Are you also an Xfinity customer? I thought I’d share my most recent experience with them.

Our family of four is all at home during the mornings during the pandemic, which can mean four people on zoom calls at any given time.

Last week, our Xfinity internet service was really spotty, prompting me to call Xfinity to find out if there had been service outages, or if there was a problem with our modem/router.

Here’s how that experience went:

Friday

Step 1: Try to find Xfinity phone number. It’s not obvious or apparent where it is on the Xfinity website, so I had to google it to find it.

Step 2: Get through to Xfinity’s 1-800 number (here it is, in case you need it: 1-800–XFINITY). Xfinity’s system then insists on having me reset my modem, which I tried. Here’s something interesting- Xfinity won’t let you get through to a human being (in their phone system) until after the modem reset has happened and 10 minutes has passed.

Step 3: Finally get through to an Xfinity person. He said he needed to do another sort of reset, but promised he’d call me back afterwards (given challenge I had getting ahold of a human being). He did not call back.

Step 4: Call Xfinity. Next Xfinity rep tells me I should plug an ethernet cable into the modem to try and troubleshoot the problem. Only problem here is that many computers don’t have ethernet ports (luckily my work computer did), and I’d have to guess that in this increasing wireless world, I’m also not the only person to struggle to find an ethernet cord. This representative suggested buying a new router/modem, which I did at Best Buy this afternoon.

Step 5: Set up new Arris modem/router. Xfinity keeps trying to force me to download its app in order to get it going. I finally get it to work by telling the Xfinity website that I’m trying to set up a phone line, and it lets me get past the set-up website.

Step 6: Speak with another Xfinity rep, who tells me I should have bought a DOCSIS 3.1 modem/router (I wish the second rep. had told me that)…After running several speed tests, he suggests that we should still have appointment with an Xfinity representative, so I agree and we schedule an appointment for that weekend.

Saturday (the next day)

I get a phone call from an Xfinity representative, who is now trying to convince me to cancel the appointment. I’m in the middle of something else, so I ask him to call him back. Several hours later, he does, and while he doesn’t want to admit it, his job is clearly to get me to cancel the appointment, so I agree.

I had received an earlier text message, from Xfinity, asking for my feedback, and I’m not making this up, here’s my experience:

First picture is beginning of my text exchange with Xfinity. I have no idea if I was speaking to a real person or a bot.

After receiving the “We’d love to know more!” text, I took the effort to type out 7 ways that I thought Xfinity could have done better with this situation. I received no response for about 5-6 hours.

I’m not making this up. About 5-6 hours later, I get this response from Xfinity, telling me this survey had expired.

So, Xfinity, with the many urgings that I had about “please let us know how we did,” I’m doing that right now. I tried to give you feedback (took time, in fact to do it), and that totally failed.

A few suggestions:

1. Make it easier to find your phone number on the website.
2. Think about how many of your customers have ethernet cables and ports – is there another way to test modems/routers?
3. Don’t ask your customers for feedback and then not have the technology (in this case text messages) to accept it.
4. Don’t force your customers to do things they don’t want to do (like download your app, or force people to reset their modem, or not allow people to speak with a human being while they wait on the modem reset).