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Industry Insider Blasts Comcast
gordette writes "I'm posting this because Comcast did the same thing to me that this journalist describes — held my HD channels hostage by insisting that I shell out for an expensive cable package. The journalist is blasting Comcast for their 'shakedown' of consumers, and is doing so in full view of industry insiders. She also links to an earlier blog post describing Comcast's Motorola DVR problems."
comcast once required a notarized letter from my landlord stating that I was not resident at a particular address while a previous resident was before I could turn on my service. unless of course I wanted to pay off the $300 in back charges said resident owed. left me without internet for a week since my landlord was on vacation. needless to say they are getting canceled the day FIOS is available in my area.
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
Its just TV for gods sake, not life saving medical equipment. As the provider that can choose what terms they like. Yes maybe its unfair but you as a consumer have the option of taking your money and custom elsewhere.
I'm kind of shocked that anyone would shell out $2000 a year for TV. Is that common?
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
No, I mean, to criticize comcast in a public forum.. there must be a law against making libelous comments directed at corporate america.
I am absolutely frustrated with the cable companies in my area. Be it comcast, RCN or WOW. First the charges are sky high, then the internet service is throttled. They keep pushing the phone service. If you have to get HD you have to 'rent' their DVR boxes. I dont need a DVR because I have a HTPC but I am still paying for it.
I have wondered what would it take to start a community cable service, which provides basic HD (OTA reception is bad) and basic cable. Internet service offloaded in bulk to a competing ISP. Has any one any experience in such project, any links on how one can achieve this ?
I know one has to get licenses from the local municipality for providing utility, besides the politics, what are the technical challenges. Is it even doable ??
I for one find it difficult to believe any of this! I mean, come on, since does the one service provider of a particular medium (say, cable) in an area, institute monopolistic venues such as these?
Next thing you know people will get sued over MP3s!
> ..."Oh," he sneers, "you must have talked to our Morgan Hill [California] office. I'm not supposed to say anything but..."
:(
but *what*?....talk about a cliff hanger
Max.
I know quite a few people with 1 or two kids who pay nearly $100 a month for cell service.
Combine that with all the other monthlies people tend to accumulate and no wonder most are always "broke"
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think this is the future of content provision--over the internet, straight from the content companies' websites. Speed and quality will increase, the content companies will start charging on a pay-per-view or subscription basis for the good stuff/good quality, a large number of individual plans will proliferate, and the cable companies will be reduced to ISPs.
I have Comcast for Internet access and am reasonably happy with them. I think their cable TV channels are way overpriced, so I'm not subscribing to anything there, but, then, I have never watched much cable.
So, why not just cancel? You have alternatives: DSL, satellite, OTA, other cable companies.
I saw a news piece about Japanese teens who are addicted to DoCoMo services and texting and they had a few 15yo's who were racking up $450 a month. No idea who was paying their bills.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I'm one of those people who never played the cable TV companies' games. Lot of times didn't even bother having a TV. Closest I got was cable Internet. I wouldn't mind some cable TV access, but they'd have to come way down in price and knock it off with the nickel and dime charging, overly complicated deals, trying to market black as white, insults to intelligence, etc.
I don't like the phone company either, for much the same reasons. I'm stuck with AT&T. Would love to dump the land line, but got to have Internet access somehow.
Then there's the RIAA/MPAA. If you don't watch TV, not watching movies either is no big deal. As for music, I'd like some new stuff that's good, but I'm not hearing anything. So I've cut back there too and buy not quite none but very few music CDs anymore.
Next are book publishers. I can't get over that in the early 1980's, a paperback was $2. Today, it's $8, which is about double what it should be if they were simply keeping pace with inflation. I used to keep up with the latest in SF/Fantasy.
Next up is Windows. I think MMORPGs are a tad overpriced too, but they're a better deal than these others. Unfortunately, that means you have to have Windows. (I don't see WINE, Crossover Office, and those as really viable, because then creaky budget hardware wouldn't be adequate.) However, Windows is easy to pirate, so one can indulge in all sorts of justifications. Yes, could live without, and still get in some gaming. For most things, I stick with Linux.
I haven't 100% boycotted all that stuff, but I'm close. There are many other things to do.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
McNamara, we didn't all just fall off a turnip truck.
Promote your cause honestly next time rather than astroturfing please. Or if you must do it, make it less screamingly obvious.
I recently added HD to my Comcast subscription, and admit to still being a bit confused by the specifics of Comcast's scheme. On their channel listing, they indicate that with their most basic digital cable package, the HD versions of the broadcast networks (NBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, and PBS) should be accessible. What they don't tell you in that listing, is that currently the only way for you to decode the HD signal transmitted by Comcast is to get their tuner (either in DVR, or standard tuner models), and presently, the only way to do that is to rent the device from Comcast. Now, as I understand from the Comcast sales rep, the only way to get that device is to upgrade to a more expansive cable package, which includes SDTV channels such as ESPN, MTV, etc, and naturally costs more.
However, the installation technician clued me in to a possible new option. He thought that the tuners would soon be available for sale at Best Buy stores. Now, from Comcast's own channel listing, I'm presuming that I should be able to purchase one of those tuners at a one-time cost, drop back to basic digital cable, and reduce my monthly bill by some $40 a month while still getting at least the broadcast networks in HD. Of the channels currently available to me with my chosen package, the only HD channels that really are of interest to me are the broadcast networks, ESPN (occasionally), and Discovery HD. So it's certainly not worth an additional $40 a month. Were my cable TV subscription not also tied to a lower rate for my cable internet connection, I'd probably just plunk down the cash for an over-the-air tuner and antenna. Come to think of it, at $40 a month, that option might quickly become more cost effective.
Back when they did the @home takeover, they halved our bandwidth, took away our newsgroups, and thought that it would be funny to charge subscribers $8 more/month and non-subscribers $22 more/month. I wouldn't trust these clowns to stick bread in a toaster, unless, of course, the toaster were unplugged and had no way of heating up.
