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Comcast Pays $800,000 To U.S. For Hiding Stand-Alone Broadband
First time accepted submitter vu1986 writes "The Federal Communications Commission has settled with Comcast over charges that the cable company made it hard for consumers to find stand-alone broadband packages that don't cost an arm and leg. As part of the settlement Comcast paid the U.S. Treasury $800,000 and the FCC extended the length of time Comcast had to provide such a service."
Does Comcast have to make it any easier for customers to find the stand alone-packages? I don't see that requirement anywhere in the summary or article ..
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
I had a bitch of a time with Time Warner trying to get them to give me broadband without the TV, phone, and other crap that's pointless to me. What's the point of making it such a pain in the ass? All it does is ensure that wherever I move next it sure as hell won't be somewhere serviced by TWC.
Hmm. $800,000 fine. For a company that grossed 4.4 billion last year. If this was an individual making median income (47k USD), then this would be like fining them $0.09. That'll teach them!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Comcast sucks. They've been making advertisements lately where they claim people go back to them or something. They even claim that according to PCWorld they have the nation's fastest broadband.
Not hardly. Not when our local fiber provider can drop a gig to your house.
Of course the wannabe libertarians screamed about public money and a monopoly abusing its power.
Lying fuckers.
TFA says:
price no greater than $49.95 for three years.
Well shit. I have Comcast's cable internet service, without TV or anything else from them, and they're charging me around $70/mo.
I spend $35 a month for stand-alone 12mbps. It's not great, but it's hardly an "arm or a leg". Maybe they're guilty of not advertising it, but I didn't know that was a crime.
Screw that - I'll believe the FCC has some teeth when they start revoking $MEGACORP company charters for doing $STUPIDSHIT
Until then, DOJ v. Microsoft proved that no govenment agency has the balls nowadays to go up against a major corporation - no matter how bad they get.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I had no problem finding an internet only package with Comcast and I was quite happy with their service.
I used Comcast for internet service for 3 years and it worked great. Consistent 15 mbit service, never hit any usage caps despite being a heavy Netflix user with no cable service (I used Comcast only for internet). Only one instance of downtime in 3 years, they had a truck there within 4 hours and re terminated the connection at the pole to get me back online (the tech said it was water damage - it had been rainy and exceptionally windy - many people lost power). I considered DSL, but the local Telco could only promise "up to" 1.5mbit of bandwidth and said that due to my CO distance it might be lower.
Now I have AT&T U-Verse (my only option) and after 2 missed install appointment (no call for either one - they just didn't show), it's been ok, but there have been 2 outages in 3 months. One lasted around 10 minutes, the other was 60 minutes but it was the middle of the night.
If I could use Comcast again, I would.
I need to make a call.
I just haven't figured out who I need to call--the FCC or Comcast.
When I purchased this house new, it had existing cable hookups but had never had them activated. I called Comcast and asked to have internet service activated. No problem, except that lady I spoke to automatically added cable service in the price--$69.00 a month. When I corrected her and stated that I did not want cable she stated that it was the same price anyway, with or without cable service.
So, in effect, the stand-alone internet service was never offered. In it's place, I was offered their bundle and was forced to pay a premium to have the cable access removed if I really desired to. Obviously, since the price was the same I now have both cable and internet service when all I wanted was the broadband.
More and more companies are being found to have behaved badly and are fined, just today Barclays is fined £290m. The company pays it and probably keeps going on other scams for which individuals earn large bonuses or commissions, nobody really suffers, the company just makes a little less profit that year.
The only way of altering behaviour is to fine the individuals who are behind the scams. Only when these crooks start loosing their houses and pensions will they stop thieving. Their primary interest is themselves, not the company. Hit them where it matters to them - then, and only then, might the regulators truly find their teeth.
If comcast doesn't want consumers to know about the alternate packages, why make them available at all? Granite State Communications (local telco here in NH) has NO standalone internet package--if you want internet, you HAVE to have their phone.
Verizon recently sent out letters claiming that you cant have un-bundled DSL anymore and demanded I call and change my service to something that has a phone line. I refused and I still only have DSL and no phone line. I still get calls claiming that I have to convert from them.
This is illegal, yet the FCC is not jumping on them or Frontier for pulling pretty much the exact same stunt. I am all for forcing companies to comply, but apply it across the board evenly. And no I'm not a Comcast fanboi, I worked there, I know how evil they are. But I dont like single sided enforcement.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Even if Comcast does offer you reasonable broadband only service, they still try to get you another way. I just moved a few months back and decided to skip out on the TV service for now but I needed the broadband service for when I work from home. I went to their website about 2 weeks prior to my move to sign up for service. I was able to sign up and they made me prepay my first month's bill. During the process, the website said it was unable to select an installation appointment for me so I needed to call a number to setup the time.
This is where the fun begins, I call and get passed around to three different people who each tell me the scheduling software must not be working because they are not able to see ANY installation dates. They tell me it might be a problem with the system and to call back in another hour or two. No big deal I think, I have plenty of time before I move. So I call back at night and sure enough, I get the same results. I get transferred a few times and they all say they can not see any future installation dates for me. The last person tells me to call back at 6AM EST since that is the time they are supposed to load new installation availability times. I figured this is BS but whatever. Lets just say, I try calling 2-3 times each day for the next 3 days and each time get the same crappy response. Finally, one night I have lost it and the person on the phone suggests I just pick up a self installation kit. I am fine with this but since I was moving into a new construction house, I figured this would not work.
So the day I move in, I pick up the self install kit and sure enough, even after they said the line had been pulled and activated, no signal. Sigh, so I now get to call tech support to setup a visit and surprise surprise they tell me no dates are showing up for a tech to come. I am pissed at this point since I am actually already paying for service. I call back again that night in hopes of getting a better response and I finally get someone who is helpful and sheds a potential light onto my problems. He too had trouble finding a date but he was able to force one in by changing the type of service I had with them. Evidently, one of the key pieces of data used for determining when a installer or tech could come out is based on the amount of service you have. So if I only had broadband, that is worth lets say 5 points. If I had broadband and TV it might be worth 12. He said their is a min number of points required for installation and tech work and since my broadband only service was not high enough, it would appear to the people on the phone that no appointment times for available.
While the last person on the phone could have been just making up something, it is kind of odd that the other 15-20 people I had talked with over the past 2 weeks could not help. Sound like to me, this is just another method for Comcast to "force" people into buying more services than they really need.
I am sure people will just say, why don't you just get service from someone else? That is the problem with where I am. Comcast is the ONLY high speed internet provider available (no DSL or FIOS).
I was a Comcast customer for a couple of years, when Earthlink sent me a promotion to switch to their cable Internet service. Turns out it's still Comcast, just resold by Earthlink. The price is lower, and they didn't charge me an extra fee for not having Cable TV! Their price has never changed, unlike Comcast's prices, which keep going up. I even pay my bills to Comcast and get repairs by Comcast employees, the only difference is that my router's default domain name is earthlink.net! I've decided that going with a reseller like this is a great idea.