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Comcast Failed To Install Internet, Then Demanded $60,000 In Fees (arstechnica.com)
Earthquake Retrofit writes: A Silicon Valley startup called SmartCar in Mountain View, California signed up for Comcast Internet service. After hearing Comcast excuses for months, company owner Katta finally got fed up and decided that he would find a new office building once his 12-month lease expires on April 20 of this year. Katta told Comcast he wanted to 'cancel' his nonexistent service and get a refund for a $2,100 deposit he had paid. Instead, Comcast told him he'd have to pay more than $60,000 to get out of his contract with the company. Comcast eventually waived the fee—but only after being contacted by Ars Technica about the case.
Not that I'm making excuses for the most loathed company in the United States, but California is the most backwards state in the Union when it comes to building and permitting, and it is not only plausible, but quite likely that they actually *were* stuck in the permitting queue that they claimed.
Lesson to business owners: There are some critical questions you should have answered before you purchase or lease a building if you aren't constructing it yourself.
-Does it have utilities?
-Does it have a parking lot?
-Does it have deployed fiber or wiring for internet and phone service?
-Do the doors have locks?
-What are the zoning laws around you?
And a dozen more. C'mon.
I mean seriously, this is par for the course. And you know what, you guys deserve it.
Time and time again you elect officials who go out of their way to protect the incumbent ISPs and other special interests even though it is expressly against your own interests. And then everyone makes noise about it and then every does fuck all about it.
So, what the hell do you think the end result will be? You have Comcast literally writing laws to outlaw competition for F's sake!
Then in the next election cycle, the same asshats are voted back into office. I have no sympathy at all regarding the currently political landscape in the US.
Really, can't get internet. They should have use Hughesnet or DishTV satellite service. At least they'd have service.
he'd have to pay more than $60,000 to get out of his contract
looks like he didn't read the fine print .
Comcast expends too much evil energy fucking people over with their business "contracts". Terms for early termination is 75% of monthly rate over the entire term of the contract and it fucking evergreens yearly after that with a requirement for month in advance notification to terminate without penalty.
Of course their sales people go out of their way to not mention any of this, lie out of their ass if you'll sign and bury basic facts because they are scum. Treating customers like total shit is what Comcast does best.
I suspect that without providing him a service, a court would rule, and quite quickly, that there was no consideration, thus no valid contract.
Clause n ) In an event where in due to unforeseen circumstances comcast is unable to provide service , the consumer should be bound to the contract till comcast is able to provide service. Premature termination will attract a fine of $60000.
I agree to all the above terms and conditions
Yes they can be expected to foot the bill. Commercial contracts have SLA. If they fail to even connect they can hardly claim you have 99.9% availability. That is why you pay so much more for commercial contracts. Both sides have more on the line.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
The most shocking part is that not every place in Silicon Valley already comes with a fast internet access, for a reasonable price. Even if Comcast had been able to provide internet, it would have cost $189.90 a month for 100/20 Mbps! In other parts of the world, that's becoming a standard domestic speed, sold for a fraction of that price, available in a few days after you order it.
Have you ever been in a comcast customer service center? That place is depressing. I'm not surprised by this at all.
Despite not having read that contract, I am almost certain that Comcast has been around the block enough times to avoid taking the blame for things that are out of their control, especially in a contract with a business, where consumer protection laws don't apply. Comcast couldn't keep a consumer in a contract without actually delivering the service, but if the contract states the risks that come with the installation of a new line and only demands "best effort" in installing from Comcast, then a business can sign itself into that. Shouldn't, of course, but can.
SLA still have an up time requirement. Not connected is not connected and would count. Also all of these contracts have a "commencement date" or some such thing. There is no way in hell even standard boilerplate contract wouldn't have minimum times for connection of service . These contracts have good lawyers on both sides typically and well i wouldn't be surprised if comsat tried to just pull one over the guy wihtout any legal position.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Something similar happened to someone else who had Time Warner in Manhattan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
From the story: Katta signed a contract for fiber in early May, and he says that a Comcast rep “promised me within 30 days of that date we would have Internet, and he said if there are any delays the longest term delivery is 90 to 120 days.”
