OK, I'm on a little bit of the "full of rant" side of things right now so bear with me. I've been without Internet service at home now for more than 24 hours. If this were the first time this had happened I would not be as fired up as I am today, but the service has been up and down all week, there was a serious area-wide outage just two weeks ago and I was without service for almost a week just a month ago.
Now, when Comcast gets things right the access is great. The problem is, when it comes to customer service they rarely get things right.
I don't use access just to browse the web, communicate with friends or post this blog. I use it for business. As a contractor I rely on access to get into my clients' sites, to run tests for them, evaluate systems, write/edit/submit documentation, etc. And, as a contractor, if I don't work I don't get paid. So right now I'm sitting in a Starbucks (now that they have free wi-fi), sipping on a mocha, running a system scan of one of my client sites and writing this blog. This morning I worked from Borders Books. I think I prefer Borders, but Starbucks is much closer and is between me and the meeting I'm going to in a bit.
I have tried to be nice in my conversations with the group that passes itself off as customer service for Comcast. I've told the people I've spoken with that I don't blame them for the inability to respond more quickly. Without saying it, I know they are just hourly employees doing what the boss instructs. But, it's hard to be nice when they seem to think they've done me a huge favor by promising to get someone to me two days after I report the service down. I even had a "team lead" tell me they were in compliance with their contract with me in taking so long to get to me and suggested I upgrade my service.
Now I'm a single person shop. I don't have the need for the huge data transfer capabilities that come with a commercial contract and since it's just my home connections the speed they are providing is great for my need. What I need is service. They don't seem to grasp that I know what I'm seeing when I access their modem and check the stats. I can see where it's hanging and I know that the outbound power levels in dBmV are too high and that indicates a problem on their lines. The last tech I had agreed and gave me a modem he thought would be more tolerant while he put in an engineering report to have the situation repaired. Apparently no one repaired it and it has simply gotten worse.
That brings me to the subject of this blog. Is Internet access simply an entertainment service or is it becoming a commodity necessary for the smooth functioning of the economy? I would suggest the latter. Look at the number of businesses providing free wi-fi to entice customers (where I'm sitting for example). How many businesses are finding it more economical to allow employees in positions that don't necessarily require them to be in the office to work remotely?
While Internet service may not be a commodity in the sense that electricity is, neither was electricity that critical for years after it was introduced into the home. It wasn't until the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 that electricity began to become an essential commodity in the home. The rapid development and employment of 3g and 4g connection through wireless carriers tells me this is a need that is not going away.
And traditional (if you can be traditional in such a young industry) providers like Comcast run the risk of being replaced and left behind, especially if they don't realize that pleasing existing customers is just as, if not more, important than installing the new customer. I'm definitely going to explore a wireless option through my cell carrier and if I can get acceptable performance and coverage it may be time to say bye-bye Comcast.
Are you listening and do you care?
p.s. Comcast: When I'm on hold reporting an outage of my Internet access don't have a recorded message telling me to access www.comcast.com -- if I could do that I wouldn't be calling you, damnit!
