Scripting News: A new reason to hate Comcast (Scripting News)
Paul
· 1 year ago
Just another thing to think about. What if your phone service was handled by a VOIP service. How would you have been able to call them back to find out about the outage? Or even more serious, what if there had been a health(or police) emergency during their forced outage and you were unable to use your VOIP phone to call for an ambulance(or the police)? If they keep this up, someday they could be looking at the wrong end of a wrongful death lawsuit, and losing that suit bigtime.
dshaw
· 1 year ago
Send them a bill.
Kevin Hart
· 1 year ago
The same thing happened to me late in 2006. So for the entire year of 2007 I cut back. I pushed and pushed on the call and I got him to finally say that I was over 300g a month and that was too much. I scaled back and put a warning level on my ipcop router to email me when I have got near 300g a month. I download a lot of podcasts so thats why I use a lot...oh well.
Funny thing is, they said 300 was too much, well my ipcop router has logs for the last 2 years, and in June I used 600g. How come I didnt get a call? What Ive dug around and seems to be the reason is this. Some people on your node in your neighborhood called and complained things were slow. if they get a few of these calls they go into the node and check the logs. Then they blanket call everyone in the top '10%' there and threaten them. Its not an automated system, they wait for some complains, more than one, and then they call. Or that seems to be the common consensus around the net.
I still hate comcrap and will dump them the moment i can. AT&T is the only other major vendor here, everyone else is just a reseller of AT&T dsl so no real choices. I wish Verizon could move in to middle Tennessee but I doubt it. So till then...i just get an email every month near the end from my router saying "you used too much slow down for the next week" meh
ted dziuba
· 1 year ago
"I also told him I was a blogger and would be writing it up. He said he didn't care. "
that's all we need to hear, dave
Jason
· 1 year ago
Should the response have been any different? No one deserves special treatment because they're a bloggger. I don't understand why Dave even mentioned it, to be honest. What was the expected reaction?
ted dziuba
· 1 year ago
my point was that dave isn't exactly technology editor of the new york times.
further, if i were on the other end of the phone, and i even knew who dave winer _was_, i'd wouldn't care. dave winer complaining about something? sounds like par for the course.
do you really want a reaction from comcast? tell them that you're a blogger for consumerist.com. that will get them listening. somehow, i don't think that HURR I ARE DAVE WINER has the same effect.
dave
· 1 year ago
I got an email from someone at Consumerist, they're in the loop.
Someday they'll care. I wrote up a shitty experience with Travelocity a few years ago. A few months later I got a panicked email from a VP there wanting to make-good on the screwing they gave me. I looked on Google and I had the #1 hit for Travelocity. They should do a Google pagerank of the blog before they blow you off. In a few years all businesses will be savvy to this.
Christina Warren
· 1 year ago
And the thing is, they *should* care -- not because you are Dave Winer, but because as we discussed in the podcast, you never know who is on the other end of the phone. Being disrespectful and dismissive of your customer base is bad business -- pure and simple. If people with the ability to bring attention to the issue don't do it, who will?
SSV
· 1 year ago
testify!!
dave
· 1 year ago
I didn't want him to feel that he was unfairly treated because I didn't warn him that his words were on the record. I wanted my readers to know that I didn't ambush him.
In practice it never matters, I've never seen a business be concerned about it, before they see the result. I have heard a wide range or responses after the fact, ranging from threatened lawsuits to offers of bribes.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
Random question:
If a service provider has to provide saturation levels to all consumers, how much are you willing to pay a month for it?
Two issues going on here:
1- Comcasts advertising strongly implies unlimited, when their applied policy means unlimited til you saturate or trip some metrics.
2- What unlimited in a colo or a T1 would actually cost. $200 and up. Which is what you really want. "unlimited" at the last mile currently is a shell game, they have 'enough' capacity to handle if a certain monthly mean consumption per house is reached. You with your usage blew that figure out of the water. For years ISP ate those costs. But as the number of people one could deploy on the last mile has dropped in recent years, from 3000, to 1000, to 500, to 200 today -- with all the web 2.0 greedy end user apps, always-on streaming, etc ... something had to give. Enter the Comcast TCP RST on p2p. Enter the 300 gb a month defacto limit.
The reason they dont tell you what the limit is, is because the second they do that, every saturation customer out there being thrown off of their own ISP will migrate to Comcast. Say the limits 300 gb / month. You know that, you are going to use 299.99999 a month, which does Comcasts' capacity planners zero for figuring out how to accommodate their mean usage curves, which are all going "up and to the right."
We know you're Dave Winer, but if you're 1% of 1% why should anyone put up with your consumption at consumer grade prices? If you really were using that much, and 6 full time PC on one consumer grade circuit strongly suggests you could, why not pony up and buy a colo or a T1 and be a real network? Quit bitching when you are exploding usage curves and demanding it be handed you for free.
Last thought. If I'm comcast, would I rather sell to 400 per last mile of 'normal' users, doing 'normal' amounts of consumption, or one highly prominent mac user who htinks he's deserving of more, just because he has a 6 PC lan and wants to run hourly stream syncs? At consumer-level pricing, what is their upside to catering to this consumer model? Versus 99% of their other users. Why would they? Seriously?
grumfan
· 1 year ago
to: certaindoom No. The problem is not DaveW. The problem is "provisioning". Telecomm companies (cable and phone) "provision" their facilities expecting a certain amount of load (or consumption of bandwidth). The crunch comes when it turns out that their estimates are wrong. This used to happen to the phone companies all the time. But they didn't cut their customers (who they promised service to), off.
Instead they went out and installed more equipment/capacity.
The cable companies could do the same But instead of actually providing the service they told the public it was buying, they turn off their customers.
teh cables companies have never embraced the internet except as a means of delivering their product to consumers. What the consumers want and need has never been a consideration of the cable companies. Because of their narrow perspective the cable companies will never understand what we (the public) is going to want to do with the internet and so they will ALWAYS be underprovisioning it, forever trailing behind. Town X decides to manage its road system better, They install a sensor pod every 400 feet on their roads (temp, humidity, cheap ccd [to see if cars are moving] and a microphone) Now - how much to hook these up so they can be remotely accessed to gather the info? $40 a month for each one?
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
Spot on regarding provisioning. Cable and internet grew out of telco.
But in the words of Montgomery Scott, "You cannot change the laws of physics." How else is a ISP / services provider supposed to get capacity out into the field than with "provisioning" ?
You then go off on a rant about how those evil cable companies have never embraced the internet, but what really seems to be the issue is capacity doesn't keep up with demand, or rather, with "unlimited" demand. Unless network gear, and the physical space to store it, and the physical time and employee wages it takes to go out to multiple hundreds of sites around the country and install it has dramatically fallen, this magic network where capacity just increases on demand forever does not exist. You might wish it does, but it doesn't,, and can't. Physical limits on switch capacity, physical limits on what costs what to deploy, physical limits on how much wiring closet space is required, on and on. I agree it'd be awesome for your unlimited p2p if somehow Comcast and everyone else anticipated infinite growth, then built a network run on unicorns and rainbows to carry it. But it didn't. Better write your legislator and demand customer satisfaction. Or at least a marketing campaign by Comcast that matches reality. Which, really, seems to be the nut of most of these complaints, you were promised / led to believe "unlimited" in the ad actually meant "unlimited" in the Service Level Agreement / Terms of Service in writing. As a consumer, I'd be a bit miffed if it were me, too. If I hadn't worked 16 years on the inside of networks, I'd proabbly be steamed. But being steamed isnt going to magically make capacity planning change, and unless all the efforts to create wireless networks suddenly get the scalability issue solved (notice how they havent yet?) then we all will be constrained by what is physically possible, versus what is advertising promised.
jonknight
· 1 year ago
Back in 1991 or 92 a law was passed that required ISPs to provide the capacity we're discussing, and to do it, they were granted tax breaks which amounted to over 200 billion dollars. In 1999, the law was rewritten, removing the requirement to provide the upgrades as necessary. Since then ISPs have successfully lobbied for furhter laws which guarantee them price hikes over the next several years which amount to more than 50% of rates currently charged at the time of the law's passing, again without requiring the connectivity or the upgrades. The net effect is that as bandwidth costs steadily decline hour by hour, automatically increasing the profit margin on bandwidth services, consumer prices will continue to rise and services will not be improved.
Addressing "what is physically possible": You axx. You know as well as I do that it's physically possible to provide unlimited bandwidth across an entire node. The truth is that Comcast is greedy to the point of not caring. There's no law anymore that makes them do it, so they don't. And they won't, probably, until a class action lawsuit is brought against them. When a company advertises "unlimited bandwidth", that is not a typographical error. It's a lawful description of a product. Nobody here is talking about unicorns and rainbows except the comcast plant.
dave
· 1 year ago
Or they could try writing a nice letter to the user, saying maybe you could cut your usage a little. It's the bullying that really freaks me out, the knee-jerk that first you hit the customer to get them to do what you want. Throw away any goodwill you might have with them. Most people are pretty reasonable if you talk with them as if they are adults, esp ones who pay their bills on time, and have good credit.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
We tried that approach -- nice letters, nice phone calls, nice emails. most of the time people ignore them and go on doing whatever it was they are doing.
Provisioning. Since equipment costs money, space, time, and effort by people who are trained to go out and install, what happens if you make projections, then 18 months later new applications nobody knew about appear on the scene and blow those projections out of the water? What happens if your budget for hardware, in the tens of millions, was spent, do you go out and instead of 48 port local CO's, install 96 port (or 48 port in parallel, since 96 doesnt exist, lets say) What about closet space, did we just suddenly build a new building or sign a new contract with another data hotel for this hypothetical new space?
People crying from the consumer perspective aren't seeing it from the network providers side, just trying to open things up here. It costs budget, time, planning, effort and lots of variables coming together from digging more cable to provisioning more hardware to make last-mile happen. Big upgrade, huge investment, alls well, and then: Youtube launches. Nobody expects what it does to last-mile capacity.
Network planners are smart, but come on, the net has been exponentially growing. Do you really want 1% of 1% to dictate how networks are built out? Do you want 10x capacity to be deployed, and costs demanded of everyone for it, just so some can saturate their use?
A person with 6 computers on one circuit is saturating the circuit. They are operating like a business, should be on a business T1 or even a colocation. NOT a consumer grade service. Not on how the current economy of telco and dsl and cable are laid out.
Please try and wrap your brain around the costs involved if everyone shows up doing what you do, consider that maybe it takes one company 2-3 years to upgrade the entire network, once they do the projections are already at risk for being obsolete. And for what? So you can run business grade usage on consumer grade pricing.
Comcasts enforcement is autocratic, but it is fair. Exceed the limit, get enforced. The alternative would be to employ a room full of people calling up johnny leecher and begging him to close his damn client half the time. How likely is that? And why would/should they?
Get the FCC to open the Cable network to true competition, and we'll see how things go, but right now, there is a choke point on the network, it is on the last mile, and telcos have to protect the capacity for the most users, not accommodate 1% of 1% just so they can run business class service over consumer grade pay tier.
daisigeiNW
· 1 year ago
Certaindoom:
"We tried that approach -- nice letters, nice phone calls, nice emails. most of the time people ignore them and go on doing whatever it was they are doing." Comcast and other providers should be very concerned if their people are thinking the same way your posts suggests. That customers-are-the-problem attitude eventually will solve all your last-mile capacity problems without any need to trouble the network planners.
"Big upgrade, huge investment, alls well, and then: Youtube launches. Nobody expects what it does to last-mile capacity." Take a long-term view. Youtube is the reason providers exist and network planners have jobs. The more Youtubes the better. Most businesses would kill to have such enormous pent-up demand for their services. Didn't Dave say that he would consider paying more for higher capacity service if he knew that was necessary and if given the option?
"But as the number of people one could deploy on the last mile has dropped in recent years, from 3000, to 1000, to 500, to 200 today -- with all the web 2.0 greedy end user apps, always-on streaming, etc ... something had to give. Enter the Comcast TCP RST on p2p. Enter the 300 gb a month defacto limit." You see unreasonable customers who have the temerity to actually want to use the "unlimited" service they purchased to run "greedy end user apps". I see unmet consumer demand waiting for the first provider who can figure out a profitable way to meet it. I see Comcast continuing to sell a level of service that its infrastructure can no longer support, and is less able to support with each new customer.
"The reason they dont tell you what the limit is, is because the second they do that, every saturation customer out there being thrown off of their own ISP will migrate to Comcast." If saturation users aren't migrating en masse to Comcast's supposedly "unlimited" service now, why would they start if Comcast announced a 300GB limit? A more likely explanation is that Comcast doesn't want to admit the problem because it would hurt sales and make their annual price increases more difficult to obtain. Comcast seems to be modeling it's current approach on the insurance industry --- sell policies on the promise of complete coverage, but hide exclusions and limits in the fine print and then fight like hell to avoid actually paying a claim.
There is a flip-side to your point about providers making a choice to serve the 99% of their customers who are "normal" users versus the 1% who are "heavy" users. They also made a choice to price their service at a flat rate for "unlimited" use, clearly betting that 99% of their customers won't actually use very much bandwidth. They could have chosen to charge customers based on actual usage, but that would have created marketing problems instead of the technical & service problems that Dave and others have experienced.
Comcast is unecessarily shooting itself in the foot by treating Dave (and others) as they have. If Comcast had sent a couple of "nice letters" to Dave's billing address explaining the problem, the usage limits and the consequences of not staying within those limits, and Dave chose to ignore those letters, none of us would give a second thought if Comcast suspended his service. Network capacity isn't the issue. The issue is transparency and good faith business practices.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
as a consumer, I am agreeing with your points.
Please view it from the point of view of a network capacity planner, who has to cram X circuits onto Y dollars for Z customers, or go out of business.
You guys seem to be omitting one key fact: most network operators dont set the prices at which they buy capacity. Sure they can compete for contracts, or buy capacity from network A or network B, and manage their network. But even the big boys have 100s of things to consider when planning for network capacity. Right now consumer demand is warping ahead about 2x, NX times faster than anyone can deploy to keep up.
Comcast has a marketing disconnect, I agreed with that, still do. Attempting to explain why that is. For 99% of their consumers, it IS defacto unlimited, because for 99% of their consumers, the need to enforce bandwidth never gets hit.
Whine all you want guys, networks have to manage their capacity, or everyone gets degraded service. If it were a simple button push to deploy more capacity, it would have already happened. Very real very logistical very slow at times real world problems occur when capacity has to be deployed, from new telco closet space, to new power capacity, new rackspace ,new facilities, new contracts for new facilities, new cities where demand might be expanding faster than anyone could have guessed 2 years ago, on and on it goes. All so you can run youtube to 6 computers on a home circuit.
Its remarkable it works as well as it does.
jonknight
· 1 year ago
OR GO OUT OF BUSINESS?!
Man, who are you? If my company makes promises that I know cannot be met, I will be going out of business! If Comcast does this, THEY SHOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS. It's not a simple button. It's a simple solution, though. Make your ads reflect the reality. If you can't provide UNlimited, then do not sell UNlimited. Where is the problem with that? Oh, the problem arises when Comcast has to be honest. I forgot who we were talking about for a moment...
dave
· 1 year ago
Who is "we" -- I want to be sure never to buy your company's product.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
Shrug. I'm sure someone will be delighted to sell you T1 capacity at consumer prices. Til they get too many of that and can't turn profit supporting it.
If you get a last-mile provider IN WRITING as opposed to a commercial on tv claiming unlimited, please do post it. I'd like to know how they're doing it, and whether it is more than a promotional beta.
Last mile is not unlimited in any network I am familiar with... this would have been controversial in 2005, now its pretty much becoming accepted knowledge, its very unfortunately comcasts claims make it sound possible, but there is no such thing as unlimited IN WRITING, only de facto unlimited before the neighborhood gets saturated and they have to do something because it isnt time to deploy more capacity yet.
Your usage sounds very familiar, it happens when end-user circuits mimick the usage found on business class circuits or T1. Comcast has packages that support that model. If they had handled the bandwidth issue better, its possible you would be interested in upgrading. We've gotten better at steering people who are going to saturate the circuit away from consumer-grade, because we know it'll just end badly. But in some cases, there's no keeping them happy regardless, cause they have this 8 yrs outdated view of how networks work -- namely, they're the only one on the block who has more than one computer plugged in. Taint that way any more my friend. We can barely break even on data and we have to manage our capacity carefully or find we're supporting more than we can recover. Many network operators are in the same boat.
Comcasts marketing is amusing, cause those housemates spots absolutely would be in line for exceeding their defacto 300 gb a month limit. But I am positive without even checking theres fine print someplace that says they can enforce on capacity, or on some vague "abuse of the network" standard. So they bait and switch, and you feel gypped, but honestly, find us a network that isn't enforcing capacity today, or rather, is promising in its Terms of Service unlimited. Then promote it. Cause I guarantee you two things happen, 1) the leechers flock to it, and 2) they have to stop, cause they cant pay their bills or keep bandwidth from not saturating and service degrading for everyone.
Rich Black
· 1 year ago
Comcast should care. I am looking into a new internet hookup and Comcast is looking like a bunch of thieves and jerks. I also know some ex-Comcast employees who were treated like slaves and terminated unfairly. Verizon seems to provide good service but they are a shitty company as afr as their business practices and undue influence in Washington. We need the infrastructure of the Internet to be like public highways and have many more providers who keep in mind your privacy and the Constitution and make it clear what service they will provide and for how much.
recommended window cleaner
· 1 year ago
That's Comcastic! I wouldn't use them if they were twice as fast as my current service. Too evil.
