Tom’s got a rather unpleasant Comcast experience he wrote about here and a twittering little birdie leads me to believe that more is on the horizon. The question is, when the company with a monopoly on your service doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about serving you what are you supposed to do about it?
You put pen to paper and let the local and national regulatory boards know about the bad service, that’s what. What we’re interested in is over here, their general information sheet.
Here’s what Tom should be concerned with (emphasis mine):
Cable operators may schedule appointments for installations and other service calls either at a specific time or, at a maximum, during a four-hour time block during normal business hours. Cable operators may also schedule service calls outside of normal business hours for the convenience of the customer. No appointment cancellations are permitted after the close of business on the business day prior to the scheduled appointment. If the cable installer or technician is running late and will not meet the specified appointment time, he or she must contact the customer and reschedule the appointment at the convenience of the subscriber. These requirements concerning installations, outages and service calls must ordinarily be met at least 95 percent of the time, measured quarterly, under normal operating conditions.
So, what you or Tom should do when Comcast comes down and screws you this way is make sure the FCC knows about their failures. These folks have been granted use of OUR land to run their monopoly cables and things over so they need to hold up their end of the bargain and provide appropriate service. If you have questions or your needs aren’t being met, you can call the toll-free number, 1-888-225-5322 (1-888-CALLFCC). A letter is worth a thousand nasty phone calls, however, so send your written complaints to:
FCC,
Cable Services Bureau,
445 12th Street, S.W.
Washington, D.C., 20554
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
Well I used to say something in my profile about not quite being a “tinker, tailor, soldier, or spy” but Tom stole that for our about us page, so I guess I’ll have to find another way to express that I am a man of many interests.
Hmm, guess I just did.
My tastes run the gamut from sophomoric to Shakespeare and in my “professional” life I’ve sold things, served beer, written software, and carried heavy objects… sometimes at the same place. It’s that range of loves and activities that makes it so easy for me to love DC – we’ve got it all.
