Mom’s new phone system is VOIP via Comcast / Xfinity. But from the time it was hooked up, despite the fact that she doesn’t have Comcast Voice Messaging on her account (answering machine!), her phone line had the stutter dial-tone that modern phones use to detect if there’s a telco voice message. Which her phones dutifully reported.
I called Comcast on her behalf today (because nobody wants to have their parent call Comcast), and got a Tier 1 tech who … hung up midway. And then when I called back, the help automated system bumped the call in an attempt to solve the problem (unsuccessfully) with a remote reset.
The third person I contacted grasped what I was telling her pretty quickly, but she let me know that she was a Tier 1 person, and she had to bump this up to Tier 2. So a Tier 2 person would be happy to call me sometime … tomorrow … between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.
“Um … I’m visiting my mom’s place. I won’t be here for twelve hours tomorrow, waiting for a tech to call. This is my mom’s residence, not mine.”
“Your mom will be there, though, won’t she?”
“Yes, but I’m not going to have her on the phone with a Tier 2 tech. That’s why I’m making this call.”
We settled for the Tier 2 tech calling back between 1-3pm tomorrow.
A few minutes after the call, I got a call back from Comcast with an automated survey. And I did not pull any punches as to my dissatisfaction that, while the person had understood my problem, she couldn’t immediately escalate the call to a better tech, and had an unrealistic understanding of people being available to take the call from that higher level tech. Which I explained in more detail in the “tell us why you gave a score of X” prompt.
Ten minutes later I got a follow-up call from a Tier 2 tech. Who started working on my problem.
And while I was on the VOIP line on hold with that tech, I got a call on my mobile (which is the second number on Mom’s account) from another Tier 2 (or maybe Tier 3) tech, calling to solve my problem.
And as I explained to that tech the situation, I had the other tech come back on the line and talk in my other ear.
It was kind of zany.
But the problem got solved.
So kudos to Comcast for going to DEFCON 1 because of a poor quality survey (though it would have been much better to fix the problem in the first call) — and a reminder that saying okay to those follow-up surveys can sometimes be useful.
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