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Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps

comcastmyths.tumblr.com

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

#41

Post by nitrogen »

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.

Viable off-site backups, faster downloads for large digital purchases (e.g. 30GB games from Steam).

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

#42

Post by jotm »

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's not all about the money, maybe he enjoyed exposing Comcast's lies - most of the time anything interesting/exciting beats money, or people wouldn't be writing posts on Tumblr, drawing digital art, fixing old stuff and commenting on Hacker News...

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

#43

Post by jotm »

drakaal wrote: post #33

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…

I thought that can be done remotely? On one of my old ISPs I could change every setting on the modem on the company's website. It was quite scary, actually, how little privacy I had in this regard. They could easily check the signal strength to the modem that way...

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

#44

Post by nitrogen »

larrys wrote: post #26
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?

"Don't you find that it should be at least somewhat commensurate with the work required though?" 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 i…

...and this is why the last mile needs to become a regulated utility. Whose place is it to say Comcast is making too much profit? Mine, as their former customer.

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

#45

Post by DanBC »

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…

In the UK it is typical to have an ad with huge font saying. "50 MBPS!!!" and a tiny footnote disclaiming "upto that speed, on a good day if you're close".

It's sad that things like speed or megapixels are a single easy to quote number because many people think more is better.

(I'd love a solid 7.5 Mbps and no caps.)

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

#46

Post by Shinkei »

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…

Are you trolling? In an industry that is not regulated as a utility due to monopoly issues, profit margins are irrelevant. But in an industry that activity stiffles local competition with monopoly powers, this is all the info I need:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=CMCSA+Key+Statistics

The serious answer to your question is that the price a consumer pays should reflect the value of the service they are receiving and should be proportional to the cost of providing this product/service. If the business is subsidizing loses in one area by overcharging in other areas, then the model is broken... especially if you are punishing your customers that are looking for better value and have no other options because you lack competition. That is the very reason that we have protections from price-fixing schemes. It's the same issue as the Banks' overdraft charges. They are making huge profit off the most vulnerable of their customers.

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

#47

Post by jbraithwaite »

Comcast charged me a "wireless setup fee"[1] when the technician came over to setup my new connection. The problem is: he didn't touch my personal wireless router nor was there any mention of the wifi fee on the receipt when he left.

After some time on the phone, I was able to get my monthly cable modem fee removed (seemly forever) but they tried to sneak it back into my bill recently.

I wish we had more options for ISPs in america.

[1] Not sure of the exact name or cost but it was around $75-$90.

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

#48

Post by bensmcc »

I had a related experience: Had 105 Mbps but called to try and lower our bill with Comcast. Were told we'd keep the same service, but bill would be roughly $50 cheaper. Next day when doing a speed test, turns out that our 105 Mbps service had been downgraded to 30 Mbps.

Called to complain / change it to 105 Mbps and had multiple customer service people try and tell me that we'd have to pay a $250 fee to have someone come out and make sure that we could handle 105 Mbps service, even though 36 hours earlier we had the faster service.

Finally managed to convince a service rep that we had it the day before so we obviously were equipped to handle it - only wasted ~3 hours of my life.

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

#50

Post by gnoway »

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.

Nothing, but you can do it 2.1x faster.

Don't feel too bad, I'm paying $32.99 for 1mbps cable. I can do just about everything I want, I just have to plan for it to take longer than I'd like.

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