G
· 8 months ago
I would just like to say that I too hate Comcast! Ooooooooh, how I hate Comcast! Seething, seething, seething with hate! They have ruined several days of my usually perfectly happy life. Scum bags! I know it's not constructive critisism but I can't help it, I'm just so mad!
ethlite
· 1 year ago
Even though my house was "pre-wired" for Comcast, I've stayed away from them because of their aggressive bundling of Cable TV and Internet services. I didn't need any new reasons to hate Comcast, but your post reminded me why I do.
As corporations gain monopoly status, they become unbearably arrogant and aggressive. They view you as a revenue generating unit, which is fine but I draw the line when they get in your face about it.
Thanks for blogging about it, the fact that Comcast man says he "didn't care" only shows the depth of his ignorance.
C.
· 1 year ago
You should look into Earthlink high speed internet (powered by Comcast) as they resell Comcast cablemodem services without whacking you with a $17 surcharge for not bundling it with cable TV.
Colin Faulkingham
· 1 year ago
Your post makes me wonder if there are any large companies left that are not totally psychotic?
matt
· 1 year ago
The problem with this situation is that they have some secret bandwidth/throughput cap. They either need to disclose the cap in writing or eliminate it. Pretty easy to violate a secret hidden rule you only know if once you 'break' it ;)
Could you imagine if landlines were cut off "We niticed you used your phone often, so we shut it off"
And I do hate Comcast. I never even asked for their service, they just ate Insight.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
Once they disclose the cap, anyone that is saturating will demand the cap per week. They're better off keeping it a secret, from a network management perspective. Stinks if you're "that guy" but again, this is why we have "business class" services and non business class -- business class pays enough to afford in-writing Service Level Agreements regarding capacity. Home users dont.
jonknight
· 1 year ago
My bet is that the "cap" is whatever is just below the usage of the guy they have on the phone, and that's why it's not in writing. Because it exists only when they want it to exist.
playerx
· 1 year ago
The government needs to force open access to all the networks, glass fiber, FTTH, HFC, cable, telephone, etc, for cost, so that competition can grow. Competition is good.
Also making them function as a utility is vital, with proper checks and balances.
Ben
· 1 year ago
I worked with Comcast a bit earlier this year. I made a few of the ads that were supposed to give them more of a family image. My experience is that in general they suck where there's not competition but they're actually pretty good where this is some competition (this might not always be true).
I go to school in Huntington, IN. The only high-speed internet offered here is AT&T DSL and Comcast Cable internet. Here they send out letters all the time for downloading too much and half the time you're bandwidth is cut down to 56kbs modem speeds. However up in Fort Wayne Verizon's Fios is selling like crazy (they're even giving away HDTV's now). Fios has had some bad reviews but in Fort Wayne the quality of the speed and service is really amazing. In response to that Comcast has tried to up their speeds and quality of service....so now they are actually pretty good in Fort Wayne (though still not as good as Fios).
Unfortunately you're kind of screwed if you're in a smaller town or an area where they don't have a decent amount of competition. They're a bastard if they can do so without losing a bunch of money.
@khopper
· 1 year ago
Dave, how about an online dialog on twitter with @comcastcares (AKA Frank Eliason from Comcast Customer Outreach)? I can think of several thousand folks who might follow along and perhaps chime in as appropriate.
guineapig
· 1 year ago
I just got the new "wideband" 50 Mbps cable in Minneapolis (wicked fast!) ... I keep waiting to see what kind of limits might be in place on that! Indeed -- what are you paying $180 for, exactly? sounds like you are paying for a service that changes according to their whims. Imagine if the electric or water worked this way! "Well, you can have... 40 gallons of water, but only the first 20 gallons will be delivered at normal speed at 2pm on Tuesday, the rest will trickle in at a rate we see fit. But, please, continue to pay your bill in full and on time."
thowland
· 1 year ago
The big issue with bandwidth is that comcast (and all ISPs) routinely oversell it. They buy enough DS3's for, say, 10% of their customers to use at once at the rated speed. Abusing folks who try to use the bandwidth they pay for is far cheaper than providing the contracted services. This is not terribly different from the way banks work, of course. Banks loan out far more money than they have on deposit, as they assume that not everyone is going to demand their money at once. The difference is that there is an FDIC behind the bank, and abusive CSRs behind comcast.
lux
· 1 year ago
My interest in using Comcast for anything other than basic cable was never very high, but it's dropped even lower after reading this. Seriously, why go through that BS when there are perfectly good bandwidth alternatives?
Jim
· 1 year ago
The problem is, for many people, there aren't perfectly good bandwith alternatives. The cable operators have a geographic monopoly in many parts of this country with no viable competition.
Bryan Woods
· 1 year ago
Is there a Sundaygang feed I could subscribe to? Or am I just not seeing it?
MichiganInnovators
· 1 year ago
This whole post had me laughing raucously such that people walking down the hall were looking in my office in question. The story has a kafkaesque flavor. I'm laughing at the absurdity, not the wrong itself.
clifguy
· 1 year ago
Thanks for posting about this. Spectacularly bad customer service is hardly news, but it really helps those of us who are trying to deliver great customer service to be reminded about what bad service looks like.
It's always bothered me that ISPs say they are providing an "unlimited" usage service when in fact it is metered and limited. Comcast isn't unusual in this regard, unfortunately. I'm a customer of Sprint's all-you-can-drink EVDO service on my cell phone. I've heard they will squeal if you use more than an undefined X amount, but I've never hit the limit so I don't know that from personal experience.
justcorbly
· 1 year ago
I'm a Time-Warner customer. Once, I asked how they knew if someone was using too much bandwidth. Did they meter each customer's use? (My service started taking a dive shortly after the local schools let out each day, so I guessed some kid was busy filling up his drive.)
Anyway, the answer was: no. They don't routinely monitor bandwidth consumption. Like Kevin suggested, they just wait until people start complaining.
My main gripe with T-W is their lack of phone lines when an outage occurs. You can't get through.
Frederic Guarino
· 1 year ago
Definitely send Brian Roberts a bill -) More seriously your experience smacks of horrendous customer service and fellow commenter Kevin Hart's explanation of blanket calls make the marketer in me cringe. As a New Yorker I too have limited options (basically just Verizon DSL and TimeWarner Cable). As a European who's seen the effects of government-enforced competition (France, UK, Italy) ie lower prices, innovation (google IIiad and the Freebox or go to http://tinyurl.com/r8go5), when will the FCC comes to it senses and mandate the incumbents to resell access to allow competition everywhere ? Maybe the cable cos and telcos are just waiting for Google to come and eat their lunch too -)
noaml
· 1 year ago
It's funny that you happened to write this today Dave. I've been trying to pick a better provider for our office because we need more upload bandwidth and our DSL kills our download bandwidth whenever we're uploading to our colo. What's crazy is the difference in price between Comcast and our Covad DSL for what we get.
According the Comcast's FAQ, anything above 2GB a month of data usage "can" be considered excessive since it's not within the typical usage pattern of their residential consumers, as they define it. What a joke!
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
And the fine print has been found.
Guess those Housemates ads and the Slowskys never needed to read them, but any consumer using home internet should, prior to assuming what is in the ad matches whats in the Terms of Service.
Jay Cuthrell
· 1 year ago
Dave,
I listened to your mp3 and read through this. I think you just showed up on the radar of their Sandvine units. I can't confirm they used them, but those boxes -do- work as advertised. And unfortunately, you were probably impacting users around you.
This is news to me. So couldn't they have shown me their data, instead of treating me like a criminal, explain what the problem is.
Further, if I never saw any slowdowns on my LAN going out to the net. why would any of my neighbors have seen a slowdown? That's a straight question. I obviously have a lot to learn here, and if I want to keep my net connection I have to understand this.
BTW, I've taken the initiative of shutting Comcast off until we figure this out. I have redundant connectivity so I can easily switch to another outbound link while I learn about these issues. If I end up not trusting them, I'll make it permanent. I don't accept their power over me. I'm a customer, I think I pay them a fair amount of money for the service, and I don't like how they treated me.
Jay Cuthrell
· 1 year ago
More than anything, what you have highlighted is the need for transparency. Even if Comcast give you a techno-babble answer, you'd at least know the metrics by which you are being measured, accounted, and perhaps billed by in practice.
Assuming Comcast are using the systems for top talker reporting, there are also ways to create tiers of access and service levels. That leads us down the path of a Net Neutrality discussion or the valid uses of DPI technology which is another topic entirely.
I'm curious to see if Comcast pushes you towards a business bundle. That way you are given more SLA oriented access with (more) clearly defined paramters. I'm not going to say they would give you a true SLA... you'll get SLA like. I reserve the right to be amazed though.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
My .02 American, is that it really doesn't matter what you think here, its what the network demands on saturation showed on the usage that day.
What you notice on your little lan, and what is happening upstream, really aren't that comparable. Its possible you wouldnt have noticed anything, yet they were at 99% capacity on the next-hop, and heading up. Or its possible they have plenty of headroom, and only are enforcing everyone who hits X capacity per day or per month as a preventative. Entirely possible you will find that unfair. But the way the internet has always worked, yes even in 1991, was if a network operator had capacity issues, he could shut off people using capacity. Done and dusted.
What seems to be the only real issue you have here is Comcasts marketing blither doesnt match their network management policies. Thats a fair gripe. But not one that reflects in any way how a network of shared data transmission has to be run.
Either you deploy it like old frame relay or like a T1, and everyone is a locked in capacity -- and you pay for that -- or there are subscriptions over the theoretical maximum and some will use less and some will use more and the network operators have to manage that capacity as they see fit. Writing in too many rules on that will have unintended consequences, like a network operator being unable to guarantee any capacity at all.
Comcasts marketing is deceptive, but I'm positive they are covered in writing in the fine print on it. If they're not, it could be amusing definitely. But from a network management standpoint, them shutting off heavy users makes perfect sense, and is probably needed, whether you noticed it that day or not, they had metrics showing why they had to take that action.
If anyone reading this is in the Bay Area tomorrow, I hope you drop by the FCC hearing at Stanford, noon-7pm with public comments starting at 4:30 p.m.. See www.fcc.gov for the location address and agenda.
You can watch it on VonTV tomorrow, too, or listen to the RealAudio feed from the FCC site.
Internet TV
· 1 year ago
I'm noticing that ISPS are getting more strict about enforcing bandwidth limits. They want to play hardball with customers and hold them to the megabyte, and to some extent they're fully within the law to do so. The only problem of course is the way in which they do it and that they haven't been playing fairly to begin with (packet sniffing, throttling speeds, etc).
Jason
· 1 year ago
The problem is in many areas you have no real alternative. Here in Menlo Park there is Comcast cable - which is very fast - and AT&T DSL. I live too far from the central office and so the best DSL I can get is the lowest possible one - it's literally a fraction of the speed of Comcast. I think it is up to 384 down and up to 128k up. And in some parts of Palo Alto you can't get DSL at all!! Amazing. It's been the same shitty speed since DSL came out years ago. My Comcast which is expensive at like $60/month for the cable (not counting the TV...don't get me started on that one) - it is 16 mbs down and 2mbs up. So they pretty much have a monopoly over it. I wish we had FIOS or even AT&T UVerse here so there would at least be an alternative. Sigh. And here in the middle of Silicon Valley too!
lisa
· 1 year ago
I guess if you're enough of a bigshot, you can get whatever you want, and as many eyes on it as you like, and a reasonably quick resolution is likely to follow as well.
Then there are people like this guy, who don't have that same advantage:
I feel for you. Unfortunately, most all of us really have zero rights in terms of protecting our level of service with ISPs. That means individuals AND companies. Comcast doesn't have to give you anything in writing. Foolishly they could do what they continue to do to so many people - exercise poor customer service and support. I suspect that's what will happen. Despite all these companies making money off an infrastructure that our tax dollars, collectively created, they appear to care little about simply providing a pipe to the Internet.
kenny
· 1 year ago
Not bad, you hit all the right buttons for digg.. "my five computers, all macs".. "i like the iphone better..."
well done
IndyGreg
· 1 year ago
For years, I WAS a ComCast customer. Never again. Never, never, never again. Did I say "Never?"
CoreyTamas
· 1 year ago
Driving your car too fast is against the law because you can kill someone by doing it. What's more, there are clear postings and laws about how fast is too fast so that you can't claim that you didn't know. Additionally, if you want to read the law in print, you can do so. When you receive a ticket or a warning, it's on paper. Finally, you do not get your car impounded so that you will call the police and they can warn you over the phone not to speed.
You will notice that the bulk of the arguments and criticisms against Comcast are not so much about the bandwidth limit, but rather that the rules are not properly or fairly identified, communicated or enforced. My ISP states clearly in writing that if I go over XGB per month then I will be charged $Y per GB. That's the information a mature, reasonable adult requires in order to feel like they are dealing with a professional company.
Kodai
· 1 year ago
OK, I realise that this is an old thread and it is likely nobody will ever read this, but I have to reply to this.
Using your speed limit analogy...
In the time I have been with comcast, they have upped the speed limit from 55 to more than 250 MPH. BUT... They also say that you can only drive a certain distance because you would use too much gas. They also won't tell us how far we can drive, just that we'll lose our liscence and car if we do drive too much.
I have this feeling that the total bandwidth that we can use per month changes from month to month. I think they just call the top 14K customers and threten them.
I'd be happy to stay within limits they set, if I knew what they were. If they were too restrictive, I'd look for other service (which I'm going to do anyway).
Chris Taylor
· 1 year ago
No Lemon it is YOU who do not understand.
for some reason comcast and ATT&T execs think by being assholes to their customers they'll maximize profit.
NO what it REALLY is, is as follows. You want my internet. I am the ONLY game in town so get down on your god damned knees and beg me for it.
The REASON a company can treat you badly. Offer Unlimited service that is not remotely unlimited and have secret limits so they can continue to lie and say "unlimited" (the MOMENT they put forth a hard limit it would absolutely be illegal for them to use the word UNLIMITED see??) is because they KNOW they have you buy the nut sack that you can NOT go elsewhere. Like Car Insurance or Gasoline :-)
If Comcast called me and said he slow down or else I would have no choice but to say yes sir and do as I am told. I can not even get DSL at 18k from the CO. Its Comcast or Dial up.
That why we either need HEALTHY competition (IE more than 10 options to limit collusion or deep PEOPLE FAIR regulation from the government if competition is just not practical.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
What if the market has 100 local last mile providers, but all must buy from the same national tier 1 and tier 2 backhaul / core network providers, and those prices remain fairly fixed by market functions like cost of deployment and cost of facilities. What if ATT has to spend X dollars per national upgrade, and it takes them 2 years to complete, and it has a value to ATT that is supposed to last 7 years, but along comes more demand in 4, now they have a choice, they can rate limit people, they can enforce the 1% that is costing them too much per last-mile, they can try to pick out the protocols that are costing them the saturation and rate limit just those, or they can do NOTHING and watch their support centers be inundated with angry consumers who can't even surf at all. Maybe in 2003 people should have anticipated growth like we're seeing, but honestly, most people don't saturate, even with youtube and other rich content apps. Most people are predictable in their usage. Its the 1% p2p always on multiple client leechers blowing the curve for most networks I'm familiar with. T1 capacity at consumer prices won't scale. So they are taking network operator perrogative and managing their existing capacity. If you don't like it, get investors and start a new network, lobby the FCC for a redo of 1996, and see how it goes. Nobody can "guarantee" you last-mile unlimited capacity at the prices we currently pay for last mile. Nobody. Unless a dramatic drop in facility and deployment costs occurs, unless a lot of routers and hubs and switches just got a lot cheaper, unless a lot of things that aren't currently true, you don't get unlimited home bandwidth without paying T1 / business class rates for it. Sorry.
Erik
· 1 year ago
http://tinyurl.com/5wquel Comcast sent this to me years ago before canceling my account for a week. Looks like they changed their policy, makes me glad I don't have to deal with them any more.
Mike
· 1 year ago
I'd like to see the FTC look into this. Internet-based HD video-on-demand is becoming increasingly popular. Apple TV and Xbox 360 video rentals compete directly with Comcast pay-per-view and other TV offerings. Telling consumers they aren't allowed to download "too much" causes some people (me, for example) to curb their online media consumption, for fear of reaching the mysterious ceiling and losing their connection. With Comcast competing directly with online services to which it is a gateway, capping customer access strikes me as an unfair business practice.
Gman
· 1 year ago
Yeah, this makes me use Qwest DSL and just pirate all TV shows that aren't on the networks websites. They are the only cable company in my area and I refuse to give them any money. Especially when they are even cutting down on the quality of their HD. Hopefully they get in trouble, but I doubt it. The bastards.
Stacy
· 1 year ago
"What's the big issue with bandwidth anyway? Does a company like Comcast pay their ISP for bandwidth? Do they even have an ISP?"
Basically, Yes. They have backbone providers they must pay to receive internet access. Bandwidth is not free. Who do you expect to eat the cost for your free internet? (which was suggested in your podcast). Who do you expect to pay for the electricity that's needed to run the servers? Who is supposed to pay for the maintenance that is necessary to keep everything running? Me? Tax payers?
dave
· 1 year ago
Whoa Stacy, back up a bit.
I pay them $180 a month. I'm not asking for a handout. If they want more money from me, let them ask for it respectfully and give me a choice.
Their first reaction to a problem is treat me like a criminal, not a customer, which is exactly what I am.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
Whoah, Dave, back up a bit.
When Comcast network operators (as opposed to comcasts marketing dept, thats another issue) treat network saturation or the potential for it with impugnity, they are doing so to ensure their network doesnt get fully saturated, and impact service for everyone on that part of it.
