WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The Montgomery County Council stepped up its ongoing battle with cable giant Comcast Wednesday, leveling almost $13,000 in fines for customer service issues in the county.

Bethesda resident Arthur Meisnere says that’s “not enough.”

Meisnere said in April of last year, he called Comcast to report a problem, put his phone on speaker and listened to it ring for 45 minutes before anybody answered.

“To me, they don’t have any customer service,” Meisnere said.

Montgomery officials levied the fine after the cable company failed to meet contract requirements that 90 percent of customer service calls must be answered within 30 seconds. Between January and November 2007, according to the company’s own data, Comcast complied with that requirement only twice — in July and August.

Comcast spokeswoman Lisa Altman said the company has made “significant improvements” in its service over the past year.

“We’ve invested $290 million in technology and infrastructure in the region,” Altman said. “We’ve also added 300 ‘customer-facing’ employees, which includes service technicians and call-center employees.”

The county’s cable office received 343 complaints about Comcast service during the fourth quarter of 2007, down from 457 during the third quarter, but Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg, chair of the management and fiscal policy committee, said service concerns continue.

“We continue to fine them, the fines are hefty but clearly they aren’t putting Comcast out of business,” Trachtenberg said. “We are trying to send them a message and get them to have a public conversation about problems with their customer service.”

During the past year, the county has fined Comcast more than $74,000 for customer service problems. In addition to phone-answering issues, customers complain of problems with timely repair and that the company continues to automatically deduct payments from bank accounts after people cancel their contracts.

Local Comcast competitors RCN and Verizon only serve 6,000 and 29,000 county residents respectively. Comcast serves more than 180,000 customers.

County officials also issued a written warning to RCN last week for similar service problems involving answering customer service issues and timely service repair, saying the company must comply with minimum service standards over the next three months or face fines.

kmiller@dcexaminer.com