A week ago if you would have asked me if I liked Comcast I would have gone on a rant about everything I hated about them. 

 I had been toying with the idea of switching to Voom.  I finally decided that I was ready to switch.  In November I called Comcast and canceled my cable service (I kept the high-speed internet).  We decided to leave the cable service off for a little while, but finally, last week we needed cable service again.  I was all set to call Voom. 

The night before I was planning on calling them I was doing a little research on the net and I found this article at Engadget. So Voom was going to shut down.  Crap.  Even after finding this out I toyed with the idea of still getting service from them.  I figured it was only $1 for installation and I wouldn't be out anything when they went under. Once again I was all set to order Voom, and then I read somewhere that you had to have a phone line.  I use Vonage and don't have a normal phone line.  I'm pretty confidant that it would work fine, but I used the online chat with Voom and asked them.  They told me they required a normal phone line.  That was it, I gave up on Voom.

So then I had to figure out what I was going to do about getting a TV signal.  The rabbit ears just weren't cutting it. In the middle of all this I received a bill from Comcast.  They charged me for cable for since November.  Of course this was just a mistake on their part.  My wife called them up and told them about the problem.  To her surprise they said that they didn't have a work order for someone actually coming out and turning off our cable so they had to charge us.  She asked to talk to a supervisor and even the supervisor said there was nothing they could do, we would have to pay the bill. 

That really irked me.  There was no way I would use Comcast again.  A few friends of mine subscribe to DirecTV so I started looking into that.  What I found shocked me.  In order to get HD service I would have to spend $300 on equipment and installation.  That wasn't so bad.  I mean with Comcast I had to spend $5 per month per cable box. I could sort of look at the purchase of all the equipment as an investment (even though it's pretty weak... I mean it'd take me almost 3 years of a monthly fee to cover the cost of the equipment.  By then I'd probably have to purchase new equipment.). What really shocked me about DirecTV was that even after purchasing the equipment they were going to charge me a monthly “usage” fee per box in my house.  Holly crap, what a rip. 

At this point I was really pissed.  Voom is going out of business, Comcast sucks, and DirectTV is freakin expensive.

I was cornered... I really had no option but to give Comcast another chance.  I called Comcast and told them my story and told them I was trying to decide between DirecTV and Comcast.  I asked them if they had anything to entice me back as a customer. 

This is where the importance of customer service comes into play.

The person I was talking to was named Kevin.  I told Kevin that I felt cornered into their service.  He apologized for me feeling that way and asked me why.  I explained the billing problems and some of the other problems I've had.  He immediately cleared up the billing problems.  He said it was obvious that we requested to have our cable turned off in November and that I should not send in a payment.  He then gave me an offer that put the prices of DirecTV to shame.  Before I canceled Comcast I was paying $110 for both cable and high speed internet.  I was also paying $13.00/month for a ReplayTV subscription. I only had one cable box. 

Kevin set me up.  For the next year I'm paying $90.00/month.  That's with two cable boxes, and the new Comcast DVR.  Comcast had won me back.  The thing is, it wasn't just about the price.  It was the way Kevin handled to whole situation.  Everyone I had talked to at Comcast previous to Kevin had been pretty horrible at customer service.  Kevin not only gave me a great deal, but also truly seemed to want me to be happy about choosing Comcast.  He even gave me his direct phone number in case I ever had any future problems.

So that's the story of why I hated Comcast and why I now like them.  Bad customer service made me hate them... and good customer service made me come back to them.