Comcast service rep: a deeply fearful employee trying to hold onto his paycheck

I’m working three jobs to try and ensure my children don’t end up the service economy.

Had to go through this hell, and circumvent it to some extent by lying (note from Miss Manners: It is ok to lie to Comcast)

We are fortunate to have a real ISP in San Francisco, Monkey Brains, which I highly recommend to anyone living in SF.

As for Comcast, enjoy a bag of Network Neutral dicks.

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so basically comcast management has incentivized these account reps to become argumentative jerks… if middle management is this messed up, it makes one wonder if upper management there is any better.

let’s hope comcast chooses to take a more enlightened and humane approach to treating it’s workers going forwards…

Thank you for reminding me that I need to take a five day vacation to Colorado and watch this movie a half dozen times :wink:

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sounds like you are proposing a bb meetup.

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In the eventuality of Net Neutrality becoming a reality, I think we need to think about trunking the free exchange of Ideas that the Internet currently facilitates from the Commerce that provides the $ to build out infrastructure but which is now collecting on its “loans.”

Free ideas should be spread by mesh networks.

Yes ELIZA. Exactly.

This!

Because fuck the ISPs!

I would so be an early adopter if this ever got anywhere near getting off the ground.

Come on, BBSers, why are you disappointing me? I came here for the victim-blaming and found none. I’m so angry at the lack of victim-blaming that I am compelled to start my own:

Why is this stupid POS employee working for such a crap company? He obviously should quit and go to work at some independent startup or an organic honey collective. If he didn’t want the pressure or to be berated by his supervisors and customers, he should quit and work elsewhere, this is all his fault. Also, did you see what he was wearing? He was asking for it.

Yeah, that’s nice, and it’s triggery.

I think the best advice in this thread has been to simply ask for a supervisor and to let the poor schlub get on with his day. Some people don’t want to quit, they just want free HBO for six months, and I’m sure he can grant that.

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Upper management are all operating like OT VIII Operating Thetans so they are clear. It’s the suckers underneath them that suck.

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It isn’t no pay.

It’s no BONUS.

They get their based pay. However, if they don’t hit certain target numbers, they get no bonus.

That bonus is significant enough (and the base pay low enough) that there is plenty of incentive to work for that target number, though.

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+1 on Monkeybrains. They don’t have TV service but come on, it’s the 21st century. The only thing I want live TV for is baseball, and for that I go to a bar. More fun that way anyhow.

Cumcast … Yes that is right!!! that is CUM Cast. This is absolutely and definitely perfect example of how monopoly works. Here is example. I ma customer for long time. Why because I have no other option. Prices on bill are going up every few months by little with out notifying me,. When I call from my cell phone which is on their file I get always long time to wait. So I wanted to try something else and while I was online on my phone I called from my son phone (not on their file) and guess what I got person online quite quick while I still was waiting on my cell. So I hung hip quick and dialed again from my son phone number. Same thing got person again. I did try this fee other days just to make sure this was not the “system”. Eventually I asked person what is going on that as preferred customer I have to wait longer. His response was “he is not sure how the system works”!!!. So this brings another point.
If you call CumCast and ask for pricing they ask for location where you live first. Why because price goes up if you have no other option. So I asked the rep on the phone why does the price differ when when my friends pay little less about 10 miles from me (we all live just on suburbs of Chicago) and he could not comment on this. So only reasonable explanation is price gauging… I am wondering why out lovely politicians do not do anything about it and allow CumCast to merge and buy others to help us? In what way? Is there something we can do as customers? Sounds like calling local politician will not help… Any ideas and horrible stories?

In Portland Oregon in the early 2000s when ISM band 802.11b wireless hardware was a new thing there was a prophet named Adam Shand who started the personaltelco.net project. His vision was a rollout of mesh networking all over Portland and other cities.
He belived in the idea that we should own the infrastructure so it couldnt be hogged like the cable companies do. The members of PTP were more interested or equipped in the task of putting sponsored open hotspots all over the city; in the end hobbits dragged him back to NZ to work at Wetta. We all lost.
Personal Telco - Wikipedia

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Comcast unethical?

You don’t say?

