Hit by Comcast’s Presidents Day Outage? Here’s Your Refund (Sorta)

Comcast says it’s sorry about its massive nationwide service outage earlier this week. Now the telecommunications giant is hoping it can make it up to impacted customers by offering them a credit.

Comcast’s cable TV and on-demand video were down for roughly 90 minutes on Feb. 15, Presidents Day. Comcast phone and website support systems were also crippled.

In this post on Comcast’s website, network engineering executive Kevin McElearney apologized to Comcast customers.

“We did not live up to expectations around 100 percent reliability with your TV service,” McElearney said. “We’re sorry for that, and we will be crediting customers.”

But here’s the thing. The credit isn’t automatically applied to the bills of customers affected by the outage. According to CNN Money, Comcast claims it can’t apply a blanket credit “because the impact was varied.”

So, if you were affected by the Comcast service outage and you want a credit on your account, you need to call Comcast and request it.

“We’ll work with customers on a case by case basis,” a Comcast spokeswoman told CNN Money.

She said there’s no set amount for the service outage credit, but she estimated that many customers will be refunded about $2 – roughly the cost of a day’s worth of video service. Of course, Comcast is again quick to point out that customers’ credit amount will vary depending on how they were impacted.

Still, one has to wonder if a $2 credit is worth calling Comcast customer service. After all, Americans have little love for Comcast and its customer service (or lack thereof). (Check out “Comcast Renames Customer ‘A**hole’ on Billing Statement” and “Call Comcast for Help? Expect a Sales Pitch.”)

Comcast attributed the service outage to “a configuration error in a network device that supports our live network.” The issue caused some of Comcast’s video feeds to reroute, resulting in a service interruption.

“We know exactly what went wrong and have fixed the issue and put in place technical measures to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” McElearney said.

What do you think of Comcast’s offer to credit customers’ accounts after its nationwide outage? Is a phone call to Comcast worth it for a $2 refund? Sound off below or on our Facebook page.