Reputation management

I rarely write on this blog about a motion picture that I have seen.  In fact, this is the first film review I have ever written, and I am not skilled at such things.  But I know what I like, and Bunker Hill deserves great praise as a courageous and realistic film.  Bunker Hill is a highly relevant, timely and meaningful motion picture for the times we live in, and I highly recommend it.

Bunker Hill is a new independent feature film from infinitely talented and noted director Kevin Willmott (left in the photo with me at the screening in Washington, DC), who is based in Lawrence, Kansas.  Bunker Hill is now making the rounds nationwide of film festivals and screenings.

The film stars Emmy and Peabody Award winner James McDaniel (NYPD Blue, Sunshine State); Saeed Jaffrey the legendary actor from India who has starred in more than 150 films including Gandhi, Passage to India, My Beautiful Launderette and The Man Who Would Be King; and Laura Kirk, star and co-writer of the acclaimed feature film “Lisa Picard Is Famous,” which premiered at The Cannes Film Festival.

Bunker Hill is the story of a former Wall Street executive who leaves prison after 9-11 and heads for the small town of Bunker Hill, Kansas, where his ex-wife and their children have started a new life. Soon after he arrives, an apparent massive terrorist attack against America darkens the town. Cut off from the world, the town’s militant past is reawakened and forces coalesce to protect citizens from an unseen enemy. The town’s fear leads to the creation of a posse of gunmen, torture, illegal searches and eventually, murder.

Look beyond what seems like a lot of violence (actually not much at that) to the honest and raw realness of Bunker Hill.  It is a film not to be missed.

You may be sick of reading about Comcast on this blog, and I guess I don’t blame you.  But the point I am trying to make is that when a company, such as Comcast, constantly has a poor reputation for customer relations, it is not the result of marketplace competition.  It is, in fact, because of self-inflicted wounds.

In Comcast’s case, it is a defensive and inwardly-focused culture that inhibits building positive relationships and transparent conversations with customers. To borrow an often-used phrase, it is an analog corporate culture in a digital world.  Comcast exclusively creates its own external problems that injury the company’s reputation, starting with its Web sites and lack of an interactive blog.

Customers hate Comcast because it consumes hours and hours simply to get the company to fix simple issues. Additionally, it’s so darn hard to find anyone at Comcast with the authority or competence to fix anything.  Simple as that.  

I would like nothing better than to see Comcast change, and here’s why - the company’s Internet and cable TV service is pretty good, other than the fact that Comcast has banned the outstanding HDNet network channels (more about that in a later posting).  

The formula for improving Comcast’s reputation is neither difficult nor time-consuming nor expensive to achieve.  The company could see quantifiable improvements within a few months that would result in favorable buzz and glowing reviews among customers, the media and stake-holders.

While I know the formula, I will not give it away here because such consulting is what I do for a living.  Yet, the essential elements include openness, transparency and becoming more ethical.  Comcast might begin by studying the terrific examples of Apple and Zappos.

The thing about NBC News correspondent Tim Russert that made him so respected and popular, I believe, was that he knew what he was talking about. He nurtured valuable contacts, studied issues and delivered insider perspective and clarity of often-complex issues. 

In an industry largely dominated by pretty faces, glamour and talking heads, Russert distinguished himself with depth of intelligence.  He defined credibility.

Russert was a journalist’s journalist.  Clearly, he is missed.

For all the people who read this blog, maybe this posting can provide some ideas about a company that is managed by old-fashioned (defensive) thinking but has a few professionals who are really talented individuals.

The issues regarding my wife’s ability to check her work email from home seem to have been solved, for now.  But the issues clearly were caused by a lack of communication from Comcast when they perceived a problem.  In this case, they thought my wife - an international religious freedom and human rights advocate - was a spammer.  I hope she lives down kidding from colleagues over that because nothing could be farther from the truth.

It did not help the situation but only escalated it and encumbered finding a solution by Comcast when a Comcast vice president suggested that all issues can be solved by getting a commercial account.  Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people check their work email from home, and to suggest that someone get a commercial account in order to check work email from home is simply ludicrous.

We live in a day and age when customers expect to have clear and transparent communication from service providers, such as Comcast.  It’s not rocket science. With mobile phones and email, it’s not smart for a company like Comcast to create its own PR problems by imposing Orwellian “target blocking” filters on a person’s email with no prior communication or alert.

I am now tallying up all the otherwise-productive hours it has taken to fix this Comcast-caused problem, and I am thinking about all the thousands of other people I read about who have issues with this old-fashioned and very insular company. The thought crossed my mind that Comcast should be made liable to reimburse people on those thousands of times when the company screws-up through incompetence.

I am left hoping that the day will soon come when the Internet is deregulated, when such monopolies are broken-up and when there is more openness to tomorrow’s exciting world online.

[footnote: I have made an offer to Comcast to respond.  If they do, I will post their comments verbatim, provided it's not a sales-pitch.]

I am old enough to remember the breakup of the old American Telephone & Telegraph Company in 1982 after a legal battle that cost billions of dollars.  The company was fat with arrogance, lacking in advanced technology and ripe for an antitrust suit.

Today, 26 years later, I find the similarities between the old American Telephone & Telegraph Company at the time of the antitrust breakup and Comcast, the cable giant, to be astonishing.  Then, American Telephone & Telegraph Company had strangled competition in the telephone industry for decades; today, Comcast is the big bully on the block in the monopolistic cable industry in America and part of the reason that the quality of Internet access for Americans lags behind the rest of the world. 

