Taking a Whack Against Comcast
By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 18, 2007; C01
Sometimes truly American virtues arise in outlaws who -- by dint of
heroic but questionable endeavors -- display the mettle of the
national character.
For instance: The Dillinger Gang, robbing banks (and destroying
mortgages) when banks were foreclosing on the poor. Stephanie St.
Clair, matron of the numbers racket during the Harlem Renaissance,
striking a (dubious) blow for both gender and racial equality.
Junior Johnson bootlegging liquor during Prohibition (the benefits
of which were self-evident).
Fear not, fellow Americans! In these dark days of war, pestilence
and Paris Hilton, a new hero has arisen. She is none other than
75-year-old Mona "The Hammer" Shaw, who took the aforementioned
implement to her local Comcast office in Manassas to settle a
score, and boy, did she!
This was after the company had scheduled installation of its much
ballyhooed "Triple Play" service, which combines phone, cable and
Internet services, in Shaw's brick home in nearby Bristow. But Shaw
said they failed to show up on the appointed day, Monday, Aug. 13.
They came two days later but left with the job half done. On Friday
morning, they cut off all service.
This was the company that has had consumer service problems serious
enough to prompt the trade magazine Advertising Age to editorialize
that Comcast and other cable providers should spend less on
advertising and more on customer service. And has spawned a blog
called ComcastMustDie.com that's filled with posts from angry
customers.
So on that Friday, Mona Shaw and her husband, Don, went to the
local call center office to complain.
Let's pick it up, mid-action, according to Shaw:
Mona demands to speak to a manager. A customer service
representative says someone will be right with them. Directs them
to a bench, outside. (Remember, it's mid-August.) Mona and Don
sit.
Tick, tick, tick, goes the clock. Sit, sit, sit, go Mona and
Don.
For. Two. Hours.
And then -- this is the best part -- the customer rep leans out the
door and says the manager has left for the day. Thanks for
coming!
Oh, the sputtering outrage!
The insulting idea that, as Shaw puts it, "they thought just
because we're old enough to get Social Security that we lack both
brains and backbone."
So, after stewing over it all weekend, on the following Monday, she
went downstairs, got Don's claw hammer and said: "C'mon, honey,
we're going to Comcast."
Did you try to stop her, Mr. Shaw?
"Oh no, no," he says.
Hammer time: Shaw storms in the company's office. BAM! She whacks
the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the
monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream,
cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the
phone!
"They cuffed me right then," she says.
Her take on Comcast: "What a bunch of sub-moronic imbeciles."
Being a responsible newspaper, we must note that this is a
misdemeanor, a crime, a completely inappropriate way of handling a
business dispute.
Noted.
Who among us has not longed for a hammer in this age of incompetent
"customer service representatives," of nimrods reading from a
script at some 800-number location, of crumbs-in-their-beards
plumbing installation people who tell you they'll grace you with
their presence between 12 and 3, only never to show? And you'll
call and call and finally some outsourced representative slings a
dart at a calendar and tells you another guy will come back between
10 and 2 next Thursday? And when this guy comes, pants halfway down
his behind, he'll tell you he brought the wrong part?
And there is nothing, nothing you can do.
Until there! On the horizon! It's Hammer Woman, avenger of
oppressed cable subscribers everywhere! (Cue galloping "Lone
Ranger" theme.)
"I scared the tar out of some people, at least," she says. "It had
never occurred to me to take a hammer to a phone company before,
but I was just so upset. . . . After I hit the keyboard, I turned
to this blonde who had been there the previous Friday, the one who
told me to wait for the manager, and I said, ' Now do I have your
attention?' "
It wasn't all fun.
"My blood pressure went up around my ears. I started
hyperventilating. They had to call the rescue squad and put me on a
litter."
By the time it was over, she recalls, there were an ambulance, two
police cruisers and a sergeant's car in the parking lot. Shaw
received a three-month suspended sentence for disorderly conduct, a
$345 fine in restitution and a year-long restraining order barring
her from the Comcast office.
"Truly a unique and inappropriate situation," says Beth Bacha, a
vice president for Comcast. She says company policy forbids
disclosure of clients' records, but did say their files note that
the service record wasn't exactly what Shaw has indicated. Besides,
"nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior."
Bacha noted that Comcast has more than 25 million customers, the
overwhelming majority of which are very satistified with their
service.
Manassas police spokesman Sgt. Tim Neumann says there have been
other police calls to that Comcast office, but he doesn't know what
prompted them.
Bob Garfield, who runs ComcastMustDie.com, wrote last week he was
happy the site had become an outlet for "so much deep-seated rage,"
but hoped customers would "keep the hammer assaults down to a bare
minimum."
From what we can tell, Mona Shaw is not, actually, a raving lunatic
armed with construction tools.
She is a nice lady who lives in a nice house. She and Don are both
retired from the Air Force (she was a registered nurse). They have
been married 45 years. She is secretary of the local AARP,
secretary of a square-dancing club and takes in strays for the
local animal shelter (they have seven dogs at the moment). She has
a heart condition. She lifts weights at a local gym. The couple
attend a Unitarian Universalist church.
Police gave her the hammer back, though she swears she's content to
ride off into the sunset of True Crime Stories in America, never
again to go Com-smash-tic on her local cable provider.
She does, however, finally, have phone service.
********************************
For the record, I do not
have Comcast as my cable, telephone or internet broadband provider,
but have heard from friends and colleagues who do, that their
customer service is outrageously bad.