Imagine you're the head of customer support, facing a complaint wave of thousands of people who can't even surf, all because of a handful of saturation level users who were left unchecked.
Ham-handed how they did it? Absolutely. Probably a PR blowback? Yeppers. But will any of that change the reality of managing networks? Not likely, and if forced by law, will have unintended consequences.
Is your $180 a month for just internet? Or for cable TV and every other service you can get with Comcast ? If its just data line internet, you're overpaying for the grade of service you're on. If its for the 'triple play" you're kind of lumping the money you pay for cable TV in with the money you pay for data service.
dave
· 1 year ago
Look I'm not going to argue with you about this -- I'm right -- as in The customer is always right. They fucked with me and I was innocent. I don't give a shit what part of the company fucked with me, I pay the money so I don't have to care. If you don't understand that, it's time to go back to Business 101 for a fresher.
dave
· 1 year ago
Further, you're wrong about the network getting saturated. I never experienced any slowness in accessing the net. If I was using up even a significant portion of the bandwidth in my sector, I of all people, would feel it. Never did.
Captain Bob
· 1 year ago
The fact is that in many places Comcast cannot deliver what they are promising their customers. Are you having problem with your In Demand service? That's the first thing to start to go when you aren't getting enough signal. If your internet connection too slow? Someone is probably using all of their allotted band-width.
Yup, if someone uses what they are promised, everyone else can suffer. Comcast counts on people not using their services to the fullest extent. Here in Florida I had to purchase a signal booster, FROM COMCAST, because THEIR service didn't work. How's that for fun?
Comcast needs to SERIOUSLY increase their capacity, but don't want the expense of going out and laying more cable everywhere, so instead they just take your money and cut off your service with no notice.
dave
· 1 year ago
Neither. No trouble accssing On Demand or any slowness on Internet access.
bkayne
· 1 year ago
As long as Comcast has a monopoly on cable, they'll do what they want. They recently stopped my outgoing mail going through port 25 on smpt.comcast.net. Never called, never communicated it, it just stopped working. When I called them, they said that I had overrun their limit of 100 outgoing emails a day, which I didn't. Their system won't let me use port 25 anymore, and they say they have no way to reverse that.
junior
· 1 year ago
You shouldn't use port 25 anyway--Kudos to Comcast
OSC
· 1 year ago
There is an easy work around when they block port 25. Change your mail servers settings. Click the box My server requires authentication. Then change you outgoing mail server port to 587. Problem solved
Rant93
· 1 year ago
Yup. same thing happened to me. Just shut off my internet with no explanation. The person I spoke to would not tell me my bandwidth usage, just that it was too high. I complained that they could have, oh, sent me an email since I obviously used my computer a lot. Just Not Our Policy. I explained that is Just My Policy when dealing with @ssholes who do work that hurts other people without any sympathy, to let them know that they are @ssholes and hurting people, regardless of how it benefits their pocketbook.
rick
· 1 year ago
you do realize that you always have another provider you can go to. if you buy a wrt54g3g-XX then you can purchase either the att, sprint, or verizon boradband card
You should make sure the FCC hears about your experiences somehow.
jason
· 1 year ago
Thats what happens when a company gets monoply power. With no choice, there is no need for keeping customers happy or even treating them like a customer. I'm stuck with comcast because I need the faster speed over DSL but don;t use that much bandwidth.
achernow
· 1 year ago
Dave,
Honestly, I'd just stick with AT&T if I were you... Not that I've not had my issues with AT&T. I've written up my frustrations with them on my blog. 3 posts worth. You can read it here http://tinyurl.com/2mdqez if you'd like.
From my experience, and from talking with the people in the consumer unit at the station I work at, cable companies are bad news. I'm honestly glad I left Rockford, IL before Comcast bought Insight. I've heard that service has gone downhill since Comcast bought them. Likewise, here in Madison, I've said it a number of times... I REFUSE to deal with Charter. I've seen enough on them where they've ruined people's credit because they've continued to charge people for service even after it's been disconnected.
-Adam
noyz_zd
· 1 year ago
I am hoping that with the explosion of laptop users now, companies like AT&T, Verizon and others would introduce a more competitive, wifi internet service. One without any contract and where the monthly payment does not exceed $30.00. This would certainly allow users to have internet access anywhere anytime as opposed to being restricted to Comcast at one location
thecanary
· 1 year ago
The New York Attorney General recently cracked down on Verizon doing similar things with customers of the broadband connect card. After settling with NY, they changed their policy, and I found that while they didn't cancel me, they just continued to reduce my speed without telling me. I would call and complain and we wasted hours and hours on troubleshooting . Needless to say, when I discovered that they had secretly been reducing my speed, but charging me the full price, I cancelled and was given a refund for 3 months sevice. http://www.betanews.com/article/Verizon_Wireles...
Anson
· 1 year ago
I use to have Charter and they would do the same thing. I think it was an automated thing though and it took multiple calls into the before they admitted what they were doing. It was usually, "have you rebooted your modem?". Which I of course had, then magically, I would reboot it while on the phone with them and it would start working. All this based on traffic from a realtime (ish) webcam. I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to the days when you paid by the Meg/Gig per month, but that's essentially what they are doing now. At least you would know what you are getting and where those limits are.
thecanary
· 1 year ago
Well, strangely enough, Verizon claims that their TOS with the broadband connect card prohibits downloading videos, music or games. WTF? Who buys internet access for $59 mo. that doesn't allow watching MSNBC news clips? But there it was...in small print, on the back and if you do, they will either cancel you or just reduce your speed and still charge you $59.
Bryan
· 1 year ago
A long time ago the same thing happened to me but what was funny is it was on a Dial-Up connection. The service was called NTR.net and I was being harassed by Charles Beasley. We had this whole exchange of e-mails and what it ultimately boiled down to is that I was staying connected too long. His idea of acceptable use was browsing a few pages and checking e-mail and then disconnecting and reconnecting when I wanted to look at the next page. I asked him to point out in the EULA where it says I have to use the service like that and he wasn't able to put anything in writing. I forced him to cancel my service.
"The Service is for personal and non-commercial residential use only. Therefore, Comcast reserves the right to suspend or terminate Service accounts where bandwidth consumption is not characteristic of a typical residential user of the Service as determined by the company in its sole discretion."
Sounds like that's enough to cover your situation. Kudos to whichever lawyer drafted those words, as they stack everything in Comcast's favor.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
And the fine print has been found.
Paula
· 1 year ago
alright, so I dont want to seem completely stupid (as I have tried google and such to get some info but have had little luck).
Is the bandwidth recorded per ip address or per neighborhood? Because I've got my router wired to 3 computers, 2 being used by "normal users" (not tech advanced high school student and a dad) and then me, the music downloaded (no torrents), movie streaming, 10 tabs open at a time student. Oh yeah, i edit a lot of photos and use flickr alot.
My issue? I have to reset our cable modem every few hours, if not every half an hour. Sure, the run down the stairs to teh basement is a workout but for how much we're paying for the service, i should be online allllll the time.
(and yes, i have replaced my cable modem TWICE and rerouted my house 2 or 3 times. no i am not using wireless as I am afraid of greater issues)
Rick
· 1 year ago
Oddly enough, I had a similar issue awhile back. Check the cable coming into the router, when I removed or replaced it, it would spark, ie: bad cable=bad connection.
Rich Kulawiec
· 1 year ago
It's highly ironic to read this at the same time that Comcast is promoting itself at saturation levels via commercials on its cable TV service -- and that every single one of those promotions emphasizes fast, fast, fast. Some of them mention how wonderful it is to be able to download music and video quickly. Yet clearly if Comcast customers, having paid for that service, actually attempt to use it in a manner commensurate with what's being promoted, they're cut off.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
Couldn't agree more, comcasts' marketing isnt reflecting reality for people if they saturate the circuit. On the other hand, Comcasts Terms of Service does say capacity issues can be enforced. The claims of the marketing department seem misleading, but legally probably aren't. We'll see, if enough people with blogs get cheesed off, they might have an impact. But managing a network is still going to come down to managing it in the best interest of the most people, not the highest users.
Yar
· 1 year ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a company advertises X Mbps, does that not afford me to use X megabits every second? Isn't that what it means?
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
Sure. But what happens if everyone does this at once, one of two things:
1) the network can't handle the load, or
2) they built enough capacity to do it.
I know of no network that actually built capacity for every one of its consumer grade subscribers to saturate their circuits 24/7 at once. None. Not even close.
So you can get upset at the misleading marketing, and you can even demand they provide more capacity, but at some point everyone -- even those not saturating their circuit -- will have to pay to subsidize those that do. I'm not sure thats what a majority of people want. Companies, even big evil ones, try to manage their network to the most capacity for the most consumers at once, without going broke doing it. Comcast just got itself in a bind claiming one thing with its marketing, that contravenes how ALL networks are managed on the last-mile on non-SLA circuits (circuits with SLA typically cost $700 and up a month, with a true SLA. SLA == service level agreement requiring what you're assuming you already had -- the ability to run full on 24/7/365 without possibility of being rate limited down)
stewtopia
· 1 year ago
Just listened to the recording of the call. Damn, that voice is sci-fi, futuristic, big brother eerie. Not quite "I'm sorry, Dave" but damn near.
I just started using Sprint's "unlimited" 3G service for my Macbook. As I know Verizon has capped their service to 5Gb a month, I asked the sales man in at least 4 different ways if there was a cap. He insisted that there wasn't. I guess I'll find out.
Cheers, Randy
Zikkiyn Quanstrum
· 1 year ago
The issue at hand here, and where most of the confusion seems to start, is that you are paying for bandWIDTH, not bandDEPTH. Just because you have 28Mbps isn't a license to use all 28 of those megabits every second or even half that, or a quarter and so on.
There simply isn't enough bandwidth for all users to be using a majority of their bandwidth at all times, which isn't a limitation of just Comcast's or even simply cable internet, DSL services suffer from the same exact problem. The statement that you are in the top 1/10th of 1 percent of all their users may sound like corp-speak party lines intended to freak out the customer, but your ranking ultimately means your use is having a detrimental effect on other users of the service.
So they should have contacted you? You're right, they should have, and they tried to. If they had a bad phone number on file (ultimately your fault) and couldn't get in touch with you via email just how exactly are they supposed to contact you? You can wave the snail mail flag all you want, but while the letter is taking its sweet time getting to your house, you're being a (admittedly, unintentional) pain in the ass to everyone in your area. You said you were connected quickly, so how long was your service down? An hour? 2 hours? More? Less?
Believe me, I'm a proponent of getting what you pay for, and in this instance you (according to Comcast's Terms of Service to which you agreed) got exactly that.
dave
· 1 year ago
I don't think I was slowing anyone down and you certainly have no way of knowing. They mail me my bill, and they sure could have mailed me this notice. The reason they don't do that is because they clearly don't want to create a record of this. They market their service without stating any limits, if they put it in writing it would get out (I would certainly have published any letter they sent me).
Zikkiyn Quanstrum
· 1 year ago
Right, you alone may very well have not been impacting anyone's service (though the nature of cable internet and your usage makes it likely), but you see there are other people on the internet; some of which have usage patterns similar to yours. They may even live in your very same neighborhood! It's horrifying, I know.
This is a psuedo-preventative measure, and allowing you to continue using your service in the way you were using it constituted a threat to their ability to provide the majority of their customers with the service they expect. It's basic game theory.
"The Service is for personal and non-commercial residential use only. Therefore, Comcast reserves the right to suspend or terminate Service accounts where bandwidth consumption is not characteristic of a typical residential user of the Service as determined by the company in its sole discretion."
So yeah, it is in writing. A "soft" limitation is still a limitation, quoting a hard number would be ridiculous since 1 GB one way or the other isn't going to make a real difference but WILL provide enough wiggle room for self-righteous d-bags to smugly cap their usage at *just* under the benchmark, thus screwing over their neighbors.
So until there's enough bandwidth for everyone to saturate their lines on a constant basis this is what you'll have to deal with if you insist on getting what (you assume to be) your money's worth. Always, read the Terms of Service and enjoy your ISP hopping.
dave
· 1 year ago
Congrats you've perfectly captured the paternal attitude of Comcast. Game theory teaches us that it's much better to treat the customer as a criminal, to cut them off, and lecture them, to not ask for their cooperation, rather threaten them, as if they were a child who couldn't understand anything but abuse. Thanks for explaining why I deserve such horrible treatment. I will try to deserve Comcast in the future, I am obviously not worthy. I love being abused by big companies, it's so good for me and everyone else. Thanks for taking the time to set me straight.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
The only other guy arguing here with experience from the network provider side, and you accuse him of being paternalistic.
At some point you have to let the people that know what they're doing run their networks. Or you can attempt to legislate (or rabble rouse) changes.
Let me know how that goes.
By the way, all networks pretty much have to manage their traffic, Comcast did so in a way they saw fit, if you dont like it get on a new network, check http://www.dslreports.com for lists in your area. But please just believe me, your demand is off the curve for most home users, and most companies will take an approach similar to comcasts: 1) rate limit it if you buy consumer grade, or 2) charge more if you demand that level of capacity be available any time you want, as opposed to any time the network can fit it in without killing everyone else's service.
What you notice in terms of your downloads is very off topic for how a network manages its capacity. The issues might line up, but its pretty much random and not really relevant.
bananapudding
· 1 year ago
Clearly the ISP should be required by law to define what is "too much bandwidth." i think thats all it amounts to.
if you get a penalty for doing something wrong it helps to know what that wrong thing is. if you cannot communicate that, how can you expect to not do wrong again?
it also very fair to consumers to let them know what you can and cannot do. by articulating the bandwidth limit consumers can know whether they should seek an ISP elsewhere. if they can't tell you what that limit is, then your just lucky, and you should be paranoid of writing that next email or visiting one too many webpages -- as long as there is no standard by which to measure fair use. after all, this limit applies to everyone. i dont use a whole lot of bandwidth. if i had uncapped unlimited bandwidth i probably would not download any more than i actually do. if they give us tools like powerboost that allows us to download a whole bunch very quickly then aren't they giving consumers the message they already have that bandwidth. heaven forbid everyone use powerboost. they'd have serious problems not defining right and wrong. and i thought Comcast advertised unlimited bandwidth, which if there is a limit in place, is false advertising.
I like my comcast service but I feel it costs way too much money. I am only with comcast and not AT&T simply because my home survived a hurricane without losing internet. its a shame that this corporation can't see thats its just plain wrong not to clearly define what is acceptable to its customers. shame on them for being rude and forcing an admission of guilt just to restore service too.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
The hidden gotcha with that, is that this moves everyone onto a plan where a service level agreement is required, even for consumer grade services, who might not need it. Which then requires networks to deploy about 10 to 60x more capacity than they do now. Which then requires, assuming other costs dont change, that the cost for this capacity be passed along.
We can do this one of two ways folks. Either network planners can buy "enough" network for "most" people, and the policies we make to guarantee that might adversely affect a small minority of heavy users... OR ... we can build in enough capacity that everyone BY LAW is now required, and pass the costs on to the consumer.
dave
· 1 year ago
You're not getting it -- we could work all this out -- if they would approach customers as adults instead of the way they're dealing with us now. That's my complaint, I don't like the way they approached me and communicated. I still haven't received a letter of any kind, or an apology on behalf of the company for the rough treatment and any assurance that it won't happen again.
bananapudding
· 1 year ago
i've spent alot of time reading these comments. it would probably be wise for Dave to get this thread publicised on http://dslreports.com forums. their forums seems to have been the only decent place for people to discuss things like ISPs. I feel that the person who referenced you to the one man's blog who had been in communication with the persons former ISP for one year without any change is probably indicitive about what needs to change but might not. its very unfair, and i've been in situations like this myself. unfortunately if we dont be loud about it, doesn't pave the path for better treatment or service. those of you who are like me and have no other choice but to stay with Comcast, please call Earthlink up and sign up with them, same modem, same network, resold comcast, different ip, at $17 less for not accepting comcast cable sounds like a much better situation to me.
zero-kill
· 1 year ago
I use Cox Communications here in Kansas, they are about the same level of professional cons that Comcast are. The speed is great and the flexibility is awesome. I have a downstream cap of 40GB and upstream of 20GB (roughly can't recall the exact but this is fair approximation). I go over my upstream by 800% each month because I'm a good pirate and like to seed my torrents and share my photos and home movies on Youtube. My download cap is just stupid, I smoke the thing like it were a doobie soaked in chocolate sauce, but never get any warnings. I don't know why this is, I'm kind of hoping that I get one, cause it'd make me feel like I'm normal and get to suffer with the rest of the world and having shitty service.
paul
· 1 year ago
that's unreal. that's bad customer service, to say the least!
bryan
· 1 year ago
Good grief. I returned my Comcast modem just an hour ago before finding this blog. Glad to be out.
Frog
· 1 year ago
I guess it was Verizon that did the same thing in New York or some place back east. They did the same thing...they called the service Unlimited (I think it was a cell phone account) and they got into legal trouble for their "unlimited" service not being "unlimited"... Contact the EFF and discuss it with them...they might have some advice for you.
bananapudding
· 1 year ago
news article shows up this morning about Comcast paying people to stay in line at the FCC hearing that coincidentally took place as this drama was unfolding. apparently Comcast paid a number of people to stay in line for their employees not granting denying access to people whos employers had already paid for entrance, or just everyday people waiting in line. Comcast wanted to have such a foothold there because of competing technologies. the world just ought to be fair. it isn't. boo on Comcast.
If someone already mentioned this, I apologize, I don't have time to read all of the comments.
