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More rude Comcast customer renamings surface

After a Comcast employee changed a customer's first name to "A**hole," more customers are now coming forward with similar stories, including one whose bills were addressed to "Whore Julia"
More customers report Comcast is changing their names on bills 00:34

Christopher Elliott, the journalist who broke the story about the Comcast-"A**hole Brown" customer service debacle, writes that more customers are coming forth with similar stories.

Comcast customer’s name changed to profanity on bill 00:22

On his blog Elliott.org Wednesday, Elliot shared the story of Ricardo and Lisa Brown, a Spokane, Washington couple whose billing name was changed from "Ricardo Brown" to "A**hole Brown" by a Comcast customer service rep.

It's the kind of publicity the company doesn't need, and it sparked intervention from the highest levels. Charlie Herrin, the company's senior vice president of customer experience, spoke directly to Lisa Brown, apologizing and telling her the employee who made the name change had been fired.

The dust was starting to settle when Elliott was contacted by other Comcast customers including:

  • A woman whose billing name was change to "Whore Julia"
  • Another woman whose online greeting was changed to "Hello, dummy"
  • A family whose name changed to something close to the f-word
whorejuliaresize.jpg
Another Comcast bill with a rude name, note upper left corner Elliott.org

Comcast's Herrin said in a post that the company is investigating the incidents and "We're also looking at a number of technical solutions that would prevent it from happening moving forward."

Tom Karinshak, Comcast's senior vice president of customer service, told Elliott the company is taking steps to prevent unauthorized name changes from taking place in the future.

"We're retraining our teams on the importance of making name changes properly," he told Elliott. "We're looking for automated solutions to prevent this from happening in the future."

Comcast says it will follow up with each customer, offer an apology and "do whatever it takes to make things right," said Karinshak.

Elliott, a consumer advocacy writer who writes for USA Today, The Washington Post and other publications, said he's been amazed by the crudeness.

"With all this salty language flying, I feel like I should wash my keyboard with hot water and soap," he said. "If they talk about their customers like this publicly, I can only image what they say about them privately."

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