A Random Act of Kindness...from an Unexpected Source

I've seen lots of posts that chronicle tales of moms  who are peeved at various companies for one reason or another. It used to be that when you were mistreated by a company you didn't have much recourse except to tell all of your friends about how they did you wrong but now we mom bloggers have the power of the (virtual) pen. Forget "Big Brother is Watching You," it's now "Big Mama is Watching You." We have contact with all sorts of people every day who have no idea that their mistreatment could end up flying through cyberspace. If they only knew how far reaching their actions were maybe they'd be nicer.

I have lots of stories of mistreatment and rudeness that I could share but today I had something good happen and it came from an unexpected source.

It came from Comcast. Comcast -- just a mention of their name conjures up a lot of feelings, most of them bad. I've had a few run ins with them myself. When we moved to Philly we had a heck of a time trying to get our service right. Our internet speed was unacceptably slow. We my husband was on hold for their customer service department most of an evening. Ultimately the technicians came out, climbed poles, stretched cable, drilled, connected and proclaimed the problem fixed. It wasn't

Rather than put my husband through another round of Doobie Brothers Muzak I decided to visit the local Comcast office to speak with a human face-to-face. (I am grateful that I live in a town where I can get things done by going down the street and talking to someone.) The human turned out to be Florence, a spunky petite woman with a manicure, a coiffure and some chic designer glasses whom I spoke to through a hole in the glass office window.

I explained to her that our problem wasn't fixed and wondered what we had to do to get our service up to par. She left her post and walked around the corner. I could hear her talking to someone through the wall and when she returned she'd sweet-talked a technician into coming over to our house that very afternoon. Luckily he was able to swap out the bad modem and voila! Problem solved.

Then the next bill came. It had a service charge for the bad equipment. Back I went to see Florence who promised I'd be credited on my next bill. I wasn't. Ugh! So back I went today to see Flo (my new BFF), hoping that she could once again try to get things right. She was at lunch so my soon-to-be-best-friend (STBBF) Don helped. Not only did he get my credit processed but...hang onto your hats, this is big...he offered me ANOTHER credit for $20 as a goodwill gesture for all my trouble.

Comcast Cable gave me twenty bucks! That's a third of a tank of gas or almost enough for a manicure. Certainly enough for a passable bottle of wine or a couple of pounds of my favorite coffee from The Head Nut and definitely a cheesesteak from Mama's. All courtesy of Comast -- an unexpected act of kindness from a very unexpected source.

This is an original Philly Moms post. When she's not trolling the Wayne Farmer's Market for Amish pastries or pulling for The Phillies in the World Series Lollie also blogs on 50 Something Moms.