Comcast punishes new customers by charging them more
Maybe having an effective monopoly over a particular service makes you completely disregard new customer acquisition, but if I was running things at Comcast, I’d be playing around with a few numbers. Here is some interesting information: as a current customer I can order internet with a promotion that will run me about $377 for a year (something like $20 for 6 months and $43 after that). As a new customer I would be paying $575 for the same thing (at $33 for 3 months and $53 after that).
Yep, I’d be paying a $200 premium in the first year to become a Comcast customer. A nice welcome package.
I hope new services like Verizon FiOS start giving Comcast a run for their money. This market needs competition, badly.
Update 1: Today a comcast representative contacted me by email after reading my blog post. Big kudos to them for paying attention to the blogosphere. I am shocked and awed. Will update again with what comes of this conversation…
Update 2: I got on the phone with one Christina from the Oakland area who was very helpful in resolving my problems for me. Certainly I was impressed that less than 24 hours after blogging about my issue, someone had cared enough to call me and get my issues resolved.
They were able to give me the $19.99*6 months internet deal that current customers get (with $43 ongoing instead of $53). What sucks for other people is that I had to complain loudly before any of this was taken care of. This should be the standard customer treatment. They also threw in some free installs and a year of $33 cable service.
Oh, by the way the comcast guy lied to me yesterday saying the absolute cheapest cable package was the $33 package. I asked him twice - should have taken a screenshot (their chat client very cleverly doesn’t allow you to cut and paste). There is actually still basic cable for $22 but it’s not published on the website and for some reason the support guy wouldn’t tell me about it.
So - impressed with the personalized service today, but that doesn’t change the fact that the website and online support people could not get me the same deal. On one hand I understand - they want to silence the complaint and turn me into a supporter. They certainly have shown great promise with the way they handled this. On the other hand there need to be some core changes in the Comcast mentality. They won’t be the big boys in town for ever so they need to start focusing on customer service. And that all begins with a clearly laid out homepage (don’t bury ongoing prices in small print), transparent pricing plans with no hidden ‘workarounds’ necessary (new customers should pay the same as current customers), and more customer service people like Christina :-)
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