When you decide to call your cable, telephone or Internet provider for customer service, don’t be surprised the next time you open your bill and find that your name has been changed to something rather insulting.
This is what happened to one Spokane, Washington couple, who canceled cable their service with Comcast. According to USA Today, the couple opened up their last bill from Comcast and noticed that an employee had changed the husband’s name from Ricardo Brown to “A–hole Brown.”
It was reported that the Brown family contacted Comcast to then have the profane-laced name changed, but she was met with quite the defiance. Lisa Brown then told the national newspaper that the family was having financial difficulties and just wanted to get rid of the cable aspect of their package because it costs them $60 per month.
When she informed Comcast about this she was referred to a retention specialist and urged to sign up for a new two-year contract. Brown insisted that she “was never rude” to any of the staff members during the exchange.
A columnist for USA Today, Christopher Elliott, wrote on his blog that he spoke with the company and was assured by Steve Kipp, Comcast’s vice president of communications for the Washington region, that Comcast was “conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened.”
Soon after, Comcast confirmed that Brown would be receiving a refund for two years of service from the company and noted that it would be working with the Brown family to ensure this never takes place again.
Finally, the individual who revised the name is no longer working for the firm.
But this isn’t the first time that such an incident has occurred.
The newspaper columnist received an influx of comments from previous customers who also had their names changed to expletives. For instance, Julie Swano had her bill addressed to “Whore Julie Swano” and it took her an entire month speaking to 20 different customer service representatives to have it changed back to her real name.
Meanwhile, Carolina Heredia noticed the name on her online bill was adjusted to “dummy.” This meant that every time she would log-in to her account it would tell her, “Hello Dummy.”
Another customer experienced a variation of the term “F— You.” Maida Bezdjian saw her account name modified to Fakoe Bez. Sako, her son, thinks this was meant to insult the family because they simply canceled their television and telephone services.
“Each and every customer deserves to be treated with respect,” says Comcast in a statement to Ars Technica. “We fell short of that and are taking immediate steps to make sure we fix this. We’ve ended our relationship with the vendor call center that was involved with the first incident and are investigating the others.”
Indeed, there is a wide spectrum of these types of examples to showcase Comcast may have a customer service problem on its hands. It may not be surprise then to find out Comcast was named the worst company in America last year.
