One person you don’t want to piss off
Michael Arrington just told his Twitter fans that Comcast has been for 36 hours and he’s told after a half-a-lifetime on hold that it’s California-wide. Others pipe in with their troubles. I go looking at the news and find more problems on the East Coast. Here you can watch the Comcast revolt spread across Twitter. Arrington is vowing “expend significant energy over the next three weeks trashing comcast.” Heh. Can’t wait to watch that. I also told him via Twitter that he should join forces with Bob Garfield at ComcastMustDie.
I’m willing to bet a few dollars that this could be the start of the first (or an early) consume revolt spread on Twitter (as the Laceygate revolt spread at SXSW): the instamob. I wonder whether Comcast is monitoring Twitter and whether it will be man enough to come in and explain what the hell is happening (without hold music).
Tags: cable, comcast, comcastmustdie, customerism, techcrunch
April 6th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Consumer leverage vs firms is clearly increasing. Deliver value or go out of business. Consumers can communicate wrongs [real or perceived] much wider than in the past.
The old rule was an angry customer might tell 10 people your firm blew it [or sucks]. That rule no longer holds true. There are blog writes who have the reach to communicate with hundreds, thousands and even millions within days.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
TechCrunch Sets Comcast in its Sights…
This will be interesting to follow, possibly entertaining, and perhaps productive in the long run. Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch has had some problems with Comcast of late, and although nothing has appeared on TechCrunch yet, Arrington’s venom is sp…
April 6th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Hmmm…is this what i have to look forward to - just a few miles south of you, in Hillsborough, we’re about to switch over from Patriot Media to the folks that bought them - Comcast.
…sigh…
April 6th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I love Comcast:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/256039807.png
Guy
April 6th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
I love Comcast too.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/256102096.png
Bill
April 6th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I love Comcast as well. I see no reason they have to stoop to the level of responding to a single blogger’s post.
April 6th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Guy, Bill and Wotan, the problem with your speed tests are that Comcast has been faking them. You’re not really getting those download speeds
April 6th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Comcast reduced my household (02459, MA) to an unbearable hell of slow internet (more torturous than dial-up, no lie) a few years ago, despite our exorbitant cable fees. Despite many protestations and attempts by then to ‘resolve’ the problem, things never got better. We moved to RCN, and later FiOS; some RCN remains because of bundling, other randomness. But at least for everyone I knew back home with Comcast, things could be real trouble sometimes. VZW’s fiber makes me much happier–though Yale’s connection is not so bad, either–though once the load on that goes up, who knows what we’ll see…
I always find it so interesting that even as Techmeme’d things get lots of traffic and attention, they get so few comments. O_o
April 6th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
For purposes of comparison, did a quick Yale test as well. 17 / 13. Things vary by load, though… and local access. Oh well. Yay research universities!
http://www.speedtest.net/result/256111802.png
April 6th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
[...] then I lost my cool, tearing into Comcast on Twitter. Jeff Jarvis and others picked up the story and blogged about [...]
April 6th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
My Comcast connection was down all day yesterday. Somehow I doubt I will get reimbursed for this outage. Luckily, Verizon just finished installing FIOS into the building I live in so Comcast no longer has a legal monopoly on me and my neighbors. Goodbye Comcast, I’m voting with my feet and taking my wallet elsewhere.
April 6th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Anythong or anyone that silences that arrogant, racist, ignorant fool aka as Arrington has my vote.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
[...] then I lost my cool, tearing into Comcast on Twitter. Jeff Jarvis and others picked up the story and blogged about [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 12:09 am
[...] then I lost my cool, tearing into Comcast on Twitter. Jeff Jarvis and others picked up the story and blogged about [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 12:23 am
We have not had issues with Comcast. Seems like you attempting to invent a viral revolt for an issue you are having… weak in my mind.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:57 am
Comcast’s high-speed internet quality in N. California is getting increasingly spotty. Their customer service has always been appalling; it’s just now becoming more evident as consumers realize they have options more satisfying than Comcast’s lip service.
Friday night saw Comcast’s bandwidth choking up and down Northern California– for a taste of the outrage check out the posts on the lower part of this page:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20026267-Anybody-else-in-Mendocino-Co-Seeing-daily-SLOWWWW-downs~start=60
What if all these people were on Twitter?
April 7th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Twitter blah blah blah Twitter blah blah Twitter blah blah blah Twitter Twitter blah Twitter blah spam Twitter Twitter Twitter spam Twitter blah.
Somebody is really pushing the Twitter hype machine at the moment. They must getting desperate, maybe they’re about to go under?
