Remember a couple days ago, when the world learned Comcast had changed a customer's name from "Ricardo Brown" to "Asshole Brown?" Looks like our Ricardo might not have been the only one. More Comcast customers have reported similar incidents to Elliott.org. The name changes range from "dummy" to "whore" to the slightly confusing "Fakoe Bez" (sounds like "Fuck you, Bez.") 
 
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 Consumer watchdog and blogger Christopher Elliott first reported the saga of Asshole Brown and promptly learned of several more misnomers. And apparently, the Comcast employees who engage in this sort of tomfoolery just do it for shits and giggles. Julie Swan—well "Whore Julie Swan" according to Comcast—shared her experience with Elliott: 
 
 What's most interesting is that Comcast said the 'whore' was added on Dec. 6,. I have no record of any recent contact with Comcast until Dec. 16. So whoever chose to re-name me picked my account out of a hat. That says there are probably millions of us out there who Comcast employees have renamed. We need to find all of them. What amazed me then was that I had talked with at least 20 people at Comcast between Dec. 16 and January 6 who could see that my name was 'whore' and they did nothing about it. 
 
 That's crazy, Julie! Surely, you and Ricardo were the only ones. Nope! Carolina Heredia explains: 
 
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 They changed my name to 'dummy' in my online account, so that the greeting was 'Hello, dummy.'" I had to call several times but they said they didn't see it until I went in person to Comcast and they removed it. 
 
 That's just immature. Elliott also shared the story of Maida Bezdjian who was renamed as "Fakoe Bez" (again, sounds like "Fuck you, Bez") on her Comcast account. These are apparently just a handful. It's admittedly a little suspicious; it makes sense that other cases might come out of the woodwork immediately after Asshole Brown, but also that other hooligans might jump on the bandwagon with the help of Photoshop. Asshole Brown was confirmed by Comcast however, so it's definitely not out of the question. We've reached out to Comcast for confirmation on these names as well. 
 
 Has Comcast changed the name on your account in an attempt to insult or belittle you? Let us know in the comments. [Elliott.org via Ars Technica] 
 
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 Caution: This post contains language that may not be appropriate for a family audience. 
 
 The most shocking thing about a revelation that a Comcast employee changed a customer’s name to “a**hole” was how shocked everyone was. 
 
 Readers reacted with indignation at my report that the company with the worst customer service scores in America would have employees who hated their customers enough to put it in writing. 
 
 
 
 All the while, the cable TV giant has implied this was a single action of a disgruntled employee they would soon terminate. 
 
 But that may not be entirely accurate. 
 
 Comcast is no stranger to the insult by invoice. In 2005, it called one woman a “b*tch dog” on her bill. And I’ve been contacted by several Comcast customers who claim the same thing has happened to them. One customer says an employee changed his name to the phonetic spelling of a profanity that is unprintable in a family newspaper. Another says the company changed her name to “whore” and another says her name became “dummy.” 
 
 Comcast says it’s investigating these incidents. In a blog post, it also promised it would be investing in technology to prevent future name-changing incidents. It has already terminated the entire subcontracting company responsible for the “a**hole” incident. 
 
 Tom Karinshak, Comcast’s senior vice president of customer service, told me the company is taking steps to prevent unauthorized name changes from taking place in the future. 
 
 “We’re retraining our teams on the importance of making name changes properly,” he said. “We’re looking for automated solutions to prevent this from happening in the future.” 
 
 Comcast says it will follow up with each customer, offer an apology and “do whatever it takes to make things right,” says Karinshak. 
 
 Until then, let’s let the customers decide whether these following examples are an anomaly — or a reflection of what some Comcast employees really think about their customers. Let me repeat my warning about the salty language. 
 
 You’re a “whore” 
 
 Julie Swano says her December Comcast bill was addressed to “Whore” Julia Swano. She sent it to me. 
 
 “What’s most interesting is that Comcast said the ‘whore’ was added on Dec. 6,” she says. “I have no record of any recent contact with Comcast until Dec. 16. So whoever chose to re-name me picked my account out of a hat. That says there are probably millions of us out there who Comcast employees have renamed. We need to find all of them.” 
 
 The word “whore” remained on her account until Jan. 6, when she told someone in the Comcast billing department about it. 
 
 “What amazed me then was that I had talked with at least 20 people at Comcast between Dec. 16 and January 6 who could see that my name was ‘whore’ and they did nothing about it.” 
 
 Carolina is a “dummy” 
 
 Carolina Heredia also got in touch with me after Comcast changed her name to a playground insult. 
 
 “They changed my name to ‘dummy’ in my online account, so that the greeting was ‘Hello, dummy,'” she says. “I had to call several times but they said they didn’t see it until I went in person to Comcast and they removed it.” 
 
 Comcast didn’t offer her any apologies or explanation for why her name would have been changed to “dummy.” 
 
 F*ck you, Bez 
 
 Garbis Bezdjian’s son, Sako, emailed me on Wednesday to ask for help with his father’s Comcast bill. 
 
 “After my dad contacted Comcast to remove the TV and phone services — they only kept the internet service — the name on their bill mysteriously changed to ‘Fakoe Bez,'” he says. “The bill used to have my mother’s full name on it, so it really makes no sense why the name changed so drastically.” 
 
 His mother’s name is Maida Bezdjian. 
 
