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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
You certainly didn't RTFA. They sold an upgraded (and expensive) package for her promising HD channels but now they are wanting her to upgrade again to another more expensive package in order to get the *real* HD channels. That's the traditional bait and switch, and it doesn't matter if it is TV, medical treatment or a piece of soggy wet paper, it is outright fraud.
Her breakdown was:
$102.99 for the DIGITAL GOLD Package which includes: standard cable (limited basic and expanded basic), digital special interest channels, music choice, Starz, Starz Plex, Encore, Encore Plex, HBO, HBO Plex, Showtime, Showtime Plex, and Digital Converter and Remote where applicable;
$11.95 for DVR with HDTV;
$45.95 for high speed Internet
So $46/mo ($552/yr) was for Internet. But to answer your question, I'd say it's fairly common for people to pay something close to what she's paying. Lots of people get the premium channels packages. A few years ago, I had it. Then I moved in with a friend who was a cheap bastard, and all we had was the non-digital expanded basic. Got used to not having all the premium channels, and I got along just fine. Now that I've moved into my own place, I didn't bother with the premium channels. No need, there's plenty of stuff to watch as is.
And she was hardly fleeced. To quote "When I upgraded to HD in 2005, Comcast never disclosed - not once - that they would require a shift into an even more expensive cable package.". Oh my god. Comcast didn't indicated that almost 2 years later the price might go up. I'll be Comcast currently offer many more HD channels then they did in 2005. And of course, by her logic, they should do that without raising their price. Because offering this additional content (and HD content cost more to feed then normal channels) does cost.
? starting=13) It's amazing how her attitude can change so quickly when she finds out she'll have to pay more money for more content.
I notice as well that the customer rents her HD terminal - hardly like she's being forced to stay.
She could choose Direct TV (satellite) - but oh, wait, they charge $9.99/month for HD content. Hmm.. Isn't the same $120 per year she is complaining that comcast want?
I'll also note that on May 7 this same author writes "I'm a Comcast customer, too. But my experience with Comcast, bar some exceptions, has been fairly positive. For one thing, the system is incredibly reliable. Outages just don't happen, at least in my area." (http://www.multichannel.com/blog/1300000330.html
This is quite surprising. I always thought the US was awash with options. In the UK we only have one cable company now after the two main ones merged and changed their name. ADSL is all handled by BT but resold via the hundreds of ISPs so you choose who you want based on price/download cap etc. WIth the local loop being slowly unbundled, speeds are rising. Most people have the option of 8Mb ADSL but those who have been unbundled can go to 24Mb I think. Not sure about cable - I think that's 10Mb - it was when I used to be Blueyonder.
As far as TV goes, it's cable via Virgin Media, Sky (spit) if you want digital Sat and Freeview for digital via an aerial. There is of course also analogue TV via aerial but that's about to be switched off - a pity as a good analogue signal beats the current crop of digital ones hands down.
Many operators are now offering bundles with phone/TV/broadband and mobile (cell) all in one package assuming you can find one that suits your usage.
HiDef is still in its infancy with a handful of Sky and Cable channels at premium prices.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
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'll cast my last post into the flames:
I lived in South Dakota in a town with a pop. of 50,000. There were two cable providers and prices were lower and services better because of the competition.
I lived in Lincoln, Nebraska (pop. 200,000) and got a huge cable package with DVR for less than I'm paying now. Again, there were multiple options.
Now, in a metro area with a pop. of approximately 1,000,000, I can't get the services I want at a price I want. I can't get the best deal thru my current provider because they don't provide the phone service in my area. They do in other parts of town. I can't run an all-in-one package with the phone company because I can't install a satellite dish.
Companies like Comcast get away with the abhorrent service record because they climbed into enough back pockets to ensure monopolies in large metro areas. They don't have any reason to keep prices low or provide responsive customer service.
In a supposed free-market economy, this should be near impossible. But, sadly, it isn't.
She actually has an old package of gold from at&t and if she wants new channels she has to get the modern package, pretty simple
For less than two months worth of cable you can get a machine significantly newer than your 7 year old PC. If you're that strapped, maybe you should reconsider whether you really need "all the HBO's, Cinemax's, Showtimes, Starz, Encores etc including On Demand channels."
Just saying.
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!
Manufacturer's website for an HDTV will usually say if it has a QAM tuner in addition to ATSC/NTSC. Vizio does this for their televisions, for instance, it's one of the reasons I went with them. Consumer Reports (consumerreports.org) will also say whether a television they're reviewing has a QAM tuner. QAM tuners are still not common, though, so your selection is somewhat limited.
If you live in a major market, you can still get reasonably good TV for free. In Houston there's something like ten English-speaking channels over the air-waves. Most of the signals are pretty strong, and if you get a good set of bunny ears, you can pick up some of them as clear as cable. The only reason we got Dish last year was because my wife was pregnant and moody and got really mad about the whole Monday-Night-Football-on-ESPN thing.
I wonder how all of this is going to change when the airwaves go digital...
Or he could call Dishnetworks or Directv and have them come and install a satellite setup for him.
There are tradeoffs with every TV service. The parent said he was waiting for FiOS... which I have, so I can tell you from experience that there are tradeoffs with that too. I've also had DirecTV in the past.
With FiOS, you pay the highest prices anywhere. Oh, they advertise "$95 a month" for their three service package (TV, phone, internet), but they nickel and dime you to death. They charge $12.95 for an HD-DVR - same box was $5 from Cablevision. They have tons of little extra fees tacked on that they don't tell you about. My "$95 a month" plan ended up quoted to me at $121 a month over the phone, and I actually pay at least $155 a month when all is said and done. With Cablevision, getting the same package of services I was paying $126 a month. So FiOS is an expensive option.
FiOS is also the least reliable of all the services I have used. Cablevision was honestly rock solid for all three services - no problems. With FiOS, I have channel breakups almost every day, I get audio dropouts, and my router dies at least once a week (you have to use their router).
You may as well ask why I switched... at this point, I really don't know. I'd heard FiOS had the best picture quality, and that may be true, when it's working properly. I had no problem with my Cablevision picture quality, though I moved to FiOS at the same time as I moved from a 26" HDTV to a 42" HDTV so I can't really say for sure which has the better PQ. But now I'm locked into a year contract. And I don't want to change my phone number again.
As for DirecTV, you know what they say about it going out in the rain? Well, it's true. Oh, it's not as big of a problem as their competitors' commercials make it out to be, but it does happen. It may not be an issue if you live in a dry state like Arizona, but I live in the northeast and we get some wicked thunderstorms in the summer. My DTV was going out about once a week, sometimes for hours at a time when I had it.
Also, DirecTV is well known for awful picture quality. They're the standard-bearers of "HD-lite" - taking a 1920x1080 signal and down-rezzing it to 1280x1080. They were sued in court over their commercials that advertised the "best picture quality" and they lost - they were forced to withdraw the ads. They've recently launched a few new satellites that give them greater data capacity, but everybody knows that they'll just add more channels rather than improving PQ - it's what they've always done when they've added capacity. At the very least, they are re-compressing MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, which is an inherently lossy process even keeping the same resolution.
So, you pick your poison. There is no "perfect" TV service, only whatever you personally consider to be least bad.