Why does Comcast/Xfinity hate its customers? What other reason could there be for the awful customer service? Comcast edited this!

A LOOONG time ago I had Comcast and then switched away from them when their service agreements for the Internet explicitly forbid VPN connections (which I have been using for well over 20 years by now) unless you were willing to pay 6x as much for Comcast BUSINESS Internet.   Now, obviously that restriction no longer exists and the provider I had been using (Wide Open West) is ending their cable TV and forcing everyone to use streaming so I switched back.

That being said, the switch back has been a NIGHTMARE.

The day before my installation (Feb 13), even after confirming my appointment (by both text and phone), I received a dozen calls and texts continually bugging me to confirm my appointment.  Comcast customer support, after over 2 hours on the phone, were completely useless (and I started my connection with them via one of those extra calls they kept making to me.)  Comcast support even suggested I just block their number to stop the calls and texts.

So on the day of install, my appointment was for between 1p and 3p.  Come 3p, I get an automated call saying the tech will be late and if I want to reschedule, to hit a number.  There was no indication of how late the tech would be, and attempting to call, text and message Comcast for info was completely useless.  I had a soccer game to go to in a few hours so I needed to know how late before I could decide to reschedule.  Oh, and rescheduling would require me to take ANOTHER day off of work.

Eventually, tech did arrive nearly 2 hours later and was just able to complete the task before I had to head out the door (nearly 2 hours to install everything and show me some needed info.)  Then the automated system contacted me about burying the wire in the backyard, but, of course it had the wrong info so I spent an additional several hours on the phone today trying to make sure that when they do bury the line (at least a month away) that they don't damage the gas and sprinkler lines running in my backyard.

To add insult to injury, the customer support escalation team sent me a message asking me for info I don't yet have because I am a new customer.

Things that MUST change.

1.) Eliminate the garbage support.  Start with all foreign support.  Then a massive purge of the US based support must be done.  So far very few people in support have been useful in any manner.  The techs need to be evaluated for their skill.  Good techs actually solve problems and would reduce the need for the large staff of unqualified techs currently rampant in the support role at Xfinity.  All those bad phone techs are doing is making people mad and giving Comcast the bad support reputation it has had for decades.

2.) Eliminate the phone maze.  It is so bad that it takes people who are just trying to get a problem resolved and makes them VERY MAD by the time they reach an actual human.  Further, that phone maze is not even able to answer many questions and has no way to get to a human once you go down those paths.

3.) keep your promises and when you can't, do not wait until the promise is broken to try and let the customer know.  In the case of my late tech, their management knew from the morning that far too many techs had called off (probably due to it being Valentine's day) and that appointments were going to be running late.  MANAGEMENT should have been calling customers and providing a heads up many hours earlier.  And when you promise a call back... you need to CALL BACK.

4.) back to the phones... provide all the people on the phones with the right phone numbers.  I was sent to 2 Comcast numbers that had no relation to the problems needing to be addressed.

5.) eliminate the automated agents used on the web site.  They are complete garbage too that cannot handle any situations not covered in their decision trees.

That being said, the Comcast Internet is better (at least for gaming) than WOW, even if WOW could at least deliver me the 1.2Gb promised and Comcast has failed to breach the 1Gb mark in any tests. 

Still, knowing how BAD the phone support is, I DREAD ever having to call in as it is ALWAYS going to be many useless minutes.  That system turns someone from a calm but disgruntled customer into someone wishing there was a way to send a brain melting sound into the heads of any Comcast employee on the other end of the line by the time you actually reach a human.  Not that the text and other messaging options also seem to be answered by some of the most ignorant folks every gathered to provide support and who also inspire a similar amount of pain to be inflicted upon whichever bot or human is generating the nonsense spewed out via those mechanisms.

Since my first post of this, Comcast has edited this post and hidden it for hours.  They have also behaved even worse in the other areas where they require communication.  They continue to send USELESS links as well as insisting that I use their phone system (which is extremely bad) or their online chats in which new people jump on every 10 minutes or so and force you to start all over from the beginning because they are just trying to make folks mad enough to drop off instead of actually solving the problems.  Even worse is how Comcast has deliberately hidden or deleted messages because they consider any statements against their worthless support to be "inflammatory" regardless of the fact that the wording is still civil and true.  By now I have spent over 20 hours dealing with a very sorry level of support via all the various methods allowed... (phone, direct chats, email, X, Facebook, SMS...)

A further update, (Feb 17) I have been contacted via several means... an escalation person called me on the phone but had not bothered to know anything about what I reported before calling me (despite first pretending to have done so, but then when asked to summarize what had been documented, had to admit he hadn't done any reading into the situation.)  I asked him to review the info and then call me again... crickets since that time.  And the X and direct message folks always want to authenticate with that 15 minute timer but never reply in time to be able to use that 15 minute 2FA timer.  Even sadder is how they need multiple authentications from me despite already having that information.  They claim it is a Federal regulation but then refuse to say which one.  And, because of how Comcast has messed with this post, all the links they send, whether via the bell in the top, or via email, now go to a 404 page not found result.  Gotta love their lack of tech savvy.