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@Jaysyn: My thoughts exactly. 700 or so of those votes must have been from email addresses that end in \"@comcast.net\".
@Jaysyn: My thoughts exactly. 700 or so of those votes must have been from email addresses that end in \"@comcast.net\".
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Im astounded Ron Paul didn't win!
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I dropped Comcast for Dish and after about 2 weeks on a SUNDAY a Comcast Contractor shows up to collect my box. Since I had Analog there wasn't a box. I let him into the yard to put a terminator on the line from the pole. I asked him who he had: DirectTV.
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Ooooo, Comcast is watching us!
Dear Comcast
You suck. You will never see a dime from me. Ever
Love,
KingFriday
Obviously Comcast management reads this. I'd like to personally tell them they can suck ol' Buck. (Watch the teeth, please)
That's like the least example of astroturfing (i.e. artificial grass-roots) I've ever seen. When I used to work for a Verizon-owned company we would frequently get emails from up top exhorting employees to write their congresspeople encouraging a vote on various bills that would benefit Verizon, and they had the gall to bill it as true grass-roots politics. I even saw this in academia; I and all other USC students recently received an email from the powers that be encouraging us to protest to the Coliseum comission to let USC take over the historic structure. The result? Death threats and harassment, naturally.
It's actually quite funny that Comcast cares enough about a web poll to do this. And also a rather nice sign that Consumerist is Important. Of course, we already knew that.
Oh yeah, right, as long as Comcast is reading this, just wanted to mention that your service was outstanding while I had it for 8 years (I've moved now to a Cablevision area). I didn't have too many outages, the channel selection was great, the internet speed was good, and I never had any billing problems.
However, I'm very disappointed at your lying sack of shit representative who gave me a promotional rate when I upgraded to digital cable while assuring me on his fucking dying grandmother that the rate he was quoting me was the regular rate. I checked with the girl in the office when I was returning equipment and she said oh I see you still had two months on your promotional rate. Nice!
My suggestion to you: Stop stuffing polls and teach your reps to be ethical human beings. Twats!
@rachmanut: This is why management is watching/concerned about simple things like web polls:
[www.businessweek.com]
Their subscription base is getting hammered (no pun intended :)
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Sorry, Comcast. You had the opportunity to keep my business since I had been with one of your acquired companies for years. We even stuck with your company for a little over a year until you started taking channels away from us pretty much on a monthly basis (claiming that if we didn't want to pay more than our \"grandfathered\" rate, channels would have to be taken away.) Then when we had to deal with your Customer Service more than before, we came to realize you didn't really want your business.
We finally dropped you. And when I went to the local Comcast office to drop off our box, I stood behind a large number of other folks doing the same thing.
But, as they say, it's all good. We have SO MANY channels through our new provider, our DSL puts our cable modem to shame, and we're actually paying about $15 less than we paid your company when we dropped you over 4 years ago.
Ah...Comcast. The New AOL.
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LOL @ Badgeman46
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Haha I wonder what the poll results would have been if the obvious Comcast-employee votes were filtered out.
Comcast, I was so pissed when I had to move from a FiOS area to your service. I can't freaking wait until AT&T UVerse comes to Chicago so I can get an ISP that doesn't mess with Bittorrent, have outages at inconvenient times and charge an arm and a leg for the slow speeds.
I paid less for my FiOS internet which was 15/5 than I pay now for your crappy regular service.
I wonder if FiOS also sent a similar e-mail to their employees...
Dear Comcast,
I currently live in a housing complex where my only option for Television is comcast. I can not hang up a sat dish on my roof and there is no FIOS. I hate you so much that I am basing a new home purchase on the fact that the house will be able to get FIOS as soon as I move in.
How does it feel to be HATED? Not just disliked but HATED.
Kind of funny that they would think that tampering with a poll would change their public perception on this site. The only real way to change public perception around here is to start treating your customers better.
When I saw this poll I was thinking comcast would do something like this.
Technically - the e-mail didn't tell them to go vote for Comcast. It just said \"Go Vote\"
It would be hilarious if most of the Comcast employees actually voted for FIOS :P
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@skiffer. thats what i was thinking. it says \"Share your voice\", which they did. Not even the comcast employees like comcast!
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@Black Bellamy: Actually, Ron Paul did win. The mainstream media took him off the poll results for more morally corrupt and Constitutionally repressed candidates. =)
I thought the poll was interesting. Comcast v. FioS. Well, if FioS was in all the areas that Comcast exists, and if Comcast had any product that came close to those speeds, maybe there would be a fair comparison. No wonder they wanted to cheat.
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Dear Comcast,
After checking your rates and seeing that you wanted $50 for Internet and $52 for extended analog cable, I decided that it would be much cheaper to pay $42 for DSL and $17 for Netflix. I'm now using the $43 a month savings towards more beer to enjoy while watching my Netflix movies.
Every company I have worked for has sent out emails asking employees to \"stuff\" the online ballot boxes whenever the companies were part of a poll. Usually, we were warned to do so form our home computer, so the chances of discovery were reduced. This is why you should never believe any of those stupid rewards you see (voted best new product, best new company, best whatever). They're all BS.
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Just switched to Fios cable and internet from Comcast. Using Speakeasy's test, between here (suburbs of Boston) and NYC, I have a DL/UL rate of 20486/3092 kbps, with slower rates for more distant locations.
