Industry Insider Blasts Comcast

gordette writes "I'm posting this because Comcast did the same thing to me that this journalist describes — held my HD channels hostage by insisting that I shell out for an expensive cable package. The journalist is blasting Comcast for their 'shakedown' of consumers, and is doing so in full view of industry insiders. She also links to an earlier blog post describing Comcast's Motorola DVR problems."

Wow

[niceone]

I'm kind of shocked that anyone would shell out $2000 a year for TV. Is that common?

Re:Oh stop whinging

[clickclickdrone]

You're missing the point - it's only TV - you can go without it, your life isn't going to end. I used to watch obscene amounts of TV but between work and having children, I don't think the TV ever gets to see kids channels. I reckon I watch maybe an hour a fortnight if I'm lucky. I haven't died yet.

Re:Oh stop whinging

[clickclickdrone]

That should of course have read "anything BUT kids channels."

Re:Is this EVEN LEGAL ???

[nysus]

Remember when Oprah got sued by the beef industry for expressing her concerns about the safety of meat? Better watch what you say in public about the products you use. Unless it's gushing, fan-boy enthusiasm, you could have the "product libel" lawyers all over you. So, yes, it's safer to just shut up; don't make any waves. It's one of the small prices we have to pay for freedom in this country.

Hell, people shell out a $1200 for cell service.

[Shivetya]

I know quite a few people with 1 or two kids who pay nearly $100 a month for cell service.

Combine that with all the other monthlies people tend to accumulate and no wonder most are always "broke"

Cable companies will soon be parasitic relics

[Belacgod]

I've gone completely computer. I buy a lot of DVDs, download through Itunes, and watch off network websites (specifically Heroes on NBC.com). The last one is free, but relatively low-quality (but will tide me over 'til the DVDs arrive). A whole season of a good show goes for

I think this is the future of content provision--over the internet, straight from the content companies' websites. Speed and quality will increase, the content companies will start charging on a pay-per-view or subscription basis for the good stuff/good quality, a large number of individual plans will proliferate, and the cable companies will be reduced to ISPs.

Re:"back charges"

[Acid-Duck]

I'm guessing this is standard practice for lots of companies, think about how easy it would be for someone to run up a big bill and all of a sudden call the provider and pretend to be someone else who just moved in to avoid paying the huge bill. it probably has been done before (just show up to pay your bill caash every month, no credit cards to verify your name)and that's why they're so strict now. I'm with them on this one.

Erik

Re:Hell, people shell out a $1200 for cell service

[speaker of the truth]

no wonder most are always "broke"

Its called living above your means and something people do on a fairly regular basis.

Re:"back charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

It shouldn't be easy to run up big bills on your cable. As soon as they don't pay, shut the deadbeat's cable off. At most it should be 1 month's payment they owe and a cable company should be able to absorb that.

Re:Oh stop whinging

[pallmall1]

You buy or your don't buy.

That's not the point. Comcast cut her service level without notification -- basically like getting slammed on cellphone service. What they did was drop the package that she subscribed to (again, without telling her that her package was discontinued) even though her account was in good standing. Just because that package was "grandfathered in" from AT&T before Comcast took over the cable in that area doesn't mean that Comcast can just drop the package that current subscribers have. They can raise the price of that package along with system wide rate hikes, but if the channels in that package are available on the system, they have to be included in that package. I had a similar situation with COX about two years ago, so unless the FCC regulations have changed, Comcast may be violating some rules. Comcast probably changed the lineups without making provisions for legacy packages. This may have been unintentional, but the fact that they did not notify legacy package subscribers of the change should raise questions. The lack of notification could be an oversight, or it could be because they realized they made a mistake and thought they could quietly get away with it, or it could be the result of a plan to illegaly force subscribers to "upgrade" their packages. In any case, there are probably other packages that have been affected, and the FCC should investigate the matter. It may just be TV, but TV is part of the fabric of modern society just the same.

Re:"back charges"

[bkr1_2k]

How many pay-per-view movies and "events" can you watch in a month? Now consider you have 3 college kids living in the same house, all with a light courseload. Big bills can't be that difficult.

Re:Wow

[bkr1_2k]

You're a "low budget family" paying $180/month for cable?

I think we have different definitions of low budget.

Re:"back charges"

[Buran]

So you support the notion that companies are going to blame this guy for something someone else did?

Hell no.

I would have told them "Thank you for informing me that you do not want my business. I will now be spending $x with your competitor, who is willing to not treat me badly for something someone I don't even know has done." *click*

Re:"back charges"

[OldHawk777]

Cable companies and executives has a lobby on /..

