Comcast called on the carpet

Commissioners voice frustration at meeting

June 12, 2019 by Ken Leinart

Comcast came under scrutiny Monday night during the Anderson County Operations Committee meeting.

Specifically, the company’s service department — or lack thereof.

There were a lot of questions about the company’s apparent lack of interest in helping Anderson Countians get internet service and about phone calls to register complaints and how they are answered.

Anderson Countians have contacted their commissioners with tales of extreme pricing to get internet service — upwards of $4,000 to be hooked up even though the surrounding neighborhood is already connected — or being told service is not available to them — even though the surrounding neighborhood is already connected.

There is no contract excluding other internet providers; while HughesNet, Frontier, AT&T Uverse, and Xfinity are, apparently, available, Comcast is the dominant provider.

It is also the provider of the county’s Ch95 — something not lost on Commissioner Tracy Wandell.

“I just wonder, did we sell out souls to the devil so we could have Ch95?” he asked.

Wandell suggested — coming just short of making it a motion for the committee to act upon — of setting up time on Ch 95 and letting citizens have a sort of open floor to discuss Comcast.

“I say let citizens on Ch95 to discuss their service experiences with Comcast,” Wandell said.

It was noted that the problems with Comcast seem have gotten “worse” as of late.

And, Anderson County Attorney Jay Yeager noted, there is a reason for that.

Yeager said Comcast used to provide a member for the county’s ACTV Board. That person acted as a liaison between the county and the company.

“In most cases these kind of problems were taken care of by that person (liaison),” he said.

But then that person left Comcast and a replacement has not been named. Yeager told the committee that if Comcast were to replace that person on the ACTV Board a lot of the problems commissioners are hearing about now may be resolved.

Operations Committee forwarded a motion to the ACTV Board to meet, and find out about getting Comcast to fill the governmental liaison position.