’t doing it fast of enough. I had to tell him to stop yelling at me.

We worked on it for another hour. Tom said, at the end of a horrible hour, that the router was defective. He said I should take it back to Office Depot.

Wrong. At my daughter’s suggestion, I called D-Link, the company that makes the router, instead of trying Comcast for a third time.

It worked. The problem was the Firefox browser. It’s my default browser. When I worked with the D-Link representative, I got a blank screen two times.

She said we should try Safari. It worked. My daughter is happily posting photos to Facebook.

I can’t believe the terrible customer service I received from Comcast. I tried to call the Signature number again to complain about the “customer service.” I was cut off again. Unbelievable.

I plan to write the CEO of Comcast about this.