I just got an e-mail from Erik stating that my findings represent a bug and presumably he will be fixing it ASAP.
What a refreshingly quick and helpful response. I love it when a company is big enough to meet my needs yet small enough to listen to its customers.
I am reminded of the time that the left and right audio channels for a local television station were swapped on my cable TV. At first, I assumed that everyone in my area would be complaining to Comcast and the problem would soon be fixed automagically. But after months of the sound driving across my living room in the opposite direction of the cars on the screen, I realized that this wasn’t going to be the case.
I called Comcast. They clearly were not equipped to deal with a report like this and I got disbelief, the runaround, and consternation. I tried several different approaches in each of many, many calls. I got nowhere.
It became my mission to correct the stereo audio image of my local TV station. Eventually, my anger at the situation turned to intellectual curiosity. Will it ever be fixed? How long would it take? In what form would the solution come? Can a single person make a difference?
Every week or so, I would verify that the problem still existed and call Comcast. Sometimes I would pretend to be angry. Other times I would be super technical. In some calls, I would try the “let me speak to your manager” as many times as I could. I even tried asking for the address of the local distribution center so that I could go there in person and talk to someone who actually might know something. Nothing worked.
Interspersed with talking to the Comcast wall, I would try other tactics. Posting on message boards, telling everyone I knew, and e-mailing the local TV station were some of the things I tried. I figured that if Comcast wouldn’t listen to, or believe me, maybe they would pay attention to the broadcaster whose signal they were distorting.
Finally one day I got an e-mail that wasn’t the standard reply with an “info@xxxxx.com” or “support@xxxxx.com” return address. It was from the “RF Manager” of the local TV station and included his name and real e-mail address. He confirmed what I had known for the greater part of a year and blamed the problem, not surprisingly, on Comcast. They were apparently assigning ‘audio channel 1’ and ‘audio channel 2’ to the wrong ‘left’ and ‘right’ designations. Even he couldn’t get Comcast to do anything about it! In the e-mail he stated that he had resorted to reversing station’s audio feed to the cable company.
And that is how I fixed the television audio that was annoying everyone in Seattle – even if they didn’t know it.
I saved the RF Manager’s e-mail address.