Does $5 refund for three-hour outage set a new precedent for service providers?
Cable and Internet provider Comcast, infamously known for poor customer service, is going to provide $5 refunds to customers affected by a network failure that cut off or degraded Web service in the western U.S.
The outage lasted for about three hours on the evening of June 1 and hit customers in California, Oregon and Washington.
Mark Muehl, SVP of platform technologies, said in a corporate blog posted Tuesday that a “piece of hardware in our backbone network failed,” adding issues like that “are fairly commonplace and redundancy in our network addressed any immediate concern.”
But apparently redundancy measures were not able to accommodate the failure by rerouting DNS, domain name system and Web traffic.
“Some of that traffic shifted in an unexpected way and overloaded local DNS server capacity causing many customers to experience service interruptions,” Muehl explained.
The company is working on launching a purpose-driven website that will let customers collect their refunds.
“We all rely on the Internet and expect it to be there when we need it,” Muehl wrote. “We are directly reaching out to those who reported problems … to offer our apologies and a credit for lost service.”
Last month Comcast set out to refresh its customer service protocols and undo the bad will that led consumer group Consumerist to name it the worst company in America last year.
With the rise of over-the-top providers like HBO Go and Netflix, and increased competition from satellite and fiber providers, cable companies have been struggling to keep up in recent years. In a new survey gauging customer satisfaction, subscriber TV companies such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable took a nosedive. The industry as a whole ranked dead last among 43 industries.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index shows a 10% loss in satisfaction for Comcast customers, while Time Warner Cable lost 9%, putting them in last place.
The report suggests the recent failed merger between the two companies has led to lower customer satisfaction scores.
“Cable companies are trying to strengthen their positions through consolidation, but the benefits to consumers of one coaxial cable company absorbing another are questionable,” said David VanAmburg, ACSI director.