April 7th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Maybe Arrington can come up to Canada, and help us with Rogers and Bell.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:26 am
[...] was cut off on Friday night, and Comcast failed to provide him with a sufficient response. As Jeff Jarvis notes, Arrington is one guy you “don’t want to piss [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 7:19 am
[...] take speculative investments and who still don’t put in the torturous hours he does. [UPDATE: Add Comcast to the [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 8:01 am
[...] One person you don’t want to piss off [via Zemanta] [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 10:34 am
[...] going out about his connection problems in his home. Certainly it didn’t hurt to have Jeff Jarvis and others pick up on the story but still…20 minutes is a pretty amazing response time in the [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
seems like help comes to you when you blog the problem you are having. I lived in California for 10 years and do not remember having any major problems with comcast….besides the price of their services. My internet service from them was fast but it came at a high price…
April 7th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Hi Jeff
At Comcast we do monitor twitter as well as forums, blogs or website where a Customer may share their experience. We view this as another channel similar to email, phone or chat. In fact shortly after the initial discussion started I reached out to Mr. Arrington, as I have to numerous others on the internet.
Of course we also need to make sure we get it right the first time which unfortunately we didn’t when you first called in. We are working to do just that. We are listening and I am sharing all the online feedback I get with the head of customer care.
Frank Eliason
Comcast
April 7th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
I didn’t call in. I’m not a Comcast customer.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Certainly a typo - I was up late last night monitoring Twitter.
Thanks for pointing it out! I do want to thank you for your great blog website. I do enjoy reading it.
Have a great week!
Frank Eliason
Comcast
April 8th, 2008 at 8:37 am
So, some dude from Comcast leaves me an email via my web site contact form saying that I should contact them to get reimbursed for the outage (because he saw my note in the comments above). Um, hello….why should this be a reactive thing that I must do. Comcast *knows* which of their customers had a day-long outage; they should automatically reimburse ALL OF THEM, no questions asked.
Talk about an inconvenience. Why should I have to jump through hoops to be reimbursed. Comcast knows they fucked up, and they should reimburse ALL of the customers, not just the ones who specifically request it.
I give them credit for trying to put on a better Customer Service face but it’s still not good enough. Not when FIOS is eating their lunch because Comcast’s network simply can’t scale as well as Verizon’s fiber. Try harder Comcast, try harder.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:09 am
[...] Bloggers Leverage Their Collective Voices Against Companies "The old rule was an angry customer might tell 10 people your firm blew it. That rule no longer holds true. There are blog writers who have the reach to communicate with hundreds, thousands and even millions within days." [...]
April 30th, 2008 at 11:17 am
[...] blowing up through the Twitter audience at SXSW and Michael Arrington rallying the “instamob,†as Jeff Jarvis described, against Comcast when his internet service went down in early April. Consumer revolts now start [...]
April 30th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I loved Comcast until I had an experience about a month ago that fried my beans.
After, a week long interruption of service, they sent a serviceman out, he thought the problem was an outdoor problem at the cable box. I took off a half day from work for him to tell me this? All the while, I am maintaining that it is the modem that they installed about 4 year ago. The signal kept on dropping at that point. He said, yeah we don’t even use those modems anymore, but he didn’t take the initiative to switch it out, instead he sets up another service call for Saturday. But who am I? Just a homeowner at the mercy of a cable company. A repairman was scheduled to come out on Saturday around 1PM…at 1:30 I called to see if he was showing up, they transferred me to the local dispatch office, I get a gal on the phone ranting about “How they shouldn’t have routed my call to her”. After 30 seconds of abusive rants, I calmly said to her “It sounds like you have an internal issue here, I am a customer just wanting to know when the repairman is coming out”. After a moment of silence, she said, she would have to check with her supervisor and would call me back in a few minutes. 1 hour went by and no call , so I called Comcast back, the gal on the other end of the phone was very nice and said, I don’t show that you even have high-speed internet with us. ” I teasingly said, then you owe me a lot of money because you have been billing me for 4 years and unless this is a phantom modem I looking at, someone has manipulated my records. She finally did find out that it had been removed but wouldn’t go as far as to say how it happened.
So after getting the cable mac address reregistered, she informed me the repairman would be out on Sunday to look at the outer box. He showed tightened a few things and thought it looked ok. After 3 more weeks of intermittent dropped signal I called Comcast back and demanded a new cable modem. Been working like a charm ever since. Wished the customer service would have worked as well as my new modem.
Maybe I should send them a bill?
May 1st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I think there is a higher message for this fantastic Michael Arrington/Twitter story and I blogged about it: “Corporations take note: twitter is here” at http://www.techaffect.com
Its about giving these huge (often monopolizing) companies a big wake up call: To start actually monitoring and taking heed to what your valuble customer base is saying through social media outlets like Twitter and the blogoshphere. Its so easy to do, customer service can be vastly improved, and the payoff is be huge: happy customers means more business.
To me, its a no brainer.
Yasmin