Less than a day after I posted my letter to my blog, and before the printed letter even reached Comcast, I received an emailed response:
Dear Mr. Kamens:
Your concern posted to a recent Blog has been referred to me for research and resolution. As requested, the best way to correspond with you is via email.
In your Blog, you were concerned that only your secondary email address listed on your account received an email from Comcast with the subject of “Apology for Service Disruption”. Please accept my sincere apology for any inconvenience this may have caused.
After thoroughly investigating the issue, I was informed this may be a result of the preference setting of your primary email. I would suggest modifying the setting for the primary username which can be completed at the Subscribe/unsubscribe to Comcast benefits & offers email link under ‘My Account’ at Comcast.net. You may also want to check the email filters in SmartZone in addition to the ‘restrict incoming email’ setting also found under My Account.
If I can be of further assistance, please contact me at [phone number and extension elided], Monday-Friday, 8:00a.m. – 4:00p.m.
Regards,
[name elided]
Executive Customer Care & Communications
I sent this response:
I am somewhat surprised to receive such a quick response to my blog posting. I cannot help but wonder what brought it to the attention of Comcast, even before my mailed letter reached Mr. Bowling.
Having said that, I’m sorry to say that your response is entirely inadequate, for many reasons:
- You don’t seem to have actually bothered to find out for certain what the cause of the issue is. Is the setting you described the source of the problem, or isn’t it? Phrases like “this may be a result of” and “you may also want to check” do not exactly inspire confidence. What I asked Mr. Bowling to do, and what you obviously haven’t done, is to actually refer this issue to the people who can actually, for real, figure out the cause of the problem.
- Even if you’re right that the setting in question is why I did not receive the last two emails about service upgrades and interruptions, your answer is not acceptable. Those two emails were not about “special offers, promotions and new features related to Comcast products and services” (which is what the setting purports to control), they were service announcements about my account. I want to receive those service announcements — indeed, you want me to receive those service emails — but I do not want to receive marketing spam from you. If you’re correct that important service announcements are grouped under the same setting as marketing spam, well, then, that’s just completely unacceptable.
- The setting in question is the same on my wife’s account as it is on mine, i.e., both accounts have selected “Please don’t send me e-mail from Comcast about special offers, promotions or features,” and yet she received the two emails in question and I didn’t. This means that either (a) the setting doesn’t always work properly or (b) you’re wrong about the cause of the issue and making me waste even more of my time proving it to you.
- My wife and I do not have any email filters or incoming email restrictions on our accounts, so that, too, is irrelevant.
- You’ve said nothing about the poor service I received the first time I tried to resolve this issue, or about the fact that your New England Executive Care department never even bothered to respond to me when I brought it to their attention.
In short, your response is just more of the bad service I’ve already received. If you can’t do better, then please hand this off to someone who can.
Thank you,
Jonathan Kamens
