Ricardo Brown didn't have to wonder what Comcast thought of him.
Someone at the company changed his name to a not-very-nice word and then mailed him his monthly bill.
His wife, Lisa, was shocked and irate when she saw the insulting bill. She contacted Comcast to try and have the name corrected, visiting her local Comcast office and even phoning regional executives.
We can't imagine what those Comcast employees thought when they looked at the name on the bill and heard Lisa tell them that she didn't marry an A-hole, but a guy named Ricardo.
But they apparently didn't believe her enough to change the name back. So she reached out to consumer advocate blogger Christopher Elliott, who posted an image of the offending bill on his blog.
Elliott contacted Comcast and got a response. A company spokesperson "apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change.”
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The company also contacted Brown and promised it would look for and fire the responsible employee.
Brown suspects a customer service rep did it after she called the company to cancel the cable portion of her service. She was told she would be charged a $60 fee to cancel but instead of proceeding with her request, she was passed off to a "retention specialist" who tried to talk her into signing a new two-year contract for cable.
She says she was never rude as she rebuffed the offer and insisted that Comcast cancel the service as requested.
Along with the apology, Comcast offered to refund her the $60. But when Brown thought about it, she decided she wanted a full refund from the company for treating her this way. In the end, an embarrassed Comcast did try to do right by her, offering to refund her for the last two years and to give her two years of service at no charge, Elliott reported.
Here's Comcast's statement about the incident:
We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change. We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened. We are working with our customer to make this right and will take appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again.
