If she was so concerned about being able to make emergency calls, she definitely should not be on a VoIP solution. Otherwise, good for her !

But you can't help buy admire her balls... crazy and unjustified as they are.

I think even the woman thinks the arrest was justified. However, I hope that when I'm a senior citizen, I am feisty enough to hammer my consumer complaint home.

Comcast employee: "I'm sorry but we can't do anyth..."

Old Lady: "Stop... Hammer Time!"

AWESOME

In other news...'Cable TV & Internet Aren't As Reliable As Electricity Or Water Utilities...News @ 7 ....'

then again if Internet charged monthly prices like Electricity Companies, maybe they would be reliable....

@louisb3: As per your comment, terrorist are desperate people, so should we automatically justify their actions?

Violence is unjustifiable, because employees in the office had nothing to do with her install.

I nominate Mona Shaw for "Consumerist of the Year".

Did anyone thought about PEOPLE WHO WORK THERE? How did they FEEL? These employees didn't have anything to do with install!

Will they be able to sleep after seeing a crazy women coming in with a HAMMER and destroying their office?

This women is a criminal, and I hope she gets some time in jail for her actions. And a psych evaluation.

Nothing justifies terrorising employees, means do not justify the end.

There a dozen ways she could have got their attention in a civilized way.

I can tell you which posters have never had a cell phone or a home internet connection :-)

This reeks of Verizon viral marketing.

"I'm so uphappy w/ Comcast I smashed up their office and now I'm going back to Verizon!"

No excuse. I can understand her frustration, but becoming a criminal isn't the answer.

Is anyone else a little disturbed that this was apparently a planned event on the customer's part? Unless she happens to tote a hammer around with her, she was sitting at home, decided "that'll show 'em!" and managed to drive all the way to Comcast with the intent to smash stuff up. Yeah, I've had some revenge fantasies for my cable providers, but I've never put any of them into action, and I'd like to think that at some point, perhaps before I was charging the office door screaming "BANZAI!", I'd cool off and ask myself exactly WTF I was doing.

Still, I kinda like that it happened. And to everyone complaining that she should be locked up even though she's elderly, please remember that the main purpose of locking people up is to prevent future crimes. I suspect some 25-year-old guy who does this is much more likely to experience recurring rage-fueled violent outbursts than Granny McWantscable.

I'm Mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

You go girl! If only you threw a tv at them...

My Comcast office has that too, and the office is in the safest town in America. (I mean that quite literally. That study done earlier in the year ranking every town in America based on violent crimes? This is the town that ranked #1.)

If they feel they need bulletproof glass in this town, I'd say they know perfectly well how angry they make their customers.

GO GRANNY!!!!

Besides, sfjon, did you consider that she might have been signing up for the triple play more for the internet access so she could have a more convenient method with which to contact family members in Iraq?

@IRSistherootofallevil:

Yes, $2 Million per customer complaint is perfectly reasonable. After all, all customer complaints are perfectly justified, and $2 million is a reasonable amount for a delay in getting cable installed, given that it's just about what the life of one American is worth (based on how much more income people demand for doing riskier jobs).

Also, what government bailouts? Haven't seen any in the cable space in, oh, ever.

@ArtDonovansLoveChild.: Says the man who's obviously never had to deal with Concast.

You could bring a hammer to an office and just use it to make an unbearable din. A large rubber mallet would be perfect for this because it's light compared to a similar-sized steel mallet, looks more impressive, and will make a fuck of a racket when banged on the counter or the bullet-proof glass.

Of course, the right catch phrase, since we are dealing with telephone servic here, is "Can you hear me now‽‽"

At 75, this woman should know better than to act like a crazy person. Boo hoo, she couldn't get her cable installed - there's a reason to destroy somebody else's property and terrorize the employees in the office - who probably had nothing to do with any delays in getting her crystal clear reception of Murder She Wrote and The Lawrence Welk Show. Put things in perspective people. We have kids dying in Iraq, but you get all bent out of shape when you can't see Oprah. Every last one of you who applaud or condone this 75 year old thug ought to be ashamed.

If she had been male she would still be in jail.

If she had been a 35 year old male she would have been tazed.

If she had been a 35 year old black male she would have been shot.

There is never a good excuse for violence, and being old shouldnt get you special treatment

Stop.

Hammer time.

Any legislators out there read these blogs?

How about getting into the 21st century?

Why is the "last mile" still a monopoly instead of a city service? Before I took my Adelphia cable box and nearly tossed it through their window the service was abysmal. Dish is a pretty horrid company to deal with but the lesser of two evils.

Why don't municipalities take over the last mile coax and/or fiber and charge residents $10-20/mo for the connection. We would then be free to choose our voice, data, and entertainment providers based on cost, content, and performance.

My power has always been far more reliable than my cable TV ever was. I would have no problem letting the power company handle my "last mile" cable.

Just wondering...will she be tried by a jury of her "peers", i.e. other Comcast subscribers? Because no jury consisting of Comcast subscribers, current or former, would ever convict this woman. I sure as hell wouldn't. What if the D.A. and/or judge are Comcast subscribers too?

Maybe getting crappy customer service isn't as dramatic as, say, being disenfranchised, and it probably doesn't merit acts of violence. Nevertheless, the woman has a point; these large, near-monopolistic companies treat their customers like shit. This is the natural result: when people can't resolve their problems any other way, ridiculous actions suddenly don't seem so implausible.

Awesome! She doesn't take any crap from the system.

The free market should apply to utilities. And government bailout of those scumbags that run utilities should stop. And seeing from the service that comcast or verizon or SBC or whatever provides, public utilities don't have the teeth that it needs, justl ike the CPSC.

They should be able to fine utility companies $2 mil PER CUSTOMER COMPLAINT. That should get comcast and verizon and whoever else to improve the customer experience.

Yay!

She should plead insanity. Insanity caused by Comcast's awful CS.

Though I don't advocate this kind of action against a company, I do find it mildly entertaining. I hope that those high-level Comcast phone #'s work, or else I'm buying stock in hammers.

Hrm, despite all the verizon problems I have seen, I say she is making the better choice. I have never had a bad experience with Verizon (3mbps DSL). Maybe they happen to be good in my area for some lucky reason.

hammer? why, gas for a chainsaw to expensive? at least the walmart guy was able to return his shotgun runds to walmart regardless of how walmart felt