I am so enraged at Comcast right now that I don't know what to do and the mere thought of having to call them again (and again, and again, and again) makes me want to throw myself out the window in frustration and despair.
We have been Comcast customers since first moving to Richmond back in September. We originally set up just with cable TV and Internet service, then later added digital phone service as well. Everything was fine for about a year, and then I started looking around and discovered that better deals could be had elsewhere.in mid-september of I began to switch things over, choosing DishNetwork over Comcast for the television, (because I loved the DVR offer, there's nothing like being able to pause live tv) and switched the phone over to Verizon. Verizon's basic phone package was similarly priced, but they were offering DSL for $19.99 per month, HALF of what we were paying Comcast for a cable connection.
Now, you'd think that a simple phone call, "Please disconnect all services that I currently purchase from Comcast and send me a final bill" would be all that was required, right? Wrong. After making this call (and by the way, I had to make THREE calls, one to each department, the phone, cable tv, and internet) I continued to recieve bills as if I were still using their services.
Each month, the new bill would reflect a 'past due' amount and late charges. Each month, I would call Comcast to ask two questions. 1) Why am I still being billed? 2) When will I recieve a final bill? And each month, I was told the same thing, that I would continue to recieve bills until a technician came by and shut the services off at the pole. They told me to disregard the erroneous bills I continued to receive and wait for the final bill, which would be prorated to the day I actually called and requested that service be stopped.
This continued for several months, the balance getting larger each time, and late fees being assessed each time. Every time I got a new bill, I would call them again, and be told the same thing.
FINALLY, on January 24th, I got the final bill, which was about what I expected, a little over $50.00. (The erroneous bills had gotten quite high, over $200 I believe... But I did not owe this!
In the meantime, our computer died and we had to purchase a new one. We were turned down for credit with Dell, and when we recieved our explanation letter, the reasons for being turned down included 'late payments on a trade line' and 'delinquent trade line accounts.' (For those of you who are unfamiliar with credit reporting practices, a trade line is any sort of utility account, and you get a bad mark for payments 30,60, or 90 days late, once a payment is more than 90 days late, the account is considered delinquent.)
For the record, we have never made a late payment on any trade line account.
So, while Comcast had idiotic phone representatives telling me to disregard the erroneous bills on one hand, they had equally idiotic credit department goons reporting "late" payments on the other hand.
I called them (for the umpteenth time) yesterday, and get this... The telephone rep claims that HIS notes never even show a request from me to stop service at all! I can call again today, and whoever I talk to will tell me something entirely different.
This has been the case no matter what issue I am calling about, last month I had one person tell me I was going to keep getting bills until I return their equipment, something that ANOTHER person had told me would be picked up on the day they came out to shut service off at the pole. I told her by all means, please come and get it, so she gave me the number of the scheduling department, informing me that I PERSONALLY had to schedule a service call to have things shut off and the equipment picked up.
Shouldnt this have been the job of customer service, whom I had informed to close my accounts? Why didn't anyone TELL me I had to call the service department? This moron eventually gave me a number to call, a number which happened to ring in one of their offices in NEW HAMPSHIRE, for petes sake.
They referred me to the local scheduling office, (after laughing hysterically about someone from Richmond calling New Hampshire to ask for a service appt) and they did finally get by here some time in early January to totally disconnect service, and I surrendered their equipment at that time as well. Thus, I get the final bill on Jan 24th, and get this... I get a collection letter FOR THAT BILL just a few days later!
Gahhh, why should our credit be ruined because Comcast took 4 freakin' months to send a technician out here to disconnect service outside in order to finalize our account? I suppose I was supposed to just keep sending them money I knew I didn't owe and hope for an eventual refund? Pfft, not after I've seen their shoddy version of customer service.
So now we have bad marks on our credit, thanks to Comcast. I am going to try again today to get a real live person with some actual authority and knowledge on the phone, and then start putting everything in writing. I can't seem to get past the apathetic and incompetant first layer of customer service grunts, no matter who I ask to speak with, I'm told they will pass my information along and someone will call me back. Of course, no one ever does, and I am at my wits end with these people.
Current Comcast customers, BEWARE. If you leave them, they punish you by farking up your credit. Potential Comcast customers? Think twice before you choose this company, it might end up costing you more than you think.
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