I had Comcast when I lived in Jersey City. I was one of their first broadband customers in that area. I was also one of their first "Digital" customers in that area.
#1) I often had to go for months without internet service.
#2) More than half of my digital channels didn't work.
I had to buy a new phone every month because their customer service (or lack thereof) had me so frustrated, I would throw the phone against the wall, and I would scream so loudly, my neighbors would call an ambulance.
I eventually returned their "Digital" box, and told the rep that their service wasn't ready for prime-time. The nail in the coffin for me was when most of the channels showed up as pixelated blocky bits with no sound. It was a waste of time.
The internet problems, as well as the Digital TV problems, all turned out to be a lack of signal coming into my building. I repeatedly had technicians come over, determine the signal was bad, and proceed to clip the cable coming out of my wall another inch shorter and then leave.
Finally, they couldn't make the cable any shorter.
I called Comcast time after time to explain to them that the problem wasn't the short cable in my wall, we'd been through that already. I wanted them to run another cable in from the street, since the cable from the street split 20 ways after it came into my building.
After about 2 or 3 years of this back and forth issue, a guy came by with an amplifier that sat under my couch to try and amplify the 1/20th of a signal I was getting. That worked for about a week and then I couldn't get the internet.
A technician replaced my cable modem. That worked for a week, and then stopped.
Then I was told that they'd have to replace the wiring in the building. That was unfeasible.
So, again I complained. By this time, I was seriously considering moving.
By the time they installed the amplifier in the basement as well to amplify the signal before it was split 20 times, I was house hunting (I needed a garage anyhow, and I'd outgrown the condo).
That worked for a while. But not long.
I can only wonder if they EVER ran a second line into my building. All I know is that I now have Verizon DSL and Direct TV.
The only way I'd ever go back to Comcast is if they paid me. I spent more time teaching their tech support people how to do basic networking than I spent at my own job. Frankly, I should send Comcast a bill for $72,000 for consulting.
They are possibly the WORST corporation I have ever had to deal with. How they got so big with such crappy service I cannot understand. They make Verizon look competent, and that's saying a lot.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Personally, I've often had the opposite experience with comcast. I often get an $8 basic cable package because it discounts my comcast internet by $10 (internet cost without TV $60, internet cost with TV $50 + $8 = $58), then they always seem to forget that I'm not supposed to get the standard cable channels, so I get Internet + standard cable for two dollars less than the normal Internet price. Not only that, but whenever I've had any little problem with my service, they've had a guy out there to fix it within a couple days, and once within minutes.
They probably think if you're willing to spend over $2000 dollars a year on TV, they shouldn't have much problem getting a little more out of you, but if you're finding every possible way to cut costs like me, they know they have to take care of you or they'll lose you.
The only thing I know is that I don't know anything; and I'm not even sure about that.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
unless of course I wanted to pay off the $300 in back charges said resident owed. left me without internet for a week since my landlord was on vacation.
Am I the person who lived there? No? Then switch me on.
Comcast is large enough to absorb tens of thousands of freeloaders - they choose to ignore the apartment leeches and instead focus on nailing new signups to make sure those folks are note deadbeats.
Getting harassed is NOT Comcastic! Once you've verified me by SSN/whatever, then fucking bill me and we'll figure it out. Just switch on the service.
I went ahead & fixed everyones' typo.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
In my area Comcrap bought out the old local cable provider about 17 or so years ago when I was a kid. They weren't too bad to begin with, and moved with a fair amount of alacrity to provide high speed internet service to the area. (As a contrast, AT&T after listi ng DSLAM as coming soon to the local CO for c. 10y finally showed up a few months ago with DSL service, a decade late, if not with a few bucks extra. Too bad that it's pathetically slow speed by comparison though.)
In any event. over the last few years, we've had a variety of entertaining conversations with comcrap, and like the article's author, Verizon's FIOS should be available here in the next year or so, and AT&T's Uverse is supposed to show up soon)hope that it's not like that DSLAM coming soon...), but in any even when a viable alternative shows up with decent highspeed internet access it'll be FOAD time for comcrap.
Of course part of the bait and switch, rate hiking, and push for more expensive option from comcrap is to cover the big bonuses that they gave out to their management for doing, eseentially, nothing other than not bankrupting the company.
cable started out as catv: community antenna...locales out of the metro areas, behind hills, etc, put up an antenna array on top of the ridge & piped the signals down into the shadow.
then they privatized...
my experience with comcast and HD wasn't too painful. We get a fairly basic family package (no premium movie channels) and to get HD had to get a comcast digital box which costs $5 per month. We get 5 or 6 HD channels on the one set that has the digital box.
So I lost the ability to renew my IP address. After a week's time and numerous attempts to regain it, including minimizing my equipment and cabling, the techs finally showed up. They did their job as they were trained; afterwards, they witnessed four or five different pieces of equipment experiencing the same problem I was having and promptly said "Oh, why don't you upgrade to a dedicated IP?"
.. if you can get me a dynamic IP address."
"Sure, I'll consider that
... Rogers cable here in Canada tried a stunt called "Negative Option Billing" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_option_billi ng) which sounds sort of like what Comcast is doing. This caused a major outcry across the country that included thousands canceling their cable service. Rogers eventually caved and the practice was made illegal shortly thereafter.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Rabbit Ears! That's what I use. Picks up approximately 10 stations. That's more than I can handle. If I want more, I go to the library and borrow it. Cable offers little for quite a lot.
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One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
The funny thing is that companies REALLY DON'T care if you drop them or not. This is not a rhetorical statement.
