After his wife Lisa canceled the cable portion of their Comcast account, Ricardo Brown got an unpleasant surprise on the next bill from the company: His first name was changed to "Asshole*.
Discovered by consumer advocate Christopher Elliott and first reported on by The Consumerist, the story is even more bizarre as even Comcast apparently doesn't know how it happened.
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According to Lisa, after she called Comcast to reduce the bill, the company rep handed the call over to another employee, who tried to persuade her to keep the service and sign a new two-year contract. She declined, but she claims she was "never rude."
“It could have been that person was upset because I didn’t take the offer,” she said.
Comcast apologized for the mishap, and later offered Lisa a full refund for the two years she paid for the service.
“We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change,” Steve Kipp, Comcast’s vice president of communications for the Washington region, told Elliott over the phone.
“We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened.”
Comcast has had troubles with its customer service before. In July 2014, a Comcast customer-service representative stubbornly stonewalled a canceling customer, and a recording of the conversation went viral. According to the University of Michigan's American Consumer Satisfaction Index, Comcast is amongst the most-hated companies in the U.S.