Less service, bigger CEO salaries

Brian Roberts is the CEO of Comcast. Last year, he took home over $30 million, well over 2 million bucks a month, $125,000 a day, figuring a five-day work week, nearly $16,000 an hour, figuring an eight-hour work day. His net worth is roughly $2 billion. His daddy was the founder of the company, and though he graduated from Wharton Business School (the same place that doled out a degree to Donald Trump) he’s never drawn a paycheck from anywhere but Comcast.

My wife recently spent part of an afternoon talking to Angel, a man in Honduras who works for Comcast. He tried to guide her through how to install a device that a) we didn’t need, b) could not be properly installed with the equipment we had, and c) should have been installed by a Comcast technician. Utility companies used to routinely send service reps out to hook up or tend to equipment required to use their products. Now, not so much.

Comcast has won awards as a “shareholder-friendly” corporation, but it is consistently rated at the top of the nation’s most hated companies, despite the unflagging efforts of people like Angel in Honduras.

Comcast/Xfinity charges seem to be made up on the spot. If you call to ask about your bill, they’ll negotiate rather than explain charges that cannot be explained, especially by wretches in boiler rooms in foreign countries who know most customers don’t have the time or energy to wait on hold in order to register a complaint.

Incidentally, Comcast takes in over $80 billion a year.

It’s safe to say that Angel doesn’t make in a month what Brian Roberts makes in an hour. Maybe Mr. Roberts could sail one of his two yachts down to Honduras some fine day and thank those employees. He might even try providing installation services to customers rather than expecting them to do the work themselves, work that allows them to use the overpriced services provided by his damn company, widely hated by its customers, and with good reason.