MCI - My MCI Neighborhood phone line. It started out at $49.95. Now it's up to $54.95 for 100% exactly the same service. Of course between junk fees and taxes the true cost is about $77/month
Sprint - My cell phone bill has 'errors' in the vicinity of 5% every month. Every month. For the last 3 years. I would rank customer service somewhere between Gitmo and prison rape. And the retail stores are in fact useless for anything other than new customers. That's actually a fact they will verify if you ask them. It's debatable whether the level of lying they perform when you try to buy something from them crosses into the realm of fraud. In either case they don't care. As an experiment ask them to verify the price they tell you with what's on their website. They will simply hang up on you without comment.
CIGNA Healthcare - Cannot verify over the phone whether I am a subscriber or not, to the pharmacy. I could understand if they refused to because HIPPA is the new holy grail of an excuse to refuse to 'do' customer service. No CIGNA actually can't. Their online systems don't work well enough to do that. But hey my call is very important to them.
Time-Warner - well their service relatively speaking is ok. It works and the bills keep coming. But when the service drops out because of some technical glitch, even in some cases for more than a day they suddenly speak only Ebonics when it comes to rebates.
Xbox support - Just give up. They're in India. They can't understand what you're saying and you can't understand them. They literally cannot speak English well enough to communicate with you. Hang up the phone and keep calling till you find someone who does.
Mitsubishi USA - Their official policy is to have their lawyers send you a threatening letter if you complain about one of the dealerships. In this case Leith Mitsu of Raleigh, NC. Even though they have service bulletins up the wazoo they will not address any of the issues unless you pay for them. And the dealership told me with a straight face that parking my car outside invalidated the warranty. The national network's response to a complaint is to send out a letter telling you to go to hell and if you persist in writing to them they will sue you for something.
Digital cable is a crock anyway. It's wrapped up tight in DRM, and not just the DRM that the cable company needs to ensure you're not stealing from them. There's no chance of being able to use a custom-built PVR, for example, to record digital cable, which means you're either at the whim of TiVo or your cable company, neither of which has a stellar track record when it comes to not interfering with your rights as a consumer. They charge you extra money to get you on board a service that is a net benefit for them due to the reduced bandwidth, and then they charge you even more any chance they get.
And now the various states are passing legislation to take away regulatory power from municipalities. They're pretty much the only thing that stands between us and monopolistic abuse in many cases, because the states sure don't care.
And some people actually think that net neutrality is a bad thing. What's going on with cable TV should be proof enough that without net neutrality, we're screwed. Lack of enforcement of net neutrality is the same as subtle deregulation of the cable TV industry - it lets the cable companies use their monopoly (or duopoly, if there's a DSL-providing phone company in the area) to abuse their customers.
My Sharp Aquos set has a QAM tuner for cable, as well as an ATSC tuner for over-the-air reception; also, I have a pcHDTV HD-5500 in one of my systems, and it also works with both QAM and ATSC. Both work just fine on the unencrypted local HD broadcast channels. I'm on Comcast in the Chicago area (Romeoville front-end).
When I was shopping for the HD set, I specifically made sure that what I was buying had a QAM tuner. I was not about to take a salesman's word for it.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
The second part of the article, he wonders why Comcast doesn't offer HDNet or HDNet movies. It's because Marc Cuban and Comcast are currently engaged in a corporate game of chicken. Cuban wants a couple of bucks per subscriber (which, frankly, I would be more than willing to pay just for HDNet Movies alone) and Comcast claims they don't want to tier-ize their HD programming. I've heard rumor that Comcast has started to cave in Houston, offering both channels for a few dollars, as a test.
My experience with Comcast taking over from Time Warner here was almost identical to this gentleman's. I lost about 20% of the channels I paid for starting the day they took over. They went to "Not Authorized", just like his. Stayed that way for 2 weeks. No one at Comcast was able to send the authorization codes to my DVR because their system was "broken". What I actually found out later, was that Comcast came in like a bull in a china shop on the week of the actual cutover, and made our local office to adopt their cable box management software immediately. It didn't work. At all. For two weeks.
Right now, they're fighting like crazy to keep UVerse out of our state. Constant commercials demonizing AT&T, trying to explain why their having a monopoly on your land-line television service is actually good for you, and their bi-annual rate raises are actually what you want. If UVerse or FiOS ever finally comes here, Comcast is out the door of my house as soon as I can get an installer on site.
I've had comcast service for about 5 years now, and I have not had a single Internet outage. I also have not had any TV outages, except for the initial setup time when I moved to my townhouse.
When I ordered digital cable, the guy came out to drop off the box and asked if he could measure my signal level. It was just good enough (3dB of margin) so just to be safe, he replaced the cable ends on both sides of the cable from the basement to the jack in the living room, made me a new cable for the TV using their ultra-high-quality coax and ends (they do NOT skimp on cable), and a new splitter in the basement.
A while passed, and I ordered a second box with DVR capability and an HDMI output for my panel. The installer came out and dropped off the box, and when I called to activate it, it wouldn't activate. They had him back at my house within 20 minutes. He again measured the signal and discovered there wasn't enough at the new box. So, he checked the feed into the basement - still too low. He then went outside to the outdoor junction box and measured there, and it was fine. Apparently, my neighbor had some contractors doing work and they nicked the underground cable while they were installing a new sliding door.
Anyway, the technician said the underground cable was bad. I asked what my options were, and he said he could call for a digging crew to come out in 4-6 weeks. He then walked over to his truck, grabbed a shovel, and buried me a new line from the outdoor junction box and the feed into my house, and everything worked fine after that.
So, if Comcast is so universally evil, I've certainly never seen it...
Direct TV.
Comcast is the debil.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
TFS calls her both an "industry insider" and a "journalist," but I can't see any evidence of either. She's a blogger with a complaint about Comcast - something not in short supply. She's not really a very good writer either, but that's another topic ...
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
I agree completely.
/.er dropped cable service simultaneously?
The came now seems to be for the companies to bring one fat pipe to the door, and get us to pay for it three times -- once for telephone service, once for cable service, and once for Internet service, at about $30-$90 per month each. I used to cheer for the Cable Cos to beat out the arrogant Telcos, but they are even worse.
