The Messy Convergence of Sh**ty Customer Service and Net Neutrality

It would appear that both Ryan Block and I have both come up winners in the private telecommunications utility customer service sweepstakes.

The audio file below was sent to me this week by reader Mad Rocket Scientist.  If you have yet to hear the tale (or recorded telephone call) of Block’s battle with Comcast, it’s well worth the entire cringe-worthy 8+ minutes:

For those without media capabilities, the recording is of a telephone call Block and his wife made to Comcast in order to cancel their cable and internet service.  Block alleges that there was an additional ten minutes of similar back and forth prior to his deciding to put it on speaker phone and record the conversation with the customer service rep. But even without that additional time it’s a jaw-droppingly painful listen.   Throughout the call, all Block wants to do is cancel his service.  But it’s rather obvious that the Comcast rep is trying to badger him into getting so frustrated that he eventually gives up, “choosing” to stay with the telecommunications provider rather than continue the frustratingly hellish and Kafka-esque experience that is dealing with Comcast.

Block’s recording has gone viral over the internet, and has subsequently been reported on by most of the major online news outlets.  Comcast has responded by making a public apology, stating both that it was “embarrassed” and plans to take quick action with the costumer service rep responsible. They have also promised to contact Block in an effort to do what they can to make things right. And that’s all well and good, except for one thing…

When you listen to the call, the rep uses language like this:

“We are the number one provider of internet and television provider in the country…  Why is it that you don’t want the number one rated internet or quality TV service available… Our competitors can’t give you the great choices we can… {If you leave} you’re not going to the hundred thousand free OnDemand titles, you’re not going to get 105 megabits per second for your Internet. No one else can guarantee the speed that we can.”

When you listen to the rep, it’s pretty clear that he isn’t winging it so much as he’s reading off of a provided script. If so, this isn’t a case of a customer service agent going rogue — it’s one who’s been trained and provided materials to do exactly what he was doing.  And the comments at the various websites reporting on the story actually underscore this possibility.  Almost all of them are from current or previous Comcast customers saying that they have had equally terrible service from the telecommunications provider.  Those that aren’t are from people claiming to be Comcast or other telecommunication companies’ employees who defend the customer service rep, saying essentially that he was doing exactly what he was trained to do.  Some even went so far as to state that the service given to Block was in fact super space awesome:

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In other words, Comcast doesn’t appear to be horrified by the fact that their customer was treated in this fashion so much as they are that this treatment was recorded and made public.

And the timing of this story is less than perfect for the telecommunications giant, because right now they’re trying very hard to convince both the House and the Senate that they care.

At this very moment, Comcast and the other telecommunication providers are attempting to get Congress to end net neutrality.  Rather than having the Internet be an equal playing field, the industry hopes to create a two-tiered system where visitors of websites who paid providers a substantial premium would have faster speed accessing those sites.  Those sites unwilling (or unable) to pay these premiums would be relegated to slower speeds and therefore, presumably, fewer visitors.  Indeed, it appears that they have already been test-driving this shakedown-insipred business model.  As the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham reported back in May, last year Comcast went to Netflix and demanded additional payments in order to ensure “smooth” data flow — and then purposefully slowed down Netflix’s data speed until the video-streaming site agreed to cough up the dough.

And as John Oliver noted a few weeks ago, the telecommunication industry now appear poised to do this exact same thing to everyone else.  In 2013 Comcast alone spent more money on lobbying than all but one U.S. company (a defense contractor).  What’s more, in that same year Comcast and it’s so-called “competitors” also succeeded in getting Tom Wheeler appointed as the Chairman of the FCC.  Prior to his appointment, Wheeler was the top lobbyist for the telecommunications industry as well as one of the biggest donors to Barack Obama’s reelection campaign the year prior.  As Oliver hilariously (and depressingly) pointed out, “that is the equivalent of needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo.”

Interestingly, I had a mea culpa experience with AT&T this past week that was similar to what Ryan Block is currently receiving from the chagrined Comcast.

