Comcast: Treatment of upset former customer “completely unacceptable”

"What happened with Mr. O’Rourke's service is completely unacceptable," Charlie Herrin, a company senior vice president, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "Despite our attempts to address Mr. O’Rourke’s issues, we simply dropped the ball and did not make things right. 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."

Herrin is the same new Comcast executive who said late last month that improving customer service was his "number one priority."

On August 18, Comcast’s Senior Deputy Corporate Counsel, Thomas Nathan, responded to the first demand letter sent by O’Rourke’s attorney, Maureen Pettibone Ryan. Nathan told her that Comcast had not received Ryan's letter in time to meet her deadline for action.

Nathan's response letter, however, does acknowledge that "Comcast communicated to PWC that a person claiming to be a PWC employee had called our chief accounting executive's office with complaints about his cable service and bills and yelled at our employees who tried to assist him."

Neither O’Rourke nor his attorney immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment.

UPDATE 2:43pm CT: Maureen Pettibone Ryan, O'Rourke's attorney, e-mailed Ars and expressed disappointment at this public apology.

We view this apology as more of a public relations strategy than a public apology. Comcast has yet to contact Mr. O’Rourke through his lawyers at Dhillon Law Group Inc. with this apology, which calls its sincerity into doubt. Furthermore, we would note what is missing from the apology.

First, Comcast has not promised to investigate its involvement in Mr. O’Rourke’s termination or to release the e-mails or taped calls that would prove that he is telling the truth and that Comcast defamed him to his employer.

Second, Comcast’s claim that “nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired” does not resolve the matter. While we disbelieve this statement, even if it were true, the Controller’s office at Comcast knew when it made the ethics complaint to PWC that if PWC believed the complaint, Mr. O’Rourke would be terminated. Comcast made false and defamatory statements about Dhillon Law Group Inc.’s client to his employer, knowing the outcome would be termination, and we will not allow that to stand.

Mr. O’Rourke does appreciate that more than 18 months after Comcast first made errors on his bill that it is willing to investigate the matter. Mr. O’Rourke and his attorneys hope that this investigation will be productive, unlike the other investigations Comcast repeatedly promised to perform over those 18 months.

Ryan reiterated that the October 14 deadline for O'Rourke's demands still stands.