21–30 of 97 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For most areas, that is wrong. I have been in the same area for a decade, and got offered 8mbps for an increased cost 8 years ago. That's it. Why? Because there is no competition.
What does a $250 upgrade fee have to do with that? If anything, shouldn't high fees encourage competition?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I supposed there is no morality in the world that say you shouldn't be able to charge 150 bucks or whatever price for 5 megabits, but the quality of life would improve immensely with high bandwidth. That is, the difference between slowly browsing the textual internet forever on dailup and watching khanacademy youtube videos with a crappy DSL connection. Imagine that everyone are on gigabit connections? What would tha…
I'm not usually one to stand up for big businesses (especially telecoms companies) but you're being ridiculous. >> "watching khanacademy youtube videos" You don't need crazy fast internet to watch YouTube videos. I've been watching theme fine since I was on 1 mobs broadband. And do you really think that if we suddenly have super fast connections people will spend time watching educational content instead of porn and…
My point of comparsion was between dailup and DSL, and how DSL enables khanacademy videos. With faster internet, it will alow things beyond khanacademy videos.
And do you really think that if we suddenly have super fast connections people will spend time watching educational content instead of porn and cat videos?
A faster internet allow more things that can be done to improve humanity as well allow humanity to watch better porn and cat videos.
They care about their shareholders and maximising profits. They are running a telecoms business not trying to improve humanity!
If you the rest of the comment. I was noting how short-sighted the cable corporations are. If anything, they are like paperclip AI that wishes only to make paperclips. Cable corporations are like that, except it's all about printing money.
"After 10 hours on the phone with customer service, two trips to the local Comcast office and a chat with a rogue technician, the myth has been busted" So the author spent maybe 12 hours figuring this out? Is his or her time worth more than 20 or so bucks per hour?
"After 10 hours on the phone with customer service, two trips to the local Comcast office and a chat with a rogue technician, the myth has been busted" So the author spent maybe 12 hours figuring this out? Is his or her time worth more than 20 or so bucks per hour?
On a side note, what do you do at 105mbps that you cannot do at 50mbps? Unless maybe you have a multi user household. I pay $50 for 5mbps. It's highway robbery.
I wanted higher speeds. They couldn't get me close to the other deal, so I told them they had to compete on price. They offered $35 with a year contract.
I told them I was going to get service with the cable company and call back to cancel and they dropped my price to %50 off for six months with no strings attached.
So shop around and call them and negotiate.
It's not exactly the crime of the century to want to charge you a fee for upgrading service.
Don't you find that it should be at least somewhat commensurate with the work required though? $250 to set the value for speed rating from 50 to 105Mbps on the backend service menu and then reboot the router; doesn't that seem a little bit like they might be playing on peoples lac of knowledge of the systems involved?
Business doesn't work that way. You make hay when the sun shines.
And there are cases when you can't charge. Because of things your competitors are doing.
In a restaurant they don't charge you for napkins and water although they could. (Actually they do charge for premium water but that's a fairly recent invention).
The idea of business is to make money.
It's not up to anyone to decide how much profit is "enough" for comcast to make. If they could simply charge more per month without games they would.
Sometimes it's easy sometimes it's hard.
Take airlines. They would like to charge you more for a ticket but if they do you might not book the ticket. Better to be able to advertise a cheap price plus extras than an all inclusive price without extras. Why? Because people are not rational buyers (generally) who can figure in all the things and the "total cost of ownership" as they say with cars.
"doesn't that seem a little bit like they might be playing on peoples lac of knowledge of the systems involved?"
Well of course they are. But so what?
There are many times when companies take features out of a product just so they can make different tiers and charge premiums.
Take web hosting. Take companies who sell people extra disk space that they will never use and don't know they don't even need at all. There are many examples of this in business.
It's not exactly the crime of the century to want to charge you a fee for upgrading service.
Don't you find that it should be at least somewhat commensurate with the work required though? $250 to set the value for speed rating from 50 to 105Mbps on the backend service menu and then reboot the router; doesn't that seem a little bit like they might be playing on peoples lac of knowledge of the systems involved?
I am not a fan of Comcast for many reasons. This fee isn't very consumer-friendly and it should be described more honestly as an "upgrade fee" or similar. But no, there's no reason it has to have anything to do with the "work" required to do the upgrade.
Is Adobe obligated to make the price of Photoshop commensurate to the cost of burning a DVD or downloading a file?
"After 10 hours on the phone with customer service, two trips to the local Comcast office and a chat with a rogue technician, the myth has been busted" So the author spent maybe 12 hours figuring this out? Is his or her time worth more than 20 or so bucks per hour?
I could get a second job, but that would pay less per hour, would start at a higher (fixed) number of hours, and bring a lot of responsibilities. Plus, it would cut into my precious free time.
Only for hyper-demanded successful freelancers time is completely fungable and arbitrarily tradeable into dollars. The rest of us can't monetarize their free time so easily. And I think a $250 saving for a day's work is pretty good for regular people. Besides, I think there was a bit of hyperbole in the "10 hours"...
"After 10 hours on the phone with customer service, two trips to the local Comcast office and a chat with a rogue technician, the myth has been busted" So the author spent maybe 12 hours figuring this out? Is his or her time worth more than 20 or so bucks per hour?
You have to add the benefit of saving ~$250 to the benefit of getting the top post on HN. Then you divide.
I've talked to a couple techs who mentioned it, but the appointment I made there was no such mention of fee nor was I ever charged.