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Businesses The Internet Idle

Comcast Awarded the Golden Poo Award 286

Posted by samzenpus from the you-will-receive-your-award-between-8-and-12 dept.
ISoldat53 writes "The Consumerist has awarded Comcast the Golden Poo award for the worst company in America. From the article: 'After four rounds of bloody battle against some of the most publicly reviled businesses in America, Comcast can now run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and hold its hands high in victory — it has bested everyone else to earn the title of Worst Company In America for 2010.'"

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Comcast Awarded the Golden Poo Award More

Comcast Awarded the Golden Poo Award

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  • Ahem... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Enuratique ( 993250 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @12:31PM (#32001066)
    That's Xfinity, you insensitive clods!

  • Surprise Surprise! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DWRECK18 ( 1796294 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @12:31PM (#32001070) Homepage
    I have dealt with several different cable and internet companies and I have to agree that IMO Comcast is by far the worst. Their prices are outrages when looking at what you get compared to what you pay. On top of that their tech support has been severly lacking. Honestly I am paying $110 for half of the services I was getting from Verizon FIOS and I was paying only $90 from VZ. The only reason I have comcast again is because unfortunately when i moved FIOS wasn't available for my Apartment Complex. Those who defend Comcast really need to look at the price comparisons and customer service reviews between them, FIOS, DirectTV, and hell even Dish network. Now I know a lot of people have local companies that they go through as well FYI I used to have Adelphia before comcast bought them. So in the end YES COMCAST DESERVES THIS AWARD.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ronocdh ( 906309 )

      The only reason I have comcast again is because unfortunately when i moved FIOS wasn't available for my Apartment Complex.

      I am not chastising you, but have you considered something like 4G wireless or tethering a 3G smartphone connection? I'm just trying to think critically, given that we all hate Comcast, and plan for how best to react to this situation.

      Personally, I'm in center city Philadelphia, and I get 16Mbps/1.5Mbps for $30/month. Suits my needs pretty well, so I'm still feeding the devil.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by DWRECK18 ( 1796294 )
        Unfortunately my phone drops from 3g to 1x at times in my apt so tethering is out of the question. Plus I have a PS3 and need the broadband connection for my MW gaming, and the amount of downloads I do at times for school and training i really do not want to be working off of a tethered internet. My way around it will be when I move again I will make sure that FIOS or some other service I prefer is available before making my selection of where I move to.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by brufleth ( 534234 )
        In my experience the speeds I get via tethering a smartphone are about an order of magnitude lower than a wired connection and the latency is super high.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Disclaimer: I'm a Vz employee, and yes I'm invlolved with the FIOS build-out.

      Is FIOS available anywhere on/near your street? If Fios is in your area and the apartment owner is willing to sign a contract with us, we will be glad to come in, place cable, retrofit internal wiring etc and make FIOS available to your complex. Believe me, we want all the MDU's (apts/condos/town houses) we can get. . .

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by DWRECK18 ( 1796294 )
        Yes, funny enough it is available right next door to the complex at a 7-11 type store. Who do I have to talk to to get this installed, because I HATE COMCAST.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cgenman ( 325138 )

        If FIOS is ostensibly available in our "area," but according to your system not available to our unit, does that mean we should push the owner of the house? Or is it likely a neighborhood by neighborhood buildout question?

    • Comcast will not rest on it's laurels until it has won the Golden Poo awards for three years running! Then they will place the Golden Poo awards in the corporate lobby.

      After three Golden Poo awards they qualify for the Golden Steaming Pile award where the trophy is four feet tall and comes with logos for their letterhead and stickers for all of their trucks.

      Of course, those of us who are Comcast customers can suggest that they be given special dispensation and a special award granted before the three years

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Miseph ( 979059 )

      Apparently you've not dealt with Charter.

      Paying more for less service sucks. Getting even worse customer service also sucks.

      I would take Comcast, er, X-Finity, back in a minute.

