Industry Insider Blasts Comcast 413
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."
Starting a inde cable (Score:4, Interesting)
I have wondered what would it take to start a community cable service, which provides basic HD (OTA reception is bad) and basic cable. Internet service offloaded in bulk to a competing ISP. Has any one any experience in such project, any links on how one can achieve this ?
I know one has to get licenses from the local municipality for providing utility, besides the politics, what are the technical challenges. Is it even doable ??
Re:Is this EVEN LEGAL ??? (Score:5, Interesting)
-- Ralph Nader
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Comcast HD receivers soon available for sale? (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently added HD to my Comcast subscription, and admit to still being a bit confused by the specifics of Comcast's scheme. On their channel listing, they indicate that with their most basic digital cable package, the HD versions of the broadcast networks (NBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, and PBS) should be accessible. What they don't tell you in that listing, is that currently the only way for you to decode the HD signal transmitted by Comcast is to get their tuner (either in DVR, or standard tuner models), and presently, the only way to do that is to rent the device from Comcast. Now, as I understand from the Comcast sales rep, the only way to get that device is to upgrade to a more expansive cable package, which includes SDTV channels such as ESPN, MTV, etc, and naturally costs more.
However, the installation technician clued me in to a possible new option. He thought that the tuners would soon be available for sale at Best Buy stores. Now, from Comcast's own channel listing, I'm presuming that I should be able to purchase one of those tuners at a one-time cost, drop back to basic digital cable, and reduce my monthly bill by some $40 a month while still getting at least the broadcast networks in HD. Of the channels currently available to me with my chosen package, the only HD channels that really are of interest to me are the broadcast networks, ESPN (occasionally), and Discovery HD. So it's certainly not worth an additional $40 a month. Were my cable TV subscription not also tied to a lower rate for my cable internet connection, I'd probably just plunk down the cash for an over-the-air tuner and antenna. Come to think of it, at $40 a month, that option might quickly become more cost effective.
Comcast Horror Stories are Common (Score:5, Interesting)
#1) I often had to go for months without internet service.
#2) More than half of my digital channels didn't work.
I had to buy a new phone every month because their customer service (or lack thereof) had me so frustrated, I would throw the phone against the wall, and I would scream so loudly, my neighbors would call an ambulance.
I eventually returned their "Digital" box, and told the rep that their service wasn't ready for prime-time. The nail in the coffin for me was when most of the channels showed up as pixelated blocky bits with no sound. It was a waste of time.
The internet problems, as well as the Digital TV problems, all turned out to be a lack of signal coming into my building. I repeatedly had technicians come over, determine the signal was bad, and proceed to clip the cable coming out of my wall another inch shorter and then leave.
Finally, they couldn't make the cable any shorter.
I called Comcast time after time to explain to them that the problem wasn't the short cable in my wall, we'd been through that already. I wanted them to run another cable in from the street, since the cable from the street split 20 ways after it came into my building.
After about 2 or 3 years of this back and forth issue, a guy came by with an amplifier that sat under my couch to try and amplify the 1/20th of a signal I was getting. That worked for about a week and then I couldn't get the internet.
A technician replaced my cable modem. That worked for a week, and then stopped.
Then I was told that they'd have to replace the wiring in the building. That was unfeasible.
So, again I complained. By this time, I was seriously considering moving.
By the time they installed the amplifier in the basement as well to amplify the signal before it was split 20 times, I was house hunting (I needed a garage anyhow, and I'd outgrown the condo).
That worked for a while. But not long.
I can only wonder if they EVER ran a second line into my building. All I know is that I now have Verizon DSL and Direct TV.
The only way I'd ever go back to Comcast is if they paid me. I spent more time teaching their tech support people how to do basic networking than I spent at my own job. Frankly, I should send Comcast a bill for $72,000 for consulting.
They are possibly the WORST corporation I have ever had to deal with. How they got so big with such crappy service I cannot understand. They make Verizon look competent, and that's saying a lot.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
I just love how every year, like clockwork, they increase the price. And there aren't a ton of new channels being added to justify the cost. We don't have HD, so there's no HDTV channels that need to be there. I'm not sure if it is just costing them more to license out or lease out (however it's done) the channels from companies like HBO and such. I mean I love HBO brand tv shows, watch them all the time, especially On Demand, but I'd never buy them on DVD cause HBO prices their dvd's horribly (like $80 for 13 episodes of The Sopranos? 13 whole episodes? come on...).
