Even Comcast's own technician had to wait more than an hour on hold for help.
(AP) Comcast Corp. has fired an employee for sleeping on a customer's couch during a house call after video of the incident became a minor Internet sensation.
Philadelphia-based Comcast also said in a statement that it had apologized to customer Brian Finkelstein of Washington, D.C., for the "unsatisfactory customer experience."
Finkelstein posted video of the sleeping technician and told this story on YouTube.com, a site that lets users share videos:
His Comcast Internet connection had worked only intermittently since he moved to a new apartment June 1. A Comcast employee who came to Finkelstein's home June 14 to replace the modem called the company for help. Put on hold for more than an hour, he caught some shut-eye while he waited.
Finkelstein, a Georgetown University law student, picked up his video camera, added an Eels song with the lyrics "I need some sleep," and sent it to YouTube.
The 58-second video has been viewed more than 227,000 times since it was posted Tuesday.
Finkelstein told The Philadelphia Inquirer in an e-mail message Friday that his service has been fixed.
This is not the first customer-service issue to embarrass Comcast. In August, the company said it had fired two employees in the Chicago area for changing a woman's name on her bill to a derogatory term after she repeatedly complained about poor service.
Comcast said that providing a positive customer experience was its top priority. It said that, each year, it interacted with customers more than 225 million times, taking more than 200 million phone calls and sending out trucks 25 million times.