I’m currently trying this with both Xfinity and Verizon Fios (to confirm what they have available,) and it’s not working. With Xfinity, entering an address redirects me back to the initial “shop for deals” page, and with Verizon, it starts letting me assemble a package, but the “Pick your internet speed” section has only one strange box that’s totally blank (except for a “details” link,) and the “Add TV” section has only “TV local” which is 20 channels. Either both these websites currently aren’t working, or, as I suspect, they don’t want you to be able to do this over the internet; they want to get you on the phone so they can apply high-pressure sales pitches.
OK, I did get into her online account and chatted with an agent, but it’s fruitless. You get someone in India who’s just following a script. When I said I was interested in a better deal, they sent me a link to the deals page for new customers. I assume we’d have to call them on the phone. Even then, I wonder what it takes to get to someone who isn’t just following a script.
Many call center employees are trained to immediately escalate to a manager if you ask, so you can try that.
Asking for a better deal may not get you anywhere because they don’t want to help you spend less money. Telling them that you’re calling to cancel your service will often activate customer retention mode - they’d rather you spend less money then cancel altogether.
Your best bet may be to cancel her service altogether and then set up a new account for her, making sure to only get what she needs.
I sent you a PM. I may be able to help.
Any idea how well that tends to work with this kind of company in general? I had that thought earlier this morning: “what if we just cancelled her service, then called back immediately to sign up as a new customer, to get the new customer rate?” It seems a little ridiculous, and I wondered if they have policies in place to prevent that, like not considering you a “new” customer if it’s been less than 60 days or something like that.
Thanks. I replied.
I highly doubt you’d get any new customer deals - that suggestion is kind of a last resort if you can’t get them to downgrade your service.
Another thing: equipment fees are one of the biggest scams out there. Go buy a modem and tell them to stuff their rental fee.
Threaten to cancel and ask to be transferred to retention. Unless something drastic has changed with Comcast, one of their larger retention centers is in Portland OR. I know this because I used to work for a competitor with a call center in the area and there were about a million agents who crossed over from Comcast to work for us. Retention agents get paid bonuses based on the percentage of retained business and they usually have access to deals that regular agents don’t have. Then you have to be patient, relentless and polite. If you get the agent on your side they can hook you up. Piss them off and you get nothing.
Oh, and the modems they use are commercially available, and usually about ten months is sufficient to make up the outright purchase cost of the modem. Continuing to pay year after year for a modem is just free money for Comcast. They’ll give you a song and dance about how it’s so beneficial for you to have THEIR modem, but that’s basically crap. The only advantage is that if it shits the bed they’ll replace it for free, but honestly, how often have any of us had a cable modem shit the bed? Things are bulletproof.
True not just for Comcast, but for basically every ISP ever.
My current modem is supplied by my ISP (Cox Cable), and has been running strong for nine years. The only reason i have a Cox modem is that it came free with hookup, and there’s no monthly rental fee. They don’t offer that deal anymore—now you have to pay rental for their modems—so if this modem does kick the bucket at some stage, i’ll buy my own rather than pay a monthly fee to Cox.
We’re with Verizon and I’m pretty sure our router is actually in its death throes, so there you are :D.
Verizon may well have deals for new customers where they’ll give you a gift card for 300 bucks (which will offset the termination fee) - look into that.
Comcast should let her change up her package without fee, as long as she remains a customer. Maybe ditching the TV service entirely, bumping up her internet speed, and going with all streaming would be an option. Do you think she could manage to use a Roku or similar? If so, the options another poster suggested (MLB.com + the anonymizing service) could well be an option. I know I can edit my Roku options online, so if you set your mother up with a good universal remote it might be doable.
Gotta love (not!) those “regional sports fees”. They’re a scam. I tried figuring out how to get that off our Verizon bill and basically that’s non-negotiable: if we have any channel bundles that include ANY sports whatsoever. Now, nobody in our household watches sports of any kind - but the only way to not have sports channels included would be to go to the basic, local-only channel pack. Bastids.
I wound up calling them and getting a new package which lowers her monthly bill by $10 per month, and gets her HD. It also gets her a few premium channels (they always have a way of throwing in things you don’t really want or need, instead of something that would have been better like lowering the bill further in exchange for getting rid of voice) and faster internet (which won’t make a difference to her.) Thanks for the tips everyone. I didn’t actually tell them I wanted to cancel. Maybe I would have done better by doing so, or maybe that is what we’ll have to do next year, when of course the “introductory” rate will expire and her bill will go up.
It might be. I would definitely do this if I lived locally, but, like I said above, no matter how simple or easy people say this or that solution is, I’m wary of anything that involves technological finagling, for fear that if anything ever goes wrong, I won’t be able to walk her through fixing it over the phone.
For what it’s worth, my elderly technophobic mother also lives in the greater Philadelphia area and also loves Phila. sports teams. Around 5 years ago (when she was 89 years young) she finally got so angry at Comcast for not broadcasting an Eagles play-off game that she quit them that day and subscribed to Verizon Fios. She’s very happy with them. And if she can figure it out, anybody can.