Comcast Typo Penalizes Wrong Customer For Data Usage (arstechnica.com)

ShaunC writes: Soon after Comcast implemented its data caps in Tennessee, one customer began getting calls warning that he was approaching his monthly usage limit. The company's data cap meter was ticking up rapidly, even attributing 120GB of use — almost half of the monthly cap — to a period of time when he was out of the country. After months of back and forth and troubleshooting by the customer, Comcast finally admitted that a typo in a MAC address was causing another customer's usage to appear on his account. With data caps like Comcast's carrying a real financial cost in terms of overage fees, how can we trust providers to accurately track customers' bandwidth usage?

Comments

Déjà vu

[nospam007]

What was his name then: Buttle or Tuttle?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You're doing it wrong

[grilled-cheese]

If you're hand typing MAC Addresses, you're doing it wrong and should get a better captive portal setup.

Re:You're doing it wrong

[Cramer]

Really. I don't buy their lame excuse. If his modem works, they have to have the correct MAC in the system. Why would the money printer, err, bandwidth meter have to have shit entered "by hand"???

Uh, the same way it's always done?

[squiggleslash]

how can we trust providers to accurately track customers' bandwidth usage?

I hate wired broadband caps with a passion, but this has to be the absolute worst reason not to have them. Somehow electricity companies, water companies, phone companies (traditional and mobile), et al, have survived for decades (centuries perhaps?) despite occasional billing mishaps.

There's nothing particularly new about this as a problem.

Re:Uh, the same way it's always done?

[markana]

Those entities are regulated, and generally must use certified measuring devices. And there's always a theoretical appeal to a state agency if there's a dispute.

Comcast has no oversight of their usage billing, and a financial incentive to cheat a bit.

Look at it this way - from Comcast's point of view, there's no problem. One account went over, another went under by the same amount. They averaged out, and there was balance in the Force (or at least their billing system).

Now go back to your TV and stop complaining!

Re:Uh, the same way it's always done?

[Tailhook]

squiggleslash..... Dude! This is supposed to be a Comcast bashing topic. A new reason has been found to vent our hate for Comcast, and you come here with your corporate shill excuses, pointing out the long history of generally successful utility billing and try to ruin it! What, exactly, is your problem mister?

I want you to stop posting for a moment and make an effort to recompense us all for your mistake. First, you are to find a way to pin this billing problem on a Republican. It's Tennessee after all. This should be easy. Then, you are to generalize the matter until you get to Net Neutrality, and show us all how this threatens our future, our liberty and everything. Bonus points if you can find a racial angle, or some other related grievance.

Don't actually post your effort. It's for your benefit and you're not supposed to be posting stuff for a while. At least till Monday. Give yourself the weekend to reflect on how it is you found yourself deviating from appropriate groupthink and consider ways you might prevent this in the future.

Thanks.

Re:Uh, the same way it's always done?

[Moof123]

I can go read my meters for all my "real" utilities. I cannot read my internet usage anywhere. A large amount of my internet usage is crap ads and Windows 10 trying to download itself. I have limited control on a lot of this bandwidth. Netflix does not have an option to set the maximum download rate anywhere I can find (I wish all streaming could be throttled locally). I usually have a pretty good idea why my gas/electricity/water bills are what they are, but I honestly could not tell you what my internet usage is or which devices are the main users.

The internet grew up without a metered notion to it. Mobile sites went through very small straws and forced the sites to be lean (often to the point of uselessness), so this attempt to close the barn doors is just rather late in the game. To fix it we will need to have some charge-back to companies to incentivize the not go overboard with all the crap. But in reality this is more of a money grab than an actual issue being addressed.

Weights and Measures!

[JimXugle]

Get the state bureau of weights and measures involved! If Comcast insists on usage-based billing, then its routers and billing infrastructure should be inspected, certified, and sealed just like gas pumps, water meters, and grocery store scales.

Re:Weights and Measures!

[psycho12345]

Seriously this. Weights and Measures are the ones who keep honest people honest, by auditing and randomly testing anything that relies on metering. They are one making sure out of town people are not being cheated at the gas pump. If Comcast wants to measure and meter data usage, then they should be compelled to install a tested and sealed device that spits out the data usage to customer on premise.

Re:Weights and Measures!

[tlhIngan]

Seriously this. Weights and Measures are the ones who keep honest people honest, by auditing and randomly testing anything that relies on metering. They are one making sure out of town people are not being cheated at the gas pump. If Comcast wants to measure and meter data usage, then they should be compelled to install a tested and sealed device that spits out the data usage to customer on premise.

