Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

Post by mikeash » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 7:35 PM UTC

Splines wrote: post #58

peapicker wrote: post #32

Seriously, this is a technology company? If they mean to cap at 250GB per month, just halt service during the month when 250GB is hit. Don't let the customer go over, warn, go over, and then suspend them for a year. Seriously, if they are metering it, they can implement a technology solution to halt when the cap is hit that month and not even have this ridiculous abuse of customers having to 'self monitor' the behavi…

I completely agree. Use over 250GB? Your internet gets slowed down to molasses until the start of the next month. Customers will notice and adjust. Here, Comcast is saying "we don't want you as a customer", which they're allowed to do, but doesn't generate very much goodwill. Having a clear cap and predictable consequences would be much preferred. I don't know why they also couldn't put a little meter on your comcast…

Post by joshfinnie » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 7:35 PM UTC

dkl wrote: post #76

crs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually if you read his post from a day ago, you will see him state he stopped the open access point. He took steps to stop what he thought was the issue. It was not until the cap was broken a second time that he realized it was his backup system uploading to a 3rd party service. That is not entitlement at all. If anything it was ignorance of the fact that your upload data is also measured against the cap. I agree w…

That is not entitlement at all. If anything it was ignorance of the fact that your upload data is also measured against the cap. This. I would never have guessed upstream was counted. I thought this was only about downstream bandwidth.

    >> Common activities that may cause excessive data consumption in violation of this Policy include, but are not limited to, 
    numerous or continuous bulk transfers of files and other high capacity traffic using 
        (i) file transfer protocol (“FTP”), 
        (ii) peer-to-peer applications, and 
        (iii) newsgroups.

Post by blahedo » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 7:41 PM UTC

peapicker wrote: post #32

Seriously, this is a technology company? If they mean to cap at 250GB per month, just halt service during the month when 250GB is hit. Don't let the customer go over, warn, go over, and then suspend them for a year. Seriously, if they are metering it, they can implement a technology solution to halt when the cap is hit that month and not even have this ridiculous abuse of customers having to 'self monitor' the behavi…

Post by cube13 » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 7:41 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #25

naner wrote: post #6

I listened to him read his canned warning that if I exceeded their cap again I'd be cut off again. Ok. Sure, the data cap sucks, but this guy broke a Comcast policy, got a warning, and then broke the policy again. I'm not surprised he got cut off. I do not recall details on how long the cut off would be, likely because I spent the next few minutes working with the service agent to add notes to my record about my deta…

Comcast refused to work with him, even though he was willing and motivated to address the problem. Even after being careful with bandwidth and disabling his public access point, they still cut him off for a year with no appeal. This mirrors what happened to me. I was given an automated warning. I called the security number but they wouldn't tell me what sort of traffic I should be looking for. They didn't even have a…

Post by astrodust » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 7:50 PM UTC

bradleyland wrote: post #89

fr0sty wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Your water and electricity utilities most likely also have caps on how much water or electricity you can use before they cut you off. They do? Where is this the case? My water and electricity usage have no monthly cap and are only shut off if I fail to pay the bills.

Your electric utility service is capped, but they use a different method because electric utilities are metered. You have a fixed capacity feed to your house. For example, our home has 150 amp service. I cannot exceed that draw or the main feed breaker trips and everything goes dark. I can request installation of a larger feed, but I have to pay the build-out, and there are hard limits based on my local zoning. One t…