I'd go with another company but there aren't any real broadband cable providers, everyone else only has DSL and since my PC is ancient, it can't use a USB connector for the modem and I really don't want some house-call technician installing a DSL card (we're a low budget family so if he fubars my 7 year old PC, I'm screwed).
Re:"back charges" (Score:1, Interesting)
Wouldn't you want proof if you were in the same position?
Money way of solving problems (Score:4, Interesting)
"Sure, I'll consider that
Comcast isn't the only one who's guilty of this... (Score:3, Interesting)
A utility screwin with you, mercy me !!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
MCI - My MCI Neighborhood phone line. It started out at $49.95. Now it's up to $54.95 for 100% exactly the same service. Of course between junk fees and taxes the true cost is about $77/month
Sprint - My cell phone bill has 'errors' in the vicinity of 5% every month. Every month. For the last 3 years. I would rank customer service somewhere between Gitmo and prison rape. And the retail stores are in fact useless for anything other than new customers. That's actually a fact they will verify if you ask them. It's debatable whether the level of lying they perform when you try to buy something from them crosses into the realm of fraud. In either case they don't care. As an experiment ask them to verify the price they tell you with what's on their website. They will simply hang up on you without comment.
CIGNA Healthcare - Cannot verify over the phone whether I am a subscriber or not, to the pharmacy. I could understand if they refused to because HIPPA is the new holy grail of an excuse to refuse to 'do' customer service. No CIGNA actually can't. Their online systems don't work well enough to do that. But hey my call is very important to them.
Time-Warner - well their service relatively speaking is ok. It works and the bills keep coming. But when the service drops out because of some technical glitch, even in some cases for more than a day they suddenly speak only Ebonics when it comes to rebates.
Xbox support - Just give up. They're in India. They can't understand what you're saying and you can't understand them. They literally cannot speak English well enough to communicate with you. Hang up the phone and keep calling till you find someone who does.
Mitsubishi USA - Their official policy is to have their lawyers send you a threatening letter if you complain about one of the dealerships. In this case Leith Mitsu of Raleigh, NC. Even though they have service bulletins up the wazoo they will not address any of the issues unless you pay for them. And the dealership told me with a straight face that parking my car outside invalidated the warranty. The national network's response to a complaint is to send out a letter telling you to go to hell and if you persist in writing to them they will sue you for something.
Crock (Score:5, Interesting)
And now the various states are passing legislation to take away regulatory power from municipalities. They're pretty much the only thing that stands between us and monopolistic abuse in many cases, because the states sure don't care.
And some people actually think that net neutrality is a bad thing. What's going on with cable TV should be proof enough that without net neutrality, we're screwed. Lack of enforcement of net neutrality is the same as subtle deregulation of the cable TV industry - it lets the cable companies use their monopoly (or duopoly, if there's a DSL-providing phone company in the area) to abuse their customers.
Re:"back charges" (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the exact problem with Comcast. They have no problem telling people they don't need your business and we as consumers seem to think that's somehow acceptable. If you don't need hi speed for work, don't pay them a penny and suffer the dial up for a while.
They tried to double charge me every month for nearly a year and I finally gave up. I told them they could cancel my service and I wasn't paying the money I didn't owe them. I figured one negative credit hit (which mysteriously never showed up) was not worth the effort of wasting my time arguing with them over a couple hundred dollars. Comcast can kiss my ass.
Re:Comcast Horror Stories are Common (Score:2, Interesting)
Now it was only $19, and yes I could of just paid it. But, they pissed me off. I wrote letters of complaint to my State Attorney Generals office, and the State Attorney General where Comcast HQ is. Also, complained to the BBB, FCC, and local Comcast office. Challenged the charge with the collection company, and told them if it wasn't removed from my credit report or I didn't get satisfactory explanation, I would take similar action with them.
After all this boy did I get people calling and apologizing and asking what they could do to help me.
Moral, some times it pays to bitch. I figure I made a bunch of people at Comcast lives miserable and cost them at least a few thousand $$$ in all the time the spent answering government complaints. And if somebody had just taken two minutes to politely answer my questions, it could have been avoided. Since that day, I vowed if I ever had to make a choice between Comcast and no Internet / TV service, I would pick the latter.
Comcast is fine for me... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I ordered digital cable, the guy came out to drop off the box and asked if he could measure my signal level. It was just good enough (3dB of margin) so just to be safe, he replaced the cable ends on both sides of the cable from the basement to the jack in the living room, made me a new cable for the TV using their ultra-high-quality coax and ends (they do NOT skimp on cable), and a new splitter in the basement.
