comast email issues, who else has them?

Thu Sep 7 20:16:14 UTC 2006

Christopher L. Morrow wroteth on 9/6/2006 5:11 PM:
> 
> On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
>> Because Comcast's tools are broken and when other mail admins or even
>> their own customers call them on it, they're not even competent enough
>> to understand the complaint and refuse to escalate?
> 
> I hate to say this, and get involved in the melee, but... Perhaps the
> problem is that for an average customer service employee there are 1000
> calls about something meaningless and not-wrong and only 1 call about
> something truly wrong? So escalating every problem that seems even half
> baked isn't an option?

You're probably right.  However, if someone called my place of 
employment (a small local ISP) and complained followed by quite a few 
others, I would at least escalate the issue so someone higher than me 
can check out logs, connectivity, etc.. things I don't have access too 
to make sure there isn't a problem.

What is unfortunate is the fact that this generally doesn't happen.  You 
get lots of calls and Tier I does the obvious and it works and works on 
those others that call that the issue must be them and it's case closed 
and nothing gets escalated.  It's even worse of the problem gets 
seemingly solved and the customer doesn't call back for quite a while.. 
gives the appearance all is well even though it truly is not.

> 
> Perhaps some of the comcast folks reading might take a better/harder look
> at their customer service tickets and do a 'better' job (note I'm not even
> half of a comcast customer so I'm not sure that there even IS a
> problem...) on this issue?

Most ISP's could do a better job.  The last ISP I worked at utilized RT 
for their support.  I think a strong ticketing system and using that 
ticketing system to it's full potential would go a long way in getting 
things solved faster as well as being able to see trends that could then 
get escalated without lots of pissed off people having to call and bitch 
whine and moan before escalation happens.  You could easily see an issue 
with a properly setup ticketing system such as RT.

> 
> In general blaming the first level tech for something isn't going to get
> anyone anywhere near a solution. Perhaps Sean's actually saying: "The
> right tool is to use another provider?" even though Steven's thought is
> that the 'other provider' is in the same boat of clue :(

... good point.  It may not even be the techs fault on any tier level. 
It might be company policy, unfortunately.

> 
> 
> 