So, I'm determined to pay only for the Internet pipe, and use VOIP for tel service and IP TV for tube.
The VIOP services are pretty much ready for prime time. I use Skype at my business, with a Verizon FIOS Internet service to the office. Instead of Verizon's $80 per month for a business line, I pay about $25 per year, and I can answer the phone wherever I have network access. My home service will be switched soon.
For TV, the options are falling into line, although maybe not ready for prime time. I dumped cable a year ago, joined NetFlix, and in the spare minutes that I might watch tube, I occasionally look into IPTV options. There are a number of viewers out there, including the OS Democracy (www.getdemocracy.com) which manages HDTV. There are also a bunch of what I'll call channel aggregators, which sometimes advertise themselves to the masses as "Internet Satellite". They provide a feed of hundred of channels for prices that seem to range from free to $40 per year, less than a typical CableCo charges per month. The one making the most noise now seems to be Joost. There are also many feeds available direct from the content source. I haven't yet got significant experience with any of them (it would be great to hear about anyone else's experience), but I'm quite sure this is the way it will go.
I wonder if there is a possibility of a reverse Slashdotting -- would the CableCo execs even notice if every
I recently in my area had an issue with my Comcast service where i was not getting ESPN/ESPN2/Discovery HD etc but i would still get the locals, and my package had been that way for 5 years, then all of a sudden out of the blue Comcast (yes i understand that they have the right to do this) changed their lineup to have to subscribe to one of the digital packages. Well not really a problem, but then one Comcast tech accused me of stealing cable even though i pay for $100 a month for it. It took 12 calls to Comcast to speak to a manager/super visor and 3 trips to the local Comcast branch. If it was not for their internet i would of told me where to shove it. All i know is that i have a nice new HDTV antenna for my new house and Comcast is coming no where near my new house...
After getting totally screwed over by Bell's DSL 'service' for several months, I got fed up and dropped back to a third party dial-up ISP. Wow. No more headaches, and I realized that there was very little about the internet which I needed high speed for anyway.
Interestingly, the trouble with my DSL account, (my login and passwords being locked out and nobody on the service help end being able to figure out why or how to fix it, setting up new accounts where the same thing would happen, lots of head scratching, blah, blah, blah), all started when I began posting mountains of political stuff during the launch of the war in Iraq. It had been a fine service up until that point. --The crap the establishment was trying to pull at that time was amazing, and the holes in all the stories were typically open only during the first few hours/days of an operation, so research speed was a priority.
-FL
Monopolistic swines. They told me to upgrade to a digital TV service. The salesman only informed me of the "teaser rate" and completely omitted to mention that this would expire in time and then I would go up to the standard rate. The mandatory box required for HD service is $5. So I said that I would then have to pay another $5 if I wanted to connect another HD TV to their service. The salesman said "errr, no actually it is more" because the $5 box was discounted for the 1st one. I cannot wait for Verizon FIOS. I have put myself on their "waiting list". It's not that I particularly like Verizon, but they seem slightly better than Comcast. As usual, competition is everything. Imagine what Intel would be selling us now if it weren't for AMD (and vice-versa).
We only pay for internet access and get basic cable as part of the package. After our 28" TV bailed late last year, we finally broke down and bought a Sony HD TV. When we plugged it in, we discovered the channels had changed slightly (in the upper areas) and we got some of the HD channels plus a bunch of music channels. We pay an additional $15 a month to one of the video stores (MVP) which gives us three "free" movies as often as we can watch them.
:) Another channel plays current movies but no sound and another plays for 30 minutes or so then cuts out.
Weirdly we have one channel that seems to be someone at the station watching random movies. I think it's a guy since "he" fast forwards through all the chick scenes to the action
A couple of years back we got the digital package (6 month deal) and tried to watch it but just didn't like 500+ channels especially since we couldn't remove the channels we didn't want to watch.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
So, if Comcast is so universally evil, I've certainly never seen it...
It's a good point. I don't think any company is universally evil or they wouldn't be in business very long. I've had good experiences with companies that have pages of complaints online (cough*direcTV*cough). I've never experienced any of those problems. I get really good service.
And, likewise, I've had very real and very serious problems with companies other people have had no problems with at all.
I'm not sure the problem these days is universal evil as much as universal inconsistency. Stupidity raised to a high enough level is indistinguishable from malice. And one customer just doesn't impact a company's bottom line that much anymore.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Here in colorado, they tried to push a de-monopolization of communication and both qwest and comcast put up MILLIONS to stop that. In particular, they pushed the cities that they currently pay money to, to help fight it. Sadly, the ones getting screwed over this is ALL Coloradoans.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The local central office in cable networks (or at least, I know for certain
that this is the case for Comcast, though I've seen it elsewhere) is called
the head end. It dates back to the days when cable service was just an ad-hoc
shared antenna, and the office was literally the head end of the cable you
tapped into.
I had similar problems where I had paid for a HD package with Insight cable, but when they added new HD channels they told me that I couldn't get them because I didn't have some other package. They charged $30 for that package and it effectively only added the new HD channels.
Add to that the fact that they use that POS Motorola DVR too and when the hard disk in mine failed they gave me the runaround and wouldn't replace it. I was paying a cable bill each month of $140 and they refused to just send someone out with a new DVR to replace the broken one I was renting. Instead, they insisted that they try various resets (which I had already found documented online and tried myself via the remote), and the caused me to miss both season finales and season premieres...
And before that they deliberately went in and removed the 30 second skip feature- which was already hidden and had to be activated on the remote control to begin with. Their software update disabled it at the box intentionally.
After those episodes, I had enough and I canceled my cable, returned their box and signed up for DirectTV. I was hesitant to do it, but I've never been happier with my television service! Their DVR is respectable and supports some VIIV music and picture streaming functionality and will work with a external eSATA drive! I'm not so happy that they downsample their HD programming from the 1900x1080 to 1024x1080, but I'm hoping they'll reverse that when they switch from the MPEG-2 codec to the MPEG-4 for the HD channels.
