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Senators Blast Comcast, Other Cable Firms For "Unfair Billing Practices" (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Six Democratic US senators [Wednesday] criticized Comcast and other TV and broadband providers for charging erroneous fees, such as cable modem rental fees billed to customers who bought their own modems. The senators have written a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler asking the commission to 'stop unfair billing practices.'.....Last year, more than 30 percent of complaints to the FCC about Internet service and 38 percent of complaints about TV service were about billing...
I've been getting involved with the local government to get fiber to the area and the cable companies keep pushing back "Nah, you don't want that speed". To the point that it's hurting local businesses. Local fiber co-ops and companies are starting up across the state (slowly). The cities that still had municipal power & water mostly have fiber already.
They're not going to be able to keep up with the competition springing up across the country.
More and more people are cutting the cord as well. They could have taken a bit less of a profit and maintained their lead but they decided to double down on
Among the little people and the petty criminals; 'invoice fraud' is a classic. You just pump out a whole bunch of reasonably plausible looking invoices for suitably generic goods or services, and hope that some of the recipients pay without checking too closely. Illegal, of course. Exactly how much 'unfair billing' and how many 'errors'(mysteriously in your favor much more often than not) do you have to accrue before people stop cringing and call your practices what they are, when not pulled by giant oligopolies?
That's how much I saved cutting the cord five years ago. Still can't believe I was one of the idiots paying $12,000 a decade to watch TV.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I had to return my parents Comcast equipment when we sold their house. I took it to the local Comcast office. I was stunned by the level of security. Inch thick bulletproof glass. You couldn't even touch the workers, everything had to be passed through lock boxes which would only open on one side at a time. I personally live in a rural area. The local cable company is located in a converted ranch house. You can walk in and talk to them at any time. Just a counter you can step around, not even a door in the way. If Comcast needs that level of security to protect the workers, it must be one of the most hated companies around.
I bought my own cable modem, had been using it for over a year when I finally decided to return Comcast's modem. Took it down to their local office and had the customer service rep. check the modem back into inventory and remove the rental fee from my account before leaving. The first month after having it removed everything was fine, there was no rental fee billed, the 2nd month after it re-appeared on my bill and they tacked on an extra charge for the prior month as well as sent a separate mailing notice to inform me they had noticed there was no rental fee on my account and it must have been a billing error on their part but not to worry as they weren't going to charge a penalty, just 2 months worth of rental fees. In order to have the issue resolved I had to call customer service and have them "open an investigation" to check with the local office to verify they had received my old modem back.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
The cable companies rape us and the socialists salivate at the chance of nationalizing things because a monopolized market has been created where no one is allowed to compete.
I cannot lay cable against my cable company even in my own neighborhood. Last mile internet delivery is granted through local franchises and no one is permitted to trespass these. I can't pay a poll fee. I can't pay a conduit fee. I cannot run cable.
I could very easily run fiber for my whole neighborhood RIGHT NOW giving everyone in my immediate area gigabit internet... on MY resources. The whole city? Obviously not. I'm just some guy. But my neighborhood... easy. But the law won't let me.
And people don't connect this reality with the fact that they get raped by the cable companies.
Imagine if there were but one sandwich shop... imagine how absurdly abusive it would be with prices, service, product quality. It would be bad.
Well, that is what you've done with the exclusive franchise agreements. We don't need to nationalize our ISPs. We need to let more people... ideally everyone... run cable.
Here some unimaginative fellow will say something like "I don't want lots of cables run along my street"... well, if lots of cables are being run then you don't see that because they'll be buried in a conduit.
Next I might get someone saying something like "we don't have conduits right now to handle something that we're not at this moment doing"... to which I can only say "uh duh"... and yet if we changed the rules this sort of thing would become standard. Not literally tomorrow but within a few years.
And what would government control? Well... the conduits. They'd have a network of pipes that people could run cable through and that they'd charge a flat fee to anyone running cable per foot or mile or whatever the proper distance is... The government wouldn't have to keep up with new technology or worry about anything in the pipe especially besides where the pipe went and how much room there was in the pipe for more cable. That's it.
Set America free and the internet issue is GONE. The cable companies in that environment will either offer competitive non-fucking-stupid service... or go out of business. Like a light.
And I won't have to listen to fucking communists talk about how everything would be better if we just let the government take control over everything.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You know, I don't know why Apple or some other tech company with vast amounts of idle cash doesn't just buy Comcast. I think that customers would be thrilled. At the very least you wouldn't have to worry about incorrect bills and shitty customer service. Not only that, it would be the ideal delivery mechanism for Apple and their products. They could tie it in with iTunes for music and movie streaming.
Maybe it's a bit far fetched but who knows?
I was billed by Comcast for a year for a cable modem rental even though I bought my own. Yes, I admit I should have been reading every line entry on my bill every month but I wasn't. When I discovered this error I called Comcast and they immediately admitted the mistake and stopped billing me for it. However when I asked for my money back for the $10/month for the previous 12 months they got all snippy and said I had only a 60 day window to challenge erroneous charges.
So I filed a formal complaint with the FCC and within days I was called back by Comcast and credited the 12 months of erroneous charges. I highly recommend this path since it was so absurdly easy.
I've very happy to hear I'm not alone in this.