As regular reader know, a few weeks ago I had grown so frustrated enough with AT&T that I decided to eat the $500 in early contract obligations and fire them.  I initially decided to switch the family over to T-Mobile the day I posted that rant, but my experience with T-Mobile was as Kafka-eaque as Block’s was with Comcast and so I decided to wait till I could figure out a Plan C.^[1]  Before I could do so, however, I was contacted by no less than two AT&T employees who offered to connect me to the right people and fix my problems with their company.

Both of these gentlemen and the AT&T rep the hooked me up with were — I cannot stress this enough — unbelievably awesome.  They listened, they took the time to understand my issues, they each one apologized on behalf of their company. (One actually said when he heard what had happened to me that it “broke [his] heart,” and he seemed 100% sincere when saying this.)  What’s more, they actually solved all of my problems, and credited me all the money I was owed (and frankly, some that I really wasn’t). And even then, they apologized because they knew my wasted time over the past few months was more valuable than the credits or savings I was getting.  It could not have been a more perfect customer service moment, and afterwards I decided to stay.

And yet...

The reason I got access to these three amazing AT&T employees is that my post sparked a Google-alert with two of them.  If I didn’t write for a site that gets a fair amount of traffic (or had I never bothered to post anything at all) I would be exactly where Ryan Block was with Comcast before his story went viral.^[2]  And though I can’t say for sure either way, I have to confess that I do wonder… If this had all happened during a non-crucial period in the net neutrality push, would anyone at AT&T have even set up the Google-alert to know to contact me?

None of this diminishes the work of the three men I dealt with, of course; I have every sense that they treat everyone the way they treated me.  But it’s also clear that the business model at A&TT is similar to the business model at Comcast: no-frills customer service for the vast majority of their customers, with a team of highly skilled and effective employees to step in should bad publicity arise.  As I said earlier,

As with Comcast, Time-Warner and Verizon, what AT&T’s actual customers think of them has been rendered irrelevant by a separate marketplace, one in which only those with a certain amount of wealth can partake. Why spend money on satisfying the consumers, when they can spend pennies on those dollars to ensure the system is rigged so that they don’t have to?

To be honest, I feel less this way than I did before.  When I wrote that I would have bet  good money that AT&T wouldn’t give a crap that I wrote anything about them here, and in that I turned out to be clearly very wrong.  Still, it’s hard not to lament a business model that doesn’t start with the awesome customer service guys.

Oh, and if by chance this post gets Google-alerted by AT&T and then gets read by whoever Don, John, and Jonah’s direct supervisors might be, let me just add this: Whatever you’re paying those guys, it isn’t enough. Go give them each a raise.  Now. They totally deserve it.

[1] To fully appreciate my experience with the T-Moblie salesman, imagine the above Comcast customer service call, but face-to-face in a T-Mobile retail store, taking place over a 20-minute period of time, and — rather than refusing to disconnect me — having the salesman refuse to give me a straight answer about how much the phones I had to buy and “add into my plan” would cost when all was said and done.

“Oh, our phones are free.”

“I thought you just said you’d be adding their cost to my regular bill until I paid them off?”

“Oh yes.  Well, it’s just close to free — it’s only $30 for all four phones.”

“Thrifty dollars for the phones, or $30 a month?”

“A month.  Four phones for only $30 — you can’t beat that price.  You just pay until they are all paid for.”

“How long will that be? How much is each phone all together?  If I just bought one today with no plan, what you be charging me?”

“It really almost free! Have you seen our coverage map?”

I kept waiting for him to tell me that “this one goes to eleven.”

[2] And it’s not just for corporate disputes!

Last year I got crosswise with a petty bureaucrat from the city of Portland concerning the removal of dead trees from our front yard.  At the time it looked like he was gong to fine us $6,000 and go out of his way to keep jerking us around, even though a review of the applicable city codes revealed he did not have the authority to do most of what he threatened.

A week after I posted that essay, I got an email from him telling me we could plant the tress we wanted to plant, that there would be no fines, and just generally being super nice and helpful.  There was also this:

“My managers sent your blog on the situation to me – a very good read!”

Every now and then, writing actually pays.

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