When I was a kid it was free too. It was also 3 crappy channels, one of which didn't come in very clear unless you adjusted the antenna.
But yes, from what I've heard from people who've had it, Comcast sucks big time. Time-Warner ain't exactly no walk in the park, either. But I'd take Time-Warner over Comcast any day. Comcast must be bribing some city councils pretty hard to keep those franchises--considering their overpriced service and poor customer relations (as much as I rag on Time-Warner I can call them up pretty easily and they will send out a technician at the drop of a hat).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Satellite locally is problematic with the constant overcast we get, and our long winters. reception quality is okay but not that good."
I have to call bullshit. You're clearly trying to find an way to support your original incorrect statement, instead of admitting satellite is an alternative.
Why lie about something this trivial? Is appearing knowledgeable on slashdot that important to you?
I'm a Comcast subscriber, and there are many aspects of my service I'm happy with. However FiOS is now available recently, and I'm curious whether it would benefit me to switch.
I started as a subscriber to Continental Cablevision (with Internet service), which was bought by (the old) AT&T, then bought by Comcast. Over the decade I've had pretty reliable service from all three providers.
Things I like about Comcast:
1) I get a public IP address, and it's essentially static. I use a Linux box as a firewall, and my address only ever changes if Comcast renumbers its network, something that's happened maybe twice in my Comcast period. Since I maintain a number of OpenVPN tunnels to remote hosts, having a static address makes that much easier.
2) They don't seem to notice, or care, that my firewall is also the backup MX host for my commercial email server.
3) They don't seem to care that I run torrents. At one time it was 24x7, now I tend to run them overnight.
4) Other than watching the Red Sox and The Golf Channel, most of the reason I keep their cable service is to watch the excellent collection of On-Demand free movies they offer. (Most of my viewing these days consists of DVDs and downloaded anime.) It's rare that we ever pay for an on-demand film. I've introduced my daughter to a number of excellent older films that we would never have seen otherwise except through rentals. While rentals are good, our viewing tends to be more haphazard, so being able to dial up an On-Demand feature is a substantial benefit.
My only experience with Verizon FiOS is observing what's happened with a friend who signed up for it recently. He's already had two outages; I only have outages when I forget to pay the bill. When Verizon installed his service, they also installed a firewall router which has his public IP. The rest of his machines are on a private IP network behind the firewall. Is this the only option available, or will I still be able to have my own router with a public IP? How stable is the public IP? Another acquaintance who has FiOS says you don't need their router unless you also want television service. Since I'm looking for a single provider, that sounds a bit ominous.
Competition from FiOS has led to Comcast sweetening the deal here. The other day I was speaking with a customer rep while paying my bill, and she told me that I could add phone service, and get HBO and Starz thrown in, for another $15/month (right now I pay about $115). My guess is that a similar FiOS package would cost about the same.
Being faced with choosing between Comcast and Verizon is something of a Hobson's choice for me.
I don't use digital cable yet. As part of my business-class broadband, I get a 'deal' on analog cable (I doubt it would be filtered just on my pole if I canceled the TV piece though).
Starting yesterday, I noticed that cinemax, HBO, and showtime, which previously had simply been scrambled, are now totally filtered. So are those holdouts who are still using analog cable and paying for those services (I don't) now being forced to migrate to digital cable? I highly doubt that comcast is going to spend the time and money to filter lines per customer, and assume this is a 'global' filter (or they stopped broadcasting those channels on analog altogether) that was just put in place.
Does comcast have a hard stop on when they'll stop sending analog signals? I don't recall having heard anything from them. Then again, I didn't when they took over my business line and screwed it up for a week while my mailing list subscribers yelled at me either.
If forced to digital, I think I'll just use the cable for the business Internet line and then just go to dish network for TV. I hate the cable TV monopoly and will do whatever I can within reason to not give them my business.
Sigbus has it totally correct. There are two ways to receive HD over cable. One is an HD cable box, which most likely will be bundled with something other than basic service. OR have a TV with a HD tuner built in, this will allow you to tune in any unencrypted Digital channels.
Now the biggest question I have is how do you make sure you get a QAM tuner. Most websites only specify NTSC and ATSC tuners. I've yet to see an advertisement for QAM! Which is needed for on Cable for digital/HD channels. I'm looking at sites like tigerdirect.com, maybe they are just not the site to use to shop for these TV's???
Anybody know?
Those who can, do.
My Yacht isn't as much about the company but the installers they choose to come out and put the modem in. They were pleasent enough and were expedient. They set the modem up, registered us via the comcast email they gave us and were all-in-all a stand up crew. We paid them with a check and thanked them.
2 weeks later, the friend whos name was on the service/check, was suddenly out of funds. We took a look at the charges, especially one under INTERNET DADDY KING or something, and, after calls being made, found out that our friend's account had been used to purchase pr0n account @ the tune of 39.95 a month.
After some questioning and a group hug, we'd eliminated all three of us fr. We'd gotten an email account that had been used to sign up for the, um, account. You guessed it. The Comcast email, that only 3 people knew the password and name to, had been used to sign up for the service as a bank draft. We figured that the installers were the aim of our charge here.
Fraud complaints to Comcast are still ongoing.
import system.cool.Sig;
I mean, while we're all complaining and such.
