Some Comcast customers might have thought they were losing their minds when e-mail user names and passwords kept failing with errors like “username and password do not match” even though customers were certain they did.  Our reader David dropped us a note late last night to say Comcast’s ongoing e-mail problems created quite a stir on the company’s customer support forum.

Customers have reported the issue sporadically for weeks, and many are unhappy about the perception Comcast has a policy of  ‘blame the customer first and don’t assume responsibility unless absolutely necessary.’

"I could have sworn the password was right!"

One customer:

They assume the customer is wrong and stick to that script no matter what, even when Signature Support states the customer’s PC is fine and the issue is on the provider’s network.

I spent hours (and $50 w/Signature) trying to get anyone to listen to me. I escalated and escalated until I was told there was no one higher, which we all know is incorrect, there are plenty of people higher than the Tech Support Supervisors. The way Comcast ignores proof is just unacceptable.

A Comcast support representative identified only as “Jordan” reports the problem was, indeed, Comcast’s responsibility:

The Consumerist awards AT&T the "Bronze Poo" Award for Third Worst Company in America. (Image: The Consumerist)

A video game company reviled by game fans and the perennially-shoddy Bank of America managed to beat out America’s lowest rated phone company in The Consumerist’s “Worst Company in America” annual award contest, but not by much.

As Electronic-Arts tries to explain away its top-worst rating, AT&T easily took third place after a consolation round decidedly eliminated Walmart.

Congratulations to the folks aboard the Death Star! As soon as we get some proper bronze-colored paint, we’ll be packing up your Bronze Poo and sending it off in the mail. It will, of course, include a 620-page end-user agreement that preempts any class-action lawsuits by AT&T employees.

Some Consumerist readers wondered why game fans rushed to beat EA over the head over its anti-consumer tendencies when Ma Bell was still ripe for some kicking:

The Consumerist notes their award epitomizes the last 12 months for AT&T.

“First it attempted to leap-frog to the head of the wireless pack by swallowing T-Mobile whole, only to fail miserably after many months and at a cost of several billion dollars,” the piece reads. “Then it came tantalizingly close to vying for the coveted Worst Company In America Golden Poo trophy, only to be given the smack-down by a video game company. At least it won’t be leaving the tournament empty-handed.”

West Virginia continues to be broadband challenged, with or without the help of Frontier Communications’ DSL service, which continues to be criticized for being woefully “oversold.”

Now some of Frontier’s most frustrated customers have found Facebook, and hope to encourage the company to deliver better speeds through their Fix Frontier DSL Now page.

Customers are especially peeved in areas where they are sold “up to 12Mbps” service, but cannot break 1Mbps during peak usage times when inadequate infrastructure cannot support customer usage demands.  Some are taking their complaints to the West Virginia Public Service Commission:

I am a long-time subscriber to Frontier Communications’ “High-speed Internet Max” DSL service. I live in the Frankford, West Virginia, telephone exchange (304-497-XXXX), which is an area that has always been served by Frontier. We never had Verizon service at my home.

When Frontier installed DSL service in our area, we immediately cancelled our satellite Internet service and signed up. Initially, we had business-class DSL which was very satisfactory. Later, we discontinued our business operation and downgraded to the residential “High-Speed Internet Max” DSL service. That remained quite satisfactory until about a year and a half ago, when service quality deteriorated to the point of being unusable.

During the evening hours, we generally log download speeds of anywhere from 150kbps (0.15MBPS) to 450kbps (0.45MBPS) , with around 300kbps (0.3MBPS) being the norm. This is barely adequate for accessing a static web page, and is totally inadequate for common tasks such as watching a video on YouTube or even streaming music. Speeds do improve, sometimes into the range of 1500kbps (1.5MBPS), in the middle of the night and the afternoons, when we are generally asleep or at work, but are consistently unusable during the evening hours when we are home.

Customers pay around $40 a month for this level of broadband service, and customers calling for assistance are being told to wait:

I have called Frontier’s tech support and opened numerous trouble tickets. Each time, a technician will come out to our house, test the line, pronounce it “perfect” from the house to the switching station, then explain that the problem is lack of bandwidth. Sometimes they say the bottleneck is in Bluefield. Sometimes they say it is between Marlinton and Ashburn, Virginia. In other words, Frontier does not have enough bandwidth available to meet customer needs.

The last time we put in a trouble ticket, the technician didn’t even come to our home. He just called and said he would put the ticket on the stack with all of the other ones, and perhaps the problem would be solved in a couple of years. A couple of years? Yet, I am constantly bombarded with ads asking me to buy Frontier’s high-speed DSL service at rates as low as half of what I pay.

As Stop the Cap! has reported previously, Frontier has acknowledged the problems in West Virginia and promised backbone upgrades to handle the influx of new customers, particularly those adopted from Verizon Communications in 2010 when the company purchased their landline network in the state.  But a schedule of promised upgrades disappeared off Frontier’s website, and according to our readers, continues to be overdue.

The loudest complainers are offered $5 monthly service credits for their troubles, but customers don’t want the money, they want something that actually qualifies as “broadband service.”

