Category: Opinions

One of our pine trees, the one closest to our shed out back, was struck by lightning not too long ago. We didn’t notice immediately, but the strike killed the tree. We *did* start noticing when hunks of bark began sloughing off…

In looking at the tree we noticed gaping holes in it which indicated that all was not well. We also noticed similar holes in the nearby trees. All of these trees are pretty big. If any of them fell they could land on our house or that of our nearest neighbor.

So we decided to contact a tree cutting service. There are very few people I know of who has had a good experience with one of these outfits. They seem to either damage the property or they don’t haul away the debris or a myriad of other issues.

A friend put us in touch with “Yellow Ribbon Tree Experts”. Gary – the company owner – came by and we immediately liked him. He was able to answer all of our questions and quoted us what I felt to be a fair price.

I’d earlier been approached by a fellow who “was in the neighborhood and can give me a deal while he’s working on a nearby yard”. His price was somewhat lower than Gary’s but I wasn’t really able to nail him down on all the details so I decided to pass on him.

We had contacted two other tree companies, also recommended by friends. One had a child’s voice on their answering machine which was not very encouraging. It didn’t really matter since they never returned our call. The other, the woman who does the estimates was one of the illest sounding people we’d ever encountered. I don’t know what she’s really like, but she sounded really bad each time we spoke with her on the phone. And apparently her life is in a shambles (sick, problems, etc.) which she thought we’d like to know about. Hmmmmm… so we passed on them as well.

Here are some pictures showing the progression of the trees disappearing from the back yard:

It took them the better part of the day, they had to carefully pull down the tree nearest the shed. They did it with no damage to the shed at all! They *did* end up crushing one of our neighbors’ bushes when one of the pieces coming down had an unfortunate bounce and roll. Gary went next door to work out replacing the bush.Once they were gone, there was only a pile of wood shavings where the stumps used to be (which we have since used to cover our pathways – saving us having to pick up any pine bark nuggets this year..).

1613 Overall everything went well, there were some scratches on the post at the corner of the patio and on our garbage box from the trees dragging past those but these were easily dealt with using some spare paint.

1615

1617

The saga continues. After that really sorry dealing with the phone customer service rep (phone CSR) on the phone on Sunday evening after my modem stopped working, I decided it might actually be faster to just go down to a Comcast store and swap out the modem.

Despite the assurances of phone CSR with whom I was dealing, the last time I went to the Comcast store they informed me that they did not do modem swaps as they did not keep any in stock. At that time, however, there had been a Comcast service van in the parking lot so teller CSR went out and just grabbed one from the truck. Swap done, all was well.

I had prophylactically set up an appointment for Thursday (August 23) for between 8 and 10 am in case I wasn’t going to get to the store and/or in case there was something else wrong beyond the modem. Interestingly, when I asked for the confirmation number phone CSR said there wasn’t any but that I should call back if I needed to check and they could find it through my account.

On Monday I trundled over to the Alpharetta Comcast store, which is near to wear I work (well.. a 15 minute drive) and found a) they had moved to a new location and b) they are closed Monday – a fact that phone CSR had failed to mention when he gave me the location but which the relocation sign fortunately stated.

On Tuesday I headed back out to find the store – a block away from the old location – and combined that trip with a LATE lunch, arriving at ten after two in the afternoon. They were closed for a “special” lunch from two ’til three that day. Another bust.

I elected to leave early from work on Tuesday, intending to get to that Comcast shop, get my modem swapped out, get home and then do a little work from home to make up for all that wasted time trying to conform to Comcasts’ 1950’s approach to customer service.

Arriving at the shop I was gleeful that it was actually open. Entering the shop showed only 5 people ahead of me.. not too bad it seemed. My glee was short-lived, however, when I realized that they had only one person working there and the guy in line ahead of me expressed his displeasure at how slowly things were moving. Over half an hour later I got to the front of the queue. I kid you not, there were over a dozen people now behind me. This CSR looked at my modem, went into the back room and brought out an identical one and tried to swap it for me, but the computer would not let her. Then she went back and got yet another identical one (after mentioning that she wasn’t sure if they had any more) which the computer *did* allow her to give to me. I’m not 100% sure but I’m pretty sure she just dropped my returned modem into the same bin from which she fished out these replacements.

I mentioned that I had an appointment on Thursday that she could now cancel and she suggested that I keep the appointment in case this modem doesn’t work. Hmmm… wonder why she said that. I got home with the replacement modem, hooked it up and, surprise! It exhibited the same symptoms as my last modem.

