I just got off the phone with Comcast. I had a cable issue and they scheduled a techs time to show up different than what we had agreed upon, in fact, they scheduled it for exactly the time I said I couldn't be at home. After two techs, and a total of 6 hours out of my life (three two hour windows) they resolved the issue, but they had told me after everything was fixed they could give me a $50 credit for my hassle. When I called, they were trying to give me less credit and were not acknowledging that they had already offered me $50 credit. So, knowing that I would end up staying for the moment, I told them I wanted to cancel because that's the only way to get what you want. So they sent me to one of the retention specialists in the loyalty department and I complained to him, he gave me my $50, plus waived a $5 a month fee for 1 year saving me $60 if I stay with them, and gave me a couple months of free showtime.
And that's the problem, people like me know that the only way to get what you want is to threaten to cancel, so I bet the majority of people that the retention specialists deal with aren't even planning on quitting, but are just sick of the bureaucracy, sick of the automated phone system, sick of having their issues unresolved, and are just threatening to quit. Comcast has to make it so that's not needed to get anything accomplished.
If they had just given me the $50 that was promised, they would not to have given me the extra $60 in fees or Showtime.
I still plan on quitting sometime soon, once I get my next job settled and I move to wherever I end up moving. I have very little need for cable, just internet. The whole paradigm is shifting and Comcast is going to find itself to be a dying dinosaur soon enough.
