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Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

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Re: Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

#31

Post by larrys »

grecy wrote: post #19

Can confirm. I work for a telco and we recently upgraded our cable infrastructure to handle 100Mbit (previously 50Mbit was the fastest). All the customer needs is a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, we re-provision in our system and they'll get 100Mbit. They come into our store, swap modems, and they're done. As for the hilarious/stupid/disappointing things OP was told by sales/tech support/whoever, I can also confirm that. Every da…

"Our company has also started ripping people off in similar ways (like a $50 fee to downgrade internet speed) "

Explain why you feel that is a "rip off".

More specifically if this company came to you as an employee (I assume you are an employee) and they said "hey we aren't making money and we need to reduce your salary" how would that fly with you?

Anyway I'm asking a serious question. I'd like to know the exact metrics of how you have come to determine that the company charging $50 to downgrade internet speed is ripping people off. Is it because nobody else does that? Is it because it doesn't cost them anything but a button click to downgrade?

Re: Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

#32

Post by thrownaway2424 »

nathancahill wrote: post #11
ck2 wrote: post #3

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.

Not my post, but I also have 105mbps. In my neighborhood, the 50mbps connections share a node, while the 105mbps is on a different node. Between 5pm and 11pm, the whole network gets over-saturated, except for the 105's.

That seems to contradict the article. If they really do need to wire your cable to some other piece of equipment then perhaps the field tech is there for a good reason.

Re: Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

#33

Post by drakaal »

I worked at TCI prior to the certification of Docsis 1.0. Back then if you wanted to go from 512k to 1M we would "roll a truck" because we needed to check that your signal was good enough that you would not only get service, but that we wouldn't go broke every time it rained and the signal would degrade.

Basically you needed to have 20% better signal than was needed for the service so that you wouldn't fall off-line when something created a small amount of interference.

I suspect Comcast is doing something similar. Not really charging to do the "install" but charging to certify that you have enough signal for the service.

It can also be that they want to check if they need to pull a new cable to the edge of your house, or upgrade the Amplifier at the "block".

You probably can convince them to not do all of these things, but your service may suffer in the long run.

Back in the day we would do "no SLA" installs and if your cable went out it was yours to deal with. When your choice was that or a modem, lots of time you took that rather than having a 33.6k connection.

Re: Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

#34

Post by krstck »

larrys wrote: post #31
grecy wrote: post #19

Can confirm. I work for a telco and we recently upgraded our cable infrastructure to handle 100Mbit (previously 50Mbit was the fastest). All the customer needs is a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, we re-provision in our system and they'll get 100Mbit. They come into our store, swap modems, and they're done. As for the hilarious/stupid/disappointing things OP was told by sales/tech support/whoever, I can also confirm that. Every da…

"Our company has also started ripping people off in similar ways (like a $50 fee to downgrade internet speed) " Explain why you feel that is a "rip off". More specifically if this company came to you as an employee (I assume you are an employee) and they said "hey we aren't making money and we need to reduce your salary" how would that fly with you? Anyway I'm asking a serious question. I'd like to know the exact met…

> More specifically if this company came to you as an employee (I assume you are an employee) and they said "hey we aren't making money and we need to reduce your salary" how would that fly with you?

This does happen. And at that point, you get another job. Unfortunately, the analogy doesn't hold up with ISPs because there are many areas where there isn't another ISP.

Re: Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

#35

Post by larrys »

eli wrote: post #27
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, I don't. 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?

"Is Adobe obligated to make the price of Photoshop commensurate to the cost of burning a DVD or downloading a file?"

Of course people who have never run a business and don't understand the total cost of running a business will always relate "cost" to one thing what you pay for a particular item which when factoring a host of other things is either not relevant or not easily determined.

I just read where Tesla (an HN favorite) gets tax credits of something like $35k (tradeable to other mfgs) for each car they sell. Forgetting whether that number is right or not (maybe it's less/more who knows) does that mean that they should somehow in ratio reduce the price of their car? Of course not (unless they want to). Even though one could make an argument that it isn't fair that they don't. To me all this is nonsense. But fully understandable if someone has never operated a working business.

Re: Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

#37

Post by grecy »

larrys wrote: post #31
grecy wrote: post #19

Can confirm. I work for a telco and we recently upgraded our cable infrastructure to handle 100Mbit (previously 50Mbit was the fastest). All the customer needs is a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, we re-provision in our system and they'll get 100Mbit. They come into our store, swap modems, and they're done. As for the hilarious/stupid/disappointing things OP was told by sales/tech support/whoever, I can also confirm that. Every da…

"Our company has also started ripping people off in similar ways (like a $50 fee to downgrade internet speed) " Explain why you feel that is a "rip off". More specifically if this company came to you as an employee (I assume you are an employee) and they said "hey we aren't making money and we need to reduce your salary" how would that fly with you? Anyway I'm asking a serious question. I'd like to know the exact met…

It's for a few reasons.

One is, as you mention, because it's nothing more than a button click to downgrade. Less than a 1 minute call with a CSR. How they can justify $50 for that is anyone's guess.

The second is they're saying things like "it's to cover the cost of having CSRs, printing bills, etc." But actually, the $110/mo charge covers that, and always has.

Third is because the company is making plenty of profit, but the parent company wants more, so they're pushing it to do stupid stuff like this.

A large percentage of employees are looking for work elsewhere, it's just unfortunate there are not many options where we live (quite remote)

Re: Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

#38

Post by berkay »

jseliger wrote: post #18
ck2 wrote: post #3

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.

On a side note, what do you do at 105mbps that you cannot do at 50mbps? Me, years ago: What will I do with this massive 40 MB hard drive? Me, years ago: What will I do with this massive 4 GB hard drive? Me, fewer years ago: What will I do with this massive 40 GB hard drive? Me, today: This 2 TB hard drive is almost full. How much are 4 TB drives going for? Me, years ago: Wow! The Internet speeds at college are so fas…

The examples you're giving are mostly about stored data. We're able to foresee why you may need more, photos, videos, etc. On bandwidth, it's harder to imagine. With 50, you can stream multiple HD videos. What would 105 would give me? I don't know. May be Google Fiber subscribers can provide some insight since they have access to much more.

Re: Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

#39

Post by grecy »

captainmuon wrote: post #28
kyleblarson wrote: post #17

"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?

It doesn't work that way. If you can take any given hour and trade it for a certain amount of money, then you're lucky. I don't know anybody who can take 12 hours and trade them for $240, or say $600 (as you are hinting that this time is worth significantly more than $20/h). 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…

Thanks for explaining this so well.

I constantly see people misinterpret "opportunity cost" in a situation like this, and you cleared it up nicely.

Re: Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

#40

Post by bigdubs »

berkay wrote: post #38
jseliger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a side note, what do you do at 105mbps that you cannot do at 50mbps? Me, years ago: What will I do with this massive 40 MB hard drive? Me, years ago: What will I do with this massive 4 GB hard drive? Me, fewer years ago: What will I do with this massive 40 GB hard drive? Me, today: This 2 TB hard drive is almost full. How much are 4 TB drives going for? Me, years ago: Wow! The Internet speeds at college are so fas…

The examples you're giving are mostly about stored data. We're able to foresee why you may need more, photos, videos, etc. On bandwidth, it's harder to imagine. With 50, you can stream multiple HD videos. What would 105 would give me? I don't know. May be Google Fiber subscribers can provide some insight since they have access to much more.

You answered your own question. How does the data get on those high capacity disks? The faster your pipe, the more content you can fill quickly / easily.
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