The other large cable outfit, Verizon, at least has made an effort to grapple with advanced conceptual thinking and technology in the 21th-century — such as collaboration with some of the Internet’s leaders and by switching to high capacity fiber optic delivery of content instead of old-fashioned copper wire that has been around for more than a century and a half.  Not so Comcast.  Comcast remains locked in copper wire thinking, more reminiscent of the dusty old American Telephone and Telegraph Company.

While blogging these last few days about Comcast blocking my wife’s outgoing work email over our home service, a lot of friends have sent messages of support, opening doors to powerful support and sharing a common sentiment that Comcast is now positioned, by its own arrogance, for a form of federally mandated deregulation.  

The fact that my wife - a long-time and well-respected voice on Capitol Hill, at the White House and State Department in Washington - has been targeted by Comcast has gotten a lot of attention, especially in the nation’s capital.

While I am sincerely grateful, we still have not solved my wife’s email problem — when she occasionally checks her work email from home to address a critical international religious freedom or human rights issue, Comcast has blocked her ability to respond to an email or to send an email because they believe the volume of emails she receives makes her a spammer.  Only one word comes to mind to describe such corporate thinking - insane.

Comcast has responded by email to the blockage of my wife’s outgoing email service:

It sounds like your account was triggered by our national network management team. Comcast manages our network to ensure the best possible broadband experience to all our customers as our network bandwidth is not an unlimited resource. We use network management practices that are consistent with other internet service providers and they continue to evolve as the use of the network changes almost every day. If we did not manage our network, our subscribers would be subject to negative experiences such as spam, viruses, and network congestion. The residential service that you are subscribing to is intended for personal and non-commercial residential use. You can find our Acceptable Use Policy on our Comcast.net homepage for more information.

I will need to speak to our network management team on Monday to determine the reason for the trigger and to better understand what happened to your account. I certainly understand the frustration that you and your wife have experienced particularly given the sensitive nature of her work. Comcast does offer commercial broadband service which allows for business related activity without the interference that you may be subject to with our residential service. This may be a better option for you based on the volume and sensitive nature of your wife’s work. If you are interested in looking into our commercial broadband service, I can certainly have someone work with you to understand the choices available to you. If you prefer to look at other providers, I certainly understand but hate to lose your business.

First, I read Comcast’s Acceptable Use Policy, and there is nothing that even remotely addresses the issue of someone checking their work email from home.

Second, I think that Comcast is on a slippery slope by suggesting that someone who checks work email from home should get a commercial account.

Third, I think that Comcast’s lack of transparency about a make-believe policy to interfere with someone’s email capability - especially someone deals with international life and death issues - with no warning or written policy is inexcusable and possibly illegal.

Lastly, we pay Comcast a considerable amount of money each month to be a high-speed pipeline to the Internet and worldwide email access.  We do not share files or stream video or play games, practices that would consume considerable broadband volume.  We do not pay Comcast to be an email censor.  

I have no issue with Comcast monitoring its online resources but when a person simply checks their work email from home, and when downloading a few dozen emails triggers an automated block by Comcast on that work email … well, that is a form of censorship.  In this case, censorship of religious freedom and human rights issues.  And, I believe that is morally and ethically wrong, especially when the censorship is imposed by a company that has a monopolistic stranglehold on a community.

Remember what I wrote in my first blog on this subject — that Comcast always creates its own problems.

I normally don’t write about negative experiences on my blog … but this is an exception.

Comcast, for anyone who may not know, is one of the small handful of big companies that dominate and monopolize the availability of Internet service in the United States.  Comcast, more than others, has the worst reputation (earned by the company’s actions), and many Comcast customers have their own horror stories.  Let me share what I consider to be the most egregious Comcast practice ever:

Who doesn’t check work email from home? Heck, we all do.  Suppose that you’ve checked your work email from home - mornings before work, evenings, weekends - for years, and suddenly, you can no longer send email even though your work in a sensitive field.

My wife has been unable to send email from her work account when she has been at home over the past week.  It happened all of a sudden - last week her email was working, this week it is not.  The reason is because Comcast has a sort of “Big Brother” watchdog program that monitors email volume, on the look-out for spammers.  

The fact that my wife - an international religious freedom and human rights advocate - receives hundreds of emails, many dealing with life and death situations around the world, has triggered Comcast to slap something called a “TP25 boot file” on her email, preventing her from sending email over Comcast from anywhere in the United States. She doesn’t sign-on often from home - perhaps only once or twice a week - but it was enough.  Comcast’s “TP25 boot file,” I am told by a Comcast technician, blocked her work’s email out, not just from home but from using Comcast-provided Internet everywhere.

In other words, when my wife was checking email from home regarding international human rights issues when lives were hanging in the balance, Comcast’s server didn’t like the fact that she was receiving many emails when she would sign-on from home during a weekend or off-hours, and the company shut down her ability to send any emails, without warning and without regard for what damage or dangers such action might cause.

There is an enormous issue of confidentiality and principle at stake here.  Everyone has the right to privacy of email, whether their personal email or work email.  Such arbitrary action by a monopolistic broadband provider is outrageous in principle.  It is the concept of Big Brother at the worst.

We would gladly switch to another broadband Internet service provider … if there were one.  Comcast, it seems, has a monopolistic lock on this part of north Arlington, Virginia.

I welcome your comments and suggestions on this issue.