Why don't the just regulate everyone's up and down speeds? Charter Communications only gives me so much, and I could have all my computers uploading and downloading at full capacity, and as far as I know, Charter wouldn't care. I can only use what they give me (or I pay extra for).
bbum
· 1 year ago
bruce -- you are not making sense.
The equivalent analogy would be if a car company sold you a car with a promise that you could rive it at 60mph, but, in reality, you could only drive it at 60mph at 5am... the rest of the time, it might be limited to 30mph.
If it runs at all.
Bottom line: Comcast is selling a bill of goods that they fail to deliver.
dave
· 1 year ago
And they don't post speed limits, and there is no manual from the DMV that says what the limit is, and no law that says what the limit is.
There's no need for analogies, they don't work anyway, we all understand how the net works, and that it's only fair if you know what the rules are. They keep dodging the question, what are the rules?
Yeah I know their user agreement says they don't have to say. Great. Some nice way to treat a well-meaning customer. Customer, not slave, not criminal. Someone who pays to use the service.
macoz
· 1 year ago
The telco voice service is a great example (and it goes back in practice for decades).
I get a POTS connection. I call and gossip 16 hours per day. Then, modems proliferate...so I am connected to my BBS, then to my ISP 24 hours per day.
Does the phone company threaten to disconnect me? No. Do I use the phone service more than the avg customer? yes indeed.
They sold me and my neighbor a dial tone. When the dial tones run out, the telco drops in more lines.
That is how it works.
If CCast wants to 'limit' their offering, they need to explain those limits in no uncertain terms.
Cap me at 10G or 100G or what ever, but put a price on a service. The price is fixed (I cannot selectively pay them what I think they were worth in a given month based upon my personal analysis of market values), and so the service should be fixed.
Why don't they do this? Marketing ploy.
Adam
· 1 year ago
im in the UK and if any company over here tries to threaten its customers they have to provide it in writing. This is a good reason again to hate this service provider, I would rather go with a slower service but get better customer care.
wally
· 1 year ago
I completely understand your frustration with Comcast. I have Charter, and they are equally bad in their high speed Internet. I can't wait until AT&T runs their DSL line on my street. Then, I will call them and tell them to "Take your service and shove it!"
Langdon
· 1 year ago
TimeWarner is even worse. I haven't gone through all the proper procedures (i.e. calling them a dozen times) but I've done enough to complain. If I ever use too much bandwidth in a given month, nowhere near as much as 300g, but maybe 80g. My connection refreshes, goes on and off for a few seconds. This is AWFUL for online gaming. I have to disconnect from the server entirely before I can get back in, eating up almost 5 minutes every time. On some occasions this can happen after every several seconds of actual connectivity. I had comcast before time warner, being a more mainstream user (50g a month at the time) Comcast worked fantastic for me. I'll be switching to Verizon as soon as I get pissed off enough to do something about it. The sad thing is that it does control my game time to a healthy portion of my life =P
mjesales
· 1 year ago
I've found that a lot of whether or not time warner is good in an area - can vary market from market. The market where I grew up was one of their top performing markets and everything was always great.
A friend of mine grew up in one of their worst performing markets... and the service was worse and customer support took forever to do simple things.
Brian
· 1 year ago
comcast still denies and will continue to deny that they throttle, which is why DSl or FIOS (for those of us who can get it) are far better then broadband will ever be
Telco's suck
· 1 year ago
I'm considering a switch to Comcast after three weeks with no Verizon service. Before you consider pulling the plug be sure to consider the alternative. It took me three weeks and 12-14 conversations (not counting the 3 field techs who came out to "fix" things) to get service restored. I was told everything from "No one from Verizon can ever guarantee that your service will be restored" to "the only solution to your problem is to cut your bandwidth in half". When they cut my bandwidth in half I still had problems, but I discovered a clause in my contract that said that if they materially changed my service without my permission as a last resort then I could break my contract and have no further obligations. So I did. Fortunately, I had a backup service. At one point during my whole ordeal that went down too (also Verizon). The last tech who came to my house told me that Verizon has cut their DSL support staff down to the bone.
mandrill
· 1 year ago
Thats beyond harsh, I'd heard that Comcast were c**ts but didn't think they'd sunk so low. I'm glad I live in the UK and am willing to put up with a crawling internet if it means I don't have to deal with these assholes.
u235sentinel
· 1 year ago
this doesn't surprise me. I had the same thing and have been blogging about it at comcastissue.blogspot.com
Also now that 12 months termination is over, they want us back. Our response?
I agree totally with you. At least most of you seem to have a choice in high-speed services. Where i live (Carmicheal,CA.), I have only one choice and its Communistcast even though Surewest FO is available 3doors down the street and AT&T is not much further and neither one is going to finish out the street i live on. As far as the powerboost feature,hell I can't get the 6megs I pay for. And just like the oil companies they don't seem to have to answer to anyone for their greed and lack of service. So yeah you can give me a ticket to the hate train too.
GH
· 1 year ago
It is good to hear that there are so many people that hate Comcast as much as I do. I live in an old house and Comcast is my only internet option because they would have to re-wire my house for DSL to work correctly (or so Quest says), so I have been stuck with Comcast. I have been nothing but screwed with, lied to and overcharged since the day I became a customer. I at least dropped their cable TV service right away, but am stuck with the internet. Then, once I dropped the cable TV service, they forced me to bring in my boxes into their office (a tech couldn't stop by my house and pick them up) where I had to wait in line for 3.5 hours to turn in the boxes, but if I didn't turn them in by the end date on the billing period, they would bill me for another month of service. But, once I turned them in, I had to pay another $50 so a tech COULD COME OUT TO MY HOUSE and put a FILTER on my internet to slow it down. This is still beyond me, they say it is mandatory to have a filter to slow your internet if you are not a cable customer, yet I am paying even more a month, and I had to pay them to come out to my house but they could not just pick up my cable boxes then. I move to different parts of the country regularly with my job and I hope to god that I never live in an area strictly serviced by Comcast again, the worst company on earth.
Kenneth
· 1 year ago
I have had so many bad experiences with comcast that "fucking comcast" is the phrase that I mutter any time anything goes wrong with my life. I am starting to seriously think that comcast is responsible for all that is bad in the world. If there werent a fucking monopoly on the cable service i would very much like to switch.
Dennis Gormley
· 1 year ago
Let's see. Press a channel and the info says this is channel so and so but you get some other channel. Stations where they aren't supposed to be. Let's see. In the middle of a show. No signal. In the middle of doing something on the computer...............oopps Sorry Mr. G you lost your connection. I could understand if I lived in the boon docks but I live in the Philly area.
millam
· 1 year ago
lol @ Kenneth. I think I'm going to coin that phrase and start using it. Who knows maybe it'll start a trend. That is way to f'ing funny.
So that brings me up to November of last year.... Comcast was again out in my area doing "upgrades" oh they were wonderful let me tell you... 8 days of super high speed NO service. YAY I was so happy the neighbors that live in China could hear my glee. I called to see if they were done upgrading and they weren't. I called again on day 2 figuring maybe they were done "upgrading," according to the Comcast reps they weren't so I said okay I'm still without service can you credit me. They said they would once they knew how many days. I said that'd be fine. So I called back 3 days later asked if they were still upgrading (now 5 days without service). They said oh... they've been done for 1-2 day now and then continued to say let me get a technician out to your place. When are you available for 4 hours? At this time I about shit a brick. I have to give you time when YOU SCREWED up!?!?!?!?! I have to spend 4 hours at home when I don't have time to be spending at home (I'm at school from 7am - 10pm on most weekdays and I can't skip class for Comcast). This makes absolutely no sense to me. I don't care if your Comcast technicians need to verify that my internet is working. They obviously don't make sure it's working when they're out here doing upgrades. So I still don't understand why I have to sit around my apartment for a technician to come out and fix a problem that they did when they were upgrading. This is unfair; the credit that I get back is not enough for the time I've wasted waiting for your technicians to come out and fix their error. I deserve more.
So this brings me up to now. Guess what. My favorite upgrading "servicing" technicians are back. And guess what they did again! They screwed up my cables some how. And guess who was without service again because your incompetent Comcast technicians don't know how to hook cables up properly! OOO I bet you got it on the first try. I got to spend another 2 hours waiting for your technician to come out and service my cable box that's outside, that your Comcast service technician's screwed up; plus 30 mins on the phone trying to find out why I have no service. I had to leave my mother and my dying grandmother at home to come here today. Your 6 dollar credit is not enough to make amends to the time that I have lost with my family, the amount of paper that I've had to use at school printing my notes (~20 bucks worth), the time that I've lost waiting for your technicians for your own stupid mistakes, and the time and the increase in phone bills I've had to use in order to speak with your technicians and service reps about why problems have gone wrong. Please give me the keys to the box out there and let me fix the problem next time it occurs it will save us all a HUGE headache. And while we're at it why don't you give me 2 months free internet and cable to help with the cost of gas I've wasted trucking back and forth to school to print notes, and the money that I've spent printing notes at school.
geri
· 1 year ago
My name is Geri Comcast has the worst customer care I have ever dealt with. they over billed me. in fact they double billed me. they sent me two bills covering the same time frame. I moved and stopped their service on the 16th of April of 2008, which was half way though the billing cycle. if any thing they owe me money, but they sent me two bills equalling $346.00 when my standard bill for their bundle was $99 a month. how can you cancel service and not even us a month of serice and owe $346.00? it has taken me weeks to get them down to $110.00
did you know if comcast over bill you they do not adust the taxes you were charged on the orginal bill. you still have to pay taxes on the orginal bill even though it was wrong? I think this is against the law. why Iam a paying taxes on a bill that they created with the wrong amounts? I agree there needs tobe someone else out there offering cable service, who understands the power of the consumer.
Respectfully,
Geri
CW Brown
· 1 year ago
Do they nor realize that when they increase a customers bandwidth, that the customer is going to increase their usage? If they increased the speed limit on the highway, it wouldn't stop people from speeding. Sounds like they highly underestimated the effects of rolling out a new product.
BillJr
· 1 year ago
My Comcast cable goes out every 3 weeks - like clockwork. I get the following message: ONE MOMENT PLEASE, THE CHANNEL WILL BE AVAILABLE SHORTLY This has been going on since January 2008. It is now May 2008.
When I go into the Main Menu -> Cable Setup -> Display, it shows Disconnected - Not Connected. I tried to explain this to Comcast and was told my cable is out because the box was physically disconnected and I needed to re-connect the box. What ?!?! If the box was disconnected, how am I able to go inside the Cable Main Menu and read this to them ?? This proved that Comcast knows NOTHING about their equipment or how it's works.
I have called Comcast easily over a dozen times and what do/did I get: 1) Hung-up on. 2) Techs no-call, no-show. 3) Lied to - Repeatedly by Comcast about the scheduled day/time when the tech was "suppose" to arrive. This part is really really bad and apparently legendary. Countless times I was told that a tech will to arrive between 8 & noon or between 1 & 5PM and like an idiot, I waited - and waited - and waited - and waited. Called Comcast, like every hour to check on my scheduled appointment: no clue, I mean totally clueless - hugh waste of time. I was told they have no control over dispatches. And yet, you have to contact them to schedule a dispatch. What the HELL !?!? 4) Techs, if and/or when they do show up, have absolutely no clue on what is the problem and apparently why they were dispatched - I guess they are told to just show up. 5) And most importantly, tech not fixing the problem as my cable went out Tuesday, May 06 and is still out.
The few and I do mean few techs that did show up told me the following: the problem is with the signal - the problem is not with the signal - the problem is outside - the problem is inside - when this happens, to call Comcast and have them send an INT signal to the boxes. This is like wiping out and re-sending the cable box configs. Any Favorite Cable Channels settings are gone. But you have to beg and plead with Comcast to do this and this is a TEMPORARY FIX. A few weeks later, cable goes out.
Another tech told me directly to -my -face to call Comcast and cancel the service as this would get their attention to fix the problem. I could not believe a Comcast tech was telling me to do this.
At others times I was told that the tech would come out and replace both HD cable boxes. Techs, again the few that did show up, were empty-handed - no replacement cable boxes. Techs did not know what I was talking about when I asked where were the new boxes. Comcast told me that they were sending out a tech to replace the boxes. Their reply was they were not sent to replace anything - and then asked, once again, "what is the problem ??" It is as if for the past 5 months, I have been talking to an empty phone in an empty room. Again, tech shows up with no clue on the reason they were dispatched - they just show up - and even that's a maybe - they may show up or they may not. No one knows.
I chatted via their chatroom last night about this 5-month-old trouble to Francis. This one stated that their Engineering Department is aware of the "issue" and are working on it right now. Sure they are !!!! When asked was exactly was the "issue", she replied I needed to contact some local office, as she " could not " tell me directly. I again pressed about this mysterious " issue ", only to be told information about it cannot be given out. Huh ??? I replied that it sounds like they already knew there was some kind of trouble and failed to notify the customer. Also, this " issue " is only affecting me. I live in a building with 90+ units, yet this " issue " is only affecting me - only ME. This was sounding like some kind of BS, big time.
I have been in the customer support field over 10 years with many different companies and have NEVER seen such BAD service. It is as if they are deaf, dumb and blind to the ability of providing SERVICE to their CUSTOMER. Isn't that what they are suppose to do ?? Customer Service means giving Service to the Customer.
Where is the follow-up call to the customer to confirm that they are back up and working ?? Where is the call to the customer to let them know the tech is running a little late ?? Or cannot make the scheduled appointment ?? Why do I, the customer have to call the provider to find out what is going on ?? Common courtesy dictates a call TO the customer would be nice, instead of a pissed-off call FROM the customer.
What is needed is another cable provider in Chicago. I will take ANYONE/ANYTHING over Comcast, I wish I could get satellite service, but I live in a condo that faces East. For satellite service, like Direct TV, I need to have an unobstructed view of the southwest sky.
Apparently I am left with no choice but to cancel service as the cable goes out at will with no fix and no cares/concerns from Comcast. None at all.
I pray to God in Heaven to please let Verizon FIOS, RCN, WOW-Wide Open West, or ANYONE get in my area and provide cable television service - and FAST !!!
Pete Hammer
· 1 year ago
Found this column when I googled "comcast service shut down" on May 28. I tried to log into my email account tonight and found out they have shut down the system until sometime tomorrow. No notice. No explanation. The window that came up instead of the comast homepage gave no indication that it had any connection to comcast. I called the service number to complain and they acted like it was my problem that I pissed and shocked that they were not providing the service that I am paying for. What's up with these idiots? What are the alternatives to this kind of arrogance?
There must be hundreds of thousands of pissed customers like me. Any suggestions you have would be appreciated. petehammer0@gmail.com
Maestro
· 1 year ago
Well this happened to me today, and they've gotten worse since you talked to them. I found your page searching about info on this as I have no clue what to do. I got this from them:
* We tried to call you twice this month (on 6/10 and 6/11 so this isn't exactly a lot of warning). * Same story, in the top 1/10 of 1% of all their users. * Will disconnect you for 12 months at the end of June if you use too much bandwidth for the _entire_ month of June. * No we can't (I was also told won't at one point, can't was first) tell you how much you've already used this month. * Even though we ourselves admit we didn't try to contact you until the 10th we'll be considering your bandwidth usage for the entire month of June. (I pointed out it was unfair and unrealistic to consider what I had done the 1st-9th when I didn't know there was a problem and wasn't monitoring my usage, he didn't care.) * Was told the data on my bandwidth usage does NOT EXIST until the end of the month. (Frankly this makes me feel they're going to make up a number and do whatever they want irregardless of what I do this month.) * We have no data regarding your bandwidth usage for any month other than May. * No we won't tell you how much is too much to download. * Can I upgrade to a business account? Was told only suitable business account would cost over $1500 a month. This is T1 pricing range, so I think he made that up. I"m totally willing to pay more for a business account, even though I don't download as much as I did in May very often. * No you can't talk to anyone about how I've treated you (this after he told me won't instead of can't tell you, it seemed to be a slip-up), I'm the only person you can talk to. * Didn't care that they're the only broadband provider in my area and that I have no other options than them.
If they disconnect me it'll ruin me, all my income's made online (such as it is), and I can't keep a normal job due to health (I'm in the process of trying to get disability in fact). I don't know what to do, maybe I'll try that comcastcares guy on Twitter (although I'm not really sure how to do that, I don't use Twitter), but I feel like they're intending to disconnect me no matter what. Their insistence that the data on my usage doesn't exist until the end of the month is just fishy as hell. I know it has to exist somewhere if they can compile it, so either they know and don't want to tell me my current usage or they're making their numbers up.
If there were alternatives to Comcast I would change right now. I definitely don't feel they've treated me anywhere near professionally and they're being beyond unrealistic in their demands. If you can't give me a number at least don't judge me on what I downloaded before you told me I was downloading too much.
Scott Westerman
· 1 year ago
Maestro - Send me a note and we'll figure out how we might be able to help.
I don't know where you live, but the $1,500/month they quoted you is pretty ridiculous and well beyond T1 pricing. Speakeasy (among others) will provision a business class T1 for $350, including telco charges) in a lot of locales.
marshal sandler
· 1 year ago
Dave it took me 2 and 1/2 years to get Comcast to replace wire that was shredded in our apartment, it took 15 minutes to replace ! For years we had terrible TV and internet, but they had no competition until now! AT&T now has internet and will have TV soon ! I have started by switching my Cell Phone to AT&T their service is above reproach ! Remember the CEO of Cohn is an attorney there fore his only people skill is winning by intimidation ! Comcast in Michigan is a ship without a rudder !