This is corporatist welfare economics. Like the RIAA/DMCA/... US citizens are persecuted, until proved innocent.

If companies can not control/secure their resources/assets, then they need to go out of business. Persecuting the innocent for proof of innocent, or make additional welfare payments to support a Bad-Biz model is the real crime to a democratic nation and a capitalist economy. The more BadBiz models (with Government permission/protection) being persecuted and requiring innocent customers to prove innocence, honor, and honesty the less the USA is FREE, DEMOCRATIC, CAPITALIST. IOW: Stop the persecution, fyck all plutocrat corporatist and their welfare BadBiz models.

One corporatist welfare BadBiz model that reminds me of the old 1950/60s mafia loan sharks is the present credit card rates today. However, that may be due to inflation (think about it ... "percentage"). Today annual mafia percentage is 100% plus, but balloon-loans that take the money and the property are close to the mafia rates. In the USA we now call all this good ethical, honest, and open Biz/Gov models/laws/...FUS. Yes, like the acronym FUS corporatist, plutocrats, politicians...

Don't worry, Be Happy, !HAVEFUN!

Re:"back charges"

[will_die]

I found an easy way to deal with services like that. Call them up and when they say someone else is already at that address tell them that person died and you just moved in.
You can try to explain that the other person has moved, etc but when you add that the other person is dead it seems to clear most problems. People want to be a little more helpful and with the other person dead it cuts off most avenues that they can take.
This also works with paypal, if you forgot your password don't want to go with the hassle of sending in the paperwork to prove who you are and don't have any money in the account send them a email telling them that the former holder at that email account has died and you want them to kill that account from thier records. Wait a day or two and the account is gone and you can resign up. I have done it twice with my own account and once with someone else; since then I have started to use Bruce Schneier's Password Safe.

Re:"back charges"

[plague3106]

You're right, but they also have the right to refuse service without it. Even a video store can do that.

Re:Oh stop whinging

[plague3106]

Oh my god. Comcast didn't indicated that almost 2 years later the price might go up.

Read what is written again. Its not that the price went up, its that they silently forced her into a higher, more expensive tier. That's something I would expect to be told about, and not something I'd expect to be forced to do.

Re:Oh stop whinging

[Lumpy]

Also people forget that there are other cheaper options.

Get an ATSC tuner and a decent small/medium antenna. I get more ATSC digital channels OTA than I do regular analog.
Get a dish. Dish network+DSL is almost 1/2 the price of Comcast cable+Cablemodem and I get WAY-way-WAY better service. All channels are clear so my linux PVR box record them perfectly for recompression to xvid. DSL is incredibly faster than cable simply because the latency and jitter are far lower (Own cablemodem kiddies in online death-matches all the time because I have DSL) Voip works better over DSL because of the above reasons as well.

And yes, this is coming from an Ex Comcast guy. I drank their coolaid, I did the rah rah rah we are so cool! dances... and only when you sample the competition do you realize how badly we were screwing our customers. Properly installed and with the $29.99 upgraded dish does NOT have rain fade (and i am firing through the edge of a tree with a bigger dish and aimed correctly) I don't get light interference on higher channels because the Cable guys cant be bothered with adjusting the tilt compensation on their Cable run to my home, or the tap on the pole is 15 years old and needs to be replaced and they refuse to do so.

Yes you can live without TV and boradband, but there are other options out there, lots of them. Hell cant get DSL? do you have line of sight to a friends that can? set up a 802.11g point to point link, it's dead easy and your buddy will like you splitting the bill. (just dont do that in Sparta, MI the sheriff, Officer Milanowski, will probably shoot you for it.)

Re:Wow

[mjwise]

Two things:

1) If you can afford $180 a month for cable, you're not low budget. At least not by any standard I would use.

2) No DSL provider in the continental USA has used internal DSL modems for years. Nearly all use external modems with onboard PPPoE and ethernet connectivity. So, basically, it's no more difficult than setting up a cable modem connection.

3) You could take two months worth of savings from canceling cable and get a new computer.

Re:Oh stop whinging

[Lockejaw]

Does being "the provider" mean they get to choose which of their own terms they have to adhere to?

Re:just cancel

[Aqua_boy17]

You mention satellite. Satellite is great. I'd get Dish in a heartbeat, if my landlord allowed it.

We have a law in Florida that prohibits landlords from denying tenant's use of the dishes, as long as they're the small version. It's comforting to know that there's at least one thing about my state that isn't completely screwed up. Someone in your state should start a petition drive to enact the same sort of law.

