Man Claims Comcast Got Him Fired After He Made Customer Service Complaints
Just about every one of the many reports of customer vs. Comcast beefs this year has been centered around complaints of high bills, slow service, or refusal of service termination.
But the latest and possibly most Comcastic story we’ve heard to date involves a customer who took issue with Comcast’s service and says that Comcast got him fired from his job in retaliation.
After months and months of dealing with overcharges for equipment he hadn’t ordered, mixed-up account information that had misplaced his bills, and poor effort from Comcast’s customer service to fix it all, Conal O’Rourke was fed up, according to the folks at Consumerist. (You can read all about the multitude of poor service claims and unnecessary fees here; it’s a long story, so maybe grab some popcorn.) O’Rourke’s attempts to cancel his service and negotiate his way out of undeserved costs with customer support had repeatedly fallen short so, as a last-ditch effort, he placed a call to a higher office in the company, the office of the controller. O’Rourke did get in touch with someone, but the call-backs and service visits he was promised never came to be.
What happened next, O’Rourke claims, cost him his job at prestigious accounting firm PwC — the same PwC that does accounting for Comcast.
He says a representative of Comcast placed a call to a partner at his firm. The Comcast rep allegedly claimed O’Rourke had used his employer’s name as leverage in attempting to deal with his customer service difficulties with Comcast. After PwC launched an ethics investigation into the matter, one that apparently uncovered email conversations between O’Rourke and Comcast employees, the firm fired him.
Per a statement by his lawyer, O’Rourke maintains that he never used his employer’s name to gain leverage in any Comcast customer service conversation.
PwC issued a statement Wednesday morning to Ars Technica about O’Rourke’s firing:
“Mr. O’Rourke was employed in one of our internal firm services offices. The firm terminated his employment after an internal investigation concluded that Mr. O’Rourke violated PwC’s ethical standards and practices, applicable to all of our people. The firm has explicit policies regarding employee conduct, we train our people in those policies, and we enforce them. Mr. O’Rourke’s violation of these policies was the sole reason for his termination.”
Comcast, for its part, has apologized to O’Rourke — but only for his poor experience with customer service. Senior VP of Comcast customer experience Charlie Herrin on Wednesday afternoon posted what he titled a “Public Apology to Conal O’Rourke” on the company’s website:
“What happened to Mr. O’Rourke is completely unacceptable. … 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 …”
Though the apology from Comcast may be nice, all reports indicate that O’Rourke is still very much fired. According to the Consumerist, the now former accountant has not yet decided to take legal action against Comcast or PwC, but since he’s lawyered up, we won’t be surprised if there are more dominoes to fall in this story.
Have questions, comments, or just want to tell me something funny? Email me at danbean@yahoo-inc.com.
