The Cellar - Cable Wars

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I know it's a tough economy and competition for customers is fierce, but are things really getting this ugly? If this is really happening, are contractors acting independently or on Comcast's behalf? Is this an argument for Comcast to stop using contractors or to eliminate their sales commissions?

I don't personally believe that upper management at Comcast would be dumb enough to ruin a national reputation getting caught doing something like this. But could a mid-level executive be that dumb? The problem with corporations is that when the stuff hits the fan, noone is there to take the blame. Even looking back to something like Watergate, noone ever proved that Nixon ever explicity authorized the Watergate break-in. His campaign and political party, however, engaged in numerous questionable activities on his behalf culminating in the break-in. Could the same be true here?

From here. The city is Springfield, Florida. If the allegations are true, then running a scam on the mother of a city commissioner is not a good idea.

Quote:

SPRINGFIELD – A sales push by Comcast into Springfield, the home of municipality-owned Springfield Cable, ended with an arrest and a felony charge against a Comcast employee.
Springfield police say that on Sept. 9 Kennedy Cao, 33, interrupted the Springfield Cable service to Myrtle Danley, a Springfield Cable customer and the mother of Commissioner Carl Curti. Danley stalled Cao long enough for Springfield police to arrive, and after Cao confessed to interrupting the service he was arrested and charged with unauthorized tampering with communications services, according to documents released by the Springfield Police Department.
Danley and dozens of other Springfield Cable customers, including Mayor Robert Walker, have had their service disconnected by contractors working for Comcast for the past several weeks, said Springfield Police Chief Phillip Thorne. One customer had her Springfield Cable service cut off four separate times, he added.

Quote:

Comcast officials said Cao was innocently acting on their behalf and got caught up in a bad situation. A contractor was, indeed, acting against Comcast policy and cutting off service to Springfield Cable customers, Comcast officials said, but that contractor was fired when Comcast was made aware of the issue.

Quote:

However, Cao was not part of the group that was cutting off service, Schnitker said. He was “innocently” performing a test on Danley’s cable box that interrupted service for about a minute, and he did not know that Danley was another cable company’s customer, Schnitker said.
“He could not actually tell from the pole if it was Comcast or Springfield, and he interrupted the service for, I believe, less than a minute,” Schnitker said.
Walker said he wants to believe Schnitker.
“I don’t want to think that Comcast is deliberately having it done,” he added. However, two letters were sent to Comcast officials and those letters were ignored until Cao was arrested, Walker said

I dunno, though it's hard to believe a contractor would go out of their way to do anything not in their contract.

Hell, Comcast often accidentally cuts of service to one apartment when they install another in our apartment building at work. At that's their own customer. My most recent run-in with them was when they were looking for the key to a wiring cabinet. A cabinet owned by Comcast, installed by Comcast, with a lock on it that was placed by Comcast.

Oh, I definitely believe the guy could have done it just because he wanted to. Some people simply like the thrill of screwing other people, especially if they can rationalize it as acceptable since they're "helping" their employer. There was a famous case of competitor sabotage at my husband's company's datacenter. After a series of surprising and oddly coincidental server failures across several companies that were hosted there, they realized it was a service technician for a specific brand of high-end server who was deliberately breaking the rival brand's servers along the datacenter aisles. What he would do is carry a little whoopee-cushion type bag inside his shirt, right under his arm, and as he walked past the fan air intakes he would give a quick squeeze and release a puff of graphite powder to be sucked into the machines. He did literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage before they caught him, and they never would have believed the balls of his setup if they hadn't caught him on the security tape and arrested him with the bag still strapped to his side.

We have Comcast. We have not had any unusual problems that anyone who has a data line have not had. They have been fairly responsive and the contractors who come to service our line, modems, household problems, etc have been good. I do worry about some of the issues I read about. But this has just not been a problem for us.