A while passed, and I ordered a second box with DVR capability and an HDMI output for my panel. The installer came out and dropped off the box, and when I called to activate it, it wouldn't activate. They had him back at my house within 20 minutes. He again measured the signal and discovered there wasn't enough at the new box. So, he checked the feed into the basement - still too low. He then went outside to the outdoor junction box and measured there, and it was fine. Apparently, my neighbor had some contractors doing work and they nicked the underground cable while they were installing a new sliding door.
Anyway, the technician said the underground cable was bad. I asked what my options were, and he said he could call for a digging crew to come out in 4-6 weeks. He then walked over to his truck, grabbed a shovel, and buried me a new line from the outdoor junction box and the feed into my house, and everything worked fine after that.
So, if Comcast is so universally evil, I've certainly never seen it...
Re:"back charges" (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been wondering how much a DirecTV's DVR hardware is worth (in theory, not if I actually tried to sell it). I stopped the DTV installers from stealing my dual-tuner Tivo, but they left the DTV DVR here anyway. DTV was supposed to send a prepaid sticker so I could return it, but that was eight or nine months ago. The damned thing is brand new, in the box. At the one year mark, I'm liberating the hard drive and taking the rest out in the woods to shoot it.
Who is this woman? (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple (Score:3, Interesting)
After getting totally screwed over by Bell's DSL 'service' for several months, I got fed up and dropped back to a third party dial-up ISP. Wow. No more headaches, and I realized that there was very little about the internet which I needed high speed for anyway.
Interestingly, the trouble with my DSL account, (my login and passwords being locked out and nobody on the service help end being able to figure out why or how to fix it, setting up new accounts where the same thing would happen, lots of head scratching, blah, blah, blah), all started when I began posting mountains of political stuff during the launch of the war in Iraq. It had been a fine service up until that point. --The crap the establishment was trying to pull at that time was amazing, and the holes in all the stories were typically open only during the first few hours/days of an operation, so research speed was a priority.
-FL
Re:"back charges" (Score:5, Interesting)
It was the weirdest thing. I told them I'd be happy for her to keep paying for my phone usage, but I thought it would be fairer if I paid for it myself. In the end her daughter had to call up and cancel the phone service.
I now use DSL and VOIP from speakeasy. I've ditched the phone company, and find my perpetual bile against the phone company is slowly, after several years, starting to wane.
Now I'm starting to hate my bank.
Re:just cancel (Score:5, Interesting)
If the landlord tries anything, you're entitled to either petition the FCC directly, or sue in your District court for an injunction, during the process he is prohibited from taking enforcement action against you either.
If you'd like more information, feel free to e-mail me at jkoebel#gmail.communism and we'll talk.
Re:"back charges" (Score:5, Interesting)
I can top that. I was an early cable internet adopter. Back in the day, the local service did not provide cable modems, you had to buy your own. So, of course that is what I did. Eventually, the company I had service from was bought out, and then the area was swapped to Comcast who took over the service. Okay, aside from being incompetent hacks whose service was spotty and support was clueless, all was well and good. Then I moved. The demanded I give them back "their" cable modem. I told them they never gave me one. They did not believe me and required I dig up a 4 year old receipt to prove I had bought one. In the end, I did get my credit card statement and they said okay. A few weeks later I got another bill and called them. They said it was their mistake. That happened a dozen times easily, over the course of the next year and then I started getting collections notices from agencies, who I called and told my story to and who all then went away. I was threatened with court numerous times, which I would have welcomed at that point, but they would never follow through with their legal threats so I could get it cleared up.
I have no idea how much this damaged my credit rating, but I assume significantly. I should be able to bill those bastards for the hours and hours I spent on the phone. You know what the worst part is, right now where I live my choice is Comcast or the local phone co. who wants $60 more than Comcast just for internet service. The fact that my tax dollars subsidized this lousy service and insane prices makes me want to kick a congress critter in the balls. We seriously need telecom reform.
YACHTS (Yet another Comcast Horror/Tragedy Story) (Score:2, Interesting)
2 weeks later, the friend whos name was on the service/check, was suddenly out of funds. We took a look at the charges, especially one under INTERNET DADDY KING or something, and, after calls being made, found out that our friend's account had been used to purchase pr0n account @ the tune of 39.95 a month.
After some questioning and a group hug, we'd eliminated all three of us fr. We'd gotten an email account that had been used to sign up for the, um, account. You guessed it. The Comcast email, that only 3 people knew the password and name to, had been used to sign up for the service as a bank draft. We figured that the installers were the aim of our charge here.
Fraud complaints to Comcast are still ongoing.