Here is how you can tell where your problem might be:

Technical Line Fault Symptoms (these can be corrected by a local technician’s service call to your home)

1. Consistently low speeds that do not vary much with time of day or on weekends;
2. Weather-related service interruptions or slowdowns – poor quality cables, fittings, and other problems are often most visible during the wet spring months;
3. Loud hum or static on your voice line when making or receiving calls;
4. Hearing conversations from other customers on your phone line;

Oversold Broadband (these problems require Frontier to regionally address problems that affect a much larger group of customers)

1. Dramatically reduced speeds during evenings and weekends that consistently speed up later at night or during the workday;
2. Similar speed-related issues affecting friends and neighbors in the same neighborhood or community;
3. Pages that do not load completely, time out, or require refreshing to load properly;
4. “Tracert” reports that indicate certain upstream connections Frontier uses to connect to its national network are timing out or require multiple attempts to get through.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Fox News Time Warner Cable Has a Monopoly In New York City And It’s Un-American 3-21-12.mp4[/flv]

Shepard Smith has a bone to pick with Time Warner Cable.  (1 minute)

Fox News’ Shepard Smith has the same problem lots of Americans have with telecommunications providers: he hates them.

Smith is angry again

Just a few weeks after slamming AT&T for its creative reinterpretation of the word “unlimited,” Smith is now on the warpath against Time Warner Cable for delivering lousy service to his home in Manhattan.

It all started with Smith’s alienation over reports that Apple iPad users are being advised to switch to Wi-Fi to avoid burning through their 4G mobile broadband data allowances.

“Well I would use that Wi-Fi connection if that Time Warner Cable would get over there and fix it,” Smith responded. “It’s been six weeks, I talked to ten people. They won’t fix it, and […] I’ve about had it.”

“I could scream at Time Warner until the cows come home and make new cows,” Smith added. “And nothing would still happen. Know why? Because it’s Time Warner Cable, that’s why.”

Smith is certain Time Warner Cable has a monopoly on service to his New York neighborhood, primarily because he can’t sign up for Verizon FiOS, which is only slowly becoming available in the New York metropolitan area.

“Look if they let me go and [I can get] FiOS, I’d take the FiOS with a smile and say sayonara; I don’t have that option,” Smith said. “It is a monopoly and it’s un-American and I’m done with them but I can’t get rid of them.”

Rogers’ paid social media outreach campaign on Twitter was supposed to promote the company’s new 1Number service, more or less a ripoff of Google Voice (with fewer features) that lets Rogers’ cell phone customers make and receive calls from a computer or wireless phone, engage in video chats, and send text messages from the 1Number portal. But the paid tweets, which reached the top of Canada’s “trending topics,” quickly went rogue after antagonized customers who loathe Canada’s largest cable operator hijacked the campaign.

“Rogers deserves every tweet coming their way,” wrote one Ontario customer. “What a national disgrace of a company. I’ll bet my last dollar this is the first time top [management] has had any clear indication what their customers think of them. Until now, they’ve just been busy finding new ways to part customers from their money.”

“Bryck123” took Rogers’ debacle more in stride: “Watching this epic fail is almost worth all that I’ve overpaid you guys over the years.”

Ironically, Rogers is paying Twitter for most of the venting and customer wrath.  Twitter sells a “promoted tweets” service to companies who pay whenever someone retweets, replies, clicks, or gives a “thumbs-up” to the promotion. A lot of Canadians are obliging, telling Rogers their customer service, billing and pricing is a disaster.

Hijacking a paid social media outreach campaign isn’t new on Twitter. McDonalds learned this themselves in January when its own paid hashtag turned into a bashtag.

“Rogers learned nothing from McDonalds’ disastrous Twitter campaign, which it smartly ended after a few hours,” said Twitter user Jacques Roglet. “Rogers has been carrying on for days, and so have their customers.”

Roglet says Rogers’ mistake was trying to use Twitter as a way to reach younger customers with a one-way advertising campaign.  Twitter was designed for two way (or more) communication, and Rogers showed no interest in establishing a dialogue with their customers.

They are now.

In an effort to turn consumer lemons into lemonade, a small army of Rogers’ social media representatives are reaching out to complaining customers to address sometimes long-standing problems and concerns.  Customers threatening to leave Rogers behind are winning special customer retention deals that slash rates or deliver larger broadband usage allowances for the same money.  But it may be too late for some.

“I think if there is some true Canadian identity, something shared by Canadians from all walks of life, it might be the common experience of having your money and time stolen by Roger’s criminal syndicate,” shared Michael To.

But things may not be that great elsewhere.

“I went through Bell, Rogers and Telus over the course of 12 years,” shared one reader of the Globe and Mail. “‘Bad service’ doesn’t describe it adequately – ‘absolute contempt for my humanity’ better describes it – every one of the them viewed me as a muppet to be abused, exploited and soaked as much as possible.”

[Thanks to Stop the Cap! reader Damian who alerted us.]

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Welcome to Rogers One Number.flv[/flv]

Rogers produced this video introducing customers to its 1Number service.  (2 minutes)