Comcast is a business, and their goal is to make ever increasing profit. Yes it's horrible your family and hundreds of others lost everything due to a natural disaster, but that's not Comcast's fault or problem. When you signed up for service from them, I'll bet it's in the fine print that you are responsible for returning the cable box.
If it got stolen, that's not Comcast's problem.
If your hot water service burst and spilled water all over the cable box, that's not Comcast's problem.
This is the world we live in. You can't choose to have the benefits of cheap cable, then complain when the company wants to keep making profit, and enforces a contract you signed.
EDIT: To be clear, I personally hate that this is how the world works, but I accept the reality that it's true.
Brand management is only important when you have a choice of service providers. It's not like you can switch your cable service from Comcast to RCN or Time Warner if you want to. They already bribed the appropriate government officials to ensure that that is not possible. And now they want $500 for their $39 cable box and there's nothing you can do about it.
(You might write to the state's attorney general's office. I'm sure enough complaints will result in a token slap on the wrist, if that makes you feel any better.)
It might be fun to let them drag you into court and see what happens if they demand USD 500 for their ancient Motorola 4100 Surfboard, considering that today a new, more capable modem is less that USD 100. I would take the chance.
That is what they say. You say that the modem wasn't worth USD 500 when it was new and certainly isn't worth that much after five years of depreciation. In a civilized society, when two people disagree they go before the judge. If the judge says you owe the debt, then you do. If he says you do not, then you don't.
Can someone explain where the people defending iffy business practices are coming from? Has no one here rented from a shady landlord who tried to charge you $$$ for stains on the ten-year-old stained carpet that was already worthless when you moved in, and the practice didn't appear indefensible then?
Actually, the task of Brand Management would be to compare the potential costs of thousands of people's equipment against the potential cost from a fewer bloggers' online complaints.
No, it's not the world we live in. Comcast is fully capable of making adjustments in specific cases, and a loss of a bunch of cable boxes wouldn't bankrupt them. Nobody says Comcast should abandon their rules and just gift their boxes to everybody. But exercising some humanity in exceptional situations is not contrary to business. The cost of those boxes probably won't even register given Comcast volumes.
I understand the OP probably spoke to some low-level grunts who might not be able to bend the rules even if he wanted. And the only way to solve this might be to escalate it to the level in Comcast that is allowed to think. But it definitely not "how the world works" - it's just how the Comcast works, and that's bad for them if it does. Business and profit is not contrary to having basic human decency towards your customers - actually, it is usually goes better if you do.
In true capitalism you have competition, and in many cases Comcast is a monopoly when it comes to cable television — so that really makes them a utility. And like any other utility (phone, gas or electric) that means there needs to be some government regulation to balance things out.
So yes they're a business and of course they should make money, but that needs to be balanced out by the needs of their customers. It might be overdue for cable companies and the phone companies to be broken up. In fact it might be a good idea that they be broken up every ten years or so given their immediate power over consumers.
How breaking up would help? Instead of one huge Comcast you'd have 1000 regional mini-comcasts, with the same people and same rules. If some region has only one cabling network, they'd have only one mini-comcast controlling it, and so nothing would change for them - except for mini-comcast eating up the costs of natural disaster actually may be a huge hit, unlike Comcast today for which it would cost them less than salad dressings on annual employee appreciation barbecue (provided they have one).
They would need to be broken up the same way that AT&T was broken up back in the day. The breakups allowed for the sharing of infrastructure by various competitors so that you could call Sprint, MCI, or whomever for (at very least) your long distance service and possibly your local service as well.
You only really competition if you can choose your cable provider wherever you live.
Obviously breaking it into 1000 mini-comcasts, like AT&T, wouldn't, by itself, do anything useful. I think the unstated assumption is that in addition to breaking up Comcast, you'd also break the franchise agreements in order to allow competing cable companies within each territory.
It's very difficult for a start-up cable company or ISP with an innovative product, say, a la carte pricing, to get going because Comcast can undersell them (or offer the same innovative product) for as long as it takes for the start-up to burn through their capital. They can do this because 1) The start-up's limited capital prevents them from opening in every market at once; and 2) Comcast's national presence allows them to use the profits from one region to subsidize service in the region where the start-up is competing. It's probably cheaper to just buy Comcast than to try to beat them in a race to the bottom.
People have a right to expect better behavior. No, Comcast doesn't have to care, but the other side of the coin is that customers have a right to make a big stink if and when a company pulls some bullshit like this. I'm not sure we can have a productive conversation about much of anything if a natural disaster on this scale is for all practical purposes equivalent to a burst water pipe.
And, as a counterexample: I got an email from PNC Bank saying that they weren't going to charge people for overdrafts and suchlike from now until November 5th, on account of Sandy. It's as if this particular corporation is comprised of people, some subset of whom sat down for two seconds and thought about something other than the bottom line.
Note that even if PNC are motivated by not pissing people off or garnering good will, I'd still call this working as intended. Without an incentive to behave well, the temptation to revert to behavior like Comcast's is all too easy.
If you want to look at it from a purely cold and objective light, then you are correct. It's true that it's not Comcast's problem, that there's a contractual clause, and that Comcast's role as a business is to maximize profit. However, it's also really bad public relations to look completely insensitive to hurricane victims, and that can affect the bottom line. The Consumerist is just changing the coefficients of the cost-benefit equation of eating the cable box cost vs. a public relations fiasco.
Yes, and customers are entitled to complain about obnoxious behaviour, are entitled to choose not to give their business to such companies, and are entitled to publicise such obnoxious behaviour.
Comcast might not be legally at fault, but I have no doubt that they are ethically. When companies behave unethically, it ought to be sung from the rooftops - that is how you put a cost on unethical behaviour.
As a business, Comcast can forsee this sort of risk, much better than any individual customer could, and insure against it.
The costs still get passed on to customers, but are distributed among all customers, are not incurred as an additional fee or cost at a time of hardship, and Comcast's size and negotiating power against an insurance company would almost certainly result in more favorable rates and terms than an individual could secure.
To say nothing of the brand management issues which would be avoided.
Moreover, people don't want to pay Comcast for the modem, but I guarantee you everyone who remembers that they lost a modem will declare it with their insurance company.
A business goal is to make ever increasing profit, but that does not absolve them from unethical behavior. After all, most mobsters viewed themselves as a company, just out for profit.
This is when society should step in. There should be consumer laws (and some countries has those) that protect the consumer in cases of service contracts and natural catastrophes. For example in Sweden, such protection exist which covers both natural catastrophes, and wars (Lightning strikes are excluded).
> You can't choose to have the benefits of cheap cable, then complain when the company wants to keep making profit, and enforces a contract you signed.
Comcast is a business, and their goal is to make ever increasing profit. Yes it's horrible your family and hundreds of others lost everything due to a natural disaster, but that's not Comcast's fault or problem. When you signed up for service from them, I'll bet it's in the fine print that you are responsible for returning the cable box.
If it got stolen, that's not Comcast's problem.
If your hot water service burst and spilled water all over the cable box, that's not Comcast's problem.
This is the world we live in. You can't choose to have the benefits of cheap cable, then complain when the company wants to keep making profit, and enforces a contract you signed.
EDIT: To be clear, I personally hate that this is how the world works, but I accept the reality that it's true.