Dear Comcast

Last week you sent me a message to this blog asking to be sure "to let you know if I had any question or comments"; I am sure to make your service better. Since the message was prompted by a google alert of a passing mention of "Comcast" in a post, I find it a bit creepy that you would contact my blog on such a minor thing, while managing, as a company, to piss me off in all kinds of ways. Let me emphasise that it is not your underpaid and overworked employees that irritate me; but your stupid, and in the long term, short-sighted corporate policies.

I have some suggestions for you up there on the VP level in Comcast Tower in Philadelphia:

(1) When I go visit your little regional office, trailing some piece of broken Comcast equipment, or even better after receiving a fire-and -brimstone phone message telling me to return old equipment or face the consequences, or carrying some fucked-up piece of billing, this is NOT a good time to request your exhausted employees to "offer new Comcast products and services they think I might enjoy." There are always more customers in the office than there are workers and the mood is tense. Let's just get through our transaction as fast as possible and avoid being on the 7 o'clock news.

(2) Do not call me with offers of upgrades of my gummy, overpriced, drop-prone Internet service (which mysteriously got worse after I declined to buy the Super Shiny Fantastic high-speed Uber Internet package for an additional 20+ a month) or expanded offers of cable TV service for shows I never watched anyway. I realize that lobbyists in the US Capitol bought a loophole in the "Do Not Call" protocols so "as a customer with an established business relationship" you can spam me with calls, but I cannot describe to you the fury that I feel when you call me EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR TWO WEEKS on my Federally Listed Do Not Call cell phone, ALWAYS when I am coated with gesso, garden dirt or cat hairballs. I have no desire to buy more of your products and services, even when you rebrand them as Xfinity and boast that you can offer the Internet at speeds roughly one-tenth of what a person living in a cardboard box in South Korea receives. Also, get real. I have the phone number marked ComcastIgnore. So stop calling unless you have something specific, non sale related, to discuss; like equipment that needs to be returned, service outages, or an impending meteor strike. And use the local area code and office and a real human.

Now here is some Big Picture Stuff. Stop eating your competition. For one thing, the innovations of the future that you will want for Comcast will come from these smaller, more nimble companies.

Stop doing the Billing Razzle Dazzle with "pretend bundles", mystery fees, technology fees, expensive pens for the CEO fees, price hikes because "it's wednesday and your imaginary "discount rate" has ended." Set one rate for a clearly defined service and stick with it. if you want to add "the CEO private plane snack fee" to it,fine... just keep it the same every month. Unlike you all at the top floor of the Comcast Tower, most of us down here have to budget.

In the meantime, let me point at Verizon. I've had Verizon's wireless phone service for over ten years. The billing is always the same. The phone always works. When I needed a new phone they didn't try to upsell me. They occasionally send me a polite and wistful text asking if I'd like to exchange my Amish phone for a real one. They don't do Internet stalking. All the features of my service are spelled out clearly in the bills. Apparently it is possible to run a telecommunications giant in a way that makes customers happy, by mostly leaving them alone and giving them ok service.

In the meantime I am waiting for Google fiber.