Why Comcast is not ready to serve business telephone service
My Rant about Comcast Phone Service for Business
I ordered Comcast voice telephone service and I made a huge mistake. I trusted that the sales person would be knowledgeable enough to know how their system works, and not lie to me to get me to sign up. The resulting service problems are enough for me to honestly say that Comcast is NOT ready to provide true business class phone service, and they fall behind every provider I have used in the past 10 years.
It started with voice mail and call hunting, two very basic features for a business phone system. Phone hunting is the ability of the phone system to take a busy phone number and continue to try other numbers in the group to find one that is open. This will typically ring an alternate line jumping from lines 1-2-3-4 in our case. If all lines are busy then voice mail should pick up and my customer hears a message saying that we’ll be right back in touch. Seems easy so far.
The problem comes when a customer tries to contact us directly on line number 2-3-4. What SHOULD happen on those lines is the same as above, hunt through the busy lines and if no answer the call is sent to my voice mail box. This is standard practice and has never been a problem with any real phone service provider. The service that Comcast provides currently causes calls from the 2-3-4 lines to ring with no answer forever. No voice mail service will pick up, leaving my customers to wonder if I am still in business. If all lines are busy, my customers get a busy signal when calling directly on these lines. UNACCEPTABLE!
The salesperson for Comcast told me it would be no problem to get things running properly. I specifically spoke to him about the voice mail and hunting service since this is one of the main reasons I went with Comcast. The promise of emailed voice mail transcripts and checking the voice mail through the net were interesting. So I know I explained this to the sales rep, then checking with his supervisor and they claimed it would work just fine.
After some techs were trying to get this working for me, the sales manager contacts me and has a tech contact me who actually understands what we are trying to accomplish. He very clearly explains to me that what I want done is not possible on Comcast’s current system. I am told they are upgrading other areas to have this ability, but it is not happening in the Philadelphia region, and that this upgraded switch would be the only way for me to get the services I explained above. So now we have a confirmation from the sales person and his manager, and this master Comcast tech that the phone system should operate this way, but it can not because of hardware that should be upgraded.
So Comcast, if you can’t provide the most basic business class phone service, why do you continue to sell this to us? At least be honest and tell us that your system is being upgraded or will be upgraded soon. Now you have a business that relies on phone service limping along and trying to get switched BACK to Verizon so my clients can contact me. Don’t push this amateur service as business class phone..it’s far from it.