Is this incompetence or frustration-by-design

I am writing to document Xfinity’s abhorrent customer service and customer communications in connection with recent outages. A summary of the events is below.

• July 3rd Outage
  • Power went out July 3rd in the early afternoon.
  • That same day, Xfinity sent a text message saying service would be restored by 6:55 pm.
  • Power came back on around 11 pm July 4th. Xfinity services did not.
  • I contacted Xfinity on July 5th in the afternoon, around 14 hours after power had been restored. The Xfinity app / chatbot provided no useful information whatsoever. Then Xfinity sent me a “survey” asking me what I think about Xfinity. This is what I sent in response:
    • “ [X]finity’s customer service and billing practices are still awful. For example, power has been back up for 14 hours but we can’t get any information on when xfinity will be back up.  The app just sends me to an automated chatbot, who just says there is an outage in the area, and that’s it. No updates, no estimated repair time. Then, you send me this dumb survey on my “most recent experience,” as if you resolved anything.”
  • I don’t recall when exactly service was restored but I believe it was the 6th. A pretty far cry from the text message promising things would be fixed by 6:55 pm on the 3rd.
• July 27th Outage
  • Power went out (around noon) and Xfinity sent automated text messages saying the problem would be fixed by 4:05 pm. It wasn’t.
  • On the 28th another text message saying “as soon as possible.”
  • I don’t recall when it was restored – if it ever was.
• July 30th Outage
  • Service out again, text message saying “as soon as possible.”
  • Another message later that same day saying it was fixed, but it was not fixed at that time.
• Sunday, August 9th Outage
  • Thunderstorm and lightning strikes caused a tree to take out power lines as well as the Xfinity cable line. 100 to 200 meters of Xfinity cable line are laying on the ground.
  • An automated text message promised restoration of services at 6:40 pm. That didn’t happen.
  • Xfinity does not appear to have any way to report downed lines.
  • The next day, Monday August 10th, power was back on but no Xfinity service. Unsurprising since ComEd had repaired the downed power lines but the cable line was still laying on the ground.
  • Incredibly, I got an automated text message stating “we were able to restore your Xfinity service at approximately 11:54 a.m. central.” Another false statement, service had not been restored.
  • I tried to report the downed line through Xfinity's purported "AI" automated system. It told me to restart the modem (as if this would somehow magically reattach a downed line to the telephone poles).
  • I called Xfinity and explained that the line was down and that they would need to get out to repair it. The CS rep told me the earliest they could get out to fix it would be the 18th(9 days after the outage begun). They set an appointment for that date. I was suspicious of this and clarified multiple times that an "ordinary" technician would not be able to do anything, the entire cable line is down and needs to be reattached to the poles, and repaired.
  • Having doubts about this "appointment," and strongly suspecting that all the CS Rep did is schedule an "ordinary" tech visit, I also initated a text chat with an Xfinity agent (that is I called, and took the "text chat with a real agent" option). In this chat, I explained that I think it’s ridiculous to wait 9 days for someone to come out, and I also expressed my suspicion that they would just send a general tech out who isn’t capable of re-hanging cable lines on telephone poles.
  • This person told me (in writing) they could put me on a “wait list” for a “roll truck” to possibly show up on the 12th, and assured me (in writing) the person who showed up would have the correct equipment to deal with a downed line.
  • At 9:09 am on Tuesday, August 11th, I got a text message saying “we have recently resolved an issue that was impacting your service” and inviting me to cancel my appointment. Obviously, our cable line was still laying on the ground.
  • Shortly after this, on Tuesday August 11th, another storm rolled through and dropped another tree on the cable line (which was already on the ground, but now there’s a big tree on it).
  • I called Xfinity the evening of August 11th, , explained once again that the cable is still laying on the ground, that there is now a tree on it , and that nothing will be fixed until they get a truck out to restore that cable to the telephone poles. During this call, the CS rep confirmed they would have a truck capable of addressing the issue out between 1 pm and 5 pm the next day (the 12th).
  • On the morning of August 12th I got a text message saying “thank you for confirming your services are up and running!” My services are obviously not up and running, and I did not provide any such confirmation. The cable is still laying on the ground. This same text message told me that my appointment was canceled because of the purported “confirmation” which I never provided.
  • A technician did show up around 1:30 pm. Predictably, this technician was an “inside technician” and had absolutely no ability or equipment to fix a downed line. This is precisely what I was trying to avoid, communicating to Xfinity that this was not an "ordinary technician" issue.
  • I also got a text message this same day asking me to call a different Comcast number. I called that number and they said they were “confirming” that everything was up and running. The CS rep told me 4 times that I had “canceled” my appointment, even though I told her repeatedly I did no such thing. I asked to speak to her manager, and he acknowledged that the notes on the account clearly stated a bucket truck would be required for the repair. He could not explain why an “inside” technician was sent, but confirmed this was always set up as an "inside technician" appointment. He could not provide any information about how and when the actual repair would happen. He told me that his “department” only handles inside technicians and he did not understand why the ticket was set up as an inside technician job, but he also said he had no ability to get in touch with the correct department. He suggested I call the main Comcast number again. I told him I’m done making calls, this has already taken hours of my time and I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to pass along the message of “hey, your cable line is on the ground.”
  • The technician that actually showed up to the house told my wife that she should call Xfinity once power is restored, and restart the whole process at that point. 

I would like to say I am surprised by any of this, but I am not. This is pretty much on target for Comcast / Xfinity. False promises, outright false statements about service being “restored,” and a general sense that the entire customer service team’s job is to just run people around in circles - or utterly incompetent.

It seems that the “real” answer here is that Xfinity has decided it won’t even try to schedule a line repair until after all power has been restored and all other issues have been addressed. If that’s the case, then it should just have said “Hey, we aren’t even going to try for at least two weeks” when I first called, instead of wasting my time.

Further, we have heard from several other neighbors that they have been without service for weeks.

I appreciate that our particular line is on a relatively short “spur,” meaning that even if the entire block is down, that represents maybe 5-6 customers. I appreciate that Xfinity needs to prioritize larger groups of customers for repairs first. All I wanted to do is make sure that Xfinity knew that our line was down, so that they did not waste precious time sending the wrong people, and so that they could schedule appropriately. Apparently nobody I have talked to is able to actually pass on that information to the correct team. I have no doubt that this is happening throughout town, based on reports we have received from other neighbors. It’s also fairly clear that Xfinity is not making any effort to coordinate with ComEd. If a ComEd crew is out replacing power lines that have been taken down by trees, an Xfinity crew should be right behind them. Instead, it appears that Xfinity’s strategy is to simply tell customers service has been “restored” and then wait for customers to report that they are still out of service. This is utterly disrespectful towards customers.