Today I was exploring Comcast’s on demand service. I found something I thought might be amusing for my son and selected it (Disney XD). It wasn’t until I was at the show selection (several menus deep) before it was obvious that I didn’t have the necessary access to that service. Ok I dug around a bit more looking for pricing information in the on screen menus. I was presented with a “Buy” button and a button with a box icon (turns out it is the package button). The package seems to be called “Digital Classic”. Ok, no information on pricing is available on via the on-screen interface.
Off to Comcast’s website I went. I pop “Digital Classic” into the search and come up with 4 pages of hits, none seem to be pricing. I triangulated my plan (digital preferred with on-demand) by the stations that I have available and I didn’t see Disney XD. OK, let’s find what package does contain this service. So I started to dig around on Comcast’s website looking for the pricing information. The only document that mentioned Disney XD was a press release. OK, time for the big guns – use a search engine. The results were also less than helpful.
At this point I lost interest.
So?
Comcast lost a sale. I had my e-wallet in hand ready to spend money. The hassle of wrestling to find information that should be dead simple to find made it not worth my time. It is 2009, information must be on the web, and it must be well organized and easily discoverable. If you are attempting to sell products and don’t provide information to your consumers don’t expect them to buy your wares.
Being quite the twitter junkie I expressed my frustration by tweeting. I did get a response from @ComcastCares offering to help but at this point it is too late in the deal.
I will continue to be a loyal Comcast cable customer but frankly I doubt I’ll bother even trying to deal with on demand again.

The slide deck from the 2008 Western Michigan Day of .Net meeting can be found at the following link:

2008wmdodn-dhibbitts

And now… a blog!  Some things about me, I am -

• a mobile computing zealot
• a supporter of local technology groups 
• and a proud dad

In this blog you can expect information on mobile technology, local technology happenings (Ann Arbor, MI area) and general musings.