Chris Pirillo ran across an all too common problem in the IT sector - lousy support, with Comcast being the louse of the day. I can relate to his experience - I've had many, many encounters like this with Comcast:

My connection kept going up and down, but by the time I was able to speak with someone in the support department, everything was fine again.

“Well, sir, we’re not showing any problems with your connection right now.” Yes, it’s fine right now - but not when I try to open up more than one Internet app. I was even having issues with Vonage and Skype… “Well, sir, we can’t be responsible for programs that we do not officially supp…”

Whoa, whoa, whoa - WAIT A MINUTE! I interrupted him, loudly. I’ve been using Skype and Vonage and streaming live video and doing all sorts of wacky things across my home network and never had an issue I wasn’t expecting to experience. Vonage wasn’t the problem. Skype wasn’t the problem. My browser wasn’t the problem. The Netgear gateway router that Comcast gave me was the problem.

If I had to guess, the problem goes right back to the motivations of the support staff. They are probably rewarded based on how quickly they handle calls (or how many they handle in an interval of time, which amounts to the same thing). The rationale for such schemes is to save money - although, if you sit down and consider that for a few minutes, the rationale doesn't hold up well in an era where an arbitrary user can end up being an accidental PR nightmare.

In any event, the "get them off the phone quickly" theory holds up well in the face of experience with Comcast. If you have anything other than Windows connected to the Comcast provided router/cable modem, the phone tech will try the "we don't support that" dodge immediately. The fact that the client is irrelevant in most cases doesn't enter into it - it's a dodge to get rid of you.

I've said before that it's a bad idea to let lawyers become ad-hoc PR staff (lawsuits). It's even worse to let your support staff cause PR headaches due to poorly thought out compensation plans. Somewhere at Comcast central, a bean counter thinks his support plan is saving the company money. What he doesn't realize is that the PR staff down the hall wants to know who keeps hitting them with the ball peen hammer...

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