Did you hear the one about the guy who recorded his telephone conversation with a distraught cable provider representative who pleaded with him to keep his business?
I saw it on the internet, so it must be true!
I’ve been on the phone with cable, phone, internet, credit card, and myriad other companies and I can assure you that no telephone operator has ever held me on the line for twenty minutes. Ever! It’s a waste of their time. …and yes, you do have to return their equipment in person. It’s stupid, but thems the rules.
PLUS… Those conversations are “recorded for quality assurances”.
Other things about this call bother me…
- Block strings this guy along rather than finding ways to end the call. After three minutes, any normal person would have asked for a supervisor.
- The representative is emotional and stumbles through the conversation. No representative I’ve ever talked with was that emotionally invested in our conversation.
- Why is he recording this in the first place? – Sorry, I don’t buy the “I started recording after ten minutes” story.
UPDATE: Since writing this story, Comcast announced an apology to Ryan Block, who claims to be an AOL VP, for the representative’s aggressiveness. There’s no further information available about the fate of the operator. Apparently, Comcast isn’t contesting the validity of the call. I imagine it would be a public relations nightmare to do so.
The bottom line is that I still don’t have enough information to remove doubt. Even if the call is real, the fact remains that Block used the representative for his own private game which, to me, puts as much of the responsibility on him. I’m not defending Comcast. They and Verizon have all but created a monopoly in the market. Sure, there’s TWC and a few other small companies. But the biggest share is Comcast and Verizon.
In the big scheme of things, this is just light entertainment for me.
What do you guys think? Is that call real? Fake?
Do you even care?
ADignorantium 
I think not a hoax. Call centers often have an escalation queue of specialists whose job it is to talk customers out of leaving. Chances are Comcast rates job performance on their success rate. I can see this guy trying to bully the caller into staying, getting emotionally invested (who knows? Maybe he didn’t make his numbers that month), and acting like an ass. The caller, on the other hand, likely knew he could make some hay by recording the call.
Comcast would have every reason to deny that it was theirs, one of which is “we record all of our calls for quality assurance. This call never happened.”
Your point about the call center success rate is a good one I hadn’t given it much thought. More than likely I was too focused on Block’s recording the call while stringing the operator along, which feels dirty to me. Good points. Thanks.
Did not hear it but heard *about* it. Whenever there is so much hoopla surrounding something I am always skeptical. 😉
LOVE your header! 😀
Thanks. The giant Marilyn is on display at Grounds for Sculpture. We went there on July 2nd, the hottest day of the year. I’m putting together a post about it that I hope to publish Friday. 🙂
look forward to reading it 🙂