Social Life
Little Old Lady Hammers Comcast
A 75-year-old lady, who apparently fed up with the lousy service she received from Comcast, took her claw hammer back to the customer service center and bludgeoned the office equipment into tiny plastic pieces.
This was after the company had scheduled installation of its much ballyhooed “Triple Play” service, which combines phone, cable and Internet services, in Shaw’s brick home in nearby Bristow. But Shaw said they failed to show up on the appointed day, Monday, Aug. 13. They came two days later but left with the job half done. On Friday morning, they cut off all service.
So on that Friday, Mona Shaw and her husband, Don, went to the local call center office to complain. Mona demands to speak to a manager. A customer service representative says someone will be right with them. Directs them to a bench, outside. (Remember, it’s mid-August.) Mona and Don sit.
And then — this is the best part — the customer rep leans out the door and says the manager has left for the day. Thanks for coming!
The insulting idea that, as Shaw puts it, “they thought just because we’re old enough to get Social Security that we lack both brains and backbone.” So, after stewing over it all weekend, on the following Monday, Shaw storms in the company’s office and whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep, the monitor and the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up.
By the time it was over, she recalls, there were an ambulance, two police cruisers and a sergeant’s car in the parking lot. Shaw received a three-month suspended sentence for disorderly conduct, a $345 fine in restitution and a year-long restraining order barring her from the Comcast office.
She does, however, finally, have phone service.
On Verizon.