    • Just switched from Comcast to Vz FIOS. A quick summary:

      Comcast - the good

      • Stable, fast speeds - 3mbps up/16mbps down was nothing to sneeze at.
      • In eight years of service, my IP address changes 4 times.
      • Received line upgrades automatically as they became available, at no extra cost. Internet service price hasn't changed - even though I started at 6/1 service years ago.
      • Received new channels as they were available

      Comcast -the bad

      • $220/month for phone, all movie channels, 16/3, a DVR and an HD converter. A lot of service, but also a lot of money.
      • "Blast" download speeds are rather deceptive
      • Holy crap are those HD channels compressed.
      • Bandwidth monitoring - I always came in under, but it was close a couple of months; and I've done nothing of questionable legality - Netflix instant watch via PS3 doubled my data usage by itself...

      Verizon the good:

      • Price: $150-160 gets me: phone, a few hundred channels, 35/35, DVR. More channels than cable overall, but not the same range of movie channels: for $15/mo additional (total 165-180) I could fix that.
      • Features: Being able to watch recorded content in other rooms is nice. Widgets are kind of useless - would be nicer if "favorites" could be configured to popup as an overlay (without resizing the screen) instantly on button push. Guide functionality and various small features hands down beats cable. And my favorite: They don't do that stupid "you didn't really want to stop where you pressed stop" "feature" that comcast DVR has started doing.
      • Picture quality: this varies based on the source (for example, local channels often broadcast in HD, but 'on the scene' cameras and whatnot provide low quality), but overall any given HD is much better than the comcast equivalent.
      • Speed: nice. very nice. Having an issue though, where I'm supposed to get 35/35 and am "only" getting 25/25 - given that it's so exact a cutoff at 25, I am thinking I need to call and see if it was properly provisioned. If so, then this may move to the "bad" line items...

      Verizonthe bad:

      • The prices are deceptive, since you're paying $5-20 per additional HD box on an HD converter. ($5 for an SD converter; $10 for HD that can receive DVR from other locations; $15 for DVR; $20 for DVR that can broadcast to other TVs). My $150/mo should have been $120/month, and it wasn't until I was "checking out" that I realized it wasn't. This deception is rampant throughout the web site and the TV commercials.
      • TV speed: a lot of the features in the TV interface seem slow. Displaying widgets consistently takes 3-5 seconds; other times the device seems to get overwhelmed with a backlog of requests and simply dumps all of them. After about 1-2 minutes it starts listening again.
      • Weird controls on on-demand content, specifically from network TV. While I could rewind/FF on-demand movies, I could not rewind or fast-forward on-demand content from NBC.
      • for internet service, they block port 80 incoming (NOTE: for me, they're not... but I don't know if this is a fluke or a change in policy.)

      Overall, in my experience Comcast doesn't deserve the award. Though they are currently outclassed, my own experience with them has been great for years. It's only the price/performance that made me switch; before FIOS was an option, I was happy where I was.

  • Pretty sure they won it last year too!

  • Well deserved (Score:5, Informative)

    by strayant ( 789108 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @12:34PM (#32001136)
    "We'll be there between 8-12, and we'll call you the day of the appointment. If you do not answer this phone call, the appointment will be canceled." - An automated message prior to a service visit from Comcast Yea, CANCELED! So, if I'm on the phone, in the bathroom, or otherwise incapable of answering this idiotic call in a 4-hour bracket, the service is canceled. This has happened to me before, months ago, and I yelled at several people about this to no avail. Today, we actually had a service call for work... answered the phone call, and even after waiting 4 hours, they're still not here. Comcast's only success is ABSOLUTE FAILURE. Someone please take this company away.

    • A couple of years back I had an appointment to have a Comcast DVR delivered when I got my HDTV.

      I waited, and waited, and waited. I made sure the phone wasn't in use and that I could hear the outside.

      Nothing.

      I called, they said he was on his way.

