The Customer Service Hall of Shame

There's an semi-interesting article on MSN Money today about the companies that got the lowest customer service rating. The bottom five, in ascending order, are Sprint, Bank of America, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T. What do these have in common? With one exception (a bank) they are all phone or cable providers.

I have had serious problems with my mobile phone provider as well as Comcast. But Comcast really takes the cake. If you have to wait for twenty minutes to talk to someone, eventually you might just stop calling in when something goes wrong. But the biggest problem I have with both cable and mobile phone companies is not touched upon in the MSN article. That would be the bait and switch in terms of pricing. If you raise someone's bill by $1.50 each month, they probably won't notice. But that shit adds up. They are constantly adding more charges, and most of the time you can't even tell what they are for, assuming you scrutinize your bill. And if you want to find out, plan on being on hold at least fifteen minutes, after which you'll be lucky if you get a straight answer. I don't feel that these companies are even maintaining the pretense that they give a shit about their customers. They are simply trying to extract as much money as they possibly can in any way they can.

What's particularly galling about Comcast is that, where I live at least, they have an effective monopoly. If you want cable television, you don't really have much of a choice. You put up with their bullshit or you do without. They can charge you anything they want, they can provide execrable customer service, and they will, because they know you can't do anything about it. As a fiscal conservative, I've always had problems with anti-trust laws and the like. But monopolies are not good for capitalism. Competition is one of the main reasons that capitalism works as well as it does. Conversely, lack of competition is one of the main reasons communism proved such an abject failure. Without a competitor, there's no reason for a company to keep their prices low or to innovate and improve the quality of their products.