Comcast Digital Telephone Service - phone service outage - it took 6 calls to Comcast to get service restored

# 19 for October 10, 2003

Complaints.com received the following on October 9, 2003:

From:

RE: Comcast Digital Telephone Service - phone service outage - it took 6 calls to Comcast to get service restored

During a storm last month all telephone service was disabled for my community. About 6 hours later the electricity came on and everyone had telephone service except myself and my next-door neighbor. We called our service from another friends house and were told that Comcast was aware of the problem and working diligently to solve it as soon as possible. Still no service.

They gave a work order deadline of Midnight that night. So we waited. Still no service. I woke up the next morning and called Comcast to see what the problem was they informed me that I did in fact have telephone service because they were able to call my home and it just rang, aparently the problem is that I was not picking up the telephone. This was not so, I tried to call my home from the same line I used to call Comcast and got a pre-recorded message 'all circuits are busy'.

I also tried my neighbors line and recieved the same message. Each time I put in a work order it was cancled when someone 'troubleshooting' tried to call my number and only got ringing (aparently from Comcast headquarters you don't hear their error messages). After arguing with the 3rd customer service agent who blatantly told me I was lying or that I could not opperate my own home telephone I finally got to a supervisor who only wanted to defend his position and his employee stating that she was not lying to me or calling me a liar. STILL NO SERVICE, STILL NO RESOLUTION.

Finally, after my 6th (yes, really) call to Comcast they sent out a repair man. He came to my house as well as my neighbors (she had called an additional 5-10 times herself) home and decided that the problem was on the line into our homes and not anything that he could repair. So, he left saying that he would send out another crew. STILL NO SERVICE.

I called the customer service center and demanded a mailing address for the CEO's or some other higher authority to complain about the way I was treated. They informed me that that was classified information and refused to even allow me to designate which call center I was speaking with or the names of their supervisors. The next day a service crew came with a bucket truck to fix the lines, only they came very late in the afternoon. Without even repairing the lines they decided to pack it up and sped away. I had to place ANOTHER call to ask what the problem was and had to have ANOTHER work order.

Eventually after over a week without service a crew came out and replaced a simple, routine part (it was called a TAP by the servicemen) that often gets blown in electrical storms. I called customer service for the last time to see what could be done about the week that I was without service and again ask for information regarding a complaint. I was told that their would be a credit applied to my bill and given an incorrect address to send a complaint letter to.

oh.. get this.. I got my bill in the mail today.. of course there was NO CREDIT..

Andria