Comcast - optioning failure

With my FIOS contract at an end, I've been looking around for a better deal for my TV / Internet.  Since Comcast is prominent in my area I decided to give them a call.  For years the company has been struggling with a bad customer service image, though in recent years it seems to have improved somewhat.  While the agent I spoke to on the phone was very polite, I realized something there was something even worse going on with the company - they are failing to be competitive.  How so?  Well, after asking me several questions about my viewing habits (sparse), and the type of television I owned, (fairly large flat screen, HD) he announced that the best deal for me was only going to cost me $146 a month.  I was more then a little stunned as that was about $50 more then FIOS wants to charge me.  Then he explained that cost included their phone service.  Now, I'm a nice guy, so I didn't call him a stupid idiot.  Doesn't Comcast realize land lines are on their way out?  Every year they are in fewer and fewer households.  There must be some really bad disconnect at Comcast Corporate Headquarters for them to still keep pushing that dinosaur.  When I explained to the agent that I haven't had a land line in over 8 years he recalculated my cost with out their phone service.  Wow!  Without a phone my cost dropped $40 bucks, but still $10 higher then what FIOS wanted to charge me.

Fossilizing customer by customer

Now I'm in retail and I can tell you when someone walks in our front door with a competitor's price, we do a little thing called 'meet and beat.'  That's right, we take dollars off and sell at less then our competitor because we love our customers, we want them to keep coming back, and back, and back.  I guess Comcast hasn't heard of that policy.  FIOS, which is already charging less then Comcast's best deal will never have to worry about this problem. since they're already meeting and beating the higher price.  Personally, I think this is pretty much of a tar pit for Comcast, one they're stuck in and slowly sinking.  If you can't pull customers away from your competitor you're a failure in the business world.  This is a real customer service issue.  Face it, both offer products which are fairly similar, and if you want to win the battle you're going to have to do it anyway you can.  Someone should have told the Comcast executives that failure is not an option.