Memo to Verizon & Comcast, Sometimes Silence is Golden

You don’t have to explain some­thing you never said.

Pres­i­dent Calvin Coolidge

With money tight and prospects for the econ­omy doing worse I’m always on the look­out to save a buck.

So when a ven­dor call­ing for Com­cast said he could do some­thing for my bill if I made a deal I was will­ing to listen.

We have two old non HD TV’s in the house, this Christ­mas using Ama­zon points we picked up a cheap 32″ HD TV the first one in the house for $97 (con­trary to the com­ments they Did exist) but when I went to Com­cast to pay my bill and was told it would be $20 a month for an addi­tional box HD box (down to $10 for a lim­ited time as a pro­mo­tion) the idea of adding $120-$240 annu­ally to my bills was not an option. (Clearly I am not qual­i­fied to run for congress)

So when a few days ago a Com­cast sub­con­trac­tor called say­ing he could add that third box plus throw in the pay chan­nels I don’t have like HBO, Show­time Stars etc and all the chan­nels below 400 for two years for only $2 more a month with a two-​year com­mit­ment I told them I’d talk to the wife and if she was OK with it, we had a deal.

So after the wife said we could man­age $24 a year I waited for the call­back. It came as promised but with a dif­fer­ent sales guy who con­firmed the deal. We were ready to com­mit when I asked the $64,000 question:

I just want to con­firm, that $2 a month includes all taxes & fees right?

It turned out not to be the case, includ­ing Taxes & fees my bill would be about $8 a month more. That comes out to $100 a year. For some peo­ple $75 isn’t much but when you are pinch­ing pen­nies that’s one or two water bills.

I said, nope, can’t do it, I told him if he could guar­an­tee me a price no higher than $3 more a month, I’d go for it, but $8 a month was too much. If he could make the deal for $5 less, we were good.

He refused. I pressed I cajoled and dick­ered but noth­ing could pry that price down that extra $5, so when we hung up I fig­ured, maybe it was because it was a sub­con­trac­tor so I called Com­cast proper and tried to make the deal, nope, that extra $5 a month was a bridge too far.

I’ve had Com­cast for years and the ser­vice has been fine. I pay my bill in per­son so I can deal with the ladies at the booth who are friendly and know me by fedora , but I was pissed. They had changed my expec­ta­tion level and then dropped the ball. FIOS had just come to the area and if Ver­i­zon wanted me I was as ripe for the pick­ing as you could get.

So I called em.

I talked to the Ver­i­zon rep, he was very friendly. I told him exactly the fea­tures I needed, the chan­nels I could not do with­out (MeTV & BBC Amer­ica) I told him the inter­net speeds I needed and he quoted me a price bet­ter than Com­cast WITH a #300 Visa gift card on top of it as a bonus.

There was only one prob­lem, one of my old­est fiends had dropped Ver­i­zon like a rock a short time ago, I asked the Ver­i­zon rep to call me back the next evening after I talked to my friend to find out why. I named a time and was told I should expect the call. In between I spoke to my friend. He has a full range of fea­tures and his issue was of price not qual­ity. That was it since the qual­ity was there and the price was right it looked good to me!

I made it a point to be avail­able, can­celling my reg­u­lar Sat­ur­day night activ­i­ties and other oblig­a­tions. I started mak­ing prepa­ra­tions in antic­i­pa­tion of no longer using my com​cast​.net e-​mail addresses. I under­stood there would be some incon­ve­niences but I didn’t care. Com­cast had led me on and fum­bled the ball, As soon as that con­fir­ma­tion call from Ver­i­zon came it was good­bye Com­cast and Hello FIOS for at least two years, in writ­ing! As soon as the phone rang we were in business…

…it never did.

As the rep was in a dif­fer­ent time zone I waited, per­haps he thought 8 my time was 8 his time I waited two more hours and then a 3^rd and fourth.

Noth­ing!

Mind you I’m not one to change capri­ciously if I like a ser­vice I tend to stick with it. If Comcast’s sur­ro­gates hadn’t called to make that offer and kept me $5 away from a deal I would have been sat­is­fied to stay exactly where I was but Com­cast annoyed me and Verzion had a shot to take advan­tage of it.

They didn’t.

The end result I’m pissed off at Com­cast for rais­ing my expec­ta­tion and dash­ing them, I’m pissed off at Ver­i­zon for doing the same and I’m upset that I spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time on the phone with both for no effect, both of em might have done bet­ter to just be quiet…

…so tell me more about the Roku thing