More Comcast horror stories (Score:4, Interesting)
I've tangled with them a couple of times. The first insult was raising my cable internet bill five bucks but dropping my download rate by about 256 k/sec. But that wasn't the good one. I live in a house that's been subdivided into apartments, and Comcast was the only outfit that consistently got my address wrong. My phone people? Fine. Electricity? Fine. Water? Fine. Comcast? Half the time they'd send my bill to my neighbor, and after a while they apparently got confused and insisted that I hadn't paid a bill at all for one month (I did) and demanded the payment and late charges. I got the check returned from my bank as well as the statement showing Comcast mysteriously cashing this check and taking my money, despite their claims to the contrary. After going 'round and 'round with them on this for over a month their position became "we're bigger than you, therefore it is impossible for us to make mistakes, so it must be your problem." At this point, they quit sending me bills entirely, but felt the need to draft rude and nasty people to call my cell phone at all hours of the day and night insulting me and demanding payment for bills I never got, trying to push me into giving them my credit card number (ha!). I dropped their sorry asses about a week into this and went to Verizon. Even without FIOS, Verizon's higher-tier package is cheaper than Comcast and about half again as fast in my area. Duh.
At my sister's place everyone is a lardass stereotypical American TV watcher, so they have Comcast digital cable. Comcast mysteriously tried to charge my sister for over 300 dollars worth of pay-per-view porno one month. Obviously, my sister was a bit miffed. This is a household of three women and my nephew, who shrewdly points out that he has no need for pay-per-view because he has internet access. Comcast claimed that the charges came from the ID number of the cable box in my sister's room, which is barely ever used and when it is... Is used by my (straight, 35 year old) sister. After threatening my sister with legal action, putting black marks all over her credit report, &c., Comcast finally figured out (not that this was much of a stretch) that this actually precipitated from someone using a stolen/hacked cable box randomly trying ID's until they got one that worked. My sister suggested that she get a new cable box from Comcast, even pay for it, and they refused to do it. Naturally, two months later, it happened again. And despite documented phone calls and a letter from Comcast stating that they knew about the problem, they threatened my sister again, and again refused to provide her a new cable box or ID number.
I'm trying to push them to go FIOS and/or take Verizon's digital cable package when it arrives in their area.
Re:Crock (Score:3, Interesting)
In my case, I have a home-built PVR and digital cable (RCN Chicago). Works like a charm. The digital cable is unencrypted QAM, so I have an HDTV card (Kworld HD PCI-115) that supports QAM. No DRM, no encryption, works well. I was worried when RCN was pushing to go all-digital in my building, but it actually has been an improvement. I can record anything that comes over the line, burn it to DVD, compress down to watch on the commute, whatever I want. If you're worried about switching to digital cable or HD cable because you have a PVR and don't want to lose that functionality, check first to see whether your local cable provider is encrypting the stream. If not, you're good to go.
Re:"back charges" (Score:2, Interesting)
You're crying about a week??? lol . Let's see. Your week was due to a back balance that was not yours, and they needed your landlord to say that you're not that person. So one week with abnormal circumstances. Hmmm...you mention FIOS.....Verizon 1 week MINIMUM for installation, and even that isn't guaranteed.
Everyone cries about what Comcast is or isn't doing, but most of you will switch to Verizon and when your contract is up where do you go after that?? Lol oh yeah...Comcast. And this is across the industry. You cry about one service provider, then when you realize the grass isn't greener on the other side you cry about that one and go back to the one before "or possibly another one"
None of you can argue these points, disregarding the "special" cases, why? Because I've been doing Communications, every day since the day I joined the Marine corps, and I've done everything from a field radio (think ham radio) to hf, shf, uhf, to Satellite Comm, down networking, and now I just manage a voip networks for multiple companies.
You can cry all you want...that's your right. But don't be the person that thinks...oh Comcast/Verizon sucks I have a lot of service interruptions so I'm going to Verizon/Comcast to get away from them.
The ONLY differences between ANY type of company is:
1) Its customer support}----makes or breaks a company
2) Price of its service compared to its competition
3) Oh wait, there is no three
All the service issues most subscribers experience are industry wide. You want FIOS? Get it. Seeing as Verizon is the first company to make it part of their services I can guarantee there will be/are wide scale issues with service due to:
1) lack of knowledge on part of techs both new and old
2) Faulty craftsmanship (this goes with number 1) in that if your fittings are loose water can get in, and anyone that knows anything about fiber knows fiber optic + water = scattered information, or hell...lets just say I use a shitty blade to cut it. Then I wouldn't know there was an issue until you started to complain, and trust me...cut it with a jagged edge and your lucky to half of what you normally would if the cut was smooth.
