Comcast just canât catch a break, can they.
âŚnor can Comcastâs customers. Itâs a fight to the death.
Time to borrow a page from Muslim tradition:
âI cancel you.â
âI cancel you.â
âI cancel you.â
Itâs telling that he didnât get that âSorry, weâre closedâ message until heâd gone through the phone tree and established that he was trying to close his Comcast account entirely. Iâm sure that, had he given any sign that he was looking to buy, or at least continue service, the offices would have been open and happy to receive his call.
Obvious much?
I appreciate the update note from Awwwsnack:
update fwiw: I did get it canceled the next day within 15 minutes. Felt bad for the guy I talked to as I gave him little opportunity to offer me any other resolution. I did clarify it wasnât his fault, I wasnât mad at him directly, and complimented him on doing what i asked and doing his job well.
He managed to get the service cancelled without yanking out some guyâs entrails through the phone line. These days, a lot of people lack those skills. Theyâll either give in to the pitiable underling whoâs âjust doing his jobâ and forget why they called, or theyâll take out all their aggressions on a person who had nothing to with the actions of others (who were cleverly absent the day before).
Kudos to him!
Iâve never understood why it is any harder than unplugging the wire from the house, and sending the gear back. Continuing to give them money is a choice.
Agreed @ AcerPlatanoides. I see no reason to follow the rules a company makes about how to cancel a contract when it has already failed to deliver on its side of the deal.
True, except they have the power to fuck up your credit royally and even haul you into court on nonsense charges. They may have nothing to gain, but they can sure as hell make you lose.
Thatâs the problem with the way the current credit laws are written. People have very little recourse for correcting specious claims (or even just overblown claims) against their credit. They can have damage lasting seven years from someone else who was actually at fault when they tried to behave themselves, or it can have been a minor issue or miscommunication that was handled poorly. It all ends up looking the same to creditors.
We really need a better system for addressing credit record claims - it hasnât happened yet.
Slightly off topic case in point: when I went to get a car loan many years ago, I discovered my credit was utterly in the toilet, which was sort of a surprise. Some digging turned up the reasons: (1) A former bank had neglected to properly close my savings account when Iâd done so in person, and never contacted me about the low-balance charges (with nothing in my account) Iâd been racking up for five years. (2) Another former bank had, somehow, swapped my sisterâs SSN with mine when I opened a debit card account in college, and got upset when I was âattemptingâ to withdraw money from her CD account at an ATM. My credit was fucked for about five years based on other peoplesâ mistakes and I was told the best I could do was to write âsincere apology lettersâ.
Seriously, just tell the people youâre moving to an area that they donât service.
Wait⌠You had to apologise? To whom?
Also, I see this guys future⌠*fingertips on brow
It has⌠I, I can almost see it, disparaging remarks from Comcast and⌠and⌠a Lawsuit.
The credit agency told me that itâd âhelp my caseâ if I sent sincere apology letters to both banks, because in their words, it was my fault because I hadnât caught the banksâ errors sooner. This was in the mid-90s, so I sent physical letters to both. No idea if it actually helped or not.
In the close the account department I was lucky to catch mine. After switching to the credit union many years ago now. I realized was just not using the bank account so went in to close it out. I got a receipt, cash for the hundred odd dollars or so I had left in it. Then 2 months later I get a you have been charged for low balance statement and went to the bank had the charge removed and was told the account was now closed. Fast forward another month, another letter of you have been charged, etc. I was then quite pissed off and was not polite with the bank staff when I went in that time as the bank at this point has royally f*d up and I had done my part politely, twice. The manager came out to make sure the account was closed.
As an addendum, all these years later, the same thing happened to me just last week. Iâd closed a credit card several months ago and just received a letter demanding a fair amount of money for low balance charges. Luckily one phone call later had it all sorted and the charges waived as some employee had simply forgotten to actually close the account despite noting it closed.
Lots of people end up in credit ruin during college - but thatâs starting to get more stable. At least now the debt comes from school. During the 80s and early 90s, aggressive credit card campaigns on campuses caused a lot of students to enter into massive debt! At that time the government wanted to blame the students - for falling for the directed advertising that no one protected them from or educated them about.
Youâre lucky it wasnât really your fault! 
Another place people end up in âshockerâ debt is medicine. In 2007, 60% of bankruptcies were due to medical bills.
Then there are the companies who change fees without proper notification - like cable companies who raise rates, but fail to even send a reminder notification that itâll be happening.
When I moved to the next town over, I called Comcast and told them my new address and they said just to take my gear and hook it up, then call us to turn on the cable.
When I called them and they âturned it on,â nothing happened. âOh,â they said, âWeâll send someone out.â
So I took a day off work, and they sent a guy out and the guy said âWell your line is broken between the street and the house, the local provider will call you to set up a time for a construction crew.â
A week went by, no calls. I called Comcast again and told them the story and they said âOh okay letâs set up an appointment.â So, I took another day off work, and a guy came out and the guy said âWTF, I canât fix this, we need a construction crew.â And I stood there while he called his office and requested a construction crew, and I asked for a number for the local office, but he said he couldnât give it to me, but someone would call me.
And another two weeks went by. I got my first Comcast bill at my new house, and had to call and spend about half an hour getting them to understand that I was not receiving service, so they shouldnât be billing me.
After another week went by, I called Comcast again, and asked them how they were doing on getting the construction crew to come out, and they said âOh weâll send someone out.â And i said âNo, donât do that, heâll just say he needs a construction crew and drive away,â but they said they would call my local office and talk to someone.
And another few weeks went by. I got another Comcast bill, and spent another half-hour talking to them on the phone about how they really shouldnât bill me until I was receiving service, and how that actually should be their responsiblity to wait for me to get service before sending me the bill, not my responsibility to call and complain every single month.
I called Comcast another couple of times, with no better results, and finally arranged to âcancelâ my âserviceâ and drop off my gear at a local storefront.
Iâm on AT&T U-Verse now. Itâs not as fast, but at least the company is not 100% dysfunctional.
When I went to college, there were always credit card people with tables set up in the student union (and the dorm lobbies, the campus green, etc) offering kids candy bars, coupons for free pizzas, and cans of soda for signing up for a credit card.
Iâm just saying that Seymore Butts and Hugh Jass have a whole lot of Mastercards.
Hereâs the worst part: Those credit card companies were doing exactly the same thing that online scammers do now - they were playing the odds that theyâd hook a few fish.
They didnât need everyone to sign up, they just needed a small percentage. They were just looking for a few valid signatories who would run up a lot of debt, and then go to their parents to get it paid off. They knew most of the students didnât have any money themselves, but they also knew that most of them had parents who wouldnât want them to have black marks on their financial records as they exited college - and those parents had the money to send them to college.