During our last round of hurricanes 2 years ago, I got lucky and the cable line was the only thing that went down. Since I had never used it anyway since moving in, I just coiled it up and threw it over the fence. I don't even want their lines attached to my house. Comcast is the absolute worst company I've ever had to deal with. They will never get another dime of my money - even if I have to resort to using my foil hat to capture a signal.

Re:"back charges"

[_xeno_]

I would have told them "Thank you for informing me that you do not want my business. I will now be spending $x with your competitor, who is willing to not treat me badly for something someone I don't even know has done." *click*

And, in the majority of the US, the response would have been quite simple:

"What competitor? There's a competitor? You mean satellite? Wait, you live in an apartment, right? Good luck getting that dish approved by your landlord."

Re:"back charges"

[BodhiCat]

Bodhicat has an alternative. I spend my free time reading A German translation of the Lord of the Rings at the local coffee hang-out, Black Dog. When I get tired of reading I can usually find someone to play chess with or have a chat. And its only $1.75 for some really great coffee from a locally owned establishment. Now that is entertainment for nurds.

And you wonder why iTunes is popular.

[SuperKendall]

Basic cable + internet + shows ala carte from iTunes = cheaper (unless you watch a rather large number of series, through the whole year).

Cancel Cable, go OTA.

[tji]

Since the late 70s there was a continual migration away from OTA antenna reception onto cable and later to satellite services. But, there is a small, but growing, trend back towards antenna.

Digital TV services offer high visual quality high definition broadcasts from the local broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox). The digital reception is a big improvement over the old analog stuff. As long as you can get a strong enough signal (which may require a bit of initial antenna tweaking) you get a perfect picture.. no static, shadows, etc.

If there were more OTA DVR options available (like the HD Tivo, but at a decent price) I think many people would be completely satisfied with OTA-only. With a DVR, you can replace the need for a bunch of channels to surf through with a queue of pre-recorded programs to browse through. Theoretically, those pre-recorded programs should be closer to your viewing preferences than the random garbage on cable.

There are some good roll-your-own options, like MythTV. But, few people want that much effort for TV viewing. Sony and LG both made OTA/ATSC DVRs, but they weren't very popular. Maybe this will be more of a hobbyist thing for a while.

Re:Comcast sucks donkey balls...

[BosstonesOwn]

Oddly enough I found the opposite to be true , and the sad part is it is all regional. So good service can some times be county to county or even city to city :(

My dishnetwork was great , solid even during blizzard like snow falls. I am in the northeast as well right outside of boston actually and my dishnetwork setup never had issues even in heavy rain i would get some pixelation but very little loss of signal. And they had good quality HD. I switched to comcast because dish refused to swap out a dvr that they destroyed with a software update. My 622 would never tune a channel after the update. It just hung on the menu screen and kept checking for a satellite signal.

I swapped to comcast and my cost not only went up $15 but they are charging $15 for an hd dvr a month then $3 for the remote. and $5 per outlet. I am sore that I got rid of my dsl and dish for comcast.

I went over to a rather well off friends home who has fios, and looked at his channels to mine , he pays $26 less a month for tv alone. Then $5 less for phone and $20 less for internet. Thats $51 a month, which would be a nice $600 chunk in my pocket a year. Hey could feed my addiction to new procs every year. The phone is crystal clear , the picture is truly beautiful on the hd channels and much better on sd. The internet is rock solid and the damn thing hits 20 mbit without an issue. I wish my cable service was as cheap , solid , and as fast.

The major thing that sucks is like you said there is no perfect one , and it's always regional. Some areas are just better maintained and better managed then some and that is really what makes the difference in quality, except for satellite services which are nationwide.

Just stop, that's all...

[JRHodel]

One day, outside the bookstore at a new strip mall near here, I saw a young woman shouting into her cell phone, saying "You don't understand, I don't want to talk to you any more!" and I thought, "Hang up." "Don't answer."

If Comcast doesn't treat you nice, tell them to come and get their nasty little box, or you can mail it to them, but you're done with them.

End of story. Don't whine around about it, vote with your money by withholding it from them. Once enough people stop paying them, they'll understand the clue.

If I were you, I'd worry about OCD TV watching! Read a book or two, take a walk, quit that TV addiction and get a real life!

Of course they want to bleed their customers dry!

[Anonymous Coward]

Their new skyscraper headquarters in Philadelphia [philly.com] isn't going to pay for itself, people!