Comcast Corporation Customer Service Problems Keep On Coming

Comcast has become the punchline to a never-ending joke about customer service.

Despite the company making what appears to be a sincere effort to clean up its act -- appointing respected Comcast executive Charlie Herrin as senior vice president of customer experience -- the mistakes keep coming. Though the cable and Internet giant has a long history of poor relations with subscribers, it is fair to say its current woes started when former Engadgeteditor-in-chief Ryan Block publicly released acallduring which a "customer retention" specialist berated him for canceling his service.

That recording went viral, which resulted in a number of other disgruntled customers making their issues with the company public. These included (but are not limited to):

A customer, Mary Bauer of Addison, Illinois whoArs Technicareportedhad faced repeated difficulties with her service, receiving a bill addressed to "Super Bi*** Bauer"
Numerous other customers have reported their names being changed to derogatory terms, according toConsumerist,with one man having his changed to A***ole Brown and another whose online profile name was changed to "Dummy"
Adrian Fraim ran into a problem when he tried to move his service from one Tennessee city to another, NashvilleWSMVreported. Fraim was shocked when he moved from Antioch to Clarksville and received a bill from Comcast for $2,789 to cancel his service. Fraim did not want to cancel and had actually scheduled a service appointment to turn on cable at his new location

Now Comcast is facing another issue, as one of its representatives told a customer that Internet data caps are "mandated by law." They are not, which the now-former customer knew, leading to a whole new scandal for the company.

What happened?In aReddit post, the Comcast customer wrote that he had been charged $120 in overage fees.

"If you don't mind me asking, what is the reason why you would like to disconnect your service?" the agent asked during the call, which the customeruploaded to SoundCloud.

Source: SoundCloud

"Your outrageous data usage plan that is completelyarchaic and unnecessary. I am apparently in a trial market for it. It's not everywhere, and I've been getting charged for going over my data cap, and I'm just going to find somewhere where that's not going to happen to me," he responded.

"Iunderstand. But every Internet service provider has [a] data cap," the agent responded.

"Nothey don't," said the customer.

"It is mandated by the law,"the customer service agent answered.

.At that point, the caller laughed and said, "No,it is not."

Comcast respondsIn a statement to Ars Technica, the company apologized for the rogue customer service agent.

Comcast has gotten good at apologizing for its mistakes, but this event illustrates the scope of the problem. Despite efforts to stop exactly this sort of bad publicity, Herrin and his team are fighting ingrained training and a system that values retention over all else.

Changing that in an organization as large as Comcast involves switching an entire culture from one that values numbers to one that puts customers first.

Herrin is saying the right thingFollowing the "A***ole Brown incident, which took place in Spokane, Washington, Herrin issued a statement that indicated he understands how deep a deficit he was dealing with.

He is saying the right things, but this is a massive shift that goes against long-standing practices. His actions, as well as those of Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit -- who has publicly acknowledged the need to improve customer service -- suggest the company is doing more than paying lip service to fixing these issues.

But it is hard to give the benefit of the doubt to a brand with such a poor track record when it comes to treating its subscribers well.

Comcast can improve. It even seems to want to improve, but until the company has a prolonged period without generating headlines at its expense, I find it hard to believe it actually will turn the corner.

The article Comcast Corporation Customer Service Problems Keep On Coming originally appeared on Fool.com.

Daniel Kline has no position in any stocks mentioned. He has been called worse things than any of the customers above. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.