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Regardless of whether Comcast sucks or not (Never had it, so I don't know), how is this different from any other company asking people to vote for them? Websites do it all the time; sure it's readers and not employees, but it's not like Comcast forced their employees to do it, or withheld wages or anything. *shrug* What's the big deal?
To Comcast:
Thank you for previously lying about cancelling my service, and now sending me to collections for service I never received.
Love,
Me.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if 90% of those FiOs votes are from Comcast employees.
I mean, who wouldn't want those speeds?
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Considering that Comcast only got a couple hundred votes, in spite of their spamming their many-thousands-of-employees maillist, I suspect that many of them hate their work so much that they voted for FIOS.
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lol pwned
Since they're watching,I would like Comcast to know that the second FIOS or any other service becomes available, I will be dropping them as fast as possible. Their crappy, overpriced service with horrid DVR boxes are just begging to be kicked to the curb.
Skiffer wrote
\"Technically - the e-mail didn't tell them to go vote for Comcast. It just said \"Go Vote\"
It would be hilarious if most of the Comcast employees actually voted for FIOS :P \"
You can find faults in any company, AT&T will no way provide any service to me, I will use 2 cans and a string first! Now, how many AT&T employees did I just upset with that comment? Maybe some, maybe none. You don't know how many Comcast employees voted, or how they voted. Its human nature to complain and whine about things…some more than others.
By they way, never have problems with them…
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Is it possible to tell which votes came from within Comcast's corporate network? It'd be funny if Comcast employees voted for Verizon....
I would go back to no internet before going back to comcast.
It is interesting to discover that in this \"poll\" FIOS won out over comcast by greater than two to one. Is the service THAT much better? I'd like to find out.
When I went to Comcast this morning to ask them about what they could do to compete to keep my business (which they have had now in California and Washington State for over 15 years). You know what they said? In a nutshell, that I should keep my existing service because it was \"better\" than Verizon. They did not want to compete on price, even though the Verizon pricing put side by side to Comcast for the same basic services was far lower than Comcast (in some cases by 50% less). There was no action on their part to attempt to keep me as a customer, simply a comment that said, \"well, if that's what you want to do, we can't stop you\" and that was a direct quote.
Well Comcast, when Verizon comes knocking at my door this afternoon, I will put them side by side with the existing product that I get from you now (combined with what I get from Vonage) and if they can do better (which I think they will), I'll probably switch. They won't get my cell service (which I'm keeping with T-mobile), but I don't see a reason, if they can provide a better service for less money why I shouldn't switch.
Oh and Comcast: Even though you say you have superior customer service, by NOT allowing your customer service people the latitude to compete with other services to retain your customers, especially those that have been with you 15 years, then you have a serious problem. I can predict with absolute certainty when I cancel my account that you will come to me with a deal to try to save the account, but by then it will be too late. If you can't get that point, then you don't deserve the business.
Stay tuned to see what happens next!
Well, something interesting happened today when Verizon came out to call: They lied. More than once:
1. The original guy, a Joe Williams, came to my door last week with a brochure stating that I could get cable/phone/internet, with more than 250 Digital channels, a multi room DVR, etc etc. for $109.95/mo plus tax and fees on for 1 yr contract. Sounds like a great deal, no? I called him to set up a conversation after my earlier conversation with Comcast and he sent out one of his guys, named \"Steve (last name to follow)\", who proceeded to tell me that the services I outlined would cost over $150.00/mo. When I queried him about the brochure, he said no where does the services state that they are free. I pointed out to him that no where on the brochure that it stated that the inclusions that were mentioned were at an extra cost (even those marked with an asterisk). He had no good answer.
2. After we negotiated a deal down to about $125.00/mo plus or minus, we checked to see when we could install FIOS and come to find out that FIOS was not available here. In fact, he couldn't get anyone locally to tell him when FIOS would be available. When I pressed him to talk to Joe who said it was available, Joe confirmed to him over the phone that he had been mistaken about the availability of FIOS in my area. At that point, Steve said he'd check with his technician in the area and get a real answer and call me back. It has been two hours now since I spoke to him and no callback. How much do you want to bet that I won't get a callback, because FIOS isn't going to be available anytime soon?
3. When I called Verizon to complain about this situation, I made three calls. The first call I waited about 10 minutes, then got transferred to Washington DC, when I clearly said that I lived in Washington State. The second call, I got transferred twice and after waiting about 11 minutes, I got a \"this number has been disconnected\". Now I was starting to get upset. The third call to Verizon got through their phone tree only to discover their office had been \"closed\"...when they are suppose to be open until 5pm.
At this point, I made a decision to not pursue Verizon and go back to Comcast and have them look at my existing service to see if it can be improved technically. I got a customer service agent right away, he said that they had a upgraded bundle for far less money than what Verizon was going to charge for their service...but I still decided not to make any changes until they fixed the service issues here.
Ultimately, I may go with a Comcast bundle, as the phone service is a landline type service rather than VOIP, which in an emergency does not work unless you have an independent battery back up (which I do, but it is limited). Right now, I am so upset with Verizon that I am tempted to make a media inquiry to warn other people of this false advertising. Verizon should pay a price for not only wasting my time, but attempting to convert me to a technology that did not exist (aka \"vaporware\").
So, if you are in the Seattle area, beware of these guys that are going door to door selling Verizon FIOS. A) Make them check to see that it is available and B) make sure that if they quote you a price, that the price remains the same as when they quote you the first time....aka the \"bait and switch\".
Beware of VERIZON FIOS!!!!
I guess Comcast employess know they suck too?