Looks like Mount Hood upped the ante. They fined Comcast $43,899 for failing to notify customers about service changes last October:
[www.bizjournals.com]

They saved well over $12K in providing shitty customer service!

I was one of the people affected by Comcast deciding to suspend my service for using too much bandwidth (but they wouldn't tell me HOW MUCH was ok).

They should roast in the hot place where the guy with the horns and point stick presides. Along with Verizon.

Another Montgomery Co. resident here, quite happy to hear about the fine even if it ends up being not much more than symbolic. I hadn't even reported all my issues to the county, although I looked up the website after my last round of service calls. The majority of my problems were caused by Cableview, the contractor that handles installation for Comcast in my area. When I first got cable installed out here, it took 5 scheduled appointments (only one of which happened within the 3 hr window I was given) and 3 more visits to the customer service center in Rockville to get fully installed cable, internet, and (mostly) functional DVR.
Of course, I hope someone is watching to make sure that they don't just include that 12K in their next rate increase.

@Avohir: At the last quarterly review (which was actually held 2 quarters ago due to the unfortunate and untimely death of our cable administrator), revoking the franchise was mentioned. But it wasn't brought up again during this review.

Frankly, I can't figure out why Comcast's franchise hasn't been revoked. They consistently violate many terms of the agreement. It makes you wonder just what a cable company has to do to get their franchise revoked.

@dwarf74: The customer service standards for cable tv service were written by the FCC. btw - any jurisdiction can enforce them if they want to, so those of you who don't live in Montgomery County MD, but like what you read in the pamphlet, ask your local franchise authority why they don't enforce the FCC's customer service standards.

Too bad that amt is pennies to comcast, since they are comcastic at ensuring they earn well beyond that amount to write it off.

@aishel: If you're in any of those apartment buildings near Reisterstown or Owings Mills, you're screwed as far as cable goes.

I want you to know that we are committed to customer service and have made significant improvements over the last year in Montgomery County with plans for additional customer service enhancements in 2008. For example, in 2007, we invested $290 million throughout the region, added 300 employees and announced plans for a 500-seat regional call center in Largo, Maryland that will open early this year.

That's Comcast's customer service everywhere, not just in Montgomery County. Here in California, I've got an ongoing problem with my Comcast internet service that has been going on for -- no exaggeration -- TWO YEARS:

My net's up, my net's down, it's up, it's down -- dozens and dozens of times a week. Every time I schedule a tech "supervisor" to come and fix it, they send out a low-level schmuck who lacks basic computer knowledge for the umpteenth time, and nothing is ever fixed.

When I demand that Comcast stop charging me for the service I'm paying for but not getting, they tell me the best they can do is a prorated discount for each individual occurrence of interrupted service, provided I report each instance as it happens. This is, of course, an impossibility, as simply reaching a human being at their Customer Service department can take as long as two or three of my service outages, and I can't possibly report each individual occurrence. On top of that, Comcast's solution of a prorated discount for lost minutes of service translates to such a miniscule amount as to make it not even remotely worth the trouble. $10 off my bill for an hour of hassle and time lost? GOSH, that's awfully kind of you, Comcast!

Oh, and my favorite thing about Comcast's policy here? The fact that they'll happily extend a more satisfactory discount or refund when my case is closed and my problem's been resolved. After two years of ongoing non-stop trouble, I sincerely doubt I'll ever see this happen, nor will I ever see that money.

Comcast is useless, no matter where they are. Until a judge slaps them with tens of millions in fines, it's clear that they won't change their business practices, and they'll continue to rip people off and offer nothing in the way of compensation.

Damages of $12,000 won't force them to do anything.

@aishel: That's one step better than me. The last time I had a problem with Comcast (I also live in MoCo) I called during Monday Night Football about two months ago because my HD ESPN was out. Probably called around 8:30 - 9:00 PM. The auto-recording simply said: we're too busy, call back later and hung up on me (probably a dozen or so times over the course of an hour). Never did get through. The ESPN outage was fixed the next day, however, so I had no reason to call back and escalate.

-sincerely, a montgomery county resident

I work for one of Comcast's competetors. We get fined
all the time too. But whenever we do, we hear about it big time. People get fired over this constantly.

A $12,000 fine will teach Comcast two lessons:

(1) It's cheaper to pay the fine than to improve customer service

(2) If the fines get too high, then just contribute more to the campaigns of the County Councilmembers. That worked for real estate developers in Montgomery County, so it will work for Comcast.

As a former employee of Comcast of Montgomery Co I can speak that customer serivice is horrible here. (I also am a Montgomery County resident.) Comcast just could not do anything right by these people. I mean not fixing problems when they occured. Hold times over 30 mins (on saturday at least). I am so glad I am out of there.

I live there, and I've got to say, their service is abysmal. During install, they totally bungled everything - albeit in such a way that I'm getting more than what I paid for.

While it would be nice, it's pretty much impossible to guarantee a call will always be answered by a human within 30 seconds... Most call centers aim for 80% within 20 (sometimes 60) seconds. In order to reach 100%/30 seconds, the company needs to staff for peak times and will end up very overstaffed the rest of the day. When a call center is greatly overstaffed, it's basically hemorrhaging money.

I work for a company that prides itself on its customer service and is generally overstaffed. Even on our best days, we don't reach 100%.

I have no doubt this fine costs far, far less than it would cost to overstaff their national call center. Heck; it would probably cost $12,000 just to hire & train one or two representatives, never mind their benefits and pay.

The TCI rep was at least 7 months pregnant too. I think they were trying for a sympathy play that failed.

@scoosdad: After seeing the requirements, I'd have to agree with you. Knowing comcast, they don't have a chance in hell of meeting any of those in their current state.

Has anyone ever, in the history of the universe, called comcast and gotten a live person (outsourced or not) in under a minute? It sounds like urban legend to me.

Still sounds like a lot less than it would cost Comcast to hire more CSRs. They will probably gladly pay the $12k if it saves them $50k in salaries.