Exactly.

First, we need a standard way of measuring the data, because there's a heck of a lot of different ways, so we need to standardize.

Things like - what headers are included - IP level headers? transport headers? (Some providers charge for DOCSIS headers too!). Then you have to define the quantities - what's 1 GB - 1GB, or 1GiB (10^9 vs. 2^30)? (Cellphone providers use base 10, and many include the OTA headers - add about 5%).

Next, what traffic do we use? This one is important because there's a LOT of unsolicited traffic out there - do we count it? Or not? Does being the victim of a pingflood mean you'll be billed extra?

Seriously, these are important questions (especially unsolicited traffic). Comcast shouldn't be the one who defines it. Weights and Measures should - and even if they pick the worst case scenario, at least we know what's being measured and how. So if Comcast advertises 250GB, we know it's probably around 200GiB all said and done, for example.

Then we can develop measurement boxes that Comcast and others have to use to determine traffic, sealed and inspected like your electric, water or gas meter with a display that's human readable, so when you get your bill (no one said the meter couldn't be electronically readable) you can check against the box.

Anything measured for trade has to be certified. If you look closely, you'll see seals, calibration stickers and sometimes expiry dates on the meters (be it gas (natural or petrol), electricity, or water).

And yes, we do this because people have cheated in the past. Scales that were off, calibrated weights (for balances) that weren't correct, etc.

In fact, because they are so strict, gas pumps generally err on the side of giving the customer too much (read low - you get 1.01 gallons for every gallon indicated) than shorting the customer. Especially in colder climates where the gas contracts a bit so a gallon of cold gas has technically more energy than a gallon of warm gas.

Re:How can we trust providers?

[chipschap]

These are companies run by human beings

You sure that Comcast is run by human beings or just greedy clones?

I've been the subject of a MAC address error

[zeet]

Comcast won't let me activated the modem that I purchased brand new from Amazon and used to have active on a Comcast account in another state. They say they own it. I have the box and receipt from the purchase. After a couple of hours talking with various people they admitted that perhaps they had made a mistake, but couldn't fix it as it involved two different 'regions' of their service. They said it might be fixable in a customer service center, but at that point I was disgusted with it and instead bought a new modem.

Re:How can we trust providers?

[Bugler412]

It took them more than three months and required essentially a "research project" on the part of the customer combined with contact and assistance from a tech publication site to get them to "discover" the typo and admit it was their fault. What would I want? To not have to bludgeon tech and billing support people with data and connections to get a proper response.

Re:Perhaps blame qwerty typing and get rid of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Qwerty was not deliberately made hard to use, there were two dominant factors is the design.

1) Engineering. Letters with high adjacent usage in words were placed in locations so that the hammers they were attached to would have a safe minimum number of other hammers in between. This is the part to prevent jamming.

2) Sales. During the layout wars, a salesman had a strong advantage if they could impress the potential user. This lead to certain long and relevant words being parsed and analyzed so that their lettering could appear nice and simple. Things like having a salesman be able to type "secretary" with their left hand while pointing to various details with their right hand during a demonstration.

Dvorak is slightly superior in certain usage cases, but the numbers you are likely to find are published by Dvorak advocates and show a severe selection bias when analyzed. Average typing speeds will show a benefit to Dvorak, but professional typist speeds will be nearly identical between Dvorak and Qwerty. This is largely due to the casual typist speed being lumped in to the Qwerty number but nearly nonexistent on the Dvorak side.

As with all forms of UI, use what you like, but stop trying to convince people that you're better than they are because you use what you like and they don't use what you like.

How? Sue them.

[Virtucon]

With data caps like Comcast's carrying a real financial cost in terms of overage fees, how can we trust providers to accurately track customers' bandwidth usage?

You can actually. There are laws that protect you from billing errors/problems but there's also lawyers. Sue the companies in court, present your evidence and sue for damages. I've had to do this with Bank Of America, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile in the past. It works because eventually you get somebody up the food chain who actually understands that they're fucking you over and try to fix it. Unfortunately in some companies there is not intelligent life to be found so I've found that judges can usually get to the bottom of things quite quickly especially when legal briefs start flying. Sure it costs money but if it's a small claims type of thing you can usually win by default because I can't see Comcast paying $500/hr for a lawyer to deal with a $300 bill.

Re:How can we trust providers?

[mrchaotica]

Would a story about a positive Comcast experience change any minds?

No, because fiction doesn't count.