travis' brain dump

So… I wander away from the blog for a few hours to go get some things done (meetings and such) and come back to discover a comcast related comment and additional login on my blog… wow?

The comment, which you can see in the previous post, was:

Travis if you are still having trouble with your speeds or bandwidth please contact us at We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com and we will be glad to help you out.cmcstcaresbill

So you’re telling me that there is someone out there watching the web for posts with comcast bashing? Un-freakin-believable. LOL I went out on the web to do a little research just to see if this was for real. I’m not one to be readily open to the idea that a company which gives you a laundry list of excuses of why their speed is not the issue but it is in turn an issue with the customer’s computer, switch, firewall, etc… is ready to be of assistance. Well, it turns out this is completely real.  o.O

cited from: http://www.thenewstribune.com/business/story/343270.html

Frank Eliason, a Comcast Corp. manager in Center City with the daunting assignment of monitoring the nation’s blogosphere for venomous posts aimed at the company, answered right away: “That should not be. We should have that looked at. Send an e-mail with account info to We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com“>We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com.”

Under siege for customer-service woes detailed on Comcastmustdie.com and other blogs, the Philadelphia cable giant has gone on the offensive, trawling the Internet for Comcast chatter. Eliason’s assignment is very specific: If someone has a Comcast problem and is talking about it online, he contacts that person and offers help.

If Eliason thinks it’s an emergency that could spiral into unpleasantness, like an expletive-loaded blog bomb, he gets on the phone and cuts through the corporate red tape.

But a cautionary note: Eliason’s quick action and kind words don’t necessarily lead to a quick fix, as Chambers discovered.

Eliason’s blog spotting is part public relations and part acknowledgment that the Internet is playing a broader role in defining company brands. Technology companies woke up to this fact after “Dell Hell” postings by blogger Jeff Jarvis in 2005.

Comcast executives say the company’s customer-service problems deepened as it expanded through acquisitions and added millions of high-speed Internet and phone customers. The company, with $31 billion in annual revenue, has leaned too heavily on outsourcers for phone help and repairs, they say.

On Twitter, where users write blurbs on what they’re doing or thinking at the moment, a passing complaint can be an early warning signal to Comcast. The site, said Biz Stone, a Twitter cofounder, is the sort of forum that Comcast should monitor.

“If Comcast can get to those influencers, the complaints will not grow to a full blog post,” he said. Eliason has posted about 600 messages, or “tweets,” on Twitter.

Comcast is “waking up to the fact that a bad rap in the social-networking space could spread like crazy,” said Shel Holtz, a public-relations consultant in the San Francisco area. “If consumers are talking to each other about your brand, you should participate in that conversation and have a good story to tell.”

The story in this case is more like a horror flick on Comcast’s FEARnet channel. Comcast has had a public-relations nightmare with Comcastmustdie.com, launched in October by Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield.

If you go out to google and you search out the email address from the comment, it’s all over the place. I’m not sure how I feel about this. It seems like a damage control effort which, in my own opinion, is a bit too little and more than just a bit too late. I’m not even going to bother writing an email to the address however it does merit a blog response.

Instead of spending so much effort on trying to do post-loss damage control, why aren’t more resources being put into training customer service reps to be more technical and provide logical thought out responses which are helpful as to opposed to canned messages which deny all responsibility by comcast for the issues being experienced. Today’s world, while it still contains many users who are absolutely clueless, there are many individuals who have some or even a lot of technical expertise and find it offensive that you’re having a tier one support phone monkey question even the most basic of troubleshooting with us? If you had someone trained to assess the situation and quite possibly offer some level of support worth a darn you might save more customers from leaving disgruntled. At the very least the person may come away from it, despite going to another provider, with a feeling of ‘ we tried everything we could and this setup just didn’t work out ‘ leaving you with less work to do in damage control.

Beyond that… don’t patronize people who are obviously way smarter than your CYA department by feeding them lines of complete bull to try to quell their rants and raves when they’ve discovered that they have been cheated out of bandwidth they’ve paid for and had it reduced in quality when they utilize it to it’s fullest. There is a REASON we want a 6mbit pipe and pay for it to be that speed and when you let some tier one phone jockey who is either a) a complete idiot or b) someone with intelligence that has been bound and gagged by internal policy that they are at fault you’re going to lose customers and you’re going to get blogsite comments and websites dedicated to the hatred of your system.

