Error with Advanced Call Forwarding

Customer service now wants to schedule a visit for someone to inspect the cable to make sure it is not damaged.

To be clear:

* The call to customer service is actively taking place over the cable in question.  Outbound calls work fine.

* The attempt to access Advanced Call Forwarding in the Chrome web browser is using the cable in question.  Internet is working fine.

What is *NOT* working is the website feature for Advanced Call Forwarding which is generating a 404 error returned by a Comcast web server.  Also what is *NOT* working is in-bound phone calls after Comcast escalated customer support selected to change the Advanced Call Fowarding without fixing the actual issue to allow the customer to modify it themselves.  I don't know what they set it to because the problem Xfinity was originally contacted about still is taking place!  How is an inspection of the cable at a later date going to fix that?!

Destroying in-bound phone service such that wellness checks in the middle of a panademic are hampered is *NOT* either "fixed" or "resolved" based on any reasonable defintion of those words.

We are on the fourth Comcast support person:

(1) General Comcast support ->

(2) Escalations (who said he was transfering us to Tier 2 Voice Department) ->

(3) Tier 1 Cable support ->

(4) Tier 1 Voice Department

The DOCSIS 3 modem gives 24 down channels locked with 0 correctable and 0 uncorrectable errors for all 24 channels.  It also gives 5 up channels locked.  The down channels have power levels between 4.7 dBmV and 7.8 dBmV.  In addition it has SNR between 39.1 dB and 40.9 dB.

Comcast support has not been able to explain what about those numbers indicate a problem with the coax but still scheduled an appointment 2 days from now to inspect the cable.

TV services works

Internet service works

Outgoing phone calls works

Just in-bound phone calls have stopped.  They stopped working when a Comcast support person left a voice mail indicating he applied an Advanced Call Forwarding.  He didn't indicate any identifying information (his name, employee #, direct call back #) and he didn't indicate what phone number he set Advanced Call Forwarding to.

Since the Xfinity Voice website is broken and only gives an error, we can't confirm what the Advanced Call Forwarding has been set to.  We can remove it.  We never supplied to Comcast support what phone number we wanted Advanced Call Forwarding set to.  And we can't get back to the person that set it.   They also didn't seem to have left any notes on any tickets that any customer service department seem able to access.

After waiting 2 hours talking to support trying to get this corrected, we have gotten "my colleague tells me you are having trouble with not getting any dial tone."  WHAT?!?!  We stated multiple times that outbound phone calls work.  How did that become the problem description?!  Seriously?!

I have tried posting in the phone features forum but haven't gotten any response back.

We called about an error on Comcast's website yesterday were Xfinity Voice Settings for Advanced Call Forwarding.  It was indicated we would get a call back to correct it.  Instead we got a call which went direct to voice mail form someone that gave no name, no employee # and no direct call back number.  He indicated that he set Advanced Call Forwarding for us but didn't indicate what phone number he has it forwarding to.  Since then all in-bound calls go direct to voice mail.

Over the last 2.5 hour call, we have been punted around to *SIX* different support people in six different departments.  The 5th person was a Xfinity Voice Tieir 2 support person who transfer us to Xfinity X1 Teir 1 support that.  None of the six support people have been able to remove the Advanced Call Forwarding so that in-bound calls are working again.

Also, since the Xfinity Voice Settings for Advanced Call Forwarding still produces the same exact error message, we can't check what it is set to or how to remove it.

Waited 5 hours with Comcast customer support to try to get a resolution.  Last half hour was on hold only to then be hung up on.

Four hours on with Comcast customer service and punted across some 7 or 8 different people now and still no resolution!

Something is very wrong when even Winelight from a Grammy Award winning album starts feeling like finger nails scratching across a blackboard.  Is it not possible to for Comcast Xfinity music on hold to provide more than just one single song on a loop?

There was a promise of an advanced tech support person calling back over half a hour ago that never happened.

Contacted a 10th customer service person who said they would do troubleshooting, hung up the call and now both in-bound and out-bound calls don't work.

Any in-bound calls now no longer go straight to voicemail but instead produce a message of "This is not a working number."