Brett Glass
· 1 year ago
What were you doing on Comcast's line that caused you to get cut off? Downloading illegal copies of movies? Seeding BitTorrent? C'mon, you had to be doing something pretty bad before Comcast would think of "firing" you as a customer. Fess up; were you trying to use all 28 Mbps of that bandwidth 24x7?
dave
· 1 year ago
Guilty until proven innocent, eh?
Joshua_Whalen
· 1 year ago
My ISP, Panix. has T1 for $300 a month. Mind, it's T1, which is much less than 28mbps, but several people mentioned T1, so I figured I'd post. If you decide to buy it, mention my name. they do offer a bounty, although I'd have posted even if they didn't . I LOVE panix. have used them for almost 2 decades, and haver nothing but good things to say about them. www.panix.com
Joshua_Whalen
· 1 year ago
OOPS! Pardon. It's $395. T3 starts at $600
Danny
· 1 year ago
Recently, I sent out an email to my sister. The total size of the email was 12 meg. The residential limit for individual emails is 15 meg. That is the link .http://lite.help.comcast.net/content/faq/guid/9bf2a488-17c2-43bc-afc9-3f5308e8bdf0
The email cam back with a notice that it exceeded the allowed size. Before going to tiersupport@comcast net, I resent the email directly through HTML at the comcast site. (It recognized a 12 meg file as 17 megs) Wow a lot of bloat! Anyway, most of the tier support people didn't evn know what size files were allowed (Or comcast has a policy of misinformation) long story short! Comcast will correct the problem in 48 hours. Nice to know that you get what you are paying for!
Louis
· 1 year ago
Dave, Reading through all this has changed my mind about the service, I was thinking of getting this service for my room since I'm a huge Internet user who is still chained to Dial-Up. It was time to move on to the next generation of high speed internet and since Comcast was the only one available in my area, it was the only choice I had(Next to Hughes net, but their services are very expensive).
Thank you, Dave, reading this has saved me any future problems and complications I would of experienced if I had gotten the service, their actions sound unethical and unprofessional. A good company should ALWAYS put customer first and that the customer is always right, not place blame on them and then threaten them. I find their service to be very laughable and sad as well. Your blog does count a lot, because they just lost a future customer with their simple minded remarks.
Brent720
· 1 year ago
COMCAST service can be great or lousy depending on who you get on the line when you call. Last night my cable went out for about two hours, in Huntsville, Alabama. I tried to call and report the outage and got put on hold for more than half an hour, and had to listen to constant commercials the whole time about how wonderful their high speed Internet service is. It is pretty darn good when it's working, but they often seem to assume that people aren't using the service between midnight and 6 AM, as I've had several outages lasting up to several hours. I know they have to do maintenance, but they don't give you any warning, just pull the plug, so if you are in the middle of doing something important, it gets squelched. If you complain they tell you to get a business account. They always have an answer which implies that you are the one at fault, not them.
I have to say, I love the service when it's working, but when it is not, it's easier to just WAIT than to call and get put on hold. All of our customer representatives are busy helping other customers. Yeah, at midnight. That means they only have one or two such representatives, or else they have a widespread outage and don't want to publicize that fact. The morning after there is no mention on the web of anyone else having an outage at 11:11 on 11/11/2008. Is that a coincidence?
Mark
· 1 year ago
My own experiences are very similar. You can also add in being disconnected four times after i signed on, have my bill be incorrect from the beginning, getting significantly less bandwidth than advertised, and having Newsgroups discontiued AFTER I signed the contract. They told me that Newsgroups were a free service and they could discontinue any time. I figure it was there when I signed up. It was htere when I paid. If they turn it off, I should get a reduction in cost.
Nope. Comcast has sucked and contibues to suck!
Dennis
· 1 year ago
thats because at comcast we dont care about our customers we only want your money and if you dont pay we shut your services off till you bitch then we still make our shit not work. i work for comcast and i see how we treat customers and i think its fucking stupid we have techs that dont do there jobs, phone agents that swear at customers and they turn around and get raises. we have outdated systems and equipment that goes down faster then a boxer getting knocked out in one punch. our systems are so unstable that even our main intranet site goes down at least 3 times a day. half our tools we use dont work properly or always Being "updated" to make them acually work.
Jeremy King
· 1 year ago
Well all I can say is that it's fine when I'm just browsing the net, but still disconnects. but when I download certain things like using my steam client to download games, it will just stop connection. I'm only running on 1mb of speed when I purchased the 6mb package. I've also got a vista premium.
chris
· 11 months ago
Obviously they have to pay for their bandwidth. Every mb you suck down costs money. This is a well covered topic and, while I think it isn't right and that their claims of "unlimited service" are lies, there is a clause in their terms of service that you can use as much bandwidth as you like as long as it is under what Comcast deems appropriate:
Network, Bandwidth, Data Storage and Other Limitations
Comcast may provide versions of the Service with different speeds and bandwidth usage limitations, among other characteristics, subject to applicable Service plans. You shall ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an overly large burden on the network. In addition, you shall ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, disrupt, degrade, or impede Comcast's ability to deliver and provide the Service and monitor the Service, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services.
You further agree to comply with all Comcast network, bandwidth, and data storage and usage limitations. You shall ensure that your bandwidth consumption using the Service does not exceed the limitations that are now in effect or may be established in the future. If your use of the Service results in the consumption of bandwidth in excess of the applicable limitations, that is a violation of this Policy. In such cases, Comcast may, in its sole discretion, terminate or suspend your Service account or request that you subscribe to a version of the Service with higher bandwidth usage limitations if you wish to continue to use the Service at higher bandwidth consumption levels.
it seems that we are truly boned, however, many people have talked to local officials and have gotten their way, which I suggest as I also hate comcast. Also, I doubt it was your flickrfan even on an excessive plethora of macs. You would have to be downloading an HD picture on every station 24/7 every 5 minutes to even hit the supposed bandwidth (anonymous comcast workers have stated that the average wall is 200GB/month). This amount (while shameful given the "unlimited" advertising) is the equivalent to watching 3 streaming movies 24/7. While it could be you flickrfan, I would suggest a spyware check to make sure nothing is stealing your bandwidth. Good Luck and stick it to Comcast as much as you can :)
jackie
· 11 months ago
I used to work for Comcast and I've created a piece of "art" using my old business cards. It was theraputic and would make you laugh. Let me know if you care to see it and I'll send you a jpg.
p.s. I hate them too....they screw their employees too.
Burdee1
· 9 months ago
Typical Comcast. I had a problem that required a line person to repair, set up a time, when they didn't show up, called. The agent said that they could not get any information because the dispatchers were eating and playing cards and wouldn't talk to anyone. The lines person showed up about midnight and I sent them away until the next day.
curtis
· 8 months ago
If you love their internet policies, you'll love their TV crap even more. I know i do....
Daniel Alexander
· 8 months ago
I've done my duty. I've gotten over 40 people to drop Comcast over the last 2 years (since I dropped them). And now they are coming to my place of business and trying to offer their business services. I found it quite enjoyable to tell the salesman that they will never due business with our company and if they want to know why they should just do a web search for "I Hate Comcast".
I still have a few more friends with the service that don't yet have a good alternative to Comcast, but just as soon as other options become available I'll see that they drop Comcast as well. There is, of course, a limit to the number of people that I know that have Comcast. I think that the most I will be able to directly change over will be around 60 people (when all is said and done), but that isn't too bad. Plus none of them will ever go back to Comcast without checking with me first (being that I'm their Computer geek friend that they go to for such advice). So, it's a reasonable amount of damage given what they did to me.
If Comcast messed with you then I recommend you do the same. At the very least you will feel a bit more vindication knowing that you were able to get some number of friends to dump Comcast as well. Comcast really should known better than to mess with the power users. It's the power users that tend to be the computer geeks that their other clients listen to. You mess with the power users then you don't just lose one account. You lose a bunch of accounts. I mean, I haven't been a Comcast customer for years now and yet I still take every opportunity to hurt them (justly so).
Actually, as far as I can tell they want to lower their overall bandwidth usage. I mean, they threaten to cancel my service because I use "too much" bandwidth so I have to think that I am doing them a favor by getting 60 people to drop their service; thus reducing their overall bandwidth usage. You are welcome Comcast. Glad to be of service to you. I'll keep up the good work on your behalf. Hopefully we can get your overall bandwidth usage down to 0.
I will say that it does sadden me to find myself so opposed to a company that I desire to see them run out of business. I mean, it isn't good for the economy and it isn't good for their employees for Comcast to fail, but I just dislike them so much that I truly want to do a dance on their corporate grave. It's actually a bit scary for me to dislike them so much that I don't even think twice about telling off some Comcast employee just for being a Comcast employee. I think, "How dare them work for such a horrible company!!!" and these can be decent people, but I just don't care. I know that it is just not fair of me to think such a thing, but I truly hate this company.
kayla
· 6 months ago
hello .. i recently bought a ps3 and now i am absolutely hooked on playing call of duty .. i've been thinking of switching my ISP [clearwire] to comcast for a better connection for online gaming, but after your article i don't think i will be .. do you have another reliable ISP that i could go through that won't break my bank and is ideal for online gaming w/ my ps3 ?? thanks ..
Miguel
· 5 months ago
Internet and phone has been down for 6 working days. First time I called hold time 23 min. Talked to some one on cell phone for 10 min then was hung up on. Second try 34 min same thing happened. Went to office. They told me some one will be out next day between 1-5 pm. No show. 3 time calling to find put why no show 58 min later they told me I wasn't answering my phone. I reminded them my phone wasn't working. They reschedualed for today. Between 1-5 pm. It's now 4.17 pm. They haven't showed. Thanks comcast
blacklaw
· 5 months ago
I can only say that my mind begins to swirl we used to have insight broad band bur comcast came in and took it over ever since my service has went to sh_t. they have changed all the packages and my bill has increased I really wish there was another provider to use i feel trapped
vincent33
· 4 months ago
Comcast: I’m writing this after Comcast put me thru 48 hours of hell but it really started over a year ago. I am an avid football fan so I decided after over 15 years of basic cable with Comcast to get a DVR. I researched the DVR and found that it was limited in recording size by a 160 gig HD. There was no option to upgrade it internally or externally. Comcast had also made sure the customer could not offload any recordings to a computer or get a different DVR. Everything was no no no. I decided to live with it expecting Comcast to eventually allow customers to upgrade. About two weeks ago with football season approaching I decided to revisit the DVR situation. I was surprised that it was identical to last year. Comcast has disabled or blocked every possible way to get more recording space. My DVR can record only 20hrs of hd. One HD football game lasts 4 hours. I could almost fill this DVR up in one weekend of football. This was when a co-worker mentioned I should get TIVO. The more research I did the more I found the answers were yes yes yes. The TiVo was highly upgradeable in every way. There was one problem. There is a multitude of horror stories on websites such as comcastmustdie.com and others of Comcast customers who have attempted and failed to get Comcast to do one simple thing (install Comcast cable card in the TiVo box). After researching the situation and considering I hold a Masters Degree in Information Systems from Kennesaw State University I figured I could walk a Comcast csr thru the process. I knew from my research I would be better off to go to Comcast and get the m-card because every part of this process could be done over the phone. It’s a simple matter of typing some numbers in a computer (m-card pairing) and sending an initialization hit from the vinings head end. I also knew that many of the service reps sent out have no idea what they are doing. I won’t even go into the trouble I went thru to actually get the m-card from Comcast. When my TiVo arrived I followed the instructions and made sure that the latest software was installed. On Monday night July 27th I was ready to make my first of about ten calls to Comcast customer service. The csr was named Pat. I knew from the online forums what numbers she needed such as host id and data ID. She said she didn’t need all those numbers that everything would start working in about 45 minutes. Nothing happened so I went to bed and started the next morning. I didn’t get the names of every csr I talked to but I know it was at least 8 and maybe 10. The fact that the first one I talked to didn’t set up a case file proves that their entire existence is a joke to Comcast. With a case file the eighth csr I talk to will know this. Asking them a question is equal to asking the guy that bags my groceries what to do about my cable TV. Some time on Tuesday afternoon on of the CSR’s mention that she could schedule a field rep to install my cable card the next day. I was exhausted so I reluctantly agreed knowing I may be paying 17 dollars for more misery. Lamont arrived at 12 noon today in a Comcast truck. I started bombarded him with technical information about Val:V missing and the Auth:MP problem. He didn’t know what I was talking about but he assured me he would get my cable card working. I took some notes. He called someone at 770-559-7800 using my phone because his was malfunctioning. He told them he was getting an illogical equipment message from the first person (the dispatcher) he called that could not help him. He said it was job number 681052. He switched the m-card I had received from Comcast with another one. He also solved one mystery. From the second I received the m-card I was billed for digital service a/o. He said the Comcast rep had charged me for an additional stb instead. These charges were on the bill I received on Tuesday. I was able to check the conditional access screen (which he knew nothing about) and see that the Val:? had changed to Val:V but Auth:MP still displayed which needs to be Auth:S . He said I was 36th in line to receive an init hit from the vinings head end. He said I should have all my channels within an hour and he would call back to verify. He assured me that if the init hit failed he would return to fix it. Indeed some unencrypted hd channels displayed as he was leaving. I commended him and told him I would keep checking channels until he called. He gave me a receipt and took my Comcast dvr and the original m-card I had received from Comcast. That was about 5 hours ago and no call. Below I have provided every piece of information Comcast may need to correct these problems. I believe it would take a person with basic knowledge of how to use a computer and telephone about 5 to 10 minutes to fix this problem. The grief this has caused me has made a permanent negative impression on me concerning Comcast. What is the price to pay for that? Right now my options are limited. I have invested in a TiVo dvr and a year of TiVo service and football season is coming up. My personal knowledge of technology ensures me that a time will come in the near future that I can rid myself of this Comcast. Consider this: I intended to eventually have Comcast cable, Comcast internet service and Comcast phone service. Now I intend to eventually rid my house of all traces of Comcast. In the meantime this is what must happen in the next 24 hours. I want every single channel that I am paying for restored and an email or phone call from Comcast assuring me that I have been refunded for the erroneous charges and that I am not charged one single minute for the dvr and m-card Lamont took with him. I also will not be charged for Lamont accomplishing nothing. Make sure the $17 is removed. Considering what I have been thru I should receive a month’s credit but I can assure you at this point with the time and money this has cost me that would be an insult. You will however give me what’s mine. I will not waste my time on the phone with another Comcast csr and I would prefer that no one else from Comcast be sent to my house. In the event that all of this does not take place at 5:00 pm eastern on Thursday July 30th 2009 I will draft a cover letter and place that and this entire email in letters to the president and ceo of Comcast and every member of the board of directors of Comcast, the FCC, the governor’s office of consumer affairs and the BBB. I also intend to post this email on comcastmustdie.com and any other websites or forum that will allow me. Next week I plan to start requesting meetings with the President, CEO and members of Comcast board of directors. These people need to hear in person what Comcast is doing to its customers.
Vincent Mark Hill mjvs2@bellsouth.net Cell: 770-862-5712 Home phone: 770-943-2876 Comcast Account Number: 8220 11 110 0848607 Motorola m-card Numbers Cable Card NO: 000-014-371-349-3
Host ID: 035-012- 059-318-0
Data: 304-463-243-00
Unit address: 000-00143-71349-101
Card S/N: MA0847CAN012
Terik Ororke
· 3 months ago
People need to swith to satellite TV or Fios and the like and it is time to dump comcast that cntinually robs the American Public and provides poor service.
Having worked within the belly of the beast, I can verify that there are within Comcast segments of employees who not only hate customers but actively persecute them. And there are segments that hate Comcast, and who work on their own shit and ignore the job. And there are segments who hate other Comcast segments, leading to a delightful mutually destructive corporate gangbang. As someone used to say, they're a trucking company that fell into digitality and still doesn't know what hit it.
certaindoom
· 1 year ago
Sounds like any company that deals with the public. I doubt Comcast has a monopoly on burned out or overworked / unable to "care enough for the customer"
Scott Westerman
· 1 year ago
I feel compassion for this person, but his comments definitely don't reflect my view.
With over 90,000 employees in the family, there are bound to be a few un-happy folks at any given time. The majority of us were attracted to Comcast because we have a passion for people and a love for the technology we deliver. We don't always get it right, but building strong customer relationships, one at a time, is the goal.
We also listen to feedback. If you're having issues with your Comcast relationship, the local team is your first best resource. But if the chain of command isn't working for you you can connect directly with our corporate special agents by writing to we_can_help@cable.comcast.com or by twittering Frank Eliason @comcastcares.
I'm happy to dialog with you if you are having bandwidth issues, too. You can write to me directly: scott.westerman@comcast.net.
@comcastscott on Twitter
lemon obrien
· 1 year ago
i use comcast and att&t like u dave; and comcast is ok; i have the internet, voip, cable deal. the phone went out once for a while; a second time, they sent over a guy and charged me $50 when I told them NOT TO SEND a guy out.
for some reason comcast and ATT&T execs think by being assholes to their customers they'll maximize profit. ATT&T finally offered "only DSL" you had to get a phone line too if you wanted one before. They don't get it, "WE WANT YOU TO SHUT THE FUCK UP (Comcast and ATT&T) AND JUST LAY PIPE AND STOP INTERFERING WITH OUR LIVES BY TRYING TO BE SOMETHING YOU'RE NOT.
sorry i had to shout; but, brother i feel your pain.
i really don't get the bandwidth argument; by law ATT&T was suppose to lay fiber to home; it was passed in 1999. The government has yet to enforce the law.
bruce M Lloyd
· 1 year ago
Poor thing. Must be tough having high speed internet disconnected like that without any notice. Bad Comcast! Very bad! I had my car impounded and because I was caught speeding! I pay 300$ a month for that thing, and if the speedometer goes up to 120mph I should be able to drive is at 120mph! The police are like Comcast!