I've tangled with them a couple of times. The first insult was raising my cable internet bill five bucks but dropping my download rate by about 256 k/sec. But that wasn't the good one. I live in a house that's been subdivided into apartments, and Comcast was the only outfit that consistently got my address wrong. My phone people? Fine. Electricity? Fine. Water? Fine. Comcast? Half the time they'd send my bill to my neighbor, and after a while they apparently got confused and insisted that I hadn't paid a bill at all for one month (I did) and demanded the payment and late charges. I got the check returned from my bank as well as the statement showing Comcast mysteriously cashing this check and taking my money, despite their claims to the contrary. After going 'round and 'round with them on this for over a month their position became "we're bigger than you, therefore it is impossible for us to make mistakes, so it must be your problem." At this point, they quit sending me bills entirely, but felt the need to draft rude and nasty people to call my cell phone at all hours of the day and night insulting me and demanding payment for bills I never got, trying to push me into giving them my credit card number (ha!). I dropped their sorry asses about a week into this and went to Verizon. Even without FIOS, Verizon's higher-tier package is cheaper than Comcast and about half again as fast in my area. Duh.
At my sister's place everyone is a lardass stereotypical American TV watcher, so they have Comcast digital cable. Comcast mysteriously tried to charge my sister for over 300 dollars worth of pay-per-view porno one month. Obviously, my sister was a bit miffed. This is a household of three women and my nephew, who shrewdly points out that he has no need for pay-per-view because he has internet access. Comcast claimed that the charges came from the ID number of the cable box in my sister's room, which is barely ever used and when it is... Is used by my (straight, 35 year old) sister. After threatening my sister with legal action, putting black marks all over her credit report, &c., Comcast finally figured out (not that this was much of a stretch) that this actually precipitated from someone using a stolen/hacked cable box randomly trying ID's until they got one that worked. My sister suggested that she get a new cable box from Comcast, even pay for it, and they refused to do it. Naturally, two months later, it happened again. And despite documented phone calls and a letter from Comcast stating that they knew about the problem, they threatened my sister again, and again refused to provide her a new cable box or ID number.
I'm trying to push them to go FIOS and/or take Verizon's digital cable package when it arrives in their area.
That's not that bad really...it's all about context.
The households bringing in less than 80k per year, pay for a land line w/long distance packages, high speed internet, full blown cable package, 4 cells etc...THAT is freaking insane. And a TON of people do so. All the things people paid for 20 years ago, PLUS a whole bunch more. Why? Haven't a clue.
Me, I've got a cell phone and cable internet. That is it. Nothing more, and I won't pay for more. Even still, I'm spending just over 100 a month. My ex of course always insisted on all the rest...before we separated, we were spending ~350 a month. WTF? Insanity. And for no need.
But to keep it directly on topic, I haven't the foggiest WHY anyone would pay that kind of money for more television channels than you could ever dream of watching. There simply is no justification for it that makes sense.
Oh yeah, and what about the commercials?
Once upon a time, broadcast content paid for itself. It still does, we just pay the broadcast companies on top of that now. Why? Because as a collective, we're gullible and stupid.
Stop it already!!!
Look at it another way: I can easily go and rent a high-def movie every day of the week and STILL spend less than a ton of people pay for their television.
No Comment.
TimeWarner pulled the same jackass stunt on me; within a month or two of taking over the Dallas-area systems from Comcast they cut off half of my HD channels. Supposedly someone was "supposed to call" and tell me this was going to happen (yeah, right). They refuse to let me have those channels unless I switch from my $60/month "grandfathered" package to a $120/month TimeWarner package.
I have FIOS and love the internet access however I am forced to buy Business service to get static IP addresses; for some reason, Verizon didn't anticipate businesses would want TV service or residential customers with home offices would want static IP addresses. This means I cannot get the TV service and keep my static IPs; I'd rather have the internet service.
Does anyone know of *any* large company that doesn't suck? I've never found one.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
From previous bad experiences, plus that of almost everyone willing to give an opinion, I'd never again try to subscribe to Comcast (note that I said "try to". They have extorted for money but I have never actually received service), however they still managed to screw me over again...
When I moved a couple of years ago, I immediately signed up for the other cable choice and DSL through the phone company. Verizon ran a brand new line to the house and had phone and DSL up and running the day of the move! About three weeks later, we saw a Comcast truck parked across the street and suddenly the new phone and DSL service died, cut where it entered the house. I tried calling but they kept insisting the company would only disconnect ComCast service (which we didn't even have) at the pole and never touch any other lines. Eventually they said they would fix it... Repeatedly, as I called every other day. Eventually I called the phone company again and Verizon ran a new line within the week! Comcast would never admit it but apparently they were being vindictive because the previous owner forgot to cancel his service before he sold the house.
For a while my internet would go out every day at 7:00 PM until around midnight...then sometime during the night it'd go down again and wouldn't come back on until sometime during the day after I had already left. Every time I called their support line it said 'we are currently experiencing problems in your area.....' and all that crap, so I let it go for about a week until I finally decided to talk to the support guy anyways. I told him we had no service and he said 'we're not reporting any outages in your area...' (then why'd the message say you were???). ANYWAYS, took 'em about a month to fix the thing by replacing my modem.
I've been using the Motorola Comcast HD-DVR since January. I've gone through 3 units. Each one is a steaming pile of crap.
The most annoying problem is what the article describes -- that it just "hangs" and stops responding to input. But most of the time it is queuing up the input. So if you've hit a lot of buttons they are all waiting to be replayed.
There are other common situations near the top of the hour where the unit freezes for a minute or two.
The unit sometimes gets into a situation where it drops frames while displaying HD signals. So any movement in the picture is jumpy.
The "Emergency Access System" for displaying Amber alerts, Weather events, whatever doesn't appear to ever have been tested. It usually crashes my unit which requires a power cycle to get it working again.
