A Comcast truck seen in Pompano Beach, Florida, February 13, 2014. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Comcast probably doesn’t relish being one of those companies that many Americans love to hate. But sometimes, the cable giant makes this way too easy.
Consider the case of Ricardo Brown. After Brown’s wife had a disagreement with the cable company recently, Comcast started sending him monthly statements under the name “Asshole Brown.”
The disagreement happened when Brown’s wife Lisa tried to cancel her cable. She got referred to one of the company’s dreaded “retention specialists,” who apparently didn’t like being told “no,” as Lisa Brown told the blogger Christopher Elliott, who first reported the story.
“I was never rude,” she told Elliott. “It could have been that person was upset because I didn’t take the offer.”
Like many phone companies and ISPs, Comcast makes it frighteningly difficult to cancel an account. The company retains an army of retention specialists whose sole job is to keep you from signing off. Last year, the journalist Ryan Block recorded a Kafkaesque conversation he had with a Comcast retention specialist from hell. That call has been listened to nearly 6 million times.
Comcast spokesman Steve Kipp confirmed the Browns’ story to WIRED. “We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change,” he told us via email. “We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened. We are working with our customer to make this right and will take appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again.”
According to Elliott, Comcast is also offering the Brown’s a full refund for the past two years of service.
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