A guest post - Worst Company in America

A guest post from an anonymous source:

Comcast is the worst company in America. It’s not entirely their fault, of course. In most markets where they operate, they do so as a monopoly. If you want cable TV, you pay them. There is no alternative other than a satellite dish, and in my experience, wherever there is a monopoly there is corruption, incompetence, and arrogance.

Some people think that Comcast is only the second worst company in America. The Consumerist website, after a period of public voting, had Comcast in the finals for “Worst Company In America” for each of the past two years. In 2008, Comcast “lost” that title to Countrywide Home Loans, http://consumerist.com/5027169/worst-company-in-america-final-death-match-comcast-vs-countrywide-home-loans and this year finished again as runner-up to AIG.

You know things are tough when the only companies worse than you are a couple of the poster children for the recent economic meltdown.

On the website, you can find people suggesting that the runner-up trophy for worst company in America be permanently named “The Comcast Award.”

Naturally, I would not be writing about this if I were not a Comcast “customer.”

Here is my (most recent) tale of woe. I am a double Comcast prisoner. We have Comcast cable at the office, and I have it at home. We have it at the office because our Internet access is absolutely mission-critical to everything we do. We cannot afford to be down for even a few hours. Therefore, we pay each month for the local phone company’s high-speed DSL service and for the Comcast cable. In other words we pay double each month simply to insure that if one goes down, we can switch to the other, and hope that the odds are long that both could be down at the same time. So far, so good.

A salesman from Comcast comes to our office and says that because we have this business account, we can also have the Comcast business service (faster, better) at home, too, if we would like. We’ll pay more, of course, but it is available.
Since I have frequent problems with my home service (a Comcast trademark) I say yes to this proposition. A guy comes out to my house and installs the new service.
Beginning a couple of months later, I begin to get calls and letters from the Comcast billing department, threatening to cut off service if I don’t pay up. This I find mysterious since one of my staff pay all my bills, and I know they are paid on time.

There ensued hours of phone calls, the pain (and pain-in-the-ass) of which I cannot begin to describe to you, which lead eventually to the discovery of a “mistake” by Comcast. While they had installed the business service (fast) in my home, and had begun billing me for it, they had neglected to cancel the domestic service (slow) account, and thus had been double billing me for months. Straightening this out was a freaking nightmare. I only kept my sanity by delegating most of it to my employee Dave Meehan who has the patience of a saint.

Now comes the piece de resistance.

I am now getting threatening letters from a collection agency because, they say, I didn’t return to Comcast the router (for the old, slow service) that they took away when they upgraded me to the new service.

So, on top of being double-billed for months, I am now being dunned for a piece of equipment that a Comcast technician removed from my house.

Wonder if these idiots will now besmirch my personal, or business, credit rating?