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Comcast Raises Controversial 'Broadcast TV' and 'Sports' Fees $48 Per Year (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast's latest price hikes include a significant increase in the company's widely despised "Broadcast TV" and "Regional Sports Network" fees. The Broadcast TV fee is moving from $5 a month to $7 a month, while the Regional Sports Network fee is rising from $3 a month to $5 a month, according to notices sent to customers in several cities. Combined, that's a change from $8 to $12 a month, giving Comcast an extra $48 a year from each customer that has to pay the fees. Comcast began charging these fees a few years ago, which have risen quickly. Just over a year ago, Comcast raised the Broadcast TV fee from $3 to $5 and the Regional Sports fee from $1 to $3. The two fees have thus gone from $4 to $12, combined, in little more than a year. Comcast customers recently sued the company, saying that Comcast falsely advertises lower-than-actual prices and then raises rates by tacking on these two fees. Comcast falsely portrays these fees as being required by the government, the proposed class action lawsuit said. Charter is facing a similar lawsuit. Comcast says the fees recover a portion of the price it pays broadcast networks and regional sports networks to air their content. But paying for programming is simply part of the cost of doing business as a cable TV provider, and programming costs have always been passed on to consumers in their cable TV bills. By charging fees separately from basic rates, "Comcast has found a way to secretly and repeatedly increase the monthly price it charges for its channel packages" even when customers are supposed to be getting a flat rate during a contract term, the lawsuit said. The Broadcast TV fee was introduced in 2014, initially as $1.50 a month, and the Regional Sports fee was added in 2015 at $1 a month. Comcast charges the sports fee even though it owns many of the regional sports networks that broadcast sporting events in local markets. The price increases were reported by TVPredictions and DSLReports, and customers have been posting letters they received from Comcast detailing the price changes.
These fees are just one way they have to claw those costs back.
Another method is having State Governments pass laws stopping cities and towns from operating their own networks in competition.
Wall Street investors want year-over-year profit increases. It is far easier for Comcast to just raise these fees (which really should be a part of the quoted price for the cable TV package) than it is for Comcast to spend money on things that make its customers happy (like quality customer service) and more willing to buy more Comcast products.
The best way to opt out of these fees is not to pay Comcast ANY money and switch to just watching content from streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and YouTube!
You will pay. You will not complain. You have no rights against the all-powerful CORPORATION. Unless you incorporate yourself.
I'm not free to cut the cord?
Actually, you are free to choose from a variety of alternate programming, including none. Nobody is holding a gun to your head making you pay for TV at all.
Or does making wildly false claims make you feel morally and mentally superior ?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Mine broke (started getting lots of packet errors leading to corrupt downloads) a while back and they replaced it with a new one. Would be a shame if something happened to yours...
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
"Nobody is holding a gun to your head making you pay for TV at all."
Ultimately, someone may be. Those under contract, who paid for service at a specific rate are now seeing price increases to the service being disguised as government mandated "fees." Stop paying before the contract ends, and ultimately the full force of government law enforcement (which includes guns) may come into play.
Yeah, it's a stretch in the real world, but so is claiming that such people have a real choice. Do you "you feel morally and mentally superior?"
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You will pay. You will not complain. You have no rights against the all-powerful CORPORATION. Unless you incorporate yourself.
I'm not free to cut the cord?
...or switch to Satellite TV (which I've done for *years* now... )
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
TFS: "Comcast began charging these fees a few years ago, which have risen quickly. Just over a year ago, Comcast raised the Broadcast TV fee from $3 to $5 and the Regional Sports fee from $1 to $3. The two fees have thus gone from $4 to $12, combined, in little more than a year."
So, a practice that started "a few years ago" and has continued over the past year, has what to do with Trump?
This is the exact kind of crap that should really drive folks to do this.
I figured my set up....
For local channels, I set up an indoor HDTV antenna (you can find these on sale, I got mine at Wally Worldmart for $79). I put this up on a pole in my house and works great. I had to get this, in order to get our local PBS (WYES) that is still on VHF, and is very hard to pull in with other antennas. Otherwise, I'd recommend one of the Mohu Leaf HDAntennas. This one worked great except for my local PBS and I like some shows on there.
I bought a Tivo Roamia OTA 1TB DVR to act as my local channel tuner. It comes with included lifetime guide service. Worked great out of the box.
The only drawback of the Tivo unit, is that the Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming which it also does (and searches across), the front ends are horribly laggy, but for OTA needs, it is amazing.
For my streaming needs, I got the Amazon FireTV.
I got this over the FireTV stick for its extra computing power. It streams VERY well Netflix, and Amazon Prime (4K on these too). AND...the power was needed for my streaming app that solves my "cable network" needs.
I did Playstation VUE. I got the 70+ channels package for $35/mo. It has all the ESPNs (I like during college football season), all the cable news I want (MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, etc), and channels like TCM, TBS, Nat'l Geo, FX..etc...
It also has built in DVR functionality, which makes it great for catching the Walking Dead on AMC to watch at my convenience and skip commercials.
The Fire TV is powerful enough to use the VUE guide....Roku 3 and PS3 could not use the guide very well at all.
So, this is my living room.
For the other TVs in my house (bedrooms, office), I set up a bit of networking for those.
I set up Tivo Minis to stream from the main unit into each bedroom, for DVR and live HD tv. The main unit has 4 receivers, so you can watch different stuff in each room. I also have an Amazon FireTV for each other room, so I can watch streaming or VUE cable channels in each room. Again, each can be watching different things.
The Tivo Minis don't work wirelessly, and I also found the FireTVs don't work as well wireless as they do wired.