Comcast doesn't want to hear about these problems. They don't care.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Sure, we have Cingular. Base plan: $39.99. Two extra lines: $9.99 each. 1500 SMS/5 MB net for 2 lines: $14.99 * 2 = $29.98. Total = $90. Add in taxes and fees, and we're usually in the $100-$110 range. And it's going to get more expensive when we go to college, because the plan we have is a "home calling area" plan grandfathered from when "no roaming charges" wasn't yet a universal policy, and the cheapest current plan is $10 more.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
The solution here is simple - don't pay for "hd" packages. Grab it off the air! I'd have to pay some monstrously high fee to get digital cable and HD service just to get the local channels, when lo and behold... they're flying over my roof as we speak. In glorious 1080i, for the price of a cheapo roof antenna from Radio Shack.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This is why I will not go to HD until I have no other choice. I have extended basic on TW and that is all. Five TVs in my house have service at no additional cost. That, and the internet is all I will pay for.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Were you sent here by the devil?
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
And while I'm at it, Comcast pulls another billing scam worth mentioning. My HD Platinum Digital Choice package is supposed to include an HD cable box. And then I can add a DVR to it for $11.95. However, when I got my first bill for the new package, I was being charged a fucking $18.90 for the DVR. How did this happen? Well they claim that the extra $6.95 is for the second cable box. It seems that when you get a DVR, this counts as your first cable box, and that the bedroom tuner that should have been included as part of your package magically becomes your second cable box, which you have to pay for!
Now, were I to ditch the DVR, then the cable only box becomes my first box, it's included in my package, and my bill goes goes down by $18.95. Yet Comcast insists they're only charging me $11.95 for the DVR. I feel you'll agree with me that this is Fraud in billing!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Basic cable + internet + shows ala carte from iTunes = cheaper (unless you watch a rather large number of series, through the whole year).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I then pointed out that I had yet to get 6Mbs downloads even on testing sites that can really pump out the bits to you, and why pay more for 8MBs that I also won't get on my very congested local loop? They had no answer for that one, because Comcast had never guaranteed any level of actual service, and in fact I believe their ToS specifically denies any guaranteed level of download performance.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
See my post further down on why you're not paying $11.95 for your DVR, if you have a second TV hooked up with a cable box.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That $8 package is the way to go. We usually get about 3 months of basic cable for free throughout the year.
Which is enough discover that there's not much worth watching _now_ versus waiting for a good series to come on DVD.
OT rant:
It boggles my mind that people pay for all of that premium stuff.
They all seem to forget that customer service in these organizations has nothing to do with either the customer or service and grind away at the bloody stump graciously provided by the telco/cable provider.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
Comcast is unfortunately the only fast option where I live, the other being ATT DSL at a whopping 768kb/s for some insane price. I've had them at 2 different places now, and each time they conveniently filter out the HD channels when I run the coax from the box into the TV. So I put a 4 way splitter there, 1 for the TV, 1 for the box, 1 for the new media center (eventually heh), and 1 for the cable modem during LAN parties. And no, I'm not paying extra for the HD stuff just yet. As soon as the analog gets switched off, everything goes to at least 480i right? (Not sure)
I have noticed a disturbing trend in my Commiecast service. I dont watch that much TV, so I subscribe to basic analog cable. Every month or two, I find another channel displaying "this channel now only available on Digital cable channel XXX".
/sarcasm
So over the past 2 years, my cable bills keep going up, and my channel selection is steadily going down.
Thanks Commiecast.
OH, but I HAVE gone from the teeny tiny 3mb cable to blazing fast 6mb cable. Who cares? I cant tell the difference when I use it for gaming.
what, you mean CNN.com now loads in a quarter second instead of a half second? oh well, that makes it all the more worthwhile!
Since the late 70s there was a continual migration away from OTA antenna reception onto cable and later to satellite services. But, there is a small, but growing, trend back towards antenna.
Digital TV services offer high visual quality high definition broadcasts from the local broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox). The digital reception is a big improvement over the old analog stuff. As long as you can get a strong enough signal (which may require a bit of initial antenna tweaking) you get a perfect picture.. no static, shadows, etc.
If there were more OTA DVR options available (like the HD Tivo, but at a decent price) I think many people would be completely satisfied with OTA-only. With a DVR, you can replace the need for a bunch of channels to surf through with a queue of pre-recorded programs to browse through. Theoretically, those pre-recorded programs should be closer to your viewing preferences than the random garbage on cable.
There are some good roll-your-own options, like MythTV. But, few people want that much effort for TV viewing. Sony and LG both made OTA/ATSC DVRs, but they weren't very popular. Maybe this will be more of a hobbyist thing for a while.
Told Comcast and SBC (now AT&T) to take a hike a bit more than two years ago. Got the equivalent Dish package and have been happy ever since - pitched the hard phone line in favor of a $60 two-phone cellular plan. My DSL is provided by a local carrier that does not offer telephone service - they don't care if I run a server on their line as long as I a) don't ask them why my web, mail or IRC daemons don't work and b) don't exceed their rather generous bandwidth limit - and they were kind enough to add a PTR record for free so AOL would quit bouncing my outbound mail ;-)
There is life without Comcast. Dish charges me ten bucks a month for not having my pair of dual-tuner DVRs connected to a phone line but I don't think I can get a hard line for ten bucks. With the ten extra bucks a month I'm still paying them less than I was paying Comcast and the service is infinitely better. Life is good.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
the FCC has issued an order that a landlord CANNOT block the installation of a receiving antenna or dish.
federal law.
it is in the interest of a landlord to require insurance. your standard homeowners' policy is just fine.
for a no-damage install, if you face direct south, put the dish pole in a 5-gallon drum of wet concrete, and run the wire in under the lip of the air conditioner's fit into its wall sleeve. otherwise, get a roof tower, a 2x4, some lagbolts, and a piece of 1-1/2-inch pipe to fit the roof tower. bolt the tower to three chunks of 2x4, slide it out to the edge of the balcony. put in the pipe. bolt on the dish hardware, aim, and align with the coax run as described above.
one sandbag on each piece of 2x4 held mine for 10 years.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
no hassle, works fine, no craptastic stories to tell.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
One day, outside the bookstore at a new strip mall near here, I saw a young woman shouting into her cell phone, saying "You don't understand, I don't want to talk to you any more!" and I thought, "Hang up." "Don't answer."
