Emma Nutt

On February 25th, the north shore and southern New Hampshire experienced a severe storm. The storm, snuck up on the guys and gals of the local media outlet's. Now as we all know forecasting the weather in New England is a crap shoot at best. Even with all the modern equipment,the forecasters get it wrong as often as they get it right. But major storms the meteorologists usually can't miss. That big black blob on the radar is a sure indicator. This turns the media meteorologists into leering, grinning, soothsayers of gloom and doom Warning you to run to your local supermarket and purchase enough groceries booze,candles and toilet paper to last you it least a month. Because there is a good chance you might not be able to get there until tomorrow. So this storm robbed them of their chance to show you their compulsory film footage of panicky shoppers, knocking down the doors of local hardware outlets in search of those elusive snow shovels. I have yet to meet one of those poor souls, who seem to be constantly losing their shovels. Or are just realizing, here on the cusp of March that winter has made an appearance.
This reminds me of Don Kent. Unlike today, where we have access to a gazillion media outlets. In the fifties we had only three TV stations and radio. And on both TV and radio WBZ was the media giant. And Don Kent of WBZ was the heavyweight of meteorologists. And his nickname? You guessed it.Everybody called him Wrong Kent!
So when you look at the big picture, trees down, street and basement flooding and beach erosion. My exasperation with Comcast seems trivial. However, having related to you in previous blogs of my run ins with telephone and video providers. Every confrontation I have with Comcast seems to be magnified.
So naturally Comcast was down and out shortly after the storm started, and still in that mode long after all it's competition was back up and running. This of course was no surprise, as their track record even in nice weather is spotty at best. It seems that if a bird craps on one of their coaxial cables it can shut down the whole system.
How can you trust a company who's major emphasis is to avoid any personal contact with it's customers. The only thing you presume from that kind of attitude is that they know, that they have major issues. And that they expect to be swamped with complaints. Now I know complaint is a badly misused word for problems. For example a doctor might say the patient was complaining of a gunshot wound to the head. Now how can that be complaining? To me that's a fact. To me complaining is when you are bitching about minor issues. So if that's what they think I can understand the smoke and mirrors of their telephone system.
But you know and I know that in this day and age, there is no company ethics or pride. The only thing that counts is the bottom line. So the way the system works is promise them a good deal, with no intention to honor it. Knowing full well that the majority of irate customers will never get past their diabolical customer relations land mines.
Trying to pay your bill on line with Comcast is like playing Russian roulette. There is no way to explain to you how convoluted their system is. You would just have to see it yourself. I pay a number of my bills on line and on the sites where I do they are user friendly. so to give the devil it's due,Comcast is not user friendly in any phase. So it least they are consistent. And the one most annoying stunt is every thirty seconds they have a pop up that ask you if you will do away with paper bills . You can not proceed unless you answer this. Even though there is a box that says check here, to not be asked again. So of course they think, like their phone system, you will finally cave in. So after trying to trick you into paying your bill twice and doing away with the paper trail, they think they have you. Fat chance! How could you trust them to be up and running when it comes time to make your next ransom payment.
The simple solution is to take pride in what they do and give the customer what they promise and then they would not need a bunch of anti linguists.
The one thing switching to Comcast made me do,is get a cellphone. The reason of course is that once any part of the system went down,they all went down. So of course I could not call them to find out if they were just dumping on me that day. Or was it the whole surrounding area,they had decided to abuse that day. Needless to say I really fumble around with this tiny bit of electronic gadgetry. I miss the old days where you picked up the phone and Emma Nutt or one of her ilk, pleasantly greeted you. She would ask what number you wanted and you would reply Walker 233 (Walker was the Beverly exchange) and someone from the business you were calling would actually answer in a civil manner. And I know you might not believe this, They actually spoke English.
Telling you about the Beverly exchange reminded me of the old radio ad that would ask you how many cookies could Andrew eat? Which was of course was Andrew 8 8000.