Woman attacks Comcast customer service keyboard with hammer

Marilyn says: "Woman attacks Comcast customer service keyboard with hammer after waiting two hours and then being told the manager has gone home for the day."

So, after stewing over it all weekend, on the following Monday, she went downstairs, got Don's claw hammer and said: "C'mon, honey, we're going to Comcast."

Did you try to stop her, Mr. Shaw?

"Oh no, no," he says.

Hammer time: Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone!

"They cuffed me right then," she says.

Link

• [doggo]

  ‘”nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior.”

  Bacha noted that Comcast has more than 25 million customers, the overwhelming majority of which are very satistified with their service.’

  Nothing justifies the complete disregard Comcast has for customer service and its customers. They fined the wrong entity.

• [David B.]

  It’s too bad she only crushed the keyboard – it’s not like it will phase the Comcast customer service flow – they just make stuff up anyway. I think the sound of keys being tapped is overdubbed, like the beep when you call the cops.

  David B.

• [Drew Blood]

  Yet another story about Comcast’s terrible service. I’m moving to an area soon where my only options for broadband will be Comcast or Sprint EVDO, for about the same price and roughly the same amount of evil. Not sure which way I’m going to end up going yet.

• [AaronZ]

  YES! Rail against ‘The Man!’ Huzzah!

  Because for sure, Comcast is the only company out there with bad customer service.

  *sigh*

  Anyone tried calling Verizon’s CS lately?

• [franko]

  she’s my new heroine.

• [Gort]

  It’s Comcrapstic!

• [Thebes]

  Good for her. Not that I want to advocate criminal behavior.

  This reminds me of our local Motor Vehicle Department in Taos, NM.

  For years the wait was measured in hours, with people frequently arriving early-afternoon and not being helped before closing. People would line up over an hour before it opened, because this ensured the shortest wait.

  The manager was a cruel woman, who enjoyed making people miserable… this is not an exageration. I once saw her make an 80-year-old woman cry. The manager smiled and made sure everyone waiting saw her smile. It was obvious she made that little old lady cry on purpose.

  About six months after that the office was burnt down in the middle of the night. They never caught the arsonist, and frankly I doubt they tried very hard. I doubt the person would have been convicted… I don’t encourage criminal behavior, but I wouldn’t have voted to convict them if I were on the jury.

  Amazingly, after rebuilding, the customer service is now polite and quick. The wait is never more than 15 minutes, and then there is an appology that it took so long. They now go out of their way to be helpful.

  Again, I don’t approve of criminal behaviour, but its nice to know that at least a few people still maintain a spirit of resistance.

• [Bonnie]

  That woman did exactly what most of us only fantasize doing. Kudos to her. I’m actually suprised we don’t see more of this type of reaction to poor customer service issues.

• [bxrguy]

  I feel her pain – I was once on the phone to Sears (Canada) for close to an hour listening to canned music alternating with “Your call is important to us, please …”

  After 45/50 minutes of this, the clock turned from 4:59pm to 5:00pm and a new message played “Our offices are now closed please call back tomorrow.” and it hung up.

• [Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator]

  Thebes (7):
  

  This reminds me of our local Motor Vehicle Department in Taos, NM.

  For years the wait was measured in hours, with people frequently arriving early-afternoon and not being helped before closing. People would line up over an hour before it opened, because this ensured the shortest wait.

  To state the obvious, Taos is not a place that should regularly have hours-long waits.
  

  The manager was a cruel woman, who enjoyed making people miserable… this is not an exaggeration. I once saw her make an 80-year-old woman cry. The manager smiled and made sure everyone waiting saw her smile. It was obvious she made that little old lady cry on purpose.

  Not all bureaucrats are evil. Some morph into time-serving automatons. Some keep on doing their best to figure out how to make the system as helpful as possible for the people they serve. (These tend to get promoted out of the front-line trenches.) And some, unfotunately, turn dead mean.

  The incidence of sociopathy in the modern American business office is seriously underrated.
  

  About six months after that the office was burnt down in the middle of the night. They never caught the arsonist, and frankly I doubt they tried very hard. I doubt the person would have been convicted… I don’t encourage criminal behavior, but I wouldn’t have voted to convict them if I were on the jury.

  I vote for it having been an inside job. Someone who worked within the system would have been in a position to know that standard policies and procedures in the wake of a fire would provide an opportunity to get rid of that manager. If she was as bad as you say, there’ll have been civil servants both above and below her who were looking for an opportunity to get rid of her.

  Also, non-employees may have hated the manager and been made miserable by her, but it’s not like they’d have to deal with her all that often. The other employees in the DMV hierarchy would have had to deal with her malice every working day, and been under constant threat of personal and professional damage. They were the ones with the real motivation.
  

  Amazingly, after rebuilding, the customer service is now polite and quick. The wait is never more than 15 minutes, and then there is an apology that it took so long. They now go out of their way to be helpful.

  Again, that makes me think it was an inside job. You don’t get great work like that out of people who constantly feel threatened.

  If the employees thought it was a random citizen who burned down their previous office, they’d be nervous and defensive. If they’re being polite, professional, and cheerful, they know the threat is gone.
  

  Again, I don’t approve of criminal behaviour, but it’s nice to know that at least a few people still maintain a spirit of resistance.

  Simple resistance gets you nowhere with bureaucracies. They’re built to withstand that kind of pressure. What you want is knowledgeable force, knowledgeably applied. Your best bet is to find someone in the system who’s sympathetic and intelligent, promise them faithfully that you’ll never rat them out, and then follow their advice.

• [MrIntolerant]

  I have Comcast. It has some good peek speeds out here and if I am downloading from a fast enough source (or as with the Kubuntu bittorrent I have going right now) I hit close to the maximum speeds.

  But when you factor in the number of times when the connection is dead, that drops the average pretty hard.

  My local Comcast office has no air conditioning, it is decorated with the flair of a downtown DMV, there is bullet resistant glass between you and the teller, and whenever I need to get my modem replaced they pass it through a protective drawer.

  I would switch to Bellsouth (now part of the new AT&T), but they are even more incompetent. I had to hook up my own phone service because they kept tying into old alarm phone cables that terminated 6 inches away from the box. 15 minutes with some needle nose pliers and I had everything rewired properly.

• [rob ray]

  Sounds like Comcast needs a few sledgehammer keyboards