Ware’s home was destroyed, but his cable service lived on. (Image: Pioneer Press)

A St. Paul, Minn. man lost his home and everything in it after a wind-driven fire destroyed two North End homes on April 1.

As Jimmy Ware (66) tried to put his life back together, his daughter argued with Comcast to turn off cable service at her father’s address.

It took more than ten days and many phone calls to get the cable company to finally turn Ware’s service off, but not until it had managed to irritate his daughter, who wanted to spend her time helping her father find a new home and get back on his feet without the benefit of fire insurance, which Ware lacked.

Jessica Schmidt ran into a Comcast bureaucratic roadblock with the first phone call. Comcast insisted on getting Ware’s account number, which disappeared along with everything else in the fire. Because Schmidt was not listed as an authorized point of contact in Comcast’s records, she made a three-way call with her father to bring him into the conversation. The Comcast representative asked for the last four digits of his Social Security number, but even that didn’t satisfy, and Comcast refused to stop billing Ware for service.

“I’ve said to Comcast, ‘Here’s your choice, disconnect the service or send someone out to fix the cable, because it’s not working,’ ” Schmidt said in a story reported by the Pioneer Press. “The (Comcast) guy said, ‘That doesn’t make sense, because the house burned down.’ I said, ‘Exactly, shut the service off.’ ”

No.

Four or five calls later, Schmidt heard back from Comcast’s corporate office who finally agreed to cancel service, backdated to April 1st. They also promised Ware would not be bothered a second time from collection efforts to pay for the cable equipment burned in the fire that would normally cost hundreds.

Comcast explained it initially refused to cancel Ware’s cable service for his protection.

“We understand that this is a difficult time for Mr. Ware and apologize for the inconvenience,” wrote Comcast spokeswoman Mary Beth Schubert in a statement. “Comcast has safeguards in place to protect the privacy of our customers, including not allowing unauthorized users to make changes to a customer’s account. We do provide the option for customers to designate others, such as family members, to make authorized account changes and verifying an account can normally be done either over the phone or in person with a driver’s license.”

Ware’s neighbors had a better experience skipping Comcast’s customer service hotline and visiting a local Comcast cable store instead. With a family member present, the Comcast representative was able to locate the customer’s account details and canceled service without issue.