Mark Carroll's Journal

I received a surprising text message that Comcast were charging me for unreturned equipment. I know that I returned everything of significance, I still have the receipts for the cable television box and the streaming television box, I provided my own cable modem. I tried the live chat on their website but it turns out to be entirely automated, it arranged for one of their representatives to telephone me.

The call came, I was to press 1 to confirm I was available, I did so and was told, invalid response then it hung up. This happened over and over again. I also tried 9 to cancel the callback, also saying the number instead of dialling it, but no luck, the calls kept coming. Eventually, they texted me saying that I can reply X to cancel the callback: I did so, and it texted me back to say it couldn't. (!) Wanting to get some sleep that night, after a few more tries I blocked their number.

The next day, I complained via their forums about how difficult it is to just talk to somebody. It's not like I didn't try a few times but I couldn't navigate their automated menus to speak to a relevant representative, it just didn't seem to anticipate my kind of enquiry: for instance, if calling about a previous account, the system would not let me talk to somebody until I had attempted to pay a past balance, which makes no sense in context.

It turns out that one may direct-message Xfinity customer service via the forum site! If only that had been rather clearer much sooner. The conversation revealed that they don't see that I have equipment to return or anything to pay. I still get texts from them about this equipment, along with a link that brings me to a page listing no equipment, but their customer service just shrug and explain that it's an automated system as if that absolves humans of any responsibility. I can't help but vaguely worry that somehow I ended up with multiple accounts.

I pay international roaming for all this fussing about on the telephone. The time and annoyance probably cost me more. As mentioned previously, Comcast had already left a bitter taste in my mouth by charging me a termination fee for, as they frame it, deciding to move out of their service area. No, I didn't decide that, I decided to not have my family live amid the violence, racism, and school shootings, their service area really was not part of the decision in any regard. Checking maps of where these things tend to happen, I didn't see any obvious safe havens in the country. I wasn't choosing to escape Comcast, though one can imagine why they might suspect customers of wanting to.