      Nothing. 6-7 hours go by, and it's still "he's running late, he's on his way" And the nerve to say "If you're not there when he eventually comes you'll have to wait another week"

      I eventually got through to a manager and out they canceled the friggin' delivery due

  • Comcast is fine (Score:2, Insightful)

    by frozentier ( 1542099 )
    There's no problem with Comcast at all, as long as your internet activities don't reach beyond e-mail and browsing a few web pages every day.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by selven ( 1556643 )

      There's no problem with rampant civil liberties abuse at all unless your activities don't reach beyond working, sleeping and mundane discussions with your family every day.

    • There's no problem with Comcast at all, as long as your internet activities don't reach beyond e-mail and browsing a few web pages every day.

      I like to put it other words: there is no problem with Comcast, as long as you weren't planning on doing anything useful.

  • Almost $800 to watch TV. (Score:5, Informative)

    by commodore64_love ( 1445365 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @12:37PM (#32001204) Journal

    Yep. Comcast is the worst. They also:

    - kick off users for exceeding undefined GB download limits

    - sell 25 Mbit/s lines that are actually only 5 Mbit/s - no better than DSL but twice as costly.

    - force users to switch to Digital Cable which is incompatible with VCRs or DVRs

    - And even if said boxes were compatible, the Digital boxes don't allow the user to tape one show while watching another live.

    - Hold a Monopoly and bribe politicians to keep out competitors

    - Bought out NBC Universal, so Comcast can censor any anti-comcast dissent from NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Bravo, Syfy, Telemundo, and so on.

    Worst.
    Company.
    Ever.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Shakrai ( 717556 )

      You do realize that TV isn't a life essential service, right? Ditch cable and get yourself an antenna. OTA is free and high-def. Combine that with the internet (legal and not-so-legal sources) and you'll find that most of your entertainment needs are met.

      They only keep raising rates because people keep writing them checks. Cut the cord.

      • That's what I did. However, getting internet also requires being a customer of the cable company. Luckily, in my case, that's Cox, not Comcast, but others aren't so lucky. My only other real ISP choice is Qwest, and they're much worse than cable internet.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mellon ( 7048 )

          Cox has lower limits than Comcast. Have you actually read the service agreement?

    • Yep. Comcast is the worst. They also:

      - kick off users for exceeding undefined GB download limits

      - sell 25 Mbit/s lines that are actually only 5 Mbit/s - no better than DSL but twice as costly.

      - force users to switch to Digital Cable which is incompatible with VCRs or DVRs

      - And even if said boxes were compatible, the Digital boxes don't allow the user to tape one show while watching another live.

      - Hold a Monopoly and bribe politicians to keep out competitors

      - Bought out NBC Universal, so Comcast can censor any anti-comcast dissent from NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Bravo, Syfy, Telemundo, and so on.

      Worst. Company. Ever.

      Worst company ever? What about the East India Trading Company? Slavery, imperialism, despotism.

  • Unfortunately, as long as Joe Sixpack and Jeb Nascar continue to pay the monthly bill, Comcast isn't going anywhere.

    • And when Joe Sixpacks all over the country move in mass to another ISP, Comcast will ask for, and receive, bailout money from the government to stay in business.

  • comcast sportsnet chicago IS good and only 20% owned by comcast.

    And it's on DIRECTV as well!!!!

  • Lending their name to a new verb... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Takionbrst ( 1772396 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @12:43PM (#32001288)
    In the gaming community, I've noticed a trend where people will drop offline, then reappear, explaining that they'd been "Comcast'd". Take that as you will.

    • Where did you hear that? It's something that I came up with on my own. Obviously someone else could have come up with the same thing.

      SIdenote: any time we win in WoW arenas because the other side didn't show up, we call it a "Comcast Win".

      The funny thing is that I kept using the term after I switched to Qwest.

  • Comcast Here Is My List of Ideas to be better. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @12:49PM (#32001394)

    Comcast Here Is My List of Ideas to be better.

    Lower your prices not that much a but a little bit (The box rent part is the real bad part)

    Don't mess up csn chicago with the nbc take over. But keep up with VS takeing our feed in the playoffs. Also can we get nhl extra in HD next year?

    also open CSN / bears VOD to dish, directv , wow. rcn, and u-verse.

