Earlier today we brought you the story that Comcast got one of its customers fired from his job after he complained about their service. It was a dick move so heinous that some were questioning the validity of the customer’s story.
Well, the customer’s story seems pretty valid now that Comcast has apologized. Here’s the full mea culpa — titled “A Public Apology to Conal O’Rourke” — courtesy of Comcast.com:
What happened with Mr. O’Rourke’s service is completely unacceptable. Despite our attempts to address Mr. O’Rourke’s issues, we simply dropped the ball and did not make things right. Mr. O’Rourke deserves another apology from us and we’re making this one publicly. We also want to clarify that nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired.
We’re also determined to get to the bottom of exactly what happened with his service, figure out what went wrong at every point along the way, and fix any underlying issues. I’m a few weeks into a new role at Comcast which is entirely focused on what we can do to make the customer experience better. We need to make sure that every interaction is excellent … from the moment a customer orders a new service, to the installation, to the way we communicate with them, to how we respond to any issues.
We’re holding ourselves accountable and we are working hard to make real improvements across the board. While it will take us some time, we can and will do better than this.
This is the ultimate “sorry not sorry.” It’s Comcast attempting to save face by issuing a public apology, then spending the entire press release talking about its sh*tty service — which everyone knows is sh*tty and no one expects to get less sh*tty — without actually copping to the ugliest part of the story.
“Nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired” is probably a true statement, but no one’s accusing Comcast of making that formal request. Conal’s employer said he was fired over “an e-mail from Comcast that summarized conversations between Conal and Comcast employees.” Nowhere in Comcast’s apology is that correspondence mentioned or, more importantly, denied.