Joys of Comcast

[nlbarber]

I discover that sometime yesterday (I think), Comcast suspended my email account. When I got a representative in their chat-help ("Chelsea"), she promptly restored it, but couldn't tell me why it was suspended. Neither could the chat-person she escalated it to ("Ashley"). Ashley told me I have to call their email abuse department to find out why. Am now on hold with them...and have been for 30 minutes or more. Email abuse? How about customer abuse?

Ah, Just connected. Guy takes my phone, name, and address, and says "this is not a security issue, you have to contact Technical Support." Grrr.....

But he must have put me in the fast lane at Tech Support--the rep picked up almost immediately. However, he sees no reason that the account was suspended, which I find almost worse than being told my account had been hacked or something. Still checking...

And the last word is they have no idea why it happened. "Might have been a glitch in the system, or we might just have made a mistake." I even confessed that I was on a WiFi network (at Sunbelt) with my new iPod Touch, trying to connect to the account, but this guy said that couldn't have done it. Grrrrrrrrr....

Comments

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

There was a news report on gmail recently. If someone tries to get into an account persistently and fails, gmail will suspend the account as a security measure. The problem is for the free accounts that it is very difficult to get it going again.

Whether this has anything to do with your case, I don't know. Obviously, you pay for Comcast, and were able to get in touch with a real person and fix things.

But what gmail (and maybe Comcast?) try to do is actually laudable. If someone is trying to attack an account guessing passwords, it is clearly in the user's overall best interest to shut that account down. It is nice to be able to start it up again, once you convince them you are you, and gmail apparently misses the mark here. You were able to get going pretty well.

My point is that there are a number of valid reasons, having nothing to do with you, and ultimately in your best interest, where a mail provider might suspend your account until you scream and prove that you are you. I agree, it would be nice if a trace were left so that your friendly rep could clue you in.

Glad you got it fixed.

Here's to no repeats.

[nlbarber]

That is true, and certainly a possible explanation as I was fighting their new mobile interface and new technology on my end. Don't think I failed that many times, but still...could be. And certainly they should have left the trace! Still grrrr..... at Comcast. But maybe a lesser grrrr.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

I shouldn't laugh... but Comcast actually suspends people for "abuse"? I wonder what their criteria actually are, since of the 100,000s of messages a day that try and spam our mail servers at work, one of the top-five spam sending networks is Comcast. In fact, I block all mail that originates from Comcast machines, except their specified mail servers.