Thanks Comcast!  You know how to make a customer feel like Comcast "cares."  Such an  unbelieveable worthless service backed by one person after another punting their incompetence over with no accountability among any of them.

It sounds like your problem is exactly the same as  mine. Advanced Call Forwarding is needed to set up NoMoRobo... I have spent a couple of hours with the call center to no avail.  I can't seem to make them understand that the feature throws an error and is greyed out. The frustration of a bunch of robocalls is less than the frustration of waiting for them to recognize something is obviously wrong on there end.

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@bhepburn wrote:

It sounds like your problem is exactly the same as  mine. Advanced Call Forwarding is needed to set up NoMoRobo... I have spent a couple of hours with the call center to no avail.  I can't seem to make them understand that the feature throws an error and is greyed out. The frustration of a bunch of robocalls is less than the frustration of waiting for them to recognize something is obviously wrong on there end.

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Well, I don't know how to directly address the call center so they understand but I am no longer frustrated.

I have been reading up on Frank Eliason, the creator of Comcast Cares.  "Comcast Frank" was directly responsable for Comcast Cares from 2008 to 2010.  He left in 2010 but several of the things he did remained in place for while.  In 2012 he wrote a book that Comcast or any other business could follow to keep the positive results of Comcast Cares going, it is titled:

"At Your Service: How to Attract New Customers, Increase Sales, and Grow Your Business Using Simple Customer Service Technique"

Despite having that book as a guide to continue going, what Comcast has done is to celebrate years of Care with "Comcast Cares Day" without actually continuing to follow what Comcast Frank had established.

So, here is what you need to under: it is nothing personal, you are a pawn in a game

My finding across 12 customer service agents is:

* They must "resolve" the call within 20 minutes

* Comcast seems to consider it resolve if the problem no longer belong to that customer service department

* There is no incentive to discover what the actual problem is, the "resolution" to get the customer out of their department was pre-determined before your call even started

* Claiming problems that do not exist but require scheduling a Comcast van later in the week is the ultimate "resolution" for the department because it should reduce call-back for a number of days showing they "resolved" it quickly

* Claiming the problem is related to a neighboring zip code having a service outage notice also seem to be a common method to get the call "resolved" even if the customer calling is not experiencing any service outage and is not in the actual notice area

It is important to note three things when being transfered to another customer service agent:

* What department does the next customer service agent state they are in?

* What does the customer service agent claim the previous agent put as being the problem?

* They will always announce they understand the problem you are having and they will get it "resolved" for you (only to later transfer the call in under 20 minutes)

What you will find is the next department frequently isn't related to what you described the problem being and that the next customer service agent "restates" the problem as being something completely different.  The reason for that and the reason we feel we are back to square one each time is because we are.  All the previous effort to explain the issue has already been "resolved" as something completely different.

So how does a call about "Advanced Call Forwarding" turn into "Customer is not getting dial tone to make calls" even when the customer service agent was told the current active call with them is via the Xfinity Voice service?  Well, imagine the alternative:

* The agent does the required Comcast initial troubleshooting steps for Voice

* The agent then listens to the problem the customer is having

* They check the knowledge base on "call forwarding" and come up with *72/*73

* They are told "call fowarding" is not the same as "advanced call forwarding" (100% of agents I talk to didn't understand the difference)

* They are now up to the 15 minute mark and have 5 minutes to resolve the call

* Do they continue to research "advanced call forwarding" to try to work on that issue?

* Do they risk having to escalate the issue and have a mark on their statistics that they didn't resolve it?

The agents aren't just being dishonest with us, they are being dishonest with the company itself.  But they are getting management the graphs they want to see of calls being "resolved" quickly.

My state is an one-party consent state.  As long as I am an active participent in a phone call, I can legally record the phone call.  I will be posting online some call recordings later showing a systematic disregard across all customer service agents to work on any issue related to Advanced Call Forwarding.  I am also contacting a tech industry journalist that works for Ars Technica.  As far as I can tell, that is really all we can do.  We are pawns in a game and this is just how Comcast setup the game to be played.

Similar problem here too. I manage both my grandparents account as well as our own. Mine is allowing me access just fine, my grandfathers look good too however my grandmothers is giving me the error message "Sorry! An error occurred while processing your request. Please log out of the application and try again."

