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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.
...when you need a shitty "news" site like ars to stick up for you.
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.
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.
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.
Something similar happened to someone else who had Time Warner in Manhattan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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.
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
$60k for premature termination of service.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
curenly laughing at you from a romanian country side village where the optic fiber enhancement just finshed up and now we can get 1gb speed for 10$ 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.
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?
theyre usually the ONLY game in town.
Hurray for monopolies!
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.
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.
“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.
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
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.