The Way I See It

by Dennis J. Lane





Looking For Love In All

The Wrong Places





I want to love Comcast.

Believe it or not, I really do. Most people who know me have heard me complain about them, and I have written a column bemoaning their abysmal customer service. That doesn't mean I don't want to love them.

And here is another shocker: I want to love the Columbia Association, too.

Now that statement may really be stretching the limits of belief, but it's true. Keep in mind that I said I "want to." I didn't say I love them.

Both of those organizations make that very hard to do.

I want to love Comcast because they are an integral part of my life. They make it possible for me to have a high-speed Internet connection in my home. They make it possible for me to watch ESPN and The History Channel. These are good things.

I want to love the Columbia Association because they, too, are an integral part of my life. They maintain the open space that surrounds my house. They provide a program called WKYS that my five-year-old daughter thoroughly enjoys.

So why don't I love them? Perhaps it is because I don't believe they love me.

I don't "feel the love," in any event.

I think I know why. They are both monopolies. They don't have to be good. If you don't love them, they don't care. Go ahead, try to get someone else to give you ESPN and The History Channel.

Sure, you can always go the satellite route. Yet somehow the thought of having a football game interrupted because the "signal can't be located" on a stormy day doesn't exactly thrill me. The satellite people can't give me high speed Internet either.

"Verizon can," you say.

Sure, they can if you live within 500 feet of a central switch or something like that. And it still isn't as fast as the cable service.

The situation with Columbia Association is even worse. There are no real alternatives to this group. You do have isolated facilities like the Coliseum Gym and Curves, but no one else has "Package Plan."

Some folks have come up to me and said, "Come on, give Columbia Association a break; they aren't that bad."

Maybe I just expect them to be better. For example, I recently decided that signing up for Package Plan would be a good idea. Although I have lived in Columbia for quite some time, I have never really wanted to use anything besides the open space.

My daughter changed that. So I decided that I'd go online and find out what the deal is with Package Plan.

Wrong. You can't get any real information on Package Plan online.

Okay. I don't get that, but okay. I went to the CA Service Center in the CA building. When I went into the service center there were two people behind the counter waiting on two people in front of the counter. Not bad. This won't take long.

Wrong again. I should have known I was in for trouble when I saw the "Now Serving" sign behind the counter. It has three digits. I don't think I've ever seen a "Now Serving" sign with three digits before. Most, like the ones you see in stores, have two digits.

It was 45 minutes before I was waited on. In my frustration I asked the Customer Service representative why they didn't make it possible to sign up for Package Plan online.

"It's too complicated for that," was her reply.

Too complicated? I can file my taxes online. Is CA saying that Package Plan is more complicated than that?

But what could I do? They are the monopoly.

The Comcast monopoly, on the other hand, is very automated. When they want to, they can be very efficient.

Last month I decided that I no longer really needed the Premium Channel package. I called Comcast to cancel, and the customer service representative was able to cancel those services immediately. He told me that when I turned on my TV, I would find that they had been turned off.

Amazing. Unfortunately that same efficiency is not found in other parts of Comcast.

Hurricane Isabel knocked down a tree in my community that consequently uprooted and crushed one of the Comcast junction boxes, cutting off cable and Internet to three of my neighbors.

It took Comcast well over a week to come out and get them hooked back up, but I can understand that delay. After Isabel there were lots of problems everywhere. What really threw me was that when they finally did replace the box, they left it uncovered with the wires exposed. They also left behind the remnants of the crushed box.

My neighbor called them voicing concern about exposed wires in an area where children play. They said they'd get to it.

It is still exposed as I write this column. A guy in a Comcast truck came out one day and looked at it and then drove off. Nice.

Monopolies don't necessarily have to be bad at serving their customers.

The Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration is a monopoly. For years they have been one of the most hated and despised departments in state government. Nobody liked dealing with the MVA.

Well guess what?

The MVA has gotten better. They have made a great effort to improve their interactions with the driving public.

And here is the saddest part of my tale.

I don't really want to love the MVA.