Getting on the phone with Comcast customer service can be worse than navigating Dante’s nine circles of hell. Not only did these Spokane, Wash., customers have to endure poor service, they got a bill in the mail, addressed to “Asshole Brown.”
The backstory, courtesy of consumer watchdog site Elliott.org, written by Chris Elliott: “Lisa Brown, a volunteer for a missions organization in Spokane, Wash., contacted me yesterday because of a billing problem with Comcast, her local cable provider. The issue? The name on their bill had been changed from her husband’s name, Ricardo, to ‘Asshole’ Brown.”
Brown was trying to cancel their cable service due to financial difficulties, but was told she’d have to pay a $60 fee, then was passed to a retention specialist who tried to get her to re-up with another two-year contract.
Brown told Elliott that she was “shocked” to receive the bill. “I was never rude,” she said. “It could have been that person was upset because I didn’t take the offer.”
Apparently, Brown tried to fix the mess herself to no avail. That’s when Elliott stepped in, and received a call from Comcast’s VP of communications for the Washington region Steve Kipp, who said: “We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change. We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened. We are working with our customer to make this right and will take appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again.”
To Comcast’s credit, they did eventually refund Brown two years of service and are giving her another two years free, according to Elliott. And they issued this statement on their website:
“It’s a privilege to have customers use our products and to have them invite us into their homes. Each and every customer deserves to be treated with respect, and in a recent situation with a customer in Spokane that clearly didn’t happen. We have apologized to our customer for this unacceptable situation and addressed it directly with the employee who will no longer be working on behalf of Comcast….
“We’re working hard to transform the customer experience and all of our employees play an important role in making that happen. We’ll take every opportunity to learn from our mistakes and fix issues to make their experience better.”
Glad there’s a happy ending to this story for Brown. And now, if you’ve never seen this before, here is Dante’s nine circles of hell, re-created with Legos.