The only thing that has changed is we changed her home phone number (she's fallen victim to several phone scams and this was the easiest fix) but it's imperative that we enable Nomorerobo on her line or else who knows who will get through to her.

Seems like an account specific, settings on their end, for sure!! Frustrating at best.

Thank you bhepburn and danieleo1 for your responses!

We had an on-site visit because multiple Comcast Xfinity customer service agents demanded it was the only way to get Advanced Call Forwarding.  When he arrived, he asked what problem we were having so we told him and his immediate response is that we would have to call back customer service for Advanced Call Forwarding!

He came (as we expected) only to take a signal reading and make repairs if the signal reading was low, which it wasn't.  I could already take DOCSIS power and SNR reading back on Wednesday and Thursday, that was never the issue.  To send a person out to home to take signal reading that customer service should have been capable of doing remote is at best frustrating.  But to do it in the middle of a pandemic raises moral and ethical issues with the behavior of Comcast and their Xfinity service.  Again, it was MULTIPLE customer service agents that told us an on-site repair was the ONLY way to proceed.

I have identified multiple area that Comcast has failed us to make this issue as hard as it is.

(1) Not pro-actively monitoring errors:
The per account problem with the ott/xcportal URL has clearly been going on for over a week.  Comcast Xfinity claims during COVID-19 their technology and engineering teams are working tirelessly to ensure performance and reliability.  Clearly in the case of less often used features such as "Advanced Call Forwarding" that simply is not true.

(2) Poor naming of features:
Why is it even called "Advanced Call Forwarding?"  If you upgrade from Comcast Xfinity Voice to a SIP provider and use Asterisk PBX, the software refers to the same exact functionality as "Follow Me Roaming."  Oddly, no Asterisk users or support ever confuse Call Forwarding and Follow Me Romaing with each other.  No customer service agents could explain the difference between CF and ACF.  Instead they asked why we couldn't just use CF as a replacement for trying to use ACF.  The reason is because they are VERY different things.  Call Forwarding remove the call from ringing at the original location and FULLY forwards the call entirely to a different number.  "Follow Me Roaming" (or as Comcast Xfinity likes to misname as ACF), causes multiple locations to all ring in parallel.

(3) Poor documentation:

The poor naming could have been recovered if the knowledgebase articles gave much more clear examples of how the features of CF and ACF are distinctly different.  Comcast Xfinity customer service agents were reading from (sometimes out loud) from the same exact KB articles we had already read ourselves.  When 100% of customer service agents are still confused after reading the documentation that standard customers are supposed to be able to understand then the documentation team has failed to do their job.

(4) Giving customers service agent the incentives to punt the call around:

I already talked about this previously but this is clearly one of the largest contributors to the problem.

(5) Advanced Tech Support can choose to never talk to customers and confirm fixes:

On Wednesday we were told Advanced Tech Support would call us.  Instead a nameless person with no employee ID # stated claimed in voicemail they had "fixed" the problem (they hadn't, they made it worse to the point we could no longer recieve any calls).  The voicemail ended with them saying to call back the tier 1 customer service phone number.  Doing that just results in "square one" again.  Multiple agents explains it is Comcast Xfinity *POLICY* that calls can never be forwarded directly to Advanced Tech Support, instead that department can only be "reached" by them calling back.  Since a promise on Thursday we would recieve another call back form them, there has been no actual call back.  When Advanced Tech Support can replace the definition of "fixed" from being a customer confirmed resolution to just being a self-servicing claim completely independent of ever talking to the customer, there is very little incentive for them to do their job correctly.

(6) Setting poor or low definitions for "working service":

After the on-site visit, we got a call back from Comcast to provide feedback.  One of the questions was if our Xfinity Voice was now working.  The answer I gave was *NO*, the original issue we called about on Wednesday of not being able to essablish Xfinity Voice Advanced Call Fowarding is still taking place.  So the person surveying us clarified "are you able to make and recieve phone calls again?"  To that the answer is yes, but if that is the only part of the service we should ever expect to get assistance in getting working then there are cheaper and more reliable solutions for that.  At this point the good old analog POTS off an AT&T 5ESS switch seems to have been much better at delivering the functionality that Comcast Xfinity considers to be "working" Xfinity Voice.