Does that sound like someone read the fine print? A Comcast rep promised me? Seriously?
We would have to read the contract to find out who failed to satisfy their obligations, but as it stands, it looks to me like somebody used Ars to create a PR problem for Comcast in order to get out of a contract that they carelessly signed.
megacorp cableco fucks over customer... only gives in when media gets involved....
i suspect customer would have comcast fiber 9 months ago if he only contacted ars back then.
if comcast promised with an end date of 120 days then there is a breach of contract, thats about it, the thing is that it stand his words against comcast if it said only oral
The Comcast spokesperson acknowledged that the company should not have demanded reimbursement of construction fees from Katta, since Comcast wasn’t able to fulfill its obligation within the original 90-day timeframe. The spokesperson also said Comcast’s website should be updated to make it clear that statements about availability at specific addresses aren’t necessarily accurate.
120 DAYS! Yea who the hell would sign that? Unless you really didn't need the internet or something and the service was super cheap.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
"A Comcast rep promised me" is code for "I may have been foolish enough to think I was promised something, when really the representative only relayed expectations and past experiences." Besides, any business contract I've read explicitly requires subsidiary agreements to be in writing, so "the rep promised me" means exactly nothing.
The Comcast spokesperson acknowledged that the company stumbled into a PR problem by demanding reimbursement of construction fees, and that Comcast wasn't able to fulfill its obligation within the original 90-day timeframe, not that the timeframe was part of the obligation. The spokesperson also agreed that the website should be updated to make it clear that statements about availability aren't necessarily accurate, although the story makes it clear that in this case the website does indeed include a note to "call a Comcast sales representative to explain availability in your area." The story also explains that the contract in question was only signed after Comcast failed to deliver the originally ordered cable internet connection, and was for a new to install fiber connection, so any surprise about the lack of immediate availability is certainly feigned for dramatic purposes.
Unless you really didn't need the internet or something and the service was super cheap.
It was $190/month for 100/20 Mbps. That's not super cheap. That's very expensive.
Unless you really didn't need the internet or something and the service was super cheap.
It was $190/month for 100/20 Mbps. That's not super cheap. That's very expensive.
Oh for fucks sake, if you think THAT is expensive for a commercial service, you should step out of your parents basement.
I pay over $1500/month for 100/100. And THAT was after leaving my old carrier at $4000 for 10/10.
No, EVPN services, CoS guarantees, and Platinum-lined SLAs should not cost that much. But they sure as fuck can.
Comcast is just like a politician. They promise you stuff but never deliver. Then send you the bill for something that you never got. Of course this story has played out so many times before. Comcast is just run by a bunch of idiots.
If comcast fires any staff member, they should pay them
$60k for premature termination of service.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
120 days delivery time for commercial internet is not uncommon, it's more of a standard I would say.
They may have to pull in black fibre to the building, install routers and other equipment, do MPLS or BGP configuration, etc.
Lots of commercial telephone operators have 120 days delivery for a commercial VOIP telephony service too.
That is strange. In my country (as far as I know), in a case like this; Smartcar have a business deal with Comcast. Not with any subcontractors Comcast has hired that in the end didn't fullfill their job.
The ONLY business dealing Smartcar has is with Comcast. Of course Comcast should be expected to foot the bill. Comcast need to learn to hire good subcontractors.
This is comcast. Their lawyers would argue that his service level has been constant throughout.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Actually the commercial contract SLA would split both ways my friend. Customer is required to pay a good faith payment if they decide to opt out once comcast has begun working, comcast HAS to being working by a set date or customer can walk away without a fee, comcast must complete work to an agreed level of service on a specific date or face penalty. This is how SLAs work. Running fiber isn't cheap, and if comcast wasn't careful, they could lose a ridiculous amount of money and man hours getting half way into a fiber deployment only to have the company walk away. It's comcast, so we already know they are the devil, but without some fine details regarding the actual agreement, and what work was actually done so far, I'm not willing to say comcast is in the wrong here.