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It’s a little deeper than that. You’re correct that they get no bonus if they don’t hit their assigned target. However, those bonus targets aren’t merely extra-credit assignments. They are the numbers you are evaluated against. If you regularly fail to hit that number, you will be terminated. That is what is implied by “trying to hold onto his paycheck”. Those target numbers loom much larger than a mere bonus.

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I bet the turnover rate at that call center is high because of unrealistically high target numbers. The only way somebody would probably reach them is by acting like a total asshole over the phone. I feel for the rep. It probably wasn’t his first choice for a job. He probably took the job out of desperation like countless others that came before him who were sacked because they couldn’t bring themselves to behave like total jerk over the phone. This lousy economy has led a lot of people to work at jobs they hate in order to pay the bills. It seems the only jobs that are plentiful these days are the ones that nobody in their right mind would want to do. If the economy keeps going this way you will have increasing numbers of people who will reject the Protestant work ethic altogether in favour of being permanently unemployed. There is less and less incentive to want to work when the jobs are so miserable, dead end and poverty paying with no way out in sight. Anybody with a brain will start to lose hope, become depressed and begin to wonder if it is worth it to get up in the morning for this crap when their pay doesn’t even cover all their bills and they forced frequently to payday loan places to cover the gap.

While it is true that there are bright spots in the economy where people are well rewarded the number of jobs they have created are not enough to make up for all the well-paying jobs in manufacturing that have disappeared overseas. You couple that with a growing labour market that outstrips job growth and you have recipe for high unemployment and desperation. This has led to downward pressure on wages and employers taking advantage of workers.

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Well, “Trying to hold onto his paycheck” is also probably representing the fact that if he doesn’t hit his numbers to get a bonus he might not be able to make his mortgage. I mean, the base pay is too low to live off in a lot of places.

What about a script that calls in over and over, requesting to cancel all services, and then agreeing to keep them all at a single word from the retention specialist? Huge bonuses for everyone! This script would be a lot easier to write as well since it would just have to navigate automated menus to get to the retention specialist and then say a handful of set phrases.

Using the information @Robert provided, we know that if this is done from a phone not registered with the company it will mean getting the calls through very quickly.

The ideal solution, though, would be to do both. 95% of calls are instant agreements to keep services, 5% are endless endurance calls. Each employee could,once they have answered enough instant agreement calls, simply stay on the line with an endurance call while reading a book. This would make the lives of retention specialists as pleasant as possible while attacking the system through its idiotic metric.

Of course in any event doing something like this would make it impossible for real people to actually cancel their service because of the insane wait times to talk to a representative, so I guess ComCast would love it.

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I think all this reddit poster does is confirm the inequality in compensation structure we all already knew existed. And let’s be clear, while Comcast is at fault for utilizing such a compensation structure, they are not alone. MOST if not all large American Corporations do this sort of thing.

Low level associates are dangled a carrot on a stick for them to jump and reach extending their own work levels and input to attain a reasonable level of compensation. The executives of said company however have no such pains to go through. They are given lofty base salaries and their bonuses are of such a high percentage that even if cut but some degree still amount to far more than the low level associates base salary.

Example: One large company I know of may pay a mid line project manager $50,000 base a year and they are eligible for a 15% bonus at year end. Seems reasonable. UNTIL you realize fist off that if that associate gets to the mid range of their pay scale, they are expressly told they are fairly compensated against the market and will no longer receive raises. This first begs the question why is that even the mid point then, shouldn’t it be the max of the salary range…but lets not focus on the details.Additionally, come year end the bonus is first defined by funding pool. Bonuses are NEVER EVER funded 100%. So the PM starts out at 85% of the 15%  or something similar. Then the bonus rating for the PM’s performance is applied to that. Lets say they did really well and get a 93%. So that means they get 93% ($5929) of 85%  ($6375) of 15% ($7500)…plus another 40% in taxes taken off that nfor good measure.

The executive that runs this PM’s team however makes a base of $200,000 plus a 40% bonus. Yes the funding and rating game applies to them too. But look at the math… 93% ($63,240) of 85% ($68,000) of 40% ($80,000)

If this sort of shell game doesn’t make your throw up a little in your mouth, then you probably are the Executive and see nothing wrong with this structure.

Comcast is only doing what all major corporations do as well. Is it right…no. Will it change…well, good luck.

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