Comcast issues apology after viral service call

Comcast issued a quick and ardent apology in response to a recording of a frustrated customer who couldn’t get a company representative to cancel his cable service.

AOL employee Ryan Block posted a recording of part of his 8-minute call on Tuesday, and it quickly gained fire online.

“The way in which our representative communicated with him is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives,” Comcast customer experience head Tom Karinshak said in a statement.

He said the company was reaching out to Block to apologize to him.

{mosads}“We are investigating this situation and will take quick action. While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.”

In the call, Block repeatedly tries to cancel his Comcast service but is denied at every turn. 

“I’m just trying to figure out what is it about Comcast service that you’re not liking,” the customer service representative said during the call. “Why is that what you want to do?”

“You’re not interested in the fastest Internet in the country?” the employee added. “Why not keep what you know works? … You don’t want a good service? You don’t want something that works?”

“This phone call is an amazingly representative example of why I don’t want to stay with Comcast,” Block responded.

Audio from the call was posted on sites across the Internet and represented many subscribers’ worst fears about poor customer service at the cable giant.

The issue is especially salient for Comcast, which is battling poor customer satisfaction ratings as it tries to convince regulators to approve a $45 billion bid to buy Time Warner Cable. 

Critics have feared that the merger between the nation’s No. 1 and No. 2 largest cable providers would lead to worse service, since the combined company would have even less to fear from competitors.

Company executives retort that the merger will allow them to bring new and better products to subscribers and ensure that it can keep pace with rivals like Google and Netflix.