Years back, I was a Comcast cable modem subscriber. That was until they spent a whole month cutting off my service, every single day, from 10am until about 4:30pm. Each day I would call to ask what was up, and I was told it was “scheduled maintenance.” I asked for said “schedule” so I could plan around it, and was told that there was no schedule — which made for an odd form of “scheduled maintenance.” I also asked if it would be happening the next day as well, and was always told that I wouldn’t be able to find out until the connection disappeared again. I dropped Comcast and switched to DSL. Even though Comcast is now much faster than my DSL, that experience so soured me that I have no interest in ever going back.

While Comcast has received a lot of attention for its “Comcast Cares” initiative (the head of which recently left the company), it certainly looks like they have a few kinks to work out. Phil Anderson points us to the story of Comcast demanding the $0.00 a customer owes and threatening to turn off service if it’s not received.

It’s not hard to figure out how something like this happens. For whatever reason, the customer didn’t owe any money that month — perhaps a credit, or he had overpaid in a previous month, or something like that. But, Comcast’s system is probably set up with the recording of “a payment” separate from the amount, such that not receiving any payment sets off a red flag, with no simple check to see if the reason is that no money is owed. You would think that this is something that Comcast would have caught a lot earlier…

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