Preemptive strike! Comcast has a new way to deal with customers

I am very sympathetic to customer service / tech support reps. I suspect it is a thankless job.

I am our family "tech" and have spent many an hour hooking up my relatives stuff: Tivo's, Ipods, computers, routers, etc. It is not always easy to explain things to them over the phone (“O.K. on the Tivo remote, press the ‘thumbs up’ button three times…”) - I have learned this the hard way!!

Comcast supplies my home Internet connection. It has been a bit buggy for the past month or so - not a huge deal, but annoying. It just drops out for a few minutes every 10-15 minutes or so. While watching TV last night, I thought I would see if Tech Support at Comcast had anything to say.

It is important you understand – I have rarely called Comcast customer service, I had not called in at least six months and I had never complained about this particular issue before…

Here is the transcription of our chat (note – I deleted the rep's last name and for readability took out some of the line breaks and time stamps, but the rest is a complete and unedited transcript of our chat – including all typos... )

---------------------------------------------------------
Comcast chat room for Internet Tech Support – Sun Jun 01 2008 22:18:38 GMT-0400 (EDT)

After waiting approximately 45 minutes, I reach the top of the cue and begin my conversation

user GC has entered room

GC > we are having intermittent internet issues. it goes fine for 5 mins then dies for a minute or two, then its back. I have rebooted the cable modem many times....

analyst Angelica has entered room

Angelica > Hello GC_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Angelica. Please give me one moment to review your information.

Angelica > I understand.

GC > ok

Angelica > GC, I understand that we need to get this matter resolved and We are doing everything we can to resolve this concern. The outage is really affecting a lot of people and we have our best engineers and technicians working to get this ironed out. But instead of chatting or talking to another rep and still would not get anywhere, I would want to suggest to you to instead make use of the time to do some worthwhile activities while the outage is being fixed. That way, it would not get you to the hassle of waiting on queue for the next available representative or argueing with someone to get things done since the outage is now being worked on.

GC > what? this is my first time emailing in - i havent argured with ayone

Angelica > I understand.

Angelica > We just wanted to reassure you that the outage will be lifted a few hours from now.

GC > so you are saying everyone has this problem? i have had it a month or so

Angelica > Yes, GC.

Angelica > It is affecting nationally.

GC > so everyone in the US has had spotty internet for the last month?

Angelica > Yes, GC.

GC > wow, ok

Angelica > But do not worry, Comcast is doing everything in its power to restore internet back. The engineers are working on it right now.
---------------------------------------------------------

And that was that.

Somethings speak for themselves... (although I must add I love the part about how I should do something more productive with my time than wait for them to tell me what is wrong.....)

For what it is worth, my connection did seem better last night.