My advice… take a good long look at yourselves before continuing to point the finger at the end user and or standing by policy which is completely wrong. Evaluate your customer service expectations and deliverables and make a change to better yourselves. This also includes informing your installers and service technicians of truthful information and not filling their heads full of propaganda to spread as well. Those poor guys are so brainwashed it’s almost sad.

*shrug*

I just don’t know. I’m done writing.

Well, I’ve successfully gotten myself un-hooked from the Comcraptic network and I must say I’m quite pleased with my decision. Yes, I will end up paying a little more in taxes on my Qwest line but you know what? It’s WORTH EVERY DOLLAR!

I’m getting twice the speed down and twice the speed up consistently! For a few bucks less per service and a few bucks more in taxes, I have a full 7mbit (6Mbit after overhead) down instead of throttled 6Mbit and 900Kbit (768K after overhead) up instead of the throttled 384Kbit I had before. I mean c`mon, after throttling I was getting maybe 2-3Mbit down and 128-200Kbit up… So why was I paying for throttled 6/384?

Oh yeah, and did I mention that Qwest doesn’t care if I host stuff out of my house and they let me have a static IP for almost nothing? Not to mention they still at this time believe in giving you what you pay for. 

I’m most definitely not alone on this one… (for another rant, click here) It inspired me to write my rant up as well. 🙂 Congratulations on shedding the bandwidth throttling and coming over to the greener pasture.

Now, keep in mind that doing some network-management is ok when the occasional users abuses the “fat pipe” they are paying for but to be consistently throttling someone based on a specific protocol or a blanket policy on the user account for all time is a little overboard. IF a such abuse occurs then balance the equation based on a specific time duration on a SINGLE SESSION and ONLY if it is impacting other network traffic sessions competing for the same allocated hardline…. do some real network-management or something instead of sticking a customer in “time-out” indefinitely…

When I first heard about these issues people were having with Comcast I decided to run some tests…

The first week I downloaded some files from my test server and capped my pipe. I was pulling stuff from this server in particular at 4-5Mb a second without a single hitch. I personally thought people posting up complaints were insane. But I continued testing. Within a matter of *DAYS* my download test DROPPED to a matter of Kbit download speeds from my system. Assuming a possible problem with routing or other traffic, I tried the same test on multiple occasions on different days only to find that it was capped dead at a specific level. Excuse me?! Not only were my speeds affected directly to this system but they were everywhere… my bandwidth speed tests to other locations had also dropped dramatically for my once a day test to three seperate sites over the course of a few days.

Way to go chuckleheads.

At least things are better now… all is well. 🙂

You know, I had this conversation with Amanda while we were driving yesterday. I don’t quite understand the stupid logic of people and their bumper stickers and signs hanging in their windows… take the following for example:

That is by far probably the dumbest sign to hang in the window of your car. Does it provide some false sense of security to people who put it in the window? I mean honestly people, do you seriously think it does anything for anyone other than your own mental state of delusion? 🙂

a) The drivers who are careful, considerate drivers already drive with the proper distance and pay attention to the vehicles around them. They already drive defensively and therefore already don’t want to hit you, baby on board or not. Also keep in mind that those who have a hard time seeing, may just get *CLOSER* to you in order to read your little sign. *NOTHING* in the entire world, especially a little sign in the window is going to help you if one of these drivers gets into an accident with you.

b) The drivers who are aggressive, inconsiderate and would probably just prefer to run you down don’t care about your sign. In fact, it’s more likely to anger them because due to their type-a and somewhat pre-offended personality they feel as though you are talking directly to them and they hate you for it. They are 10 times more likely to tailgate you because of this. Again.. *NOTHING* in the entire world, especially a little sign in the window is going to help you if one of these drivers gets into an accident with you.

So you’ve successfully done what? brought normal drivers closer to your vehicle to read your sign and successfull provoked aggressive drivers. And how does this help your baby?

That is all.

In both cases, it’s survival of the fittest.

For the record… I am super glad the party did not exceed the 15 people it did today… nothing like having a birthday party planned out based on a weather forcast that states ‘ 20% chance of late showers ‘ all the way up until the night before where it basically says ‘ the day is going to suck, hope you didn’t have outdoor plans ‘ … Yes… it rained on Arwen’s birthday and it forced the entire party into the house. Words cannot describe how happy I am that there were only five children present for my daughter’s 5th birthday. All in all despite the jungle things could be much worse. The house isn’t in too bad of a wreck and the only casualty seemed to be the kitchen floor which is a big win I say. Most the house has been cleaned and things have calmed down… back to work tomorrow so I need to get to bed. 

Thanks to those who came out to pack the house and chow down. 🙂