I can’t say I was pleased but since I had that Thursday appointment and since this modem having the EXACT SAME PROBLEM seemed a little coincidental, I elected to wait for the appointment. I was having to stay at home on Thursday anyway as we were having some tree cutters come by to clear some dead and dying pines from my back yard.

As you can imagine, Wednesday was a looong day as I caught up on a backlog of work from the foibles the previous day. When I got home I realized that I had not received a confirmation call from Comcast regarding the next day’s appointment. My home number is set to roll over to my cell whenever the Vonage router is not reachable, so I should definitely have received this. So I called Comcast to confirm the appointment.

Another half an hour on the phone had phone CSR2 telling me that there was no ticket for my Thursday appointment, but he could schedule me for the following Wednesday. I told him that there was no way I was going to wait another week on this. I wanted the tech guy out at my place by tomorrow or they could just go ahead and close this account. I then wanted to speak to his supervisor to get this dealt with. Phone CSR2 told me that he would escalate it – smoothly inferring that he would personally follow my escalation through to completion until I pressed him on how that would work. It turns out that the escalation is dealt with by my local Comcast service group and they’re only open from 8:00 ’til 5:00 (according to phone CSR2). All he does is puts the request into a queue that some other CSR will presumably read the next day and, if there is a cancellation, I might get lucky.

So I pressed to speak to his supervisor and, when smooth talkin’ phone CSR2 finally ran out of reasons why it wouldn’t help, he put me on hold as the supervisor was apparently handling another call at the moment. I felt like I was back in a car dealership with phone CSR2 “working for me”. After 5 minutes or so he came back on the line to let me know that the supervisor was still on the phone and how there is nothing more he could do anyway. I said I’d wait. 5 or more minutes go by again and smooth talkin’ phone CSR2 was back with the same spiel. I told him he’d won I didn’t want to spend any more time on the phone but I wanted him to add the phrase “Customer will cancel account if service tech is not at house by noon Thursday”. This he translated to “Customer is unhappy” and I can’t say if even that got onto the ticket.

Calling back at 8:00’ish the next day I get phone CSR3 who wants to troubleshoot the modem (“Please open internet explorer”) even though I clearly tell him that I want to ensure that my ticket is being escalated. He assures me that he will personally follow this ticket but that the Marietta service location doesn’t open until 8:30. I made it very clear to him that either they get out to my place by noon or I would be calling back to close this account. I made him aware of the failure of phone CSR(1) to create my appointment and how I do use and rely heavily upon my broadband connectivity. After noting that I already had an appointment for next Wednesday, he assured me that he’d follow up and call when an appointment was set.

Two pm rolls around and I hear nothing from Comcast. I’m really ticked. I make arrangements with BellSouth to get their 6 Mbps / 3 Mbps service and then call Comcast to cancel. I’m asked how I want to return the modem, I tell them I’ll leave it on the front porch and they can pick it up. They say they can’t do that. The tech *has* to deal with a live person to hand them a receipt. And they can only do this between 8 am and 5 pm. I relent and get the location of the Comcast store nearest to me. I grab the modem and immediately head out the door so that I can get Comcast out of my world as fast as possible. I had been intending to work from home on Thursday and take Friday off. Comcast’s absolute failure to service me ruined that day and I needed to work on Friday to make up for that.

I do *not* like Comcast’s smooth talking CSRs. They will do ANYTHING to avoid letting you get past them to somebody who might be able to solve your issue. They are among the most slick, yet least capable CSRs I have ever dealt with. And, as a computer guy who deals with a bunch of product help desks, I’ve seen plenty. I was outright lied to by phone CSR(1) when he claimed to have set up my appointment. They have a cavalier disregard for the impact their service disruptions have on their clients and seem trained primarily in the art of soothing rather than empowered to actually take a problem and resolve it.

And I emphasize again (see my last posting, typed while on the phone with phone CSR(1)), what kind of a business *is* Comcast when their stores and their residential service techs (in Marietta at the very least) are only available during normal business hours? What community are they serving where folks can afford to take time off to sit at home waiting for them – everybody *I* know works for a living – ESPECIALLY if the service impacted is broadband access – which is the reason some folks may be able to stay at home?

I had my doubts about Comcast when I first moved to them from BellSouth nearly two years ago. My previous dealings with them were somewhat unsavory and I fired them back then and switched to satellite TV after my cable rates were raised without any notification. When I called then to ask what was going on, they mailed me a pamphlet explaining the rate increases.

They make a *lot* of money off of broadband service. My understanding is that, in places like Korea, they have vastly superior broadband access (10+ Mbps down and something similar up) for the the equivalent of US$35. So there really is no excuse for they sloppy and uninspired service that Comcast provides.