Shane
· 1 year ago
The police would be like comcast if they took down the speed limits, erased the history of speed limits leaving you not knowing hat the limits are, told you that you could drive as fast as you want, pulled you over and ticketed you because you went over the limit, and then never told you what the limit was.
All Comments
Funny thing is, they said 300 was too much, well my ipcop router has logs for the last 2 years, and in June I used 600g. How come I didnt get a call? What Ive dug around and seems to be the reason is this. Some people on your node in your neighborhood called and complained things were slow. if they get a few of these calls they go into the node and check the logs. Then they blanket call everyone in the top '10%' there and threaten them. Its not an automated system, they wait for some complains, more than one, and then they call. Or that seems to be the common consensus around the net.
I still hate comcrap and will dump them the moment i can. AT&T is the only other major vendor here, everyone else is just a reseller of AT&T dsl so no real choices. I wish Verizon could move in to middle Tennessee but I doubt it. So till then...i just get an email every month near the end from my router saying "you used too much slow down for the next week" meh
that's all we need to hear, dave
further, if i were on the other end of the phone, and i even knew who dave winer _was_, i'd wouldn't care. dave winer complaining about something? sounds like par for the course.
do you really want a reaction from comcast? tell them that you're a blogger for consumerist.com. that will get them listening. somehow, i don't think that HURR I ARE DAVE WINER has the same effect.
http://consumerist.com/380752/comcast-threatens...
In practice it never matters, I've never seen a business be concerned about it, before they see the result. I have heard a wide range or responses after the fact, ranging from threatened lawsuits to offers of bribes.
If a service provider has to provide saturation levels to all consumers, how much are you willing to pay a month for it?
Two issues going on here:
1- Comcasts advertising strongly implies unlimited, when their applied policy means unlimited til you saturate or trip some metrics.
2- What unlimited in a colo or a T1 would actually cost. $200 and up. Which is what you really want. "unlimited" at the last mile currently is a shell game, they have 'enough' capacity to handle if a certain monthly mean consumption per house is reached. You with your usage blew that figure out of the water. For years ISP ate those costs. But as the number of people one could deploy on the last mile has dropped in recent years, from 3000, to 1000, to 500, to 200 today -- with all the web 2.0 greedy end user apps, always-on streaming, etc ... something had to give. Enter the Comcast TCP RST on p2p. Enter the 300 gb a month defacto limit.
The reason they dont tell you what the limit is, is because the second they do that, every saturation customer out there being thrown off of their own ISP will migrate to Comcast. Say the limits 300 gb / month. You know that, you are going to use 299.99999 a month, which does Comcasts' capacity planners zero for figuring out how to accommodate their mean usage curves, which are all going "up and to the right."
We know you're Dave Winer, but if you're 1% of 1% why should anyone put up with your consumption at consumer grade prices? If you really were using that much, and 6 full time PC on one consumer grade circuit strongly suggests you could, why not pony up and buy a colo or a T1 and be a real network? Quit bitching when you are exploding usage curves and demanding it be handed you for free.
Last thought. If I'm comcast, would I rather sell to 400 per last mile of 'normal' users, doing 'normal' amounts of consumption, or one highly prominent mac user who htinks he's deserving of more, just because he has a 6 PC lan and wants to run hourly stream syncs? At consumer-level pricing, what is their upside to catering to this consumer model? Versus 99% of their other users. Why would they? Seriously?
No.
The problem is not DaveW. The problem is "provisioning". Telecomm companies (cable and phone) "provision" their facilities expecting a certain amount of load (or consumption of bandwidth). The crunch comes when it turns out that their estimates are wrong. This used to happen to the phone companies all the time. But they didn't cut their customers (who they promised service to), off.
Instead they went out and installed more equipment/capacity.
The cable companies could do the same But instead of actually providing the service they told the public it was buying, they turn off their customers.
teh cables companies have never embraced the internet except as a means of delivering their product to consumers. What the consumers want and need has never been a consideration of the cable companies. Because of their narrow perspective the cable companies will never understand what we (the public) is going to want to do with the internet and so they will ALWAYS be underprovisioning it, forever trailing behind. Town X decides to manage its road system better, They install a sensor pod every 400 feet on their roads (temp, humidity, cheap ccd [to see if cars are moving] and a microphone) Now - how much to hook these up so they can be remotely accessed to gather the info? $40 a month for each one?
But in the words of Montgomery Scott, "You cannot change the laws of physics." How else is a ISP / services provider supposed to get capacity out into the field than with "provisioning" ?
You then go off on a rant about how those evil cable companies have never embraced the internet, but what really seems to be the issue is capacity doesn't keep up with demand, or rather, with "unlimited" demand. Unless network gear, and the physical space to store it, and the physical time and employee wages it takes to go out to multiple hundreds of sites around the country and install it has dramatically fallen, this magic network where capacity just increases on demand forever does not exist. You might wish it does, but it doesn't,, and can't. Physical limits on switch capacity, physical limits on what costs what to deploy, physical limits on how much wiring closet space is required, on and on. I agree it'd be awesome for your unlimited p2p if somehow Comcast and everyone else anticipated infinite growth, then built a network run on unicorns and rainbows to carry it. But it didn't. Better write your legislator and demand customer satisfaction. Or at least a marketing campaign by Comcast that matches reality. Which, really, seems to be the nut of most of these complaints, you were promised / led to believe "unlimited" in the ad actually meant "unlimited" in the Service Level Agreement / Terms of Service in writing. As a consumer, I'd be a bit miffed if it were me, too. If I hadn't worked 16 years on the inside of networks, I'd proabbly be steamed. But being steamed isnt going to magically make capacity planning change, and unless all the efforts to create wireless networks suddenly get the scalability issue solved (notice how they havent yet?) then we all will be constrained by what is physically possible, versus what is advertising promised.
Addressing "what is physically possible": You axx. You know as well as I do that it's physically possible to provide unlimited bandwidth across an entire node. The truth is that Comcast is greedy to the point of not caring. There's no law anymore that makes them do it, so they don't. And they won't, probably, until a class action lawsuit is brought against them. When a company advertises "unlimited bandwidth", that is not a typographical error. It's a lawful description of a product. Nobody here is talking about unicorns and rainbows except the comcast plant.
Provisioning. Since equipment costs money, space, time, and effort by people who are trained to go out and install, what happens if you make projections, then 18 months later new applications nobody knew about appear on the scene and blow those projections out of the water? What happens if your budget for hardware, in the tens of millions, was spent, do you go out and instead of 48 port local CO's, install 96 port (or 48 port in parallel, since 96 doesnt exist, lets say)
What about closet space, did we just suddenly build a new building or sign a new contract with another data hotel for this hypothetical new space?
People crying from the consumer perspective aren't seeing it from the network providers side, just trying to open things up here. It costs budget, time, planning, effort and lots of variables coming together from digging more cable to provisioning more hardware to make last-mile happen. Big upgrade, huge investment, alls well, and then: Youtube launches. Nobody expects what it does to last-mile capacity.
Network planners are smart, but come on, the net has been exponentially growing. Do you really want 1% of 1% to dictate how networks are built out? Do you want 10x capacity to be deployed, and costs demanded of everyone for it, just so some can saturate their use?
A person with 6 computers on one circuit is saturating the circuit. They are operating like a business, should be on a business T1 or even a colocation. NOT a consumer grade service. Not on how the current economy of telco and dsl and cable are laid out.
Please try and wrap your brain around the costs involved if everyone shows up doing what you do, consider that maybe it takes one company 2-3 years to upgrade the entire network, once they do the projections are already at risk for being obsolete. And for what? So you can run business grade usage on consumer grade pricing.
Comcasts enforcement is autocratic, but it is fair. Exceed the limit, get enforced. The alternative would be to employ a room full of people calling up johnny leecher and begging him to close his damn client half the time. How likely is that? And why would/should they?
Get the FCC to open the Cable network to true competition, and we'll see how things go, but right now, there is a choke point on the network, it is on the last mile, and telcos have to protect the capacity for the most users, not accommodate 1% of 1% just so they can run business class service over consumer grade pay tier.
"We tried that approach -- nice letters, nice phone calls, nice emails. most of the time people ignore them and go on doing whatever it was they are doing." Comcast and other providers should be very concerned if their people are thinking the same way your posts suggests. That customers-are-the-problem attitude eventually will solve all your last-mile capacity problems without any need to trouble the network planners.
"Big upgrade, huge investment, alls well, and then: Youtube launches. Nobody expects what it does to last-mile capacity." Take a long-term view. Youtube is the reason providers exist and network planners have jobs. The more Youtubes the better. Most businesses would kill to have such enormous pent-up demand for their services. Didn't Dave say that he would consider paying more for higher capacity service if he knew that was necessary and if given the option?
"But as the number of people one could deploy on the last mile has dropped in recent years, from 3000, to 1000, to 500, to 200 today -- with all the web 2.0 greedy end user apps, always-on streaming, etc ... something had to give. Enter the Comcast TCP RST on p2p. Enter the 300 gb a month defacto limit." You see unreasonable customers who have the temerity to actually want to use the "unlimited" service they purchased to run "greedy end user apps". I see unmet consumer demand waiting for the first provider who can figure out a profitable way to meet it. I see Comcast continuing to sell a level of service that its infrastructure can no longer support, and is less able to support with each new customer.
"The reason they dont tell you what the limit is, is because the second they do that, every saturation customer out there being thrown off of their own ISP will migrate to Comcast." If saturation users aren't migrating en masse to Comcast's supposedly "unlimited" service now, why would they start if Comcast announced a 300GB limit? A more likely explanation is that Comcast doesn't want to admit the problem because it would hurt sales and make their annual price increases more difficult to obtain. Comcast seems to be modeling it's current approach on the insurance industry --- sell policies on the promise of complete coverage, but hide exclusions and limits in the fine print and then fight like hell to avoid actually paying a claim.
There is a flip-side to your point about providers making a choice to serve the 99% of their customers who are "normal" users versus the 1% who are "heavy" users. They also made a choice to price their service at a flat rate for "unlimited" use, clearly betting that 99% of their customers won't actually use very much bandwidth. They could have chosen to charge customers based on actual usage, but that would have created marketing problems instead of the technical & service problems that Dave and others have experienced.
Comcast is unecessarily shooting itself in the foot by treating Dave (and others) as they have. If Comcast had sent a couple of "nice letters" to Dave's billing address explaining the problem, the usage limits and the consequences of not staying within those limits, and Dave chose to ignore those letters, none of us would give a second thought if Comcast suspended his service. Network capacity isn't the issue. The issue is transparency and good faith business practices.
Please view it from the point of view of a network capacity planner, who has to cram X circuits onto Y dollars for Z customers, or go out of business.
You guys seem to be omitting one key fact: most network operators dont set the prices at which they buy capacity. Sure they can compete for contracts, or buy capacity from network A or network B, and manage their network. But even the big boys have 100s of things to consider when planning for network capacity. Right now consumer demand is warping ahead about 2x, NX times faster than anyone can deploy to keep up.
Comcast has a marketing disconnect, I agreed with that, still do. Attempting to explain why that is. For 99% of their consumers, it IS defacto unlimited, because for 99% of their consumers, the need to enforce bandwidth never gets hit.
Whine all you want guys, networks have to manage their capacity, or everyone gets degraded service. If it were a simple button push to deploy more capacity, it would have already happened. Very real very logistical very slow at times real world problems occur when capacity has to be deployed, from new telco closet space, to new power capacity, new rackspace ,new facilities, new contracts for new facilities, new cities where demand might be expanding faster than anyone could have guessed 2 years ago, on and on it goes. All so you can run youtube to 6 computers on a home circuit.
Its remarkable it works as well as it does.
Man, who are you? If my company makes promises that I know cannot be met, I will be going out of business! If Comcast does this, THEY SHOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS.
It's not a simple button. It's a simple solution, though. Make your ads reflect the reality. If you can't provide UNlimited, then do not sell UNlimited. Where is the problem with that?
Oh, the problem arises when Comcast has to be honest. I forgot who we were talking about for a moment...
If you get a last-mile provider IN WRITING as opposed to a commercial on tv claiming unlimited, please do post it. I'd like to know how they're doing it, and whether it is more than a promotional beta.
Last mile is not unlimited in any network I am familiar with... this would have been controversial in 2005, now its pretty much becoming accepted knowledge, its very unfortunately comcasts claims make it sound possible, but there is no such thing as unlimited IN WRITING, only de facto unlimited before the neighborhood gets saturated and they have to do something because it isnt time to deploy more capacity yet.
Your usage sounds very familiar, it happens when end-user circuits mimick the usage found on business class circuits or T1. Comcast has packages that support that model. If they had handled the bandwidth issue better, its possible you would be interested in upgrading. We've gotten better at steering people who are going to saturate the circuit away from consumer-grade, because we know it'll just end badly. But in some cases, there's no keeping them happy regardless, cause they have this 8 yrs outdated view of how networks work -- namely, they're the only one on the block who has more than one computer plugged in. Taint that way any more my friend. We can barely break even on data and we have to manage our capacity carefully or find we're supporting more than we can recover. Many network operators are in the same boat.
Comcasts marketing is amusing, cause those housemates spots absolutely would be in line for exceeding their defacto 300 gb a month limit. But I am positive without even checking theres fine print someplace that says they can enforce on capacity, or on some vague "abuse of the network" standard. So they bait and switch, and you feel gypped, but honestly, find us a network that isn't enforcing capacity today, or rather, is promising in its Terms of Service unlimited. Then promote it. Cause I guarantee you two things happen, 1) the leechers flock to it, and 2) they have to stop, cause they cant pay their bills or keep bandwidth from not saturating and service degrading for everyone.
I also know some ex-Comcast employees who were treated like slaves and terminated unfairly.
Verizon seems to provide good service but they are a shitty company as afr as their business practices and undue influence in Washington.
We need the infrastructure of the Internet to be like public highways and have many more providers who keep in mind your privacy and the Constitution and make it clear what service they will provide and for how much.
As corporations gain monopoly status, they become unbearably arrogant and aggressive. They view you as a revenue generating unit, which is fine but I draw the line when they get in your face about it.
Thanks for blogging about it, the fact that Comcast man says he "didn't care" only shows the depth of his ignorance.
They either need to disclose the cap in writing or eliminate it.
Pretty easy to violate a secret hidden rule you only know if once you 'break' it ;)
Could you imagine if landlines were cut off "We niticed you used your phone often, so we shut it off"
And I do hate Comcast. I never even asked for their service, they just ate Insight.
Also making them function as a utility is vital, with proper checks and balances.
I go to school in Huntington, IN. The only high-speed internet offered here is AT&T DSL and Comcast Cable internet. Here they send out letters all the time for downloading too much and half the time you're bandwidth is cut down to 56kbs modem speeds. However up in Fort Wayne Verizon's Fios is selling like crazy (they're even giving away HDTV's now). Fios has had some bad reviews but in Fort Wayne the quality of the speed and service is really amazing. In response to that Comcast has tried to up their speeds and quality of service....so now they are actually pretty good in Fort Wayne (though still not as good as Fios).
Unfortunately you're kind of screwed if you're in a smaller town or an area where they don't have a decent amount of competition. They're a bastard if they can do so without losing a bunch of money.
It's always bothered me that ISPs say they are providing an "unlimited" usage service when in fact it is metered and limited. Comcast isn't unusual in this regard, unfortunately. I'm a customer of Sprint's all-you-can-drink EVDO service on my cell phone. I've heard they will squeal if you use more than an undefined X amount, but I've never hit the limit so I don't know that from personal experience.
Anyway, the answer was: no. They don't routinely monitor bandwidth consumption. Like Kevin suggested, they just wait until people start complaining.
My main gripe with T-W is their lack of phone lines when an outage occurs. You can't get through.
Check it out: http://www.menschions.com/post/31984080
According the Comcast's FAQ, anything above 2GB a month of data usage "can" be considered excessive since it's not within the typical usage pattern of their residential consumers, as they define it. What a joke!
Guess those Housemates ads and the Slowskys never needed to read them, but any consumer using home internet should, prior to assuming what is in the ad matches whats in the Terms of Service.
I listened to your mp3 and read through this. I think you just showed up on the radar of their Sandvine units. I can't confirm they used them, but those boxes -do- work as advertised. And unfortunately, you were probably impacting users around you.
-Jay
This is news to me. So couldn't they have shown me their data, instead of treating me like a criminal, explain what the problem is.
Further, if I never saw any slowdowns on my LAN going out to the net. why would any of my neighbors have seen a slowdown? That's a straight question. I obviously have a lot to learn here, and if I want to keep my net connection I have to understand this.
BTW, I've taken the initiative of shutting Comcast off until we figure this out. I have redundant connectivity so I can easily switch to another outbound link while I learn about these issues. If I end up not trusting them, I'll make it permanent. I don't accept their power over me. I'm a customer, I think I pay them a fair amount of money for the service, and I don't like how they treated me.
Assuming Comcast are using the systems for top talker reporting, there are also ways to create tiers of access and service levels. That leads us down the path of a Net Neutrality discussion or the valid uses of DPI technology which is another topic entirely.
I'm curious to see if Comcast pushes you towards a business bundle. That way you are given more SLA oriented access with (more) clearly defined paramters. I'm not going to say they would give you a true SLA... you'll get SLA like. I reserve the right to be amazed though.
