Comcast called me. Oh, the power of social media

Today, beyond a shadow of a doubt, showed how connected we are. For readers of my blog read yesterday, I had what a difficult day with Comcast. I had what one might call an epic fail day with Comcast. So, I did what any blogger and social media person would do. I blogged and tweeted about my experience with the "account executive" from Collections at Comcast.

This morning around 0815 Judy from the local Comcast office called me. Judy called me yesterday morning, as you might recall, because of a tweet I sent to @comcastcares. Judy was very apologetic and humble, and she said that she had no idea how things got so bad with Comcast, but that she wanted to learn from it and to make things right. Judy offered to give us free HBO for the next six months, effective immediately. I thanked her for the kind offer and I accepted it.

Judy then asked me if the account executive last night ever asked me to pay my bill to make it current. I told Judy, "No, the account executive never even asked me if I wanted to pay my bill." Judy asked me to logon to the Comcast website and make a payment. She also assured me that there would be no late charges or reports to a credit company about my lake of payment because Comcast did not bill my credit card in September.

Late in the morning, my cell phone rang again. It was a 215 area code. Philadelphia area. Corporate HQ for Comcast is located there. The call went like this:

Me: Hello

Person on the other end: Hello, is this Paul Kratch-o-will?

Me: This is Paul

Kip: Hi, I'm Kip Wetzel from Comcast...

The call went well from there. Kip told me that @comcastcares (Bill) works for him and because of the nature of my problem, he wanted to call me directly. We spoke for about 10 minutes and Kip repeated what Judy had said to me earlier on the morning. Kip also told me that Comcast was nothing without its customers and that they needed to do better. He said to me that they were going to learn from my experience and locate the account executive who was so unhelpful last night. Kip told me that I should have received a call from Comcast last night and that he was investigating what went wrong. He said that Comcast needed to do better. I appreciated his candor. The call ended well. Kip told me that I could call him directly in the future and I told him I would, if needed.

In a perfect world, people like the account executive I dealt with last night should have the ability to answer my questions and fix my problems. I hope that by my use of social media that I can help Comcast identify and fix their customer service problems.

In a matter of hours, using my blog and Twitter, I was able to reach out to a leader at Comcast and tell them about my issue. Kip was able to contact me and tell me that they are working to be better. Aside from working with some of the Comcast "account executives" on the phone, we have been very happy with the service Comcast provides. I can't remember the last time we did lost cable TV, telephone or internet access. Hopefully, Comcast can improve the performance of the people on the other end of the phone when customers like me call.