Senior Accidentally Overpays Comcast, Can't Get Money Back

Why does it always take the glare of the media spotlight for Comcast to do the right thing?

Granted, most companies now a days want to just give a credit, which is stupid in itself

And never attribute to stupidity that which can be attributed to greed...

Well, not to defend Comcast, but there are two issues at play here:

1) A lower level employee may be able to issue a refund for a few hundred bucks, but when you're talking about four digits the accounting folks will need to get involved. Nobody in a customer service call center is going to have the authority to issue a check for thousands of dollars.

2) The refusal to give a credit in this instance most likely came from a low level employee who was too stupid/scared to apply basic common sense. He has a flowchart, this situation is not on the flowchart, so he's going to do the safest thing, i.e., nothing.

Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity.

Anyone with a single brain cell knew this would go to the press and force Comcast's hand.

Then you've never worked in a call center. Customers call in all the time that are upset, pissed, belligerent, threatening, etc. Sometimes the customer's demeanor is justified, other times it's not. Either way, as a customer support rep, you are not always empowered to help the customer, or may not have received the proper training to help the customer. The same goes for the people who are part of the chain of escalation at call centers.
Certainly the customer did not receive the level of customer service that he obviously should have, however that does not directly indicate that the lower level person is the one who failed. Without recordings of the call(s) he made we simply have no way of knowing.

No, the customer did not receive the level of customer service that he obviously should have and rarely do they ever get that type of service.

You are creating a straw man here. It is obvious that the customer did not receive the proper resolution through traditional channels, which is not acceptable. If you have worked in a call center then you know that this may or may not be the fault of the rep(s) that took the call. Too often the reps that take the calls are simply not empowered to help customers in the way that the customers deserve. All that person can do is escalate, and at that point it is out of his or her hands.

No, there is no strawman.

Then you don't understand the strawman. You argued the first level rep that took the call is an idiot. I argued that there is no reason to say with certainty that the first-level rep is to blame. Then you started arguing a bunch of other things, but you stopped arguing it was the first level reps fault. That's how a strawman works. You stop arguing your original point and pick a new one.

Keep defending the indefensible.

In all fairness to Comcast, they probably don't have a very good mechanism to provide refunds for over-payment to customers who aren't canceling their service - it doesn't happen at this level very often. They were offering credit to the account because that's all the system is set up to do. I'm no Comcast fan, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

In all fairness to Comcast, they probably don't have a very good mechanism to provide refunds for over-payment to customers who aren't canceling their service - it doesn't happen at this level very often. They were offering credit to the account because that's all the system is set up to do. I'm no Comcast fan, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

In all fairness to Comcast, they probably don't have a very good mechanism to provide refunds for over-payment to customers who aren't canceling their service - it doesn't happen at this level very often. They were offering credit to the account because that's all the system is set up to do. I'm no Comcast fan, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Why does it always take the glare of the media spotlight for Comcast to do the right thing?

Why does it always take the glare of the media spotlight for Comcast to do the right thing?

It doesn't say how he payed, but I'm assuming it was by check. So even if he left out the decimal point in the digits box, wouldn't he have had to write it out (i.e. Six Thousand, Fifty-Three & 00/100) in order for Comcast to cash it for that?

Reminds me of one morning about five years ago when I logged into my bank and found my paycheck direct deposit as usual .... alongside another paycheck direct deposit from Oracle Corporation.

Whoever that person was, they made a lot more than me.
..

Collect $5,000.00
Bank error in your favor.

If bank web sites don't already have this feature, add a configurable maximum bill pay amount or when the amount is over say, $500, ask the customer to enter the amount twice. However, a configurable limit is probably safer because the customer may have assumed the decimal was automatic like some ATMs/calculators.