Comcast management really should be addressing all of these points but even addressing just one of them might greatly improve customer experience.  As to if they are actually listening or can be reached, that remains to be seen.  The Consumerist used to provide dated phone numbers to reach the executive offices directly but that information no longer seems to work.  At no point has any employee of Comcast indicated that our experience with Xfinity has been poor enough yet to warrant a call back from the head office (too busy dealing with even more massive dropping of the ball that we don't qualify?).

Well, I can confirm today the problems still exists.  The same exact error message come us for setting Advanced Call Forwarding in both Google Chrome web browser and Mozilla Firefox web browser.

We were told that someone from advanced tech support would call us back on Thursday.  That still has not happen.

We were told that after an on-site tech confirmed there is no damage to the coax, they would be able to fix the issue.  The on-site tech confirmed what we already knew but again fixing the issue still has not happen.

What Comcast has done instead is started doing survey harassment.

On Saturday night after confirming the physical coax wasn't the issue, we got a survey call asking if we would recommend Comcast Xfinity service to others.  They still hadn't fixed the issue, what exactly was our response supposed to be?!

On Sunday, we got a survey call asking if we would recommend Comcast Xfinity service to others.  There still had been no call from advanced tech support and the problem was still not fixed.  So, again, what should our response be expected to be??

On Monday (today), because our answer on Saturday and Sunday wasn't good enough, we got a survey call asking if we would recommend Comcast Xfinity service to others.  Seriously?!  Advanced tech support can't be bothered to call us back since Thursday and we need to keep answering the same survey three times over?!  How about fixing the issue and then performing the survey??

Me too! I had been trying to setup NoMoRobo but couldn't access Advanced Call Forwarding. I've had several calls with their Support until someone finally said that they set it up for me from their system. I have no way to verify that because, again, I still cannot access Advanced Call Forwarding. 

@ComcastJK (not sure who you are but since you're listed as Admin I'm copying you). Please help us out.

I had this issue and while banging my head against a desk trying to repeat 7 times the issue to the xfinity tech on the phone, i tried going into the Xfinity Connect app on an iPhone.  I was able to access advanced call forwarding and add some phone numbers, no problem.  Once changes are saved, I could then also access in a web browser without the error.

Hope this helps someone else.

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@hockey555 wrote:

I had this issue and while banging my head against a desk trying to repeat 7 times the issue to the xfinity tech on the phone, i tried going into the Xfinity Connect app on an iPhone.  I was able to access advanced call forwarding and add some phone numbers, no problem.  Once changes are saved, I could then also access in a web browser without the error.

 

Hope this helps someone else.

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You are correct that this seems to work as a work-around for someone customers running into the error on the website.

To make this extra "fun" as a work-around for novices to try, Xfinity seems to have a half dozen different apps for smart phones of which only one is the correct Xfinity Connect app.

Here is a link to the Android app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.comcast.ottclient 

Here is a link to the iOS/iPhone app:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/xfinity-connect/id320788270

I have been waiting for a member of Comcast advanced technical support to call back since Thursday.  It has been nearly a week of waiting.  The fact a forum member came up with a work-around does not change my rating of 0 out of 10 that I would recommend Xfinity Voice to others.  I just can't in good consciousness to others recommend a service as critical to others as phone service that seemlessly has no reasonable customer support backing it.

Seriously!  Six days of waiting for a call back from Xfinity advanced technical support and Comcast wants three surveys to reflect postively on them in the meantime?!

Comcast, if you are listening, the book you should be following is here:

https://www.amazon.com/At-Your-Service-Customers-Techniques-ebook/dp/B007OWRBJ0/

It is $15 and 241 pages.  Even Brian L. Roberts should be able to afford buying a copying and finding the time to read it.

Just in case he can't afford to spend $15, here is the first 27 pages for free:

https://books.google.com/books?id=g6rbXtGku8cC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Once Comcast takes customer service seriously, then lets talk about getting Xfinity customer service some positive survey results.  What happened during this last week is just so unbelievably negative.