Recently my cable and internet bill has been going up a lot, and with discounts expiring it was set to go up to $183/mo for Ultra TV signature and 30/3 internet. On 1/8/15 I called and said the magic word “cancel” because Comcast was offering a cable package with slightly less channels, but with 50Mb internet for $89.99.  The final cost of that would have been about $127/month with a $10 self install kit and the one time price of buying a new a cable modem, since my old one was only Docsis 2.0 and would only reach ~30Mb per second. When I called I was offered $35/mo off for 12 months, which was fine because it brought me back down to my previous cost of ~$150/mo. Still not great, but I have 3 HD receivers and a personal server hosting e-mail and web and so on set up.

Much to my surprise, I logged in to my account tonight and saw that only a $20 discount had been applied and my bill was going to autopay at $163 tomorrow. WTF, I thought, so I called them again and spoke to a rep that told me all they could offer was a $15 discount. So, basically, my bill would be going up ~$5/mo because I called to ask about why the rest of it wasn’t applied.

I initially said I wanted to cancel, but realized I may be able to salvage the situation because the notes were placed on my account during the original call on the 8th, so I asked for a supervisor. The supervisor came on the line and offered a callback, which I was wary of because I’d been offered that before and waited days with no call.

The supervisor promised a callback within 10 minutes, and luckily he followed through. I was finally given the $35/mo for 12 months, with the warning that it would not be available again. Whatever, I’m sure Comcast will be offering other deals again next year around this time, and maybe WOW will stop this aggressive behavior with their customers.

Moral of the story: if you are promised a discount make absolutely sure it shows up on your account and is applied by a manager while you’re on the phone. If a rep applies it, the request is placed in a queue for supervisor approval and can take a day or two…

Just wanted to share that experience with anyone else that may run into a similar situation.