Dear Comcast: I Cannot Send Them an Email or Physical Mail, So This Will Have to Do

Gary North

Match 16, 2009

Today, I tried to contact Comcast: www.Comcast.net. I was able to get through on the phone. That's good. But that was expensive for Comcast. Far cheaper is email.

The folks in charge of email have developed a clever way to transfer the burden of dealing with customers to the folks manning the phones.

To contact Comcast by email, you must first go through an options list. You must include your zip code.

Then, after you have filled in your zip code and clicked one of the three divisions, you get a form. You probably fill it in without examining it. You don't notice what should be obvious. See for yourself.

What's missing?

A Submit or Send button. You can't actually send them anything.

Then they offer an on-line chat feature. I tried this. Every time I clicked Send, I got another screen of links. I clicked links. I got another screen full of links. I filled in five screens in succession. I never got a response.

So, Comcast solves customer service problems the expensive way: by telephone.

I tried to mail them a physical letter. I could not find an address on the site, even in Terms of Service and Privacy Statement.

This is what every salaried technician dreams of: keeping complaints away from management. Complaints might lead to new rules from on high that make non-telephone salaried technicians' jobs more burdensome.

Managers don't personally go through the screens once a week to make sure the lines of communication are wide open. They don't hire some $10/hour person to do this. Managers are asleep at the wheel.

Here is a chart of its stock's performance: a company with a lock on local cable service.