What you notice on your little lan, and what is happening upstream, really aren't that comparable. Its possible you wouldnt have noticed anything, yet they were at 99% capacity on the next-hop, and heading up. Or its possible they have plenty of headroom, and only are enforcing everyone who hits X capacity per day or per month as a preventative. Entirely possible you will find that unfair. But the way the internet has always worked, yes even in 1991, was if a network operator had capacity issues, he could shut off people using capacity. Done and dusted.
What seems to be the only real issue you have here is Comcasts marketing blither doesnt match their network management policies. Thats a fair gripe. But not one that reflects in any way how a network of shared data transmission has to be run.
Either you deploy it like old frame relay or like a T1, and everyone is a locked in capacity -- and you pay for that -- or there are subscriptions over the theoretical maximum and some will use less and some will use more and the network operators have to manage that capacity as they see fit. Writing in too many rules on that will have unintended consequences, like a network operator being unable to guarantee any capacity at all.
Comcasts marketing is deceptive, but I'm positive they are covered in writing in the fine print on it. If they're not, it could be amusing definitely. But from a network management standpoint, them shutting off heavy users makes perfect sense, and is probably needed, whether you noticed it that day or not, they had metrics showing why they had to take that action.
You can watch it on VonTV tomorrow, too, or listen to the RealAudio feed from the FCC site.
Then there are people like this guy, who don't have that same advantage:
http://alexfalkenberg.com
His blog has been overrun with more than a full year's worth of BS dealings with Time-Warner/Roadrunner. And almost no one's noticed.
You should try Server4You web hosting. http://brianmcnitt.com/wp/images/server4you_cal...
well done
You will notice that the bulk of the arguments and criticisms against Comcast are not so much about the bandwidth limit, but rather that the rules are not properly or fairly identified, communicated or enforced. My ISP states clearly in writing that if I go over XGB per month then I will be charged $Y per GB. That's the information a mature, reasonable adult requires in order to feel like they are dealing with a professional company.
Using your speed limit analogy...
In the time I have been with comcast, they have upped the speed limit from 55 to more than 250 MPH. BUT... They also say that you can only drive a certain distance because you would use too much gas. They also won't tell us how far we can drive, just that we'll lose our liscence and car if we do drive too much.
I have this feeling that the total bandwidth that we can use per month changes from month to month. I think they just call the top 14K customers and threten them.
I'd be happy to stay within limits they set, if I knew what they were. If they were too restrictive, I'd look for other service (which I'm going to do anyway).
for some reason comcast and ATT&T execs think by being assholes to their customers they'll maximize profit.
NO what it REALLY is, is as follows. You want my internet. I am the ONLY game in town so get down on your god damned knees and beg me for it.
The REASON a company can treat you badly. Offer Unlimited service that is not remotely unlimited and have secret limits so they can continue to lie and say "unlimited" (the MOMENT they put forth a hard limit it would absolutely be illegal for them to use the word UNLIMITED see??) is because they KNOW they have you buy the nut sack that you can NOT go elsewhere. Like Car Insurance or Gasoline :-)
If Comcast called me and said he slow down or else I would have no choice but to say yes sir and do as I am told. I can not even get DSL at 18k from the CO. Its Comcast or Dial up.
That why we either need HEALTHY competition (IE more than 10 options to limit collusion or deep PEOPLE FAIR regulation from the government if competition is just not practical.
Comcast sent this to me years ago before canceling my account for a week. Looks like they changed their policy, makes me glad I don't have to deal with them any more.
Basically, Yes. They have backbone providers they must pay to receive internet access. Bandwidth is not free. Who do you expect to eat the cost for your free internet? (which was suggested in your podcast). Who do you expect to pay for the electricity that's needed to run the servers? Who is supposed to pay for the maintenance that is necessary to keep everything running? Me? Tax payers?
I pay them $180 a month. I'm not asking for a handout. If they want more money from me, let them ask for it respectfully and give me a choice.
Their first reaction to a problem is treat me like a criminal, not a customer, which is exactly what I am.
When Comcast network operators (as opposed to comcasts marketing dept, thats another issue) treat network saturation or the potential for it with impugnity, they are doing so to ensure their network doesnt get fully saturated, and impact service for everyone on that part of it.
Imagine you're the head of customer support, facing a complaint wave of thousands of people who can't even surf, all because of a handful of saturation level users who were left unchecked.
Ham-handed how they did it? Absolutely. Probably a PR blowback? Yeppers. But will any of that change the reality of managing networks? Not likely, and if forced by law, will have unintended consequences.
Is your $180 a month for just internet? Or for cable TV and every other service you can get with Comcast ? If its just data line internet, you're overpaying for the grade of service you're on. If its for the 'triple play" you're kind of lumping the money you pay for cable TV in with the money you pay for data service.
Yup, if someone uses what they are promised, everyone else can suffer. Comcast counts on people not using their services to the fullest extent. Here in Florida I had to purchase a signal booster, FROM COMCAST, because THEIR service didn't work. How's that for fun?
Comcast needs to SERIOUSLY increase their capacity, but don't want the expense of going out and laying more cable everywhere, so instead they just take your money and cut off your service with no notice.
Change your mail servers settings.
Click the box My server requires authentication.
Then change you outgoing mail server port to 587.
Problem solved
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/5729
You should make sure the FCC hears about your experiences somehow.
Honestly, I'd just stick with AT&T if I were you... Not that I've not had my issues with AT&T. I've written up my frustrations with them on my blog. 3 posts worth. You can read it here http://tinyurl.com/2mdqez if you'd like.
From my experience, and from talking with the people in the consumer unit at the station I work at, cable companies are bad news. I'm honestly glad I left Rockford, IL before Comcast bought Insight. I've heard that service has gone downhill since Comcast bought them. Likewise, here in Madison, I've said it a number of times... I REFUSE to deal with Charter. I've seen enough on them where they've ruined people's credit because they've continued to charge people for service even after it's been disconnected.
-Adam
"The Service is for personal and non-commercial residential use only. Therefore, Comcast reserves the right to suspend or terminate Service accounts where bandwidth consumption is not characteristic of a typical residential user of the Service as determined by the company in its sole discretion."
Sounds like that's enough to cover your situation. Kudos to whichever lawyer drafted those words, as they stack everything in Comcast's favor.
Is the bandwidth recorded per ip address or per neighborhood? Because I've got my router wired to 3 computers, 2 being used by "normal users" (not tech advanced high school student and a dad) and then me, the music downloaded (no torrents), movie streaming, 10 tabs open at a time student. Oh yeah, i edit a lot of photos and use flickr alot.
My issue? I have to reset our cable modem every few hours, if not every half an hour. Sure, the run down the stairs to teh basement is a workout but for how much we're paying for the service, i should be online allllll the time.
(and yes, i have replaced my cable modem TWICE and rerouted my house 2 or 3 times. no i am not using wireless as I am afraid of greater issues)
1) the network can't handle the load, or
2) they built enough capacity to do it.
I know of no network that actually built capacity for every one of its consumer grade subscribers to saturate their circuits 24/7 at once. None. Not even close.
So you can get upset at the misleading marketing, and you can even demand they provide more capacity, but at some point everyone -- even those not saturating their circuit -- will have to pay to subsidize those that do. I'm not sure thats what a majority of people want. Companies, even big evil ones, try to manage their network to the most capacity for the most consumers at once, without going broke doing it. Comcast just got itself in a bind claiming one thing with its marketing, that contravenes how ALL networks are managed on the last-mile on non-SLA circuits (circuits with SLA typically cost $700 and up a month, with a true SLA. SLA == service level agreement requiring what you're assuming you already had -- the ability to run full on 24/7/365 without possibility of being rate limited down)
I just started using Sprint's "unlimited" 3G service for my Macbook. As I know Verizon has capped their service to 5Gb a month, I asked the sales man in at least 4 different ways if there was a cap. He insisted that there wasn't. I guess I'll find out.
Cheers,
Randy
There simply isn't enough bandwidth for all users to be using a majority of their bandwidth at all times, which isn't a limitation of just Comcast's or even simply cable internet, DSL services suffer from the same exact problem. The statement that you are in the top 1/10th of 1 percent of all their users may sound like corp-speak party lines intended to freak out the customer, but your ranking ultimately means your use is having a detrimental effect on other users of the service.
So they should have contacted you? You're right, they should have, and they tried to. If they had a bad phone number on file (ultimately your fault) and couldn't get in touch with you via email just how exactly are they supposed to contact you? You can wave the snail mail flag all you want, but while the letter is taking its sweet time getting to your house, you're being a (admittedly, unintentional) pain in the ass to everyone in your area. You said you were connected quickly, so how long was your service down? An hour? 2 hours? More? Less?
Believe me, I'm a proponent of getting what you pay for, and in this instance you (according to Comcast's Terms of Service to which you agreed) got exactly that.
This is a psuedo-preventative measure, and allowing you to continue using your service in the way you were using it constituted a threat to their ability to provide the majority of their customers with the service they expect. It's basic game theory.
"The Service is for personal and non-commercial residential use only. Therefore, Comcast reserves the right to suspend or terminate Service accounts where bandwidth consumption is not characteristic of a typical residential user of the Service as determined by the company in its sole discretion."
That is directly from Comcast's Terms of Service, viewable here: http://www.comcast.net/terms/use/#network
So yeah, it is in writing. A "soft" limitation is still a limitation, quoting a hard number would be ridiculous since 1 GB one way or the other isn't going to make a real difference but WILL provide enough wiggle room for self-righteous d-bags to smugly cap their usage at *just* under the benchmark, thus screwing over their neighbors.
So until there's enough bandwidth for everyone to saturate their lines on a constant basis this is what you'll have to deal with if you insist on getting what (you assume to be) your money's worth. Always, read the Terms of Service and enjoy your ISP hopping.
At some point you have to let the people that know what they're doing run their networks. Or you can attempt to legislate (or rabble rouse) changes.
Let me know how that goes.
By the way, all networks pretty much have to manage their traffic, Comcast did so in a way they saw fit, if you dont like it get on a new network, check http://www.dslreports.com for lists in your area. But please just believe me, your demand is off the curve for most home users, and most companies will take an approach similar to comcasts: 1) rate limit it if you buy consumer grade, or 2) charge more if you demand that level of capacity be available any time you want, as opposed to any time the network can fit it in without killing everyone else's service.
What you notice in terms of your downloads is very off topic for how a network manages its capacity. The issues might line up, but its pretty much random and not really relevant.
if you get a penalty for doing something wrong it helps to know what that wrong thing is. if you cannot communicate that, how can you expect to not do wrong again?
it also very fair to consumers to let them know what you can and cannot do. by articulating the bandwidth limit consumers can know whether they should seek an ISP elsewhere. if they can't tell you what that limit is, then your just lucky, and you should be paranoid of writing that next email or visiting one too many webpages -- as long as there is no standard by which to measure fair use. after all, this limit applies to everyone. i dont use a whole lot of bandwidth. if i had uncapped unlimited bandwidth i probably would not download any more than i actually do. if they give us tools like powerboost that allows us to download a whole bunch very quickly then aren't they giving consumers the message they already have that bandwidth. heaven forbid everyone use powerboost. they'd have serious problems not defining right and wrong. and i thought Comcast advertised unlimited bandwidth, which if there is a limit in place, is false advertising.
I like my comcast service but I feel it costs way too much money. I am only with comcast and not AT&T simply because my home survived a hurricane without losing internet. its a shame that this corporation can't see thats its just plain wrong not to clearly define what is acceptable to its customers. shame on them for being rude and forcing an admission of guilt just to restore service too.
Which then requires networks to deploy about 10 to 60x more capacity than they do now.
Which then requires, assuming other costs dont change, that the cost for this capacity be passed along.
We can do this one of two ways folks. Either network planners can buy "enough" network for "most" people, and the policies we make to guarantee that might adversely affect a small minority of heavy users... OR ... we can build in enough capacity that everyone BY LAW is now required, and pass the costs on to the consumer.
Contact the EFF and discuss it with them...they might have some advice for you.
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/200...
Why don't the just regulate everyone's up and down speeds? Charter Communications only gives me so much, and I could have all my computers uploading and downloading at full capacity, and as far as I know, Charter wouldn't care. I can only use what they give me (or I pay extra for).
The equivalent analogy would be if a car company sold you a car with a promise that you could rive it at 60mph, but, in reality, you could only drive it at 60mph at 5am... the rest of the time, it might be limited to 30mph.
If it runs at all.
Bottom line: Comcast is selling a bill of goods that they fail to deliver.
There's no need for analogies, they don't work anyway, we all understand how the net works, and that it's only fair if you know what the rules are. They keep dodging the question, what are the rules?
Yeah I know their user agreement says they don't have to say. Great. Some nice way to treat a well-meaning customer. Customer, not slave, not criminal. Someone who pays to use the service.
I get a POTS connection. I call and gossip 16 hours per day. Then, modems proliferate...so I am connected to my BBS, then to my ISP 24 hours per day.
Does the phone company threaten to disconnect me? No. Do I use the phone service more than the avg customer? yes indeed.
They sold me and my neighbor a dial tone. When the dial tones run out, the telco drops in more lines.
That is how it works.
If CCast wants to 'limit' their offering, they need to explain those limits in no uncertain terms.
Cap me at 10G or 100G or what ever, but put a price on a service. The price is fixed (I cannot selectively pay them what I think they were worth in a given month based upon my personal analysis of market values), and so the service should be fixed.
Why don't they do this? Marketing ploy.
I have Charter, and they are equally bad in their high speed Internet.
I can't wait until AT&T runs their DSL line on my street.
Then, I will call them and
tell them to "Take your service and shove it!"
If I ever use too much bandwidth in a given month, nowhere near as much as 300g, but maybe 80g. My connection refreshes, goes on and off for a few seconds. This is AWFUL for online gaming. I have to disconnect from the server entirely before I can get back in, eating up almost 5 minutes every time. On some occasions this can happen after every several seconds of actual connectivity.
I had comcast before time warner, being a more mainstream user (50g a month at the time) Comcast worked fantastic for me.
I'll be switching to Verizon as soon as I get pissed off enough to do something about it. The sad thing is that it does control my game time to a healthy portion of my life =P
A friend of mine grew up in one of their worst performing markets... and the service was worse and customer support took forever to do simple things.
Also now that 12 months termination is over, they want us back. Our response?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hmOjoYUZFm0
Enjoy the video :D
Also now that 12 months termination is over, they want us back. Our response?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hmOjoYUZFm0
Press a channel and the info says this is channel so and so but you get some other channel.
Stations where they aren't supposed to be.
Let's see.
In the middle of a show. No signal.
In the middle of doing something on the computer...............oopps Sorry Mr. G you lost your connection.
I could understand if I lived in the boon docks but I live in the Philly area.
So that brings me up to November of last year.... Comcast was again out in my area doing "upgrades" oh they were wonderful let me tell you... 8 days of super high speed NO service. YAY I was so happy the neighbors that live in China could hear my glee. I called to see if they were done upgrading and they weren't. I called again on day 2 figuring maybe they were done "upgrading," according to the Comcast reps they weren't so I said okay I'm still without service can you credit me. They said they would once they knew how many days. I said that'd be fine. So I called back 3 days later asked if they were still upgrading (now 5 days without service). They said oh... they've been done for 1-2 day now and then continued to say let me get a technician out to your place. When are you available for 4 hours? At this time I about shit a brick. I have to give you time when YOU SCREWED up!?!?!?!?! I have to spend 4 hours at home when I don't have time to be spending at home (I'm at school from 7am - 10pm on most weekdays and I can't skip class for Comcast). This makes absolutely no sense to me. I don't care if your Comcast technicians need to verify that my internet is working. They obviously don't make sure it's working when they're out here doing upgrades. So I still don't understand why I have to sit around my apartment for a technician to come out and fix a problem that they did when they were upgrading. This is unfair; the credit that I get back is not enough for the time I've wasted waiting for your technicians to come out and fix their error. I deserve more.
So this brings me up to now. Guess what. My favorite upgrading "servicing" technicians are back. And guess what they did again! They screwed up my cables some how. And guess who was without service again because your incompetent Comcast technicians don't know how to hook cables up properly! OOO I bet you got it on the first try. I got to spend another 2 hours waiting for your technician to come out and service my cable box that's outside, that your Comcast service technician's screwed up; plus 30 mins on the phone trying to find out why I have no service. I had to leave my mother and my dying grandmother at home to come here today. Your 6 dollar credit is not enough to make amends to the time that I have lost with my family, the amount of paper that I've had to use at school printing my notes (~20 bucks worth), the time that I've lost waiting for your technicians for your own stupid mistakes, and the time and the increase in phone bills I've had to use in order to speak with your technicians and service reps about why problems have gone wrong. Please give me the keys to the box out there and let me fix the problem next time it occurs it will save us all a HUGE headache. And while we're at it why don't you give me 2 months free internet and cable to help with the cost of gas I've wasted trucking back and forth to school to print notes, and the money that I've spent printing notes at school.
Comcast has the worst customer care I have ever dealt with. they over billed me. in fact they double billed me. they sent me two bills covering the same time frame. I moved and stopped their service on the 16th of April of 2008, which was half way though the billing cycle. if any thing they owe me money, but they sent me two bills equalling $346.00 when my standard bill for their bundle was $99 a month. how can you cancel service and not even us a month of serice and owe $346.00? it has taken me weeks to get them down to $110.00
did you know if comcast over bill you they do not adust the taxes you were charged on the orginal bill. you still have to pay taxes on the orginal bill even though it was wrong? I think this is against the law. why Iam a paying taxes on a bill that they created with the wrong amounts? I agree there needs tobe someone else out there offering cable service, who understands the power of the consumer.
