Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by lhnn » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:38 PM UTC

scelerat wrote: post #112

Internet access is required to file a police report in Oakland, or so I was told by the OakPD switchboard operator when I called to report my car being broken into and vandalized. i.e. they would not send a car; they would not take information over the phone. I was told I must file the report online. When an essential service like Police require you to use a service, it definitely seems like that service has moved fr…

This is absurd. Another reason not to trust police to have your interest as their primary concern...

If you were presently witnessing the car being broken into, then that would be 911 level.

EDIT: There is a correlation between my use of the word "absurd" and downvotes.

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

#152

Post by jeramey » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:39 PM UTC

jheitmann wrote: post #118

corncobpipe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This crybaby's in Seattle and he's complaining about the lack of ISPs? Hell, there's Speakeasy to begin with.

I won't claim that Seattle is a terrible place for broadband, but it's also not wine and roses. On the cable side, Comcast "competes" with Broadstripe. Broadstripe has both terrible customer service and poor internet service. Broadstripe also happens to have a bunch of apartment and condo complexes covered in an exclusivity agreement. Broadstripe makes Comcast look great in almost every regard. On the DSL side it's t…

Since Speakeasy was bought by Best Buy and then shuffled off into MegaPath's maw, their customer service has gotten progressively worse. Qwest's customer service is OK as long as you're willing to learn the right magic phrases that they use. That's the hard part. On the flip side, their field techs have always been uniformly competent when I've dealt with them in spite of having to cope with the massive wad of bureaucracy that goes along with working for a huge telecom company.

DSL in general is slow in Seattle because the city hasn't spent much effort in upgrading its (or encouraging telecoms to upgrade their) old copper telecom infrastructure. When line lengths aren't just really long, they're often running over corroding 40 and 50 year-old copper. In about half the buildings I've lived in, the NID was still the very old nut-and-bolt screw down terminal style interfaces. 66 and 110 blocks? What are those?

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

#153

Post by evan_ » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:40 PM UTC

Luyt wrote: post #107

evan_ wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend had some kind of washer hose burst in his house when he was away for the weekend. The damage was minimal (it was in his unfinished basement) but the water company, detecting a large amount of water being used, came by and shut his water off. "Oh but that's different" - not really. Same thing would have happened if my friend was intentionally trying to fill his basement with water.

I suspect that would not have been a problem. The water company guy rings at your friends door: Water Company Guy: "Just checking, we think there might be a burst pipe around here somewhere. Have you noticed some flooding?" Your friend: "No. I'm just filling up my pool however, but everything is fine." Company guy: "Ah, ok. Excellent. Have a nice day!"

Well it was a couple years ago, but I do remember specifically that they didn't even call him. He actually realized there was no water before he discovered that his basement was damp and eventually figured it out. It could be that they knocked on his door, and; receiving no answer, assumed it was a leak.

Anyway this would be an easy question to answer if someone called a water utility and asked.

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

#154

Post by dotBen » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:42 PM UTC

dotBen wrote: post #130

Oompa wrote: post #102

I'm worried about this. I live with 4 other internet heavy users, so I checked our usage last week, and saw that we've consistently been blowing past the 250GB cap. Last month, we hit 566GB. Comcast hasn't contacted me or shut off our service yet, and I hope they don't.

How did you check, I couldn't see anywhere on Comcast's site that gave this info. I used to have a DD-WRT router with bandwidth monitoring but we're now using an Apple Airport Extreme, and I don't think it has such capability :/

BTW: I just discovered that Airport Extreme is SNMP compatible so you can get the bandwidth passing over the wan port that way.

If you have a Mac always running on the network, you can try freeware app http://www.thotzy.com/THOTZY/Thotz/Entries/2008/10/26_Traffi...

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

#155

Post by noonespecial » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:43 PM UTC

He went over his usage, broke his eula etc. Comcast has the right to restrict him, perhaps by slowing his connecttion or charging overages. But seriously, "No net for you! 1 YEAR!"????

Who wrote that policy? Seinfeld?

That's damn ugly monopoly behavior that should be brought to the attention of the FCC.

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

#156

Post by Sherlock » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:45 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…

That's standard practice for the mobile plans here in Chile. Such bandwidth for the first xxx Mb, 32kbps after that.

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

#157

Post by CWuestefeld » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:47 PM UTC

fr0sty wrote: post #57

megaman821 wrote: post #34

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. Except if you go over a few times they won't ban you from their service for a year. They just want you to curb your use, which is exactly what this guy was willing to do.

>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.

Years ago, in college, my fraternity house used an "excessive" amount of electricity in one month. The power company told us that if we continued at that rate of usage, then they'd have to switch us to a business plan (for which, apparently, the per-kWh charge is higher).

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

#158

Post by darksaga » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:48 PM UTC

gst wrote: post #114

Is Comcast really a monopoly in some parts of the US? Aren't there any other viable options?

I think this is the main issue I'm seeing in this discussion. I'd say yes, there are other options available. You use a lot of bandwidth? They have your roomies chip in and get a T1 or something higher. There are alternatives, but you have to consider the price.

Whether he wants to admit or not, there are tons of alternatives, he's just too cheap to lay down the cash to get what he needs. Besides telecom company options, there's always satellite as an option.

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

#159

Post by sorbus » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:50 PM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #72

Raesan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Capitol Hill (right in the middle of Seattle), and Comcast is the only ISP in my area that offers a connection faster than 5mbps. It's a legitimate problem.

Even if internet access is a right, internet access >5mbps certainly is not.

Just because something is not a fundamental human right does not mean that it's not possible to have a monopoly over it. Monopolies are a problem, regardless of what they're providing.

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

#160

Post by sp332 » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 8:50 PM UTC

pragmatic wrote: post #97

sp332 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did your router logs show high bandwidth useage? (If your router has good reporting tools).

The router I had at the time didn't have reporting, but my new one shows I've used almost 250 GB so far this month. I'd guess about half of that is bittorrent. Last month's 1TB was mostly BT.