A Rant: Digital TV and Comcast

So... I get a bill from Comcast in the mail and see that it's $20 higher than what I had expected. About a week and a half ago I received a notice from Comcast telling me that they would be lowering my bill by $20 as I was such a great customer and they wanted to keep my business. (I also received some "free" on demand movies but I would need to pay for them and then send in for a rebate--lame!). I thought it was pretty interesting that Comcast had decided to lower my bill by $20 as two days earlier I had received a notice from Verizon that Fios was coming to my area. Now I've been waiting for Fios for some time and would love to try it out.

I saw the expensive bill, figured I call to find out what happened and, here's what happened: A level 1 customer support person informed me that the promotion I had been on had expired. I was now being charged the regular price for my Comcast services. I asked if there were any other promotions that I could take advantage of and was transferred to a supervisor.

When I was connected up the phone chain, I was told that my promotion had ended and that Comcast would work with me as they understood that Verizon was pushing hard to take their customers in my area. Before we went any further, the customer support supervisor, Michael, wanted to know how many digital boxes I had in the house and he asked me if I knew about the 2/19/09 digital transition deadline. I became really agitated and asked him if he was going to tell me that I needed a digital tuner after Comcast had previously informed me that I didn't. Michael explained that several weeks ago Comcast learned that they would need to provide digital adapters (I believe this is what they called them) to their customers who did not use boxes.

It is here that I really became angry because I like to think of myself as being on top of technology and had really been following the digital transition. I know that Congress is working with the President to delay the transition to June 2009 as there are approximately 6.5 million people who are not ready for the switch--15 days from this post. Michael tried his best to calm me down saying that I would not need to buy converter boxes and that Comcast would either install them for me or I could go and pick them up, but I was really angry and frustrated. I explained to Michael that if I hadn't called him today to find out about my bill that I would have had no idea that I needed these digital adapters and I've been a paying Comcast customer for over a decade. I spend over $153 a month on my bill and Comcast didn't even send me a notice in the mail--but they did send me a notice to "give" me $20 off (without letting me know that my promotion was up so I wound up paying $20 extra a month!).

I asked why, as a paying customer, I hadn't received written notice and he informed me that they had just found out several weeks ago. I asked why an e-mail blast wasn't sent out and was told that they hadn't had time. Now I really became insulted by this because I've worked in information technology and at most normal businesses you can run a query and produce a list so that you can send out an e-mail blast. I was informed that it wasn't that simple, but I reminded him that if they've known for weeks that they could have sent out several e-mails blast over time to get to their customer base (which I was told that this would affect around 900,000 people). Now before I go any further I want to be clear: I'm not angry at Michael. He was a good guy. When he was helping me with my bill problem, he was polite and when he made a change on my service and my modem rebooted and we were disconnected, he did call me right back. What I am angry at is Comcast's inability to effectively communicate with their customers. I follower Comcastcares on Twitter, I read up as much as I can (on Cnet and Wired.com) about the digital transition, but to not have this latest bit of information was frustrating.

From what I know as of today, there will be a grace period after the 2/19/09 deadline. If the transition goes through on time, I'll have to figure out how/where to get the digital adapters. I just wish I would have been told this months ago and not by chance as I called Comcast today. I was informed that newspaper ads and commercials were taken out to communicate the message to Comcast's subscribers, but not everyone reads newspapers and watches commercials. I surely don't. I read the news on the web and skip through commercials. But I don't pay $153+ to Comcast a month and believe I deserve to receive a notice in writing to let me know what I need to do and when. I think that's only fair.

Comments

[Kim the Comic Book Goddess]

The law-mandated digital conversion is for over-the-air broadcasts only. If Comcast discontinues analog service it is their choice to stop providing that service - and a stupid one.
I think it's more likely that the supervisor was either confused about the transition or attempting to make an up-sell based on false information.

[Ron Vitale]

I was told that Comcast was informed "several weeks ago" that they had to move channels out of a certain bandwidth and that all channels would now be over 100. TVs that were connected to a Comcast cable without a digital box would need a digital adapter.

However, hot off the press: Congress has pushed the transition back to June 12th. We'll have to see what happens now.