30 days to run new fiber? Yeah, if the rep said that comcast is kind of fucked.
curenly laughing at you from a romanian country side village where the optic fiber enhancement just finshed up and now we can get 1gb speed for 10$ before that we had 100-500 mb for that money :D:D:D:D:D:D:D
The fact that there was a contract, with payments on it. The startup did pay the 2000$ Up front. This is the perfect definition of "fraud". It doesn't matter that they came to an agreement. By nature, criminal activities remains a crime regardless of the victim status. Why the authorities aren't acting?
So he's building a "cloud platform" for cars and he didn't bother checking to see if fast internet was available BEFORE purchasing the lease? Then his next braintard was to go out and get Crapcast? I'm more than certain that in Mountain View, there are plenty of other options. This company won't be going places.
I work in this (general) field and we run into this all the time.
First, there is no financial incentive for any provider to pre-qualify all buildings. It would cost so much to do all those surveys and assess all that data, without any revenue from it, that no one does it.
What you saw Comcast use was; looking at the financial model for coax delivery of service, they can't justify the build. But looking at the financial model for fiber delivery of service, you can justify it. Why? Their fiber-based service is 5X the price of coax.
I have seen 'business-class' Comcast coax installed by a technician just feeding cable thru an open window. I've seen it where the tech drilled a hole in an openable wooden window frame and pushed it thru. They will puncture any external wall and just shoot a little caulk at it later. In fairness, they generally do a better job of the physical install of fiber than coax. For fiber installs, they generally use the same methods as a LEC or other major provider would use (conduit, weatherheads, etc.)
I am still mystified as to why business people order Comcast coax service, get crappy performance and outages, then can't understand how Comcast can do that. They can do that because people keep buying their products/services. I know they are usually the cheapest game in town - I guess you get what you pay for.
So many business people say that their business is fully dependent on having Internet access, but they don't want to pay much more than residential rates for it. The nature of all residential service is based on consumers being pain-tolerant but not price-tolerant. So you make compromises on residential service to keep the cost as low as possible. With business-class service, there is a much lower tolerance of pain (outages, slow speeds), so you make fewer compromises (to maintain quality), which drives the costs for delivering services up.
I pay over $1500/month for 100/100. And THAT was after leaving my old carrier at $4000 for 10/10.
Uhh... congratulations on getting really raped on prices?
You should be proud that you're so much better at being taken advantage of than the other people here?
You've shown us all how to really fail at negotiation?
Go you?
Please tell me where you can get 100mbps up and down business class POP for less than $1500 a month...
I can SATURATE a 100/100 connection 24/7 without problems and I don't slow down after 6pm when all the kiddies get online to play call of duty. Consumer grade will not do that.
I am guessing you dont know anything at all about business or commercial grade connections... I'm guessing you will also thing people are getting raped for the $2200 router used....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I pay over $1500/month for 100/100.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT! I pay 60Euro / month for 200/50 + 5 static IPs + SLA for a commercial contract. 1000/200 can be had for under 200 Euro / month but I need to pay upfront installation costs for a fibre into the street.
Heck I used to work at industrial sites which ran remote plant control over connections leased for a fraction of what you're paying (you haven't seen an SLA until you've negotiated with an Oil company).
Congratulations on getting fucked like no man has ever gotten fucked before!
Commercial contracts have SLA. If they fail to even connect they can hardly claim you have 99.9% availability.
SLA does not apply until after service is turned up and you are being billed for service.
After you commit but before turnup, there are no service bills to pay, except possibly advance payment of installation costs, and you cannot claim a SLA violation.
The only way you can back out fine-free after the provider starts incurring installation costs; is if your contract for service has a backout clause or dead date, and provider fails to meet that date.
The provider will not have allowed a way for you to just cancel at will. Even if they miss the date; if the delay is due to permitting, government, issues with your site, unexpected construction obstacles, or the weather, for example, the agreements will still bar the customer from cancelling fee-free, and the provider gets to make that decision.....
