Lucky that Comcast has those local monopolies on high speed internet and cable television service, or it might actually suffer

When you’re a business who’s caught harassing customers, swearing at customers, and engaging in acts that might be considered tantamout to fraud, you’re likely sweating bullets as you may soon lose your customers, your revenue, and your business. That might be your reaction that is, unless you happen to be Comcast Corp. (CMCSA). In that case no worries, as your customers can’t escape your local monopolies.

I. Demonizing the Customer

This week we were greeted by another report of a Comcast employee or employee(s) brazenly billing customers using profane language.

The new report follows a similar bizarre billing in January. That incident affected a married couple in Spokane, Wash. Comcast had just slapped them with a fee for their cable television line. Upset, Lisa Brown called the company to cancel the cable part of their service bundle. A customer service rep tried to talk her out of the decision and when she refused to budge he escalated her to a customer retention specialist.

Lisa Brown (right) entered Comcast’s twisted web of customer service when she tried to cancel her cable TV service. [Image Source: CBS/Lisa Brown/Google Images]

Talking to customer retention specialists at Comcast can be somewhat frustrating — just ask Ryan Block whose 8 minute phone call with a customer service retention rep. went viral. Comcast’s playbook for the reps requires them to be rather pushy, it more or less admits. So if anyone has a good excuse to utter curses it would likely be the customer stuck in Comcast’s customer service maze.

But Brown kept her cool and stood her ground, refusing to budge when the retention rep tried to make her an offer to convince her to sign a new 2-year contract. She felt the conversation ended civilly with her making it clear she wasn’t going to be talked out of the cancellation and Comcast informing her that she’d be assessed the fee and that the account would be closed out once it had been paid.

The incident would have ended there, but when Brown opened her bill later that month she noticed something bizzare. Her husband’s name had been changed from Ricardo Brown to A%%hole Brown. She was shocked. She eventually took the letter to Elliot.org, an advocate blog who wrote a story on the incident. In the piece she ponders:

I am shocked. I was never rude. It could have been that person was upset because I didn’t take the offer.

To Comcast’s credit, it not only cancelled her account as requested and apologized, it also waived the fee and reimbursed the family what they had paid for their first 2-years of service. Comcast senior director of government affairs, Rhonda Weaver, even took a break from the usual daily duties of showering members of Congress with millions in bribes lobbyist “free speech” to call the blog and Brown, reassuring them that the employee or employees responsible would be determined and would be terminated from the company.

Read more: DailyTech – Comcast Employees Can’t Stop Cussing out Customers, Woman Billed as ‘B’ Word.