Cablevision redeems itself

If the rest of the world treated me this way I would feel like royalty.

My post of March 21, 2009, Another angry Cablevision customer, recounts my frustrating and anger inducing experience talking with the billing department about what happened after the technical department fixed a problem with my service.

Yesterday I was called by Cablevision’s Andrea W., a polite, kind lady, who wanted to fix this issue. She listened to my side of the event and was the first person to understand that:

1. I did understand what Cablevision’s “revised” bills were about.
2. From my point of view, Cablevision had surprised me with a very large unannounced set of new bills, forever accelerated what I owed them by two weeks, and that the lack of sympathy and concern on the part of the “robotic” agents in the billing department was off-putting, frustrating and anger inducing. After all, Cablevision had caused the problem and fixed it by screwing up my account.

Additionally, another employee, Jim M., has been following me on Twitter and sending me private posts to see if this situation can be resolved. It is fantastic that a multi-billion dollar company would reach out to resolve my complaint this way.

I am usually an advocate of Cablevision’s services. They usually offer bleeding edge services, top-notch technical support, and reasonable pricing, especially compared to the alternatives. My experience with the billing department made me rethink my unpaid evangelism.

On Tuesday night, at my CTPC presentation on Social Networking for the 21st Century: Facebook and Twitter, one of the members who had moved out of the Cablevision territory related his unhappy experiences with Comcast and AT&T’s Uverse.

My typical reply to people who complain to me about Cablevision is that they could experience really bad service if they had AT&T, Charter, Comcast, or Time Warner instead. Andrea W. knows. She works for Cablevision but lives in a Time Warner location.

I am gratified and impressed that Cablevision respected and responded to my concerns. Sometimes large corporations get it right. This is one of those times.