Katta forgot to use the Comcast unsubscribe hammer.
Today Justin Playfair would battle the cable company rather than the phone company.
Of course, the PHONE COPS are still tracking down Dr. Johnny Fever, because he's a delusional burnt-out ex-hippy.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The CEO runs a connected, Internet-based company and moves his company - his entire workforce - to an office with an unreliable and iffy Internet connection? Is the guy totally out of his mind?
I can saturate my consumer grade 100/33 for 24/7 without problems too, and I pay less than $50 for that. Sure, I suffer from occasional outages (about 1 per month for a few minutes), but that could be fixed by adding some redundancy, such as extra VDSL wire pair, and a cable connection for a total of $150, giving me 300/100 for 99% of the time, and at least 100/33 for 99.99% of the time.
Does that sound like someone read the fine print? A Comcast rep promised me? Seriously?
Though often very hard to prove, verbal contracts have every bit as much legal validity as written ones.
If they promised service within 120 days and failed to do so, they breached their side of the contract, simple as that.
"This call may be recorded for quality assurance."
I'd like to subpoena some quality, please.
theyre usually the ONLY game in town.
Hurray for monopolies!
Somewhere in the fine print of the contract that you agreed to and signed, there's a clause which requires subsidiary agreements to be in writing and declares all verbal modifications to the contract null and void. Besides, nobody promised anything. People hear what they want to hear. I have had to correct people who were sure that they were promised something when I tagged along and witnessed that they weren't. It's never pretty. Every sentence that starts with "a company representative promised me..." is an admission that the person uttering it doesn't know what they're doing. No, you were not promised anything, and even if you had been promised something, it would mean nothing at all, because you signed it away. Seriously, you're listening to a salesman. How does that not trigger your bullshit detector?
If you vote for Kang YOU ARE JUST THROWING YOUR VOTE AWAY!
Seriously, until the majority of US citizens swear off voting for Republicans and Democrats nothing will change. There are no major party candidates who will fulfill their campaign promises, because they don't have to. We need to remember what George Washington told us about political parties, and each one of us has to unilaterally reject the two-party system, without worrying about whether anyone else will follow suit. Only if individual voters have the moral courage to reject the two-party machine can we make any real difference.
First, the person I responded to did not specify that they were getting a point of presence for the prices quoted, just upload/download speeds.
Second, I suspect you don't really know what a Point of Presence is if you think that commercial grade internet service piped into your home or business equates to having a PoP. Unlike you, I don't have to guess that you don't know much about business and commercial grade connections because you've proven it.
Third, getting back to upload/download speeds (which is what I was responding to):
http://www.verizon.com/smallbu...
500 mb/s up and down, $360/month.
Fourth, don't even start whining about how FIOS isn't available to you. You want to know what's available in your area, do your own search. It's not my fault that you were too lazy to look for a better provider and wound up paying out the ass for sub-par service like the person I responded to.
Bald Faced Lie. This is a bold faced lie: No, honey, you don't look fat.
Usually Comcast fails to disconnect service, AT&T has been the most difficult to get service connected. Their installers never show up then lie about customers not being available. Their customer service puts you on hold for 30-45 minutes at a time then transfers you to another department. I've even had AT&T customer service argue with me and accuse me of having called a different number than the one I called to get through to them. I swear, they must hire prison inmates to run the customer service operation.
You have no idea, my friend is paying 450 a month for t1, that's 1.5x1.5 Mbps bit it's stable and it's business class. Business internet is expensive. His 40x40 fiber through Comcast that is just P-t-P is 1200/mo.
“It goes in and out almost every hour of the day, the Internet just goes down,” Katta said. “We are building a connected car cloud platform, everything we do is in the cloud. Currently, we're doing everything offline and going home to upload it.”
Maybe people should rely less on the cloud and more on actually providing a useful product. Corporations need to stop creating solutions to things that aren't real problems and addressing the real problems with real solutions.. Unfortunately there is much more profit in selling people the things they don't need rather than the things they do need.
