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.
+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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Swamping their callcenters with endless Eliza calls will probably have some impact on the time callers need to wait before they can finally talk to someone.
I recently moved and cancelled cell service as well as internet service (Verizon and Brighthouse cable, respectively). The call to Verizon was shockingly easy–they didn’t badger me about keeping a reduced level of service or any other such clinging, and the call was over before I thought it would even begin. I am Jack’s deflated adrenal gland.
My call to Brighthouse was only slightly annoying because the rep kept apologizing for their service even though I’d made clear that I was cancelling because of a move. And at the end of the call, after I told them I did not want my name or future address added to their contact/marketing list, the rep repeated something about my calling them in the near future, just to tell them how things were going, as though Brighthouse cable is suddenly in the counseling business. I found it slightly unsettling.
At any rate, it seems like the best thing to do if you have to deal with any company using retention specialists is to let them know you are recording the conversation right off the bat. It will probably minimize the amount of time you have to spend on the phone with them.
Whenever I have a problem like this with a regulated public utility I tell them plainly what I want. If I get any argument I repeat it and hang up the telephone. When the next bill comes which shows the account still active I file an complaint on-line with the state Board of Public Utilities. In a day or two I will get a call from someone much higher up in the utility telling my account has been closed as per my request. It is much more expensive for the utility to have to formally respond to the BPU and close my account than to just close my account in the first place.
I feel like we should regularly phone up Comcast and talk about quitting, but then let the rep. change our minds, so that they get positive scores and are able to earn a decent living. Throw them a few easy balls to keep up their averages.
The best way to cancel is to gather all their stuff and drop it off at the local office. A Comcast rep teased my wife about her accent, and hung up on her. Three hours later, I was at their office with a big box of stuff.
That fellow couldn’t have been nicer. He even gave me a $10 credit against our final bill.