Respectfully,
Geri
ONE MOMENT PLEASE, THE CHANNEL WILL BE AVAILABLE SHORTLY
This has been going on since January 2008. It is now May 2008.
When I go into the Main Menu -> Cable Setup -> Display, it shows Disconnected - Not Connected. I tried to explain this to Comcast and was told my cable is out because the box was physically disconnected and I needed to re-connect the box. What ?!?! If the box was disconnected, how am I able to go inside the Cable Main Menu and read this to them ?? This proved that Comcast knows NOTHING about their equipment or how it's works.
I have called Comcast easily over a dozen times and what do/did I get:
1) Hung-up on.
2) Techs no-call, no-show.
3) Lied to - Repeatedly by Comcast about the scheduled day/time when the tech was "suppose" to arrive. This part is really really bad and apparently legendary. Countless times I was told that a tech will to arrive between 8 & noon or between 1 & 5PM and like an idiot, I waited - and waited - and waited - and waited. Called Comcast, like every hour to check on my scheduled appointment: no clue, I mean totally clueless - hugh waste of time. I was told they have no control over dispatches. And yet, you have to contact them to schedule a dispatch. What the HELL !?!?
4) Techs, if and/or when they do show up, have absolutely no clue on what is the problem and apparently why they were dispatched - I guess they are told to just show up.
5) And most importantly, tech not fixing the problem as my cable went out Tuesday, May 06 and is still out.
The few and I do mean few techs that did show up told me the following:
the problem is with the signal - the problem is not with the signal - the problem is outside - the problem is inside - when this happens, to call Comcast and have them send an INT signal to the boxes. This is like wiping out and re-sending the cable box configs. Any Favorite Cable Channels settings are gone. But you have to beg and plead with Comcast to do this and this is a TEMPORARY FIX. A few weeks later, cable goes out.
Another tech told me directly to -my -face to call Comcast and cancel the service as this would get their attention to fix the problem. I could not believe a Comcast tech was telling me to do this.
At others times I was told that the tech would come out and replace both HD cable boxes. Techs, again the few that did show up, were empty-handed - no replacement cable boxes. Techs did not know what I was talking about when I asked where were the new boxes. Comcast told me that they were sending out a tech to replace the boxes. Their reply was they were not sent to replace anything - and then asked, once again, "what is the problem ??" It is as if for the past 5 months, I have been talking to an empty phone in an empty room. Again, tech shows up with no clue on the reason they were dispatched - they just show up - and even that's a maybe - they may show up or they may not. No one knows.
I chatted via their chatroom last night about this 5-month-old trouble to Francis. This one stated that their Engineering Department is aware of the "issue" and are working on it right now. Sure they are !!!! When asked was exactly was the "issue", she replied I needed to contact some local office, as she " could not " tell me directly. I again pressed about this mysterious " issue ", only to be told information about it cannot be given out. Huh ??? I replied that it sounds like they already knew there was some kind of trouble and failed to notify the customer. Also, this " issue " is only affecting me. I live in a building with 90+ units, yet this " issue " is only affecting me - only ME. This was sounding like some kind of BS, big time.
I have been in the customer support field over 10 years with many different companies and have NEVER seen such BAD service. It is as if they are deaf, dumb and blind to the ability of providing SERVICE to their CUSTOMER. Isn't that what they are suppose to do ?? Customer Service means giving Service to the Customer.
Where is the follow-up call to the customer to confirm that they are back up and working ?? Where is the call to the customer to let them know the tech is running a little late ?? Or cannot make the scheduled appointment ?? Why do I, the customer have to call the provider to find out what is going on ?? Common courtesy dictates a call TO the customer would be nice, instead of a pissed-off call FROM the customer.
What is needed is another cable provider in Chicago. I will take ANYONE/ANYTHING over Comcast, I wish I could get satellite service, but I live in a condo that faces East. For satellite service, like Direct TV, I need to have an unobstructed view of the southwest sky.
Apparently I am left with no choice but to cancel service as the cable goes out at will with no fix and no cares/concerns from Comcast. None at all.
I pray to God in Heaven to please let Verizon FIOS, RCN, WOW-Wide Open West, or ANYONE get in my area and provide cable television service - and FAST !!!
There must be hundreds of thousands of pissed customers like me. Any suggestions you have would be appreciated. petehammer0@gmail.com
* We tried to call you twice this month (on 6/10 and 6/11 so this isn't exactly a lot of warning).
* Same story, in the top 1/10 of 1% of all their users.
* Will disconnect you for 12 months at the end of June if you use too much bandwidth for the _entire_ month of June.
* No we can't (I was also told won't at one point, can't was first) tell you how much you've already used this month.
* Even though we ourselves admit we didn't try to contact you until the 10th we'll be considering your bandwidth usage for the entire month of June. (I pointed out it was unfair and unrealistic to consider what I had done the 1st-9th when I didn't know there was a problem and wasn't monitoring my usage, he didn't care.)
* Was told the data on my bandwidth usage does NOT EXIST until the end of the month. (Frankly this makes me feel they're going to make up a number and do whatever they want irregardless of what I do this month.)
* We have no data regarding your bandwidth usage for any month other than May.
* No we won't tell you how much is too much to download.
* Can I upgrade to a business account? Was told only suitable business account would cost over $1500 a month. This is T1 pricing range, so I think he made that up. I"m totally willing to pay more for a business account, even though I don't download as much as I did in May very often.
* No you can't talk to anyone about how I've treated you (this after he told me won't instead of can't tell you, it seemed to be a slip-up), I'm the only person you can talk to.
* Didn't care that they're the only broadband provider in my area and that I have no other options than them.
If they disconnect me it'll ruin me, all my income's made online (such as it is), and I can't keep a normal job due to health (I'm in the process of trying to get disability in fact). I don't know what to do, maybe I'll try that comcastcares guy on Twitter (although I'm not really sure how to do that, I don't use Twitter), but I feel like they're intending to disconnect me no matter what. Their insistence that the data on my usage doesn't exist until the end of the month is just fishy as hell. I know it has to exist somewhere if they can compile it, so either they know and don't want to tell me my current usage or they're making their numbers up.
If there were alternatives to Comcast I would change right now. I definitely don't feel they've treated me anywhere near professionally and they're being beyond unrealistic in their demands. If you can't give me a number at least don't judge me on what I downloaded before you told me I was downloading too much.
Scott Westerman
scott.westerman@comcast.net
The email cam back with a notice that it exceeded the allowed size. Before going to tiersupport@comcast net, I resent the email directly through HTML at the comcast site. (It recognized a 12 meg file as 17 megs) Wow a lot of bloat! Anyway, most of the tier support people didn't evn know what size files were allowed (Or comcast has a policy of misinformation) long story short! Comcast will correct the problem in 48 hours. Nice to know that you get what you are paying for!
Thank you, Dave, reading this has saved me any future problems and complications I would of experienced if I had gotten the service, their actions sound unethical and unprofessional. A good company should ALWAYS put customer first and that the customer is always right, not place blame on them and then threaten them. I find their service to be very laughable and sad as well. Your blog does count a lot, because they just lost a future customer with their simple minded remarks.
I have to say, I love the service when it's working, but when it is not, it's easier to just WAIT than to call and get put on hold. All of our customer representatives are busy helping other customers. Yeah, at midnight. That means they only have one or two such representatives, or else they have a widespread outage and don't want to publicize that fact. The morning after there is no mention on the web of anyone else having an outage at 11:11 on 11/11/2008. Is that a coincidence?
Nope. Comcast has sucked and contibues to suck!
Network, Bandwidth, Data Storage and Other Limitations
Comcast may provide versions of the Service with different speeds and bandwidth usage limitations, among other characteristics, subject to applicable Service plans. You shall ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an overly large burden on the network. In addition, you shall ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, disrupt, degrade, or impede Comcast's ability to deliver and provide the Service and monitor the Service, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services.
You further agree to comply with all Comcast network, bandwidth, and data storage and usage limitations. You shall ensure that your bandwidth consumption using the Service does not exceed the limitations that are now in effect or may be established in the future. If your use of the Service results in the consumption of bandwidth in excess of the applicable limitations, that is a violation of this Policy. In such cases, Comcast may, in its sole discretion, terminate or suspend your Service account or request that you subscribe to a version of the Service with higher bandwidth usage limitations if you wish to continue to use the Service at higher bandwidth consumption levels.
it seems that we are truly boned, however, many people have talked to local officials and have gotten their way, which I suggest as I also hate comcast. Also, I doubt it was your flickrfan even on an excessive plethora of macs. You would have to be downloading an HD picture on every station 24/7 every 5 minutes to even hit the supposed bandwidth (anonymous comcast workers have stated that the average wall is 200GB/month). This amount (while shameful given the "unlimited" advertising) is the equivalent to watching 3 streaming movies 24/7. While it could be you flickrfan, I would suggest a spyware check to make sure nothing is stealing your bandwidth. Good Luck and stick it to Comcast as much as you can :)
p.s. I hate them too....they screw their employees too.
I still have a few more friends with the service that don't yet have a good alternative to Comcast, but just as soon as other options become available I'll see that they drop Comcast as well. There is, of course, a limit to the number of people that I know that have Comcast. I think that the most I will be able to directly change over will be around 60 people (when all is said and done), but that isn't too bad. Plus none of them will ever go back to Comcast without checking with me first (being that I'm their Computer geek friend that they go to for such advice). So, it's a reasonable amount of damage given what they did to me.
If Comcast messed with you then I recommend you do the same. At the very least you will feel a bit more vindication knowing that you were able to get some number of friends to dump Comcast as well. Comcast really should known better than to mess with the power users. It's the power users that tend to be the computer geeks that their other clients listen to. You mess with the power users then you don't just lose one account. You lose a bunch of accounts. I mean, I haven't been a Comcast customer for years now and yet I still take every opportunity to hurt them (justly so).
Actually, as far as I can tell they want to lower their overall bandwidth usage. I mean, they threaten to cancel my service because I use "too much" bandwidth so I have to think that I am doing them a favor by getting 60 people to drop their service; thus reducing their overall bandwidth usage. You are welcome Comcast. Glad to be of service to you. I'll keep up the good work on your behalf. Hopefully we can get your overall bandwidth usage down to 0.
I will say that it does sadden me to find myself so opposed to a company that I desire to see them run out of business. I mean, it isn't good for the economy and it isn't good for their employees for Comcast to fail, but I just dislike them so much that I truly want to do a dance on their corporate grave. It's actually a bit scary for me to dislike them so much that I don't even think twice about telling off some Comcast employee just for being a Comcast employee. I think, "How dare them work for such a horrible company!!!" and these can be decent people, but I just don't care. I know that it is just not fair of me to think such a thing, but I truly hate this company.
I’m writing this after Comcast put me thru 48 hours of hell but it really started over a year ago. I am an avid football fan so I decided after over 15 years of basic cable with Comcast to get a DVR. I researched the DVR and found that it was limited in recording size by a 160 gig HD. There was no option to upgrade it internally or externally. Comcast had also made sure the customer could not offload any recordings to a computer or get a different DVR. Everything was no no no. I decided to live with it expecting Comcast to eventually allow customers to upgrade. About two weeks ago with football season approaching I decided to revisit the DVR situation. I was surprised that it was identical to last year. Comcast has disabled or blocked every possible way to get more recording space. My DVR can record only 20hrs of hd. One HD football game lasts 4 hours. I could almost fill this DVR up in one weekend of football. This was when a co-worker mentioned I should get TIVO. The more research I did the more I found the answers were yes yes yes. The TiVo was highly upgradeable in every way. There was one problem. There is a multitude of horror stories on websites such as comcastmustdie.com and others of Comcast customers who have attempted and failed to get Comcast to do one simple thing (install Comcast cable card in the TiVo box). After researching the situation and considering I hold a Masters Degree in Information Systems from Kennesaw State University I figured I could walk a Comcast csr thru the process. I knew from my research I would be better off to go to Comcast and get the m-card because every part of this process could be done over the phone. It’s a simple matter of typing some numbers in a computer (m-card pairing) and sending an initialization hit from the vinings head end. I also knew that many of the service reps sent out have no idea what they are doing. I won’t even go into the trouble I went thru to actually get the m-card from Comcast. When my TiVo arrived I followed the instructions and made sure that the latest software was installed. On Monday night July 27th I was ready to make my first of about ten calls to Comcast customer service. The csr was named Pat. I knew from the online forums what numbers she needed such as host id and data ID. She said she didn’t need all those numbers that everything would start working in about 45 minutes. Nothing happened so I went to bed and started the next morning. I didn’t get the names of every csr I talked to but I know it was at least 8 and maybe 10. The fact that the first one I talked to didn’t set up a case file proves that their entire existence is a joke to Comcast. With a case file the eighth csr I talk to will know this. Asking them a question is equal to asking the guy that bags my groceries what to do about my cable TV. Some time on Tuesday afternoon on of the CSR’s mention that she could schedule a field rep to install my cable card the next day. I was exhausted so I reluctantly agreed knowing I may be paying 17 dollars for more misery. Lamont arrived at 12 noon today in a Comcast truck. I started bombarded him with technical information about Val:V missing and the Auth:MP problem. He didn’t know what I was talking about but he assured me he would get my cable card working. I took some notes. He called someone at 770-559-7800 using my phone because his was malfunctioning. He told them he was getting an illogical equipment message from the first person (the dispatcher) he called that could not help him. He said it was job number 681052. He switched the m-card I had received from Comcast with another one. He also solved one mystery. From the second I received the m-card I was billed for digital service a/o. He said the Comcast rep had charged me for an additional stb instead. These charges were on the bill I received on Tuesday. I was able to check the conditional access screen (which he knew nothing about) and see that the Val:? had changed to Val:V but Auth:MP still displayed which needs to be Auth:S . He said I was 36th in line to receive an init hit from the vinings head end. He said I should have all my channels within an hour and he would call back to verify. He assured me that if the init hit failed he would return to fix it. Indeed some unencrypted hd channels displayed as he was leaving. I commended him and told him I would keep checking channels until he called. He gave me a receipt and took my Comcast dvr and the original m-card I had received from Comcast. That was about 5 hours ago and no call. Below I have provided every piece of information Comcast may need to correct these problems. I believe it would take a person with basic knowledge of how to use a computer and telephone about 5 to 10 minutes to fix this problem.
The grief this has caused me has made a permanent negative impression on me concerning Comcast. What is the price to pay for that? Right now my options are limited. I have invested in a TiVo dvr and a year of TiVo service and football season is coming up. My personal knowledge of technology ensures me that a time will come in the near future that I can rid myself of this Comcast. Consider this: I intended to eventually have Comcast cable, Comcast internet service and Comcast phone service. Now I intend to eventually rid my house of all traces of Comcast.
In the meantime this is what must happen in the next 24 hours. I want every single channel that I am paying for restored and an email or phone call from Comcast assuring me that I have been refunded for the erroneous charges and that I am not charged one single minute for the dvr and m-card Lamont took with him. I also will not be charged for Lamont accomplishing nothing. Make sure the $17 is removed. Considering what I have been thru I should receive a month’s credit but I can assure you at this point with the time and money this has cost me that would be an insult. You will however give me what’s mine. I will not waste my time on the phone with another Comcast csr and I would prefer that no one else from Comcast be sent to my house.
In the event that all of this does not take place at 5:00 pm eastern on Thursday July 30th 2009 I will draft a cover letter and place that and this entire email in letters to the president and ceo of Comcast and every member of the board of directors of Comcast, the FCC, the governor’s office of consumer affairs and the BBB. I also intend to post this email on comcastmustdie.com and any other websites or forum that will allow me. Next week I plan to start requesting meetings with the President, CEO and members of Comcast board of directors. These people need to hear in person what Comcast is doing to its customers.
Vincent Mark Hill
mjvs2@bellsouth.net
Cell: 770-862-5712
Home phone: 770-943-2876
Comcast Account Number: 8220 11 110 0848607
Motorola m-card Numbers
Cable Card NO: 000-014-371-349-3
Host ID: 035-012- 059-318-0
Data: 304-463-243-00
Unit address: 000-00143-71349-101
Card S/N: MA0847CAN012
http://www.vmcsatellite.com/red_design/home.cfm...
With over 90,000 employees in the family, there are bound to be a few un-happy folks at any given time. The majority of us were attracted to Comcast because we have a passion for people and a love for the technology we deliver. We don't always get it right, but building strong customer relationships, one at a time, is the goal.
We also listen to feedback. If you're having issues with your Comcast relationship, the local team is your first best resource. But if the chain of command isn't working for you you can connect directly with our corporate special agents by writing to we_can_help@cable.comcast.com or by twittering Frank Eliason @comcastcares.
I'm happy to dialog with you if you are having bandwidth issues, too. You can write to me directly: scott.westerman@comcast.net.
@comcastscott on Twitter
for some reason comcast and ATT&T execs think by being assholes to their customers they'll maximize profit. ATT&T finally offered "only DSL" you had to get a phone line too if you wanted one before. They don't get it, "WE WANT YOU TO SHUT THE FUCK UP (Comcast and ATT&T) AND JUST LAY PIPE AND STOP INTERFERING WITH OUR LIVES BY TRYING TO BE SOMETHING YOU'RE NOT.
sorry i had to shout; but, brother i feel your pain.
i really don't get the bandwidth argument; by law ATT&T was suppose to lay fiber to home; it was passed in 1999. The government has yet to enforce the law.