If Comcast doesn't treat you nice, tell them to come and get their nasty little box, or you can mail it to them, but you're done with them.
End of story. Don't whine around about it, vote with your money by withholding it from them. Once enough people stop paying them, they'll understand the clue.
If I were you, I'd worry about OCD TV watching! Read a book or two, take a walk, quit that TV addiction and get a real life!
Think of the Irony!
Actually (and speaking of Time Warner in Austin), this is done on purpose for logging in case they they are sopenaed by the RIAA or MPAA...which happens a LOT! So your IP is dynamic, but will only change after so many days have passed. Releasing and renewing will NOT force a new IP to be given because it's bound to the devices mac address connected to the modem (not the internal modems mac).
In other words, it is DHCP, but the IP addresses get refreshed at their discretion, not yours.
There is a work around however. Just clone a different mac address on your router or computer, reboot the modem, and voila...a new IP address has been given.
BTW, I'm a former Time Warner technician
Life is not for the lazy.
Their new skyscraper headquarters in Philadelphia isn't going to pay for itself, people!
> You might try here and click on the "Request a Miracle" link.
:(
I can't seem to find the link. Is it in Latin?
My sarcasm meter just blew up, too, so it's just not my day...
Comcast is a business, that wants to make money. In Slashdot mythology, that is a defining characteristic of evil,
Nope. Making money is just fine. In fact, I'd be happy to make some myself by wagering $100 that if you took a genuine poll of slashdot readers, most of them -- probably even well over 90% -- would say so.
If you'd said something a little more sophisticated, like "In Slashdot mythology, making money off of craptacular service is considered evil", now that might be accurate. It's not the profit that's objectionable. It's when the value of providing a quality service or product is so obviously well below coequal with the profit motive.
The author of the article was somebody paying over $2000 a year for cable service. Nobody pays that amount for an optional service to a business they object to having profits. Her complaint isn't even necessarily the cash, though the price raise certainly adds injury to insult. It's the shenanigans, the lying, the phone tree navigation hell, the reps who don't know what they're doing, the bullshit policies that make no sense. And author's experience aside, look around throughout this thread there's all kinds of stories about the actual technical quality of service that are pretty awful.
And often there's really no better competitor to go to.
And you know, it really isn't just the cable companies, or the phone companies, or the banks, or any single industry. Every time somebody goes on about how single-payer insurance schemes would result in the nightmare of "healthcare run like the DMV" I wonder what kind of blinders they've got on. It's already here for a good chunk of America, as I find out every time I have to deal with the inefficient health care bureacracy that in theory the market forces of competition should be conspiring to eliminate (and I've been through four different insurance companies to try and get something better). Or there's the fact that I genuinely, no kidding, have received customer service orders of magnitude better than official phone support for my Hawking wireless router from volunteers on random message boards. Increasingly it seems that *many* business of more than 1-2 dozen people have this problem.
I think one of these days, somebody is going to make a pretty winning thesis out of Why Customer Service Usually Sucks in our economy.
Tweet, tweet.
We don't watch TV in our house hold, but I am still annoyed by people who assume TV==no life.
I got some bad news, no TV means that you are being less social because you don't know what people are talking about.
And another thing, yeah you can vote with your wallet, but if you make it known then a lot of people can vote with their wallets at the same time. A much bigger effect on the company.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm going to put a good word for Comcast here. I understand they might be screwing many peoples but not me:
I previously had basic cable and 6Mbs internet (Thats local channels + discovery and food network, thats about it... no CNN or MTV...) $12.95 for TV + $42.95 for Internet.
Then my fiancee moved in, she wanted Fox Sport Net to watch Baseball games. They had a special going $33 for the digital enhanced package + free HBO for 6 month. So I called up and they tell me, no its for new customers only. So i asked them: if I cancel my service, can my "roommate" open a new accoutn and take the deal? They said yes you can do that.
So I said thank you, called my fiancee to explain the deal, then called back to cancel. "Why do you want to cancel" so i explain again that my "roommate" wants more TV and i cant get the deal, so she is going to take over. And the guy say, "oh no, you dont need to do that, we will give you the deal"
And actually he also gave me a deal on the internet, so now i'm paying $33 + $33 for internet, a digital PVR, On-demand, all the regular cable channels, and free HBO for 6 month.
Thats in the fremont, ca service area.
I hate my cable provide too. They keep upping the price and Limewire shuts down the service. I can go months without a break in service, but 10 minutes on Limewire can, on occasion shut the service down. Only rebooting the cable modem fixes. I thought it was the service, and Cox said "5 years is the break point, you need a new cable modem" which I think is garbage. Anyway, last time I posted about this someone said it was likely a MTU issue with my router. How do I chase this and figure out if it's the issue?
Can't believe Comcast does that...Cablevision/Optimum gives HD channels for free as well as no additional cost for an HD receiver (over the cost for a standard receiver). (No, I don't work for or have any professional affiliation with them...I'm just a satisfied customer)
Write your congresspeople, folks. They're the only ones who can do anything about this.
Since early 1990's my phone number is unlisted for free, on Bellsouth. Now that AT&T took over, they are charging $2 a month to UNLIST a number!
I am complaing now to FCC the Georgia State gov. I also looking for alternative phone companies.
I'm a cheapskate, and pay $13/month for "basic cable" and $5/month for my Virgin cell-phone service (which obviously, I don't use very much).
One thing you mentioned, your "ex", is a good part of the reason why people pay so much: If one person in a relationship wants something, that's what often prevails. So maybe one spouse wants a cellphone plan with lots of minutes, the other wants a cable package with lots of channels; and soon they're paying $$$/month that they can't really afford.
I just saw the video of the poor tech who fell asleep while waiting on hold for 90 minutes. The guy who posted that deserves to have his balls cut off. 15 min of fame at the cost of ruining someone's life. Nice deal I guess, if you are a dick head.