    VS ALT HD ALL SYSTEMS

    Put CSN + back on the DTA's. Why not use INFO SD mirror of INFO HD / CSN + HD and make CLTV full time?

    WOW can have CSN, CSN + and CSN + 2 on analog so why not on a DTA on comcast?

    Good job with letting others have CLTV

    add CLTV HD or at least put in on INFO HD / CSN + HD

    NEXT TIME CSN + 2 HD and not just make it sd only

    Put speed in starter for the full Chicago area why is part in starter and part in sports pack?

    also why is fox movie in the sports pack?

    Let all other systems have the Chicago Wolves games that are cocmast only at this time.

    have a guild that does not look like crap on a HD tv.

    Mirror the HD channels to the same number as SD.

    and one last thing LAY OFF ON THE HD compression!

  • Net Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby&comcast,net> on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @12:57PM (#32001504)
    For their fight against Net Neutrality alone they deserve the worst company in America award. Anyone that fights against a principal freedom, and takes that freedom away from the public deserves to be held in contempt. No amount of customer service friendliness can ever undo that damage, and that's what Comcast just doesn't get.
  • With all the stupid rubes in America, this does no good. Since their rebrand to Xfinity, idiots (and you wouldn't believe the amount of them) think it's a different company.

  • As a former employee... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @12:59PM (#32001538) Homepage

    They are actually proud of this. We used to have meetings on how to screw the customer or limit service calls. The forced digital rollout of the lower channels is the holy grail. if they can force everyone to have to have QAM tuners, then they can force encrypted QAM and simply never do a disconnect again. This will allow them to lay off 90% of the workforce and the last 10% stay as contractors.

    Did not pay your bill? box deactivated and you no longer have cable tv. no need to roll a truck.

    and yes they ARE working on that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fred fleenblat ( 463628 )

      i'm not disputing how evil comcast is or isn't, but why are you talking like it's some evil conspiracy for them to stop serving non-paying customers?

      both dish and echostar will disconnect you. also any cell phone carrier, ISP, the electric or gas company. good luck getting groceries or clothes w/o paying for them.

      • both dish and echostar will disconnect you. also any cell phone carrier, ISP, the electric or gas company. good luck getting groceries or clothes w/o paying for them.

        Actually, in parts of the northeast, it's illegal for the gas company to disconnect non-paying customers during the winter, as they'll freeze to death.

        You can get groceries for free with food stamps or many local churches, and you can get clothes for nearly free from goodwill or salvation army.

        But yeah, I don't see the problem with disconnectin

      • Re:As a former employee... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @01:33PM (#32002052) Homepage

        I'm not. Im talking like they want to encrypt everything to not have any labor costs.

        not to lower your bill, but to increase dramatically profit margins while eliminating the nasty evil scumbags that have their own DVR. Oh and gain back the charge per tv in the home they used to enjoy.

        Cable box on each TV with it's $5.00 a month charge.. suddenly they have the per TV fee back.

        • Okay, but reducing labor costs is just another thing that *all* companies do. i'm sorry that your labor was one of the ones that was reduced. I've been there and it's not fun, but blaming companies for engaging in cost-reducing/profit-seeking behavior is like blaming the sun for being warm.

          The per-tv charge is probably in their municipal charters in every market they serve. personally i have echostar and they also have a per-tv charge. $5 month is cheaper than almost anything else I can think of. Some p

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Lumpy ( 12016 )

            Actually my labor was increased. when I left for a better paying job, they had to hire 2 people to replace me. I am not joking, they wont pay for skilled labor so they hire 2 unskilled college kids.

            It's all about reducing service to the customer.. WE all know how skilled the Dish contractor installers are. that is the quality you will be getting from comcast. The last two times friends had a comcast contractor show up they screwed up the install because they cant understand the fancy new structured wiri

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Honestly this would be a blessing. I contacted comast two months before I was scheduled to deploy for the Air Force. They day of the scheduled termination my cable and internet quit working...

