Comcast recently overhauled their website with a very easy-to-use interface... very web 2.0ish.

I thought, "Awesome... here is a company that finally gets that you do not need to try to push every product you offer all on one page... simple, and easy to use. Very nice." Comcast was looking great to me.

Well, if only Comcast's internal accounts system was overhuled in the same process. It seems to me that all energy was spent rebuilding the site and not enough was put into connecting the site to the account management system.

Instead of making manual payments every month, I decided to register for the automatic bank draft on my Comcast account. Easy enough, right? The no-thinking-automatic-withdraw thing was appealing to me. The thing is that I never got any sort of confirmation. Slightly confused, I just accepted that the payment was going to go through, and probably at the end of the month. So I waited.

Bad decision.

The payment did not go through that month. And I did not make a manual payment. So, even though I registered for the automatic online payment, now I was stuck with my next month's bill being twice as much and, in addition, a nice late fee.

I tend to be understanding in situations like these, so I just thought... ok, fair enough. And the next month, in order to escape from the same thing happening, I decided to make a manual online payment in the amount of almost $300 for two months of service, assuming that this payment would overide the automatic payment. Good, I thought. Next month I will not have to deal with this.

Wrong.

It turns out that Comcat's account system does not automatically flag your account as PAID. I found a nice second payment AUTOMATICALLY drafted at the end of the month.

Total taken by Comcast in one month: $600. ((month 1 + month 2)*2)

Luckily I was able to get Comcast to reverse the automatic payment, but not before it did some damage to my bank account.

Moral of the story: 1. don't trust automatic online payment systems and 2. don't use Comcast

I say number 2 but in reality, they have a monopoly in my area, but that is a whole other blog post. Thus, I will continue to use Comcast, but I will be making manual payments from now on after completely shuting off the automatic draft.

Unfortunately, Comcast does not look too good to me anymore.

Frustrating.