Things Have Changed?

Twenty years after the beating of Rodney King, the LAPD is a changed operation.

Compared to the cops who beat King, officers these days hit the streets with a new reality ingrained in their minds: Someone is always watching.

"Early on in their training, I always tell them, 'Whatever you do, assume it will be caught on video,' " said Sgt. Heather Fungaroli, who supervises recruits at the LAPD's academy.

"We tell them if they're doing the right thing then they have no reason to worry."

"Things are a whole lot more transparent now and if you're going to do something stupid, then you're going to pay for your stupidity."

It finally took the threat of citizens 'catching' them to get them to stop beating us. And, If you believe they won't still find a way to get away with it, you are living in a fairy tale.

Comcast Customer Relations is Way Out of Line

What the Hell is Going on with Comcast?

I just found this story through Digg about how a Comcast Tech got extremely rude with a paying customer after the tech disconnected the guys service. The situation can be better explained here and the tech was definitely in the wrong for actions and absolutely out of line for his verbal assault on the customer.

Periodically, I hear of horror stories from Comcast customers in the way they are treated so I decided to do some investigation of my own. I was appalled by what I learned. It just blows me away that this company is still in business.

Is their job so stressful that they cannot maintain a civil tongue? Do they hold their customers in such low esteem that they cannot afford basic simple courtesies to them?

Do they attend any type of seminar or training session that clearly identifies how Comcast employees are supposed to talk to their customers?

The list of atrocious behavior from Comcast is a long one covering the complete gamut from missed appointments, refusing to follow through on promises to return calls, to swearing at customers.

I am a Comcast customer only because I have no options concerning who I can deliver cable to my home. They say there is no monopoly in the cable service business but everywhere I have lived, since cable became popular in the 1970s, I have never had a second choice in service providers. If that is not a monopoly then I don’t know what is.

My horror story with them involved initial installation. When the installer showed up and did not do the complete install because his work order did not reflect everything I had specifically asked for (and verified with customer service the previous week) he told me it happens all the time. He did actually call his supervisor right then and set me up for another appointment the following week to finish the installation. I could not talk him into finishing in right then but he would do it saying he had other installs to do and was only allowed a certain amount of time. A lot of this sounded bogus but at least I didn’t have to deal with the dreaded customer service again.

Then I got to thinking about their television ads. The complete and utter lies they tell of how good it is to work there or how many satisfied customers they have, or how they make your life so much better for trusting them. They are the only ones you can go to.

I witnessed a very unusual event at my neighbors home. A Comcast installer arrived near the last minute of their scheduled appointment, as is usual for this company, and about twenty minutes later a second installer showed up. within thirty more minutes two other installers showed up. so now there are four installers to do this very simple installation. I know the installation was for hooking up three televisions and an internet connection. Anyway, the reason it took all of these guys to do this very standard and simple installation is because the neighbor is a 19 year thin very busty very pretty woman. Think about that for a moment. The secret to getting fast service is invite a beautiful young busty woman to be present and make sure the installer knows it. It still took them three hours to make this installation. Sometimes you just have to laugh at how shallow and dog-like men can be.

Every where I have worked all the employees are taught that the customer should be allowed to complain but you never, ever get into a shouting match with them or become disrespectful in any way.

Comcast clearly has the opinion that since they are the only providers of cable service than they can treat their customers any way they want.

We need to get someone who can penalize Comcast for their terrible customer service record. We hold politicians to account for their behavior, we hold police to account for their behavior, we hold every other company to account for their customer service but the difference with Comcast is that are indeed a monopoly and they bloody well take advantage of it.

Comcast does not restrict their distaste and lackadaisical treatment to customers of their television cable service. They also lie to internet customers as well. They claim they do not set bandwidth limits, but we have seen proof to the contrary. Check out this story as well, and here. These are just small examples of what Comcast actually does even though they try to convince the rest of us that they don’t so it.

How much longer is this corporation going to be allowed to get away with this treatment of its customers? Who can we complain to?

Or is this just a preview to the type of customer service we can expect from every business from now on?

More horror stories:
Comcast Must Die

Comcast and Congress Are Cozy Buddies

Comcast ads mislead customers abut FiOS

Comcast Censors Ad

Comcast Throttles BitTorrent Traffic

We are losing our common decency

Dad kills children’s mother in front of them.

Kid Rock arrested after Waffle House brawl

Teen shoots four, kills self at Cleveland high school

A sheriff's deputy kills six young people at a house party in Crandon, Wisconsin, because his ex-girlfriend wouldn't take him back.

Man kills self in front of City Council after vote.

Parents beat 5-year-old.

Police blast into building, kill 63-year-old man who shot 5 at law office because he felt unfairly treated during divorce settlement.

Ex husband sets wife afire in front of witnesses. They don’t even care that their brazen acts of violence are witnessed anymore.

Stories like these are repeated every day. People are either putting off responsibility onto others or they are taking the law into their own hands and using violence to 'solve' their problems.

Why is it that people are resorting to violence and giving up on more civilized methods?

Are we becoming a society that believes if you walk away from a confrontation instead of getting physical then you are a wimp? Is this how an adult is judged these days? Is this what is passing for being manly, grown-up, or mature? Have we really reverted to animalism as the only means to settle our differences?

People are willing to become criminals, facing jail time, over words! How ridiculous is that?

People are lowering themselves to animal behavior because someone says they don’t ‘love’ us anymore and then killing the person they vowed to ‘love, cherish and respect’. What the hell, people?

This is ludicrous. The threat of punishment does not stop these people any more.

Is it becoming more of a mental health problem or simply animal instinct coming out?

Where is this society headed when we think it is better to kill or beat someone than to just turn the other cheek? This used to be preached to us as children that what ever someone says to you is only words and you should never escalate it into violence. I went to church as a child and I was taught to treat others as you want to be treated. This important lesson is not being taught anymore. There simply are not enough people going to church anymore learning to respect other people.

This is the perfect time to bring up the proliferation of the number of handguns in our society. Without them there would not be as many dead. That point cannot be argued. Handguns are used to kill people. That stupid slogan about how guns don’t kill people, people kill people, well without guns it would not be so easy to kill someone. And there would not be as many dead.

Why are we so on edge all the time ready to flip out at the drop of an assumed slight?

This affinity to resort to rage is especially prevalent while driving a car. Road rage cases are up. People become infuriated at the slightest assumption of rudeness. Stress, anxiety, antagonism all fuel the fire of frustration with life’s every day pressures to result in taking out that frustration on unsuspecting people. Then those people who now feel wrongly attacked fight back. Then it devolves into violence. We need to learn anger management.

Even without anger management, the one thing that should help us all get along with each other is respect. Everyone deserves it until they show they don’t want it. Common decency should tell us that a human life is worth far more than the ego of any one person who feels he should exact retribution just because someone calls him something he doesn’t like or cuts him off in traffic, or refuses to be with him anymore.