And, yes I do want FIOS (if only for the speed), but I'm not going to get it until at least 2 other companies start to provide it (which is coming shortly) only because the first implementation of a "new" system is ALWAYS full of bugs. That's why I laugh when I hear ppl bad mouth Comcast's CDV. I laugh because it's funny for one, and for two, their running the voip service across their OWN cable lines. It NEVER touches the internet, their trying to do something no one has done on a large scale (like Verizon with FIOS) so of course it's going to have bugs, until the people working on the back ends of those systems get used to the system and start to anticipate problems and resolve said issues prior to the customer experiencing any service related issues.Re:just cancel (Score:3, Interesting)
Your perspective is skewed from the blind hatred of large corporations that is harbored by so many readers here.
Gee, what would it take for a type of organization to get indifferent, uncaring americans to hate them? Oh yeah, piss us off by combining the worst bureaucratic aspects of the DMV (paperwork, employees who are clueless and don't care, expense, lack of internal communication, inability to perform) with all the worst aspects of a ticket scalper (high prices, gouging, differential pricing, bribing police). Large corporations have earned the way we feel about them.
The costs of building and maintaining an efficient broadband network on a nationwide scale is tremendous. Just how many companies do you think could afford to build a system of that scale?
Do you mean with or without the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent to subsidize what the cable company owns today?
Now, the FCC limits Comcast and ALL other cable providers to a MAXIMUM of 30% market penetration. This means in order to provide the entire country with high-speed cable internet, you would need FOUR financially thriving cable systems.
A cartel is not functionally any better than a monopoly. Unless those four cable companies both provide service to the same location (which most of them have agreements to avoid) then how is this any better for a consumer. If you have to move to get a reasonable cable provider, the system has failed. Note, it is my understanding that the new FCC rules requiring more than on provider for the majority of homes in an areas (as opposed to each provider taking half the homes in a zip code) was recently mothballed.
Yes the cable industry spends millions and millions of dollars a year lobbying the government. Does that make them evil?
That depends upon what they are lobbying for. Claiming that a non-profit organization lobbying for laws that stop pollution is the same thing as a commercial entity lobbying for laws that will force consumers to pay them more and prevent competition, is a pretty lame argument.
The fact is that lobbying the government is the most efficient way to get things done.
And that, all by itself is a problem because it favors the wealthy in what is supposed to eb a democracy where everyone has an equal vote and the people are represented by their representatives, not trying to pay them extra to do the right thing.
In Slashdot mythology, that is a...
This is called a strawman argument. It is a logical fallacy. You couldn't find anyone to espouse a weak argument, so you claim it is the opinion of "Slashdot."
Personally, I think it is about on par with what would the PC market look like if the government sanctioned a 30% marketshare cap on Microsoft.
Sigh. You don't understand the inherent geographical component to cable networks that does not apply to PCs? Besides, the PC industry is not media. If I owned 100% of the PC industry, I still can't control what airs on TV a week before the elections, which is what the market caps for media are for, to stop the terrible abuses that happened when we had no such laws.
Do you really trust the OSS community to pick up the slack for the rest of the 70% of desktop users out there?
I trust someone would. If MS had only 30% of the market, most of the problems with OSS would go away. Half of them are interoperability problems that are artificial problems with OSS products and would not exist except for MS's abuse. The rest is the lack of investment in the area because investors know competing against a monopoly who can introduce artificial problems with your new product, is a waste of resources and invest elsewhere.
Bah, I may have missed some points, but this is just off the top of my head. If you want to correct me, then by all means I welcome constructive f
Speaking of Comcast Crap (Score:3, Interesting)
I then pointed out that I had yet to get 6Mbs downloads even on testing sites that can really pump out the bits to you, and why pay more for 8MBs that I also won't get on my very congested local loop? They had no answer for that one, because Comcast had never guaranteed any level of actual service, and in fact I believe their ToS specifically denies any guaranteed level of download performance.
Re:"back charges" (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, they do. They are legally forbidden from preventing you from installing dishes in your apartment by the FCC. Maybe you're not aware of this, but here in the USA, when a Federal Law says you can do something, a landlord or other private party cannot take this right away from you.
Now if your apartment doesn't have a good place to mount a dish because you're facing north, or have trees in the way, that's a technical issue. But you can still mount it on your patio or wherever just to piss off the landlord if you want.
If satellite reception is important to you, it's your responsibility to select an apartment with a viable dish mounting location. It's not like they can just force you to take any unit they want you to have.-