February 18, 2016
Screenshot from DownDetector.com/for PhillyVoice
Comcast customers all along the Northeastern coast have reported service outages as shown in this screenshot from the website, DownDetector.com.
After a service outage on Monday's Presidents Day holiday that left thousands of Comcast customers without video, the cable service provider says it will provide a credit for any customer who was impacted by the disruption.
The catch? Customers will have to contact Comcast to get the credit.
And, how much would the credit be for? That would depend on the service you have at your home.
According to Jennifer Bilotta, a Comcast spokeswoman, customers would see different amounts of credit depending on the services they pay for and how the interruption affected a customer's home service.
A Comcast blog post by Kevin McElearney, senior vice president of network engineering for Comcast, indicated the service issues were a "result of a configuration error in a network device" that runs video service.
According to McElearney, issues started around 10:20 a.m. and lasted about 90 minutes.
But the website DownDetector.com – a site that documents users' issues with online service providers – said problems started at about 6:30 a.m. A review of complaints made on that site about Comcast service seems to indicate a spike in complaints, beginning at 9 a.m. and lasting through about 1:20 p.m.
"Unfortunately, we did not live up to expectations around 100-percent reliability with your TV service. We’re sorry for that, and we will be crediting customers," read McElearney's post. "Just reach out to us, and let us know you were impacted, and we’ll credit you, no questions asked."
McElearney said that while some cable channels were down during that time, other services, like Internet, phone service, On Demand, and many broadcast and local channels, were still operational. The configuration error, he said, rerouted the service for national cable channels.
"We know exactly what went wrong and have fixed the issue and put in place technical measures to make sure that this doesn’t happen again," he wrote.
To find out how much Comcast will credit your account, call its customer service department at 1-800-934-6489.