So, for each room I have Ethernet over AC....and a little TP-Link switch there too.
So now..everything hooks up nicely, and I dropped from $113/mo for UVerse to $35/mo with VUE.
I figure in about 8 mos I'll break even on the new hardware.
So far, the only caveats....my house has some less than optimal wiring, I think leftover from Katrina rework problems. At times, my Tivo has problems with slow network, but not that often. Also, setting up the Tivo minis...it has to go through Tivo Centrals computers before it can get recognized by your main DVR unit. This is a horribly thought out, PITA...but if you register your Mini online with tivo 24 hours before you hook it up, and then you have the main unit phone home a few times while trying to sync them , it will finally work. They need to fix that. I almost gave up on it, but once it syncs..works as intended and I live the Tivo guide and user interface. Auto commer
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Actually, NO, it is not free to cut the cord. I tried to cancel my service with verizon which I've had for at least 7 years and they want to charge me $70 to cancel, claiming I have a "contract", which they are in violation of for raising my rates from the $99 per month to $146 per month with no service upgrades whatsoever.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Sorry, but as someone who dropped CATV/SATV in 2008 due to the cost increases and has never looked back, I don't pay double for content; I simply don't consume anything that's non-free outside of what I choose (Netflix).
I mean, when you cut the cord you expect there will be content losses. I don't know of anyone who opts out of TV subscriptions that expects to somehow save money while keeping the same amount of content.
Verizon recently introduced a $2.80 (plus taxes) fee for my FIOS router, which they claim is old -- and to "support it" they need this monthly fee.
I got the same warning of the impending 2.80 fee to support old routers. I was on 15/15, which was a holdover from signing up years ago. Since it was nearing time to to 'renew' my contract, I checks the options. It wound up being 10.00 cheaper per month to upgrade to 50/50 - and since I was upgrading to 50 or higher they gave me a new quantum blah blah router free of charge.
So to avoid the 2.80 fee I wound of with faster service and a new router for 10.00 less. If you are on a 'contract agreement' with verizon, you can upgrade or renew that contract at any time.
In some ways cable companies get the same rap as insurance companies for costs largely beyond their control. This of course is not to excuse Comcast for playing games with HOW that cost is recorded and associated indefensible marketing schemes which essentially lie about actual prices and fuck over those on contract.
Used to be broadcasters were thrilled to get as many eyeballs as they could to tune in as bigger audience translated into more advertising revenue..at some point long ago cable stopped being dominated by access fees and is now dominated by carriage fees. Now even local broadcasters who broadcast the same signal over the air for free to anyone able to receive it are in the business of extracting carriage costs from cable and satellite providers just because they feel they can get away with it to make more money.
The FCC never said cable companies were REQUIRED to carry local stations for a price other than FREE. Consumers should have the right to opt out of the local crap and should not be forced to pay if they don't want it. I can throw up an antenna in the Attic for $30 and an hour of my time if I want local channels.
Price insanity is particularly egregious given cable/sat industry is on the brink of becoming the next home telephone/portable cd player.
Just ask them to remove local channels and local sports from your cable package. Buy an eternal VHF/UHF antenna to pick up those channels. Yes your TV will look retro like something from the 1970s. Who cares, you look at the screen, not the antenna.
If Comcast lets you remove those channels, then you won't have to pay the fees and you'll make back the cost of the antenna in a few months. You can pocket the savings every month thereafter.
If Comcast says you can't remove those channels, then they've basically admitted that they are falsely advertising their prices. If there's no way to remove a fee from the price, the fee is a part of the price, not an optional add-on. And they will lose the lawsuits and be forced to include these fees in their advertised prices.
They are actually 'Fuck you" and "fuck your mother too"
You will pay. You will not complain. You have no rights against the all-powerful CORPORATION. Unless you incorporate yourself.
I'm not free to cut the cord?
...or switch to Satellite TV (which I've done for *years* now... )
If it takes years to switch to Satellite TV, who would wait that long?
Whose Comcast account login are you using to validate your session? If your answer is "nobody's", I hate to break it to you but you're using someone's honeypot and all of your internet activities while connected to that router are compromised; a real xfinitywifi AP will only serve you the gateway login page until you sign in.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Comcast's billing systems are clearly designed to overcharge.
I recently returned a rented cable modem because I bought my own. I can log into Comcast's account page and look at "Devices" and the rented modem is no longer there.
Yet they still billed me for the rented modem. How can their systems know that I don't have the modem, yet continue to charge me for it?
I expect that, if challenged, they would claim that there are two separate systems that don't interact properly and their agent simply did not do his job when I returned the equipment, but why maintain two systems? Why not make them interact better? Probably because mistakes like this almost always work in Comcast's favor, so they have an incentive to not fix the problem.
Someone has taken a decision to not fix a problem that screws up frequently and almost always benefits Comcast. Design can be implemented through concious inaction as well as action. After all, fixing the problem would improve productivity.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
If the terms and conditions change, it gives you the right to cancel your contract without being subject to early termination penalties
Welcome to the real world, most of us don't live in Theory. What you claim is only true if you have a lawyer on retainer. Otherwise, say goodbye to your credit rating and more.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I had a very old DSL router. My ISP made some configuration change that caused it to stop working. Normally they'd charge a rental fee or tell me which router I can buy myself, but since they essentially broke the old one, they sent me a new modem for free. As a bonus, my DSL speeds tripled.
Needless to say, my ISP is not Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T. Sorry to be the weirdo with a story about an ISP acting decently.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Huh, you might want to try that again. It may have worked in the past, but Comcast currently passes no traffic out of the xfinitywifi jail, which you must sign in to get out of.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.