      2 months layter they were still BILLING ME because they "couldn't" stop billing me until some lazy sub-contractor got to my apartment building and physically disconnected the cables. It took 2 calls to customer support, and billing, and finally a letter to the BBB to get them to stop billing me and refund the money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rgviza ( 1303161 )

      >Did not pay your bill? box deactivated and you no longer have cable tv. no need to roll a truck.
      DirecTV has had this capability for years.

  • They are rather secure [anotherrandomday.com].

  • Comcast Chicago sucks and has been that way for a long time.

    As starting about 3-4 years ago they moved stuff for analog to digital and forced you to get cable box at $5+ /m each.

    Round 1 was analog turn off city of Chicago.

    1.5? was out side of city moving analog stuff to higher level digital with way less analog trun off.

    For align time they have locked in CLTV
    at least now it's open to any system.

    Now they need to open up the Chicago wolves as well. (all games not just a few on WPWR)

    As late as last year they h

  • Snort! (Score:4, Funny)

    by MarkGriz ( 520778 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @01:43PM (#32002172)

    When asked for a comment, a spokesperson replied "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the cable company *snort*"

  • "I hear that Monsanto is asking for recount -- http://www.monsanto.com/foodinc/ [monsanto.com]." he said satirically.

  • Charter? (Score:3, Funny)

    by kenp2002 ( 545495 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @01:55PM (#32002314) Homepage Journal

    Did Charter get honorable mention at least?

  • comcast intimidation (Score:5, Informative)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @02:00PM (#32002378) Journal

    I wrote to a local news host about this but don't know if they ever followed up on it.

    I'd like to preface this by saying I am a former Comcast customer, and switched to Verizon only because they offered (at the time) better performance at a lower price. I think it's good to have multiple companies competing for broadband access and don't wish either company ill.

    That said, last week a Comcast salesperson came to our door. I have a bum leg so wife answered the door, but I could hear the conversation.

    He tried to sell her on switching to Comcast from our current Verizon FIOS account. My wife said no thank you, we will be staying with our current service.

    He wanted to talk about the advantages of switching to Comcast, and she repeated again we weren't interested.

    He tried to hand the flyer to her probably five times during the conversation, and she refused to take it. During this time the salesperson got more and more upset. His voice got louder and louder and he became argumentative "Why won't you look at this? What is your problem?"

    Wife finally had enough and closed the door. At that point, the salesperson screamed at her "You aren't going to have any choice pretty soon! You might as well switch now!".

    Ok, again, I think competition is good, but... what the hell was that?

  • I find it interesting that someone gets the award for 2010 when we aren't even halfway through the year. What happens when someone in the second half of the year bests them?

    • Trust me on this. They are really frustrating to deal with. When everything works, the worst part is that they sell XMb down/1mb up at $50/mo, cxld usenet, etc..

      When it doesn't work, it takes them months to get a problem fixed. They don't listen, and make you follow scripts, even if it's the 10th time you've done it.

      I'm all for scripts btw, but at least listen to what I have to say!

      My biggest problem is that they don't have a lower tiered broadband package, which effectively eliminates the option for dec

    • I believe it's awarded for the past year's activity. not for the calendar year in which it is awarded.

  • While I've never been a consumer customer of ComCast (they avoid serving rural areas), I do have personal experience with their business class service. The two Docsis 3 modems at work provide in aggregate 100 mb/s x 20 mb/s @ ~$400/mo and the performance, up-time & customer service have been a pleasant surprise.

  • Wall Street financial companies in general (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Neanderthal Ninny ( 1153369 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @02:37PM (#32002844)

    I would have thought most Wall Street companies and financial services would win the award easy. Comcast maybe the single worst company but the combined criminals at Wall Street and financial companies would be worst than Comcast by far.

  • Had a problem with Comcast... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Squirmy McPhee ( 856939 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @04:59PM (#32004666)
    When the installer came to install my Comcast service even HE had to wait on hold when he had to call into the office for something -- for an hour! Needless to say, we had a bit of time to chat while he waited. Come to find out that he lived in a part of my city that had a choice of cable providers, and he himself said he would never be a Comcast subscriber if he could help it....

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