Dreadful service strategy and even more dreadful execution

I’m currently in the middle of the worst service experience I’ve ever had with Xfinity.  I’ve been first a Comcast and now Xfinity customer for over 25 years non-stop, never left and came back.  Stayed with them through thick and thin.  Over all those years you can imagine that I’ve needed to engage with Xfinity service numerous times on a host of different issues.  As the years have gone by those engagements have only gotten worse, capping it off with the latest situation I’m in the middle of with Xfinity service.  

It all started last week with a TV box that would not respond to the remote.  I thought I’d save myself some time and use the Xfinity assistant in the Xfinity App to troubleshoot the problem.  This of course was AFTER I did all of normal things, ie., reboot my modem, the TV box, etc.  The first thing you recognize when trying to use the assistant is that the options it gives you for problem reporting are limited and if your problem doesn’t fit perfectly in to one of those options, be prepared to find yourself in an endless loop to nowhere.  Here’s a novel Idea. How bout an option that says “Other” that enables you to accurately describe your problem just to get the issue to a chat agent as soon as possible but I digress.

Okay, some how I managed to TRICK the assistant chat bot enough to get me to an agent in a call center, most likely somewhere in India based on the names of the multiple agents I was handed off to during what became a 2 hour chat session.  So the first agent starts trouble shooting recommending I do all of the reboots I’ve already done.  That’s fine, I realize they can’t just assume everyone has done that so no problem.  Then we move on to checking the remote and they’re convinced that’s the problem but not so fast I tell them.  I have an identical remote that was paired with the box and when trying that remote the box still wasn’t responding.  This was probably about 45 min to 1hr in to the chat in which I had been handed off to 3 different agents by then.  As each new agent entered the chat they all started with the same thing “Hello Mr. xxxx, I’m agent xxxxx and I assure you that I will be able to fix your problem. Now give me a few minutes to read the transcript to understand the problem you’re having”.  By the time the 2 hour chat was over I was handed off to 6 different chat agents.  To add insult to injury, each agent pushed sales promos on me all disguised as things they were doing for me to show me how sorry Xfinity was for the problems I was experiencing.  If you want to make a furious person even more furious, try selling them something or offering them freebies with strings attached while they’re having a problem with your product or service.  The Xfinity executive genius who thought it would be a good idea to do this should be fired because they’re either completely incompetent, tone deaf or both.

So now we’re 2hours in to the chat and the agent determines that maybe the box needs to be replaced.  Okay, so he texts me a link that takes me to a billing page making it appear like I’m going to need to add another box to my account for an additional $10 a month.  I reject that and chat ends with a link for a live agent to call me the next day and giving me a download of the chat transcript which I see after multiple pages my communication in the transcript mysteriously disappeared.  Directly after the chat I was also flooded with 23 text messages and corresponding emails, why, I have no idea.  The next day I do get a call from a live agent and long story short they direct me to take my TV Box to a local Xfinity store and pick up a replacement box.  I bring the box home, hook it up and for an hour or so everything is working great then the TV screen goes black and I start getting an error message saying I’ve got a connection problem.  Okay so wait a minute, I guess the problem isn’t really with my TV but maybe it’s the internet / WiFi ?  Okay so let me use the Xfinity app and test WiFi signal to every connected device.  I run this test while watching a TV connected to an Amazon fire stick, sitting there buffering and buffering.  Test shows WiFi connection to the fire stick STRONG, LOL!  The test showed the same STRONG connection to the TV box I was having the problems with.  

So now I call Xfinity service again the next day, managing to somehow trick the phone system that enabled me to talk to a live human being.  We all know that’s next to impossible anymore.  At any rate that conversation ends with scheduling an onsite service appointment which is supposed to take place tomorrow, okay fine.  The following day I get a call from an Xfinity agent, acknowledging my appointment but wanted to know the problems I was having and wanted to do troubleshooting.  Before going there I gave the agent a brief run down on everything I’ve already been through and asked them if they read the chat transcript.  They said no that they didn’t have access that that information and I’m thinking “Are you $#%&#$@ Kidding me !”.  I said I’m not going to do anymore remote troubleshooting and that someone had already schedule an onsite service appointment for me.  The agent said well that person was customer service and I’m tech support which of course I could completely care less.  I told the agent to work that out internally and I wasn’t putting anymore hours in to this and would wait for my onsite visit.  She agreed and hung up.  It literally wasn’t 2 hours later and I receive another call from an Xfinity tech support agent who opened the call with “ I understand you’re having problems with your service.  Could you please tell me about it ?”.  This is just when I was already thinking Xfinity incompetence couldn’t get any worse.  The Call ended briefly with the agent understanding I was done having anymore discussions with Xfinity until my onsite visit takes place.  

After this past week’s nightmare, I can only hope that my issue will finally be resolved during tomorrow’s on site appointment.  Nobody at the executive level in Xfinity will ever see this post which is very sad but I thought it would be good self therapy to make this post as I needed to vent somewhere before my head exploded.  Any company to put their customers through this kind of experience needs to reexamine their entire service strategy.  I work for a global company in the tech service industry that’s much larger than Xfinity and if my company developed and delivered a service strategy like this, every executive involved in the development and execution of that strategy would be fired!  Just to wrap this up, this is the first time in 25 years I’m SERIOUSLY considering canceling service.  I can’t even think about having to go through  another experience like this anytime in the future with Xfinity.