Comcast fights hometown, says report on poor customer service “inaccurate”

The City of Philadelphia yesterday released a 571-page report assessing Comcast’s service, and the cable company is not taking the report’s criticism lying down.

“We appreciate some of the positive conclusions in the consultant’s report, but overall believe many of the findings are inaccurate, over-stated, or misleading, and we will deliver comprehensive proof of those facts to the City,” Comcast executives LeAnn Talbot and David Cohen wrote in a post titled, “A Philadelphia Love Story.”

Comcast’s headquarters are in Philadelphia, but in some respects the company provides worse service to its hometown than to other major cities, according to the community needs assessment and system technical review conducted by consulting firm CBG Communications. Comcast’s 15-year cable television franchise agreement with Philadelphia expires later this year. It authorizes the company to use public rights-of-way in order to operate cable service.

“When Comcast signaled the start of the franchise renewal process in 2012, this Administration decided that cable customers and the City deserved a first-ever needs assessment report,” Mayor Michael Nutter said in his announcement of the report’s release yesterday. “I fully endorse the report’s recommendations, but they are not the only issues we are raising with the company. We need changes now and for the future, and to that end City government is strengthening its capacity to engage in regulatory oversight to ensure these improvements are maintained each and every day.”

A telephone survey found that 74 percent of Comcast cable subscribers were satisfied overall with their service, but satisfaction levels were still “one to eleven percent lower than Comcast franchise areas in selected markets where similar studies were completed in the last six years,” the report said. The survey included about 400 current Comcast TV subscribers and 400 residents who are not subscribers. Only 36 percent of the non-subscribers said they had never been Comcast customers.

Bills in Philadelphia were higher than in Denver; Vancouver, Washington; and Portland, Oregon’s Metropolitan Area Communications Commission (MACC) franchise area:

Credit: City of Philadelphia

Seventeen percent of subscribers said they experienced cable outages of at least 24 hours. Nineteen percent reported problems with picture clarity or reception. More than a third of people who reported technical problems were dissatisfied with Comcast’s response time in fixing the problem.

One point of contention centers on Comcast’s call centers.

“Sixty-four percent called the Comcast Customer Service operation in the last year,” the report states. “The primary reason was related to billing questions (28 percent). Of these, 15 percent had received a busy signal when calling the company which is substantially greater than the 3 percent level specified by the FCC and Philadelphia’s Franchise Customer Service Standards requirements. Additionally, 61 percent indicated that their call had not been answered within 30 seconds, including the time left on hold, which is also far greater than the tolerance allowed (10 percent) under the Franchise and FCC Customer Service Standards.”

Comcast disputes these conclusions.

“Importantly, the consultant never contacted Comcast to solicit objective, verifiable data, resulting in conclusions that are not based on easily available and decisive data, and that are simply untrue,” Comcast wrote. “For example, the report suggests that 15 percent of respondents claim they recall receiving a busy signal when calling customer service and that 61 percent claim their calls were not answered in 30 seconds—our actual data, which is reported as part of FCC compliance, demonstrates that less than half a percent (0.5 percent) of Philadelphians received busy signals and that more than 90 percent of calls were answered in 30-seconds or less, both fully compliant with FCC customer service standards. Similar discrepancies can be found in virtually all aspects of the consultant’s findings and report.

“This type of initial exchange and the back-and-forth that will follow is not uncommon during franchise renewal discussions and negotiations, and we wanted to take this opportunity to assure you that Comcast’s relationship with and commitment to the City of Philadelphia has never been stronger,” Comcast added.

Comcast pointed out the contributions it has made to Philadelphia through taxes, franchise fees, jobs and construction, and charitable contributions. But numerous Philadelphia residents have a low opinion of the company.

Comcast has customer service problems around the country

Philadelphia’s survey comes as the federal government reviews Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Comcast has admitted that its customer service needs improvement; many failures have been made public over the past year, including customers’ billing account names being changed to insults like “asshole,” “whore,” “dummy,” and “super bitch.”

Among 432 survey respondents asked about customer service, “[t]he most common words found within this group were terrible (68), better (64), poor (61), horrible (48), awful (32), lacking (20), bad (15), [and] horrendous (6).”

“Comcast is a monopoly that has doubled our rates in three years, to pay for sports television rights,” one respondent said. “Their rates need to be government regulated just like any other monopoly. Consumers are getting screwed by this monopoly.”

Comcast isn’t the only option in Philadelphia. Thirty-seven percent of Philadelphia residents surveyed had home Internet access that isn’t Comcast, primarily through Verizon DSL or FiOS. The cable company RCN also offers TV, Internet, and phone service in Philadelphia. Some non-Comcast subscribers also reported getting television service through satellite.

People who do not subscribe to Comcast said that cost was the main reason. “The primary reason cited was the cost of service (35 percent), followed by 21 percent who indicated they were satellite subscribers and another 15 percent who don’t watch or don’t have time to watch television,” the report said. “For those who once, but no longer, subscribe to Comcast, cost was also the primary reason for no longer subscribing (58 percent). This was followed by those who have billing issues/problems (7 percent), those who experienced service problems (5 percent) and those who experienced poor customer service (2 percent).”