Seriously.
...Implying that Comcast has ever put forth a "best effort" at anything is nothing short of *spit take* worthiness.
He should have had AT&T sales reps in the conference room with him, working out a deal for "commercial" service, not their DSL crap. Sure, it would have cost more, but the speed and binding agreements for performance and up-time are on paper, signed by both parties. And AT&T has done duties to bury fiber for more than a few clients wanting the service and willing to pay the coin for it.
Smartcar tried to go cheap and got bitten on the a$$ for it.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Comcast is asking him to pay the costs of building fiber to an area with poor internet. Once thats built all his current neighbours will sign up. He should sue Comcast and setlle that yes he will pay 60000 but he wants 50% of all revenue from all future comcast fiber clients in a 4 block radius as after all he not comcast is providing the fiber. Lets have Comcast stew on that. He may even make more profits than his cloud dis-connected(his quote we do everything offline) taxi service.
Sorry, I have to reject this. If the rep promised something, the judge should hold the company to account regardless of the wording of the contract. This is a scam operation.
A couple of incidents, and lying companies will clean up their acts. The only real issue would be proving what the rep said.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Reject what you want. The rep didn't promise anything. If someone tells you that a sales representative promised them something that is not in the written contract, you're looking at a person who is about to get taken advantage of. You can learn from other people's mistakes, or your own mistakes, or not all. Your choice.
These days few of us need a PoP. We just pay for rack space and that is all part of the deal. And to be honest you can get quite good rates. Even better it can be where your customers are and even in a different country. My office need nothing much better than domestic internet with a up time guarantee.
And back on topic there is no indication that this was a PoP setup in the first place.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
As long as they accept that my offer to pay for the service may not be accurate.
If, as Comcast claimed, they were still doing permitting, they weren't digging anything and hadn't committed any equipment to the process at all.
Comcast "customer service" often gets confused with what cattle or horse ranchers refer to as "stud service".
Should have done more due diligence when they chose their office building. I have Cox service here at home and it's 100 megabit and 20 mega bit upstream. I'm happy as a clam with it. The phone company, frontier (used to be AT&T) advertises that they have "high speed internet available." I look into it and it's only 3 megabit. The long short is the phone company does not want to spend money for a local click on my street. If this guy was the only customer then it looks like Comcast does not want to spend the investment when they might never break even. What needs to happen is you need to go to your town council and to your state dept. Utility control commission and let them know that you as a consumer are being left behind because these companies that provide utilities are refusing to bring good and appropriate service to your business or household. The town and state are the ones that can hold their feet to the fire on this.
Paul E. Bahre
"Sorry, that call turned out NOT to be one we recorded" or "Our QC is only retained for a few days less than now"
Is that like the typical American service center with the bare poorly painted echoey walls, the cold atmosphere , the long lineups and dirty coffee machines with stale donuts and a "cafe" around the corner that sells "fish and chips" withf fried department store type frozen fish sticks and a *bag* of salt and vinegar chips! ?
Is that like the typical American service center with the bare poorly painted echoey walls, the cold atmosphere , the long lineups and dirty coffee machines with stale donuts and a "cafe" around the corner that sells "fish and chips" withf fried department store type frozen fish sticks and a *bag* of salt and vinegar chips! ?
You know.. like a greyhound bus terminal ...
1. Get contract.
2. Drill hole in customer wall.
3. Collect $60,000.00
Did you drop a zero? I haven't read the article, but $190/mo for 100/20 is super-cheap and not at all what I would expect for a commercial service. 'Round these parts, that kind of service would run you over $2,000/mo.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
I had an experience with this company I will never get over. I spent months trying to get my internet service and tv working with these guys after I moved into a new house. I spent at least days on the phone with too many people all of whom never had a clue about anything that ever was said before. they have an unbelievably crass attitude about consumers. I promised I wold never do business with them again and I ask all of you to consider very seriously the fact that so many people have troubles with this company. I am with ATT and I am not thrilled but it is still 100 times better than comcast.