 “I have nothing to do with my parents’ bills nor is my name on any of their bills,” he says. “This is not a mix-up associated with my name.” 
 
 What’s happening? Bezdjian believes his family is being punished for downgrading its Comcast service. 
 
 “This ‘Fakoe’ name is nowhere near either of their monikers and seems to be an insult in the form of the F-word aimed towards my parents,” he says. 
 
 I first contacted Comcast yesterday about getting the name corrected. As of this afternoon, it still hadn’t fixed it. 
 
 What’s going on? 
 
 Are these the actions of a single Comcast employee or multiple employees with an axe to grind? Have these name changes been happening all along without any media attention, with customers quietly suffering? It’s difficult to say based on just four cases that I know of and without a full investigation by the company. 
 
 We do know they didn’t happen by accident. Todd Loiselle, a former subcontractor for Comcast who worked with technical support, describes the company’s internal systems as tricky to navigate and “just hellish.” 
 
 “There are no confirmations or prompts asking you if you want to do something or not,” he says of the systems involving customer names. “But it does take some serious navigation to get to the portion of the biller, or the software they used to make changes on accounts, where you change account names and information. So the rep who changed the customer’s name to ‘a**hole’ couldn’t have done it by accident.” 
 
 But one thing is clear: At least one person, and maybe more than one person really doesn’t like Comcast’s customers. 
 
 Enough to put it in writing. Repeatedly. 
 
 In an odd way, this is a little bit like a whistleblower who leaks secret documents proving what everyone suspects — that the government is spying on us, that cigarettes are deadly or that a company is fixing prices. That person is just verifying what people already thought they know. 
 
 Maybe that’s what’s so shocking. 
 
 Is Comcast doing enough to stop these unauthorized name changes? Yes 
 
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 This is not how Comcast wanted to end a week that saw it having to explain how a supposedly rogue employee could change a customer’s name to “A**hole Brown.” Other customers have since come forward claiming they also had their names tweaked for the worst by Comcast staffers. 
 
 Once again the complaints come via journalist and consumer advocate Christopher Elliott’s blog, which first broke the news of the A**hole incident. 
 
 As that story caught fire online, other Comcast customers reached out to Elliott with claims that their accounts were altered with offensive names. 
 
 One customer’s bill added the word “Whore” to the name on her account. 
 
 “What’s most interesting is that Comcast said the ‘whore’ was added on Dec. 6,” she tells Elliott. “I have no record of any recent contact with Comcast until Dec. 16. So whoever chose to re-name me picked my account out of a hat. That says there are probably millions of us out there who Comcast employees have renamed. We need to find all of them.” 
 
 The woman, whose name is not “Whore,” said she had to speak with “at least 20” Comcast staffers over the course of several weeks before her account was finally fixed. 
 
 And it’s not just happening to customers with paper bills. One Comcast subscriber says she checked her account online and saw that her first name had been replaced with “dummy.” 
 
 “They changed my name to ‘dummy’ in my online account, so that the greeting was ‘Hello, dummy,’” she tells Elliott. “I had to call several times but they said they didn’t see it until I went in person to Comcast and they removed it.” 
 
 She claims that no one offered an apology or explanation for how the name change occurred. 
 
 A third customer says that after his parents called Comcast to remove their phone and TV services from the account, the first name on the account was mysteriously changed to “Fakoe,” which in no way resembles the name previously on the account. 
 
 “This ‘Fakoe’ name is nowhere near either of their monikers and seems to be an insult in the form of the F-word aimed towards my parents,” the customers’ kid explains. 
 
 One former subcontractor for Comcast explains how it’s easy to make these name changes, but that it would have to be deliberate. 
 
 “There are no confirmations or prompts asking you if you want to do something or not,” he tells Elliott. “But it does take some serious navigation to get to the portion of the biller, or the software they used to make changes on accounts, where you change account names and information. So the rep who changed the customer’s name to ‘a**hole’ couldn’t have done it by accident.” 
 
 We’ve contacted Comcast HQ for comment on this latest spate of insulting name-changes and will update when we hear anything back.
– When consumer advocate Christopher Elliott brought to light the story of a Comcast customer whose name had been changed to "A--hole Brown," the company apologized and called it a one-time fluke. Well, customers "whore" and "dummy" beg to differ, along with another who suspects his name was changed to a version of "f--- you." In a new post, Elliott writes that he has been contacted by several people since his initial post to share similar stories. One is Julie Swano, who was addressed as "whore" on her bill in December until she got the company to change it back this month. Another is Carolina Heredia. "They changed my name to ‘dummy’ in my online account, so that the greeting was ‘Hello, dummy,'” she says. (Both showed their altered greetings to Elliott.) Sako Bezdjian says that after his father canceled some services, the name on his bill was inexplicably changed from Garbis Bezdjian to "Fakoe Bez," which he takes for an f-word slam. A Comcast exec tells Elliott the company will follow up with all such cases that surface. “We’re retraining our teams on the importance of making name changes properly,” he says. “We’re looking for automated solutions to prevent this from happening in the future.” With advocate sites such as Consumerist picking up on the follow-up story, don't be surprised if more such examples surface. But be warned: At Gizmodo, Adam Clark Estes notes that pranksters might now start surfacing with crazy altered greetings with the help of Photoshop. (One critic thinks the controversy speaks volumes about Comcast's corporate culture.)