A Letter to Comcast

Dear Ms Rudnay,

I would have liked to send this to Brian Roberts, but for some reason he does not like to reveal his e-mail address to some schmuck of a customer like me.

I have to tell you that I am absolutely amazed at the lack of professionalism displayed by your firm. Here’s my story.

I am an Adelphia customer, or perhaps I should say a former Adelphia customer, as I received a letter in October announcing the acquisition of Adelphia by Comcast. While Adelphia service when I first became a customer was pretty bad, it had improved quite a bit over the past few years. Still, being a naïve country bumpkin from Martha’s Vineyard, I expected Comcast to provide better or, at a minimum, equal service. Now I fear that the service will, in fact, be worse, considerably so, as I can no longer send e-mails via my Adelphia address and your technical staff cannot help me.

First indication: Your October letter mentioned that Internet customers would be transferred over to Comcast around November 6 and would be informed as to details when the day drew near. I have yet to receive such notification.

Second indication: When I logged on to my computer this morning, I could not log on to the Internet. I called the regular Adelphia number, 888-683-1000, and was not greeted by the same automated voice as I had gotten used to. This automated voice never identified the company I was calling. It asked for my phone number twice and then asked me to verify it. It then proceeded to tell me when I paid my last bill and how much I paid. I was really not interested in this information. This preamble wasted 3 – 4 minutes until I was told to press 2 for Internet help.

Third indication: The person I spoke to (who again asked for my phone number) told me that my account was being converted to Comcast and it would take between 24 and 48 hours for the conversion. I asked to speak to his supervisor but hung up after waiting more than five minutes.

Fourth indication: On a whim I called service around 6 p.m. and was surprised when the technician told me that the conversion was complete and walked me through the necessary changes. My system worked fine using my normal e-mail address of aldevito@vineyard.net.

Fifth indication: My wife, whose e-mail address is cdevito@adelphia.net, received e-mails but could not send them using Thunderbird. She tried at least three different addresses (verizon,net, yahoo.com and vineyard.net). In each case Thunderbird said that the mail server (a Comcast device) could not relay the message. I called again. The first service person could not help and passed me on to the e-mail specialist. She did some research and could not help despite the fact that she works in the area focusing on conversion from Adelphia. While she was researching, I tried to send an e-mail using Outlook on my computer with my adelphia address, adevito@adelphia.net. Same result – Outlook said that the mail server (a Comcast device) could not relay the message. I tried also to use Adelphia’s web-based mail to send a message from my wife’s computer to mine. This worked but my wife’s message was characterized as spam.

Sixth indication: The e-mail specialist consulted her supervisor and they concluded the problem was in Thunderbird. I explained to her that yesterday my PC and wife’s PC were able to send e-mails to the world. We changed exactly nothing. Yet, when we were converted to Comcast, our Adelphia e-mail addresses could not send e-mails. Logically, it is very likely that the problem is yours, not mine.

Seventh indication: I asked to speak to the supervisor. When I was told it might be a long wait (I had already been on the phone over a half-hour), I asked whether the supervisor could call me when he was free. I was flabbergasted to learn - in this day when supposedly companies are customer-driven - that it was not the policy to have your service people call customers, who, I suspect, pay the salary of the supervisor and everybody else at Comcast.

Tell me that Comcast just had a bad day. Otherwise, I’ll have to switch to Verizon if the problem cannot be fixed soon.