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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
I'm kind of shocked that anyone would shell out $2000 a year for TV. Is that common?
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
You're missing the point - it's only TV - you can go without it, your life isn't going to end. I used to watch obscene amounts of TV but between work and having children, I don't think the TV ever gets to see kids channels. I reckon I watch maybe an hour a fortnight if I'm lucky. I haven't died yet.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
That should of course have read "anything BUT kids channels."
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
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.
No, I mean, to criticize comcast in a public forum.. there must be a law against making libelous comments directed at corporate america.
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
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
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
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.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
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!
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...
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
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
Oh my god. Comcast didn't indicated that almost 2 years later the price might go up.
Read what is written again. Its not that the price went up, its that they silently forced her into a higher, more expensive tier. That's something I would expect to be told about, and not something I'd expect to be forced to do.
Also people forget that there are other cheaper options.
Get an ATSC tuner and a decent small/medium antenna. I get more ATSC digital channels OTA than I do regular analog.
Get a dish. Dish network+DSL is almost 1/2 the price of Comcast cable+Cablemodem and I get WAY-way-WAY better service. All channels are clear so my linux PVR box record them perfectly for recompression to xvid. DSL is incredibly faster than cable simply because the latency and jitter are far lower (Own cablemodem kiddies in online death-matches all the time because I have DSL) Voip works better over DSL because of the above reasons as well.
And yes, this is coming from an Ex Comcast guy. I drank their coolaid, I did the rah rah rah we are so cool! dances... and only when you sample the competition do you realize how badly we were screwing our customers. Properly installed and with the $29.99 upgraded dish does NOT have rain fade (and i am firing through the edge of a tree with a bigger dish and aimed correctly) I don't get light interference on higher channels because the Cable guys cant be bothered with adjusting the tilt compensation on their Cable run to my home, or the tap on the pole is 15 years old and needs to be replaced and they refuse to do so.
Yes you can live without TV and boradband, but there are other options out there, lots of them. Hell cant get DSL? do you have line of sight to a friends that can? set up a 802.11g point to point link, it's dead easy and your buddy will like you splitting the bill. (just dont do that in Sparta, MI the sheriff, Officer Milanowski, will probably shoot you for it.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Does being "the provider" mean they get to choose which of their own terms they have to adhere to?
(IANAL)
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.
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...
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."
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.
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.
Oddly enough I found the opposite to be true , and the sad part is it is all regional. So good service can some times be county to county or even city to city :(
My dishnetwork was great , solid even during blizzard like snow falls. I am in the northeast as well right outside of boston actually and my dishnetwork setup never had issues even in heavy rain i would get some pixelation but very little loss of signal. And they had good quality HD. I switched to comcast because dish refused to swap out a dvr that they destroyed with a software update. My 622 would never tune a channel after the update. It just hung on the menu screen and kept checking for a satellite signal.
I swapped to comcast and my cost not only went up $15 but they are charging $15 for an hd dvr a month then $3 for the remote. and $5 per outlet. I am sore that I got rid of my dsl and dish for comcast.
I went over to a rather well off friends home who has fios, and looked at his channels to mine , he pays $26 less a month for tv alone. Then $5 less for phone and $20 less for internet. Thats $51 a month, which would be a nice $600 chunk in my pocket a year. Hey could feed my addiction to new procs every year. The phone is crystal clear , the picture is truly beautiful on the hd channels and much better on sd. The internet is rock solid and the damn thing hits 20 mbit without an issue. I wish my cable service was as cheap , solid , and as fast.
The major thing that sucks is like you said there is no perfect one , and it's always regional. Some areas are just better maintained and better managed then some and that is really what makes the difference in quality, except for satellite services which are nationwide.
This package Does Not Contain a Winner
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!