A local Perspective on the Comcast thing

I got a reply to a blog post from Scott Westerman, an executive at Comcast. It would appear that he works/is headquartered in the SouthWest region. He sent me a link to get a message to a Senior Vice President, who forwarded the email to the local ( Midwestern) region that I call home. I then received phone calls from the local executive office, trying to see if my business could be saved, or there was anything that could be fixed for me. I appreciated those calls, and that efforts were being made by the company. It was a case of too little, too late for me- but here are some interesting things that came out of those phone calls.

1) When I said that I had real concerns about the fact that Comcast uses contractors for tech and field agents, and that that cut costs but gave them less control over things like timeliness, responsiveness, and quality; the woman on the phone with me responded that here they are trying to retain all of their old Insight field agents as Comcast contractors, so the quality would stay high.

2) When I said that I had concerns about being on hold a minimum of 45 minutes, I was told that on transition, some phone lines were shut down that should not have been and their queues got long. They thought that his had been resolved and phone queues should be getting shorter soon. She honestly sounded just as frustrated about this as I was. I really do think that she believed that this would turn around soon. Unfortunately, balanced with other conversations I had had with long time Comcast customers, I was not so willing to be optimistic.

I feel awful for the local ( former Insight) workers who are currently spending all day dealing with angry, frustrated, confused customers. I have been in similar situations. It is demeaning and depressing to spend your days being blamed for something that you did not cause. I wish there were some way I could get the word out to the locals to stop blaming the poor local working stiffs who are just trying to hold together the unraveling threads of the poorly communicated plans from their corporate offices. I am sure they are all also concerned about what will happen to their jobs and the jobs of their friends and family as they watch decades-long customers flee.

But do any sort of search on Insight/Comcast 2008 and you will see link after link after link of local newspapers and blogs reporting issues, problems and unhappiness. My post? Just another little drop in the rising waters of unhappiness.

For now- I need to move on to other topics and get back to life, love and technology that glues them together.