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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

#91

Post by larrys »

mrxd wrote: post #87
larrys wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How they can justify $50 for that" They don't need to justify. The only reason they would even think about this is if the detriment didn't outweigh the benefit. If perhaps x% of people think that it's a ripoff and 90% don't or don't even know or think everything is a ripoff anyway then why not get the extra revenue? My guess is that the amount of people that even have any understanding of what is involved is quite s…

> The mere fact that you feel like it's up to you (or anyone else who makes comments) to decide "ok that's enough" really does not make any sense. Actually it does. Consumers are allowed to make decisions about purchases on any grounds they choose, including whether they feel that a company is taking too much profit, or that the company is violating some ethical standard. Consumers are also free to call for boycotts…

All of what you are saying I agree with.

I guess it just bothers me that the crowd of people who try and influence others (and yes you are correct that this is fully their right) either have no skin in the game (in other words they only have one interest in mind) and additionally may not really fully understand how business operates.

I guess I just react very viscerally to things being worded "ripoff" because it's so easy for people to throw that around and pass judgement.

To me "ripoff" means take advantage and you could argue that in business there is a fine line between what is acceptable in terms of "taking advantage" and what is not. And you know what each of us has a different line. (It's just like religion and cheating on your taxes. Anyone who does more is "really religious" anyone who steals more is "a big crook").

Everyone draws the line at a different place. There are many people who believe that YC takes advantage of young people. You know all those "should I go to Harvard or to YC" would be seen by many people as totally taking advantage of someone (and may or may not be depending on the circumstances of the particular individual and what the particular person with the opinion really knows about YC).

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

#92

Post by DannyBee »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #78
DannyBee wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely can be done remotely. Every one of these modems does SNMP, exports everything it has in the way of statistics, and they can read it remotely The modems are nowadays configured to only allow requests from certain ip space with certain passwords because you could actually accomplish a lot in the docsis 1.0 days by messing around with SNMP.

Depending on the modem manufacturer, you can still poison them with your own locally-loaded TFTP configuration file to override the speed configured from your cable provider. Disclaimer: The FBI was cracking down on people who were doing this. https://www.google.com/search?q=tftp+hack+cable+modem

Yes, and you could JTAG flash a bunch of them even after this.

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

#93

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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?

Of course not, your attempt to analogise the situation with Adobe is ridiculous. A better analogy would be if Adobe had a file-size restricted version and charged $300 to "upgrade" to the unrestricted version - the upgrade of course would be a simple patch to remove the restriction, that anyone could run locally by downloading the patch. Instead however they'd insist it was a hardware change and send someone to futz around on your computer.

Now of course you can charge what you like and price differentiation doesn't have to relate to actual costs at all, but lying to deceive the customer that the charge is paying for some direct action of employees necessary to enact the alteration is simply fraud.

Now there are of course costs, upstream bandwidth, data handling at intermediate routers and such. That's why it's entirely reasonable for them to charge more for a faster/broader data plan - http://www.comcast.com/internet-service.html it's already charged at more than twice the rate of the 50 Mbps plan (whilst I imagine the real _additional_ cost is probably maybe a few dollars); but that's fine as they're not pretending it costs more because they have to pay for faster electricity or something daft.

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

#94

Post by holyjaw »

Bit of a different experience here: Cox Cable recently performed the same upgrade, but instead of charging me $250 for an installation, they instead decided to inject JS and HTML into every non-https site I visited (wel, once every hour or so) with a reminder that I've been upgraded to a new tier at no additional cost, but I need to buy a DOCSIS3.0 router.

I... I think that's a fair deal better than being charged $250.

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

#95

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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…

>In a restaurant they don't charge you for napkins and water although they could. //

Yes they do. They don't itemise the charge, but they charge for [ie taking account of the cost of] these items too.

If I went to a restaurant and they said "your meal is extra because you wore a brown shirt" then I'd know they were ripping me off and I'd declare it; of course they are within their right to do that if they notify the customer sufficiently of the charges. That wouldn't change the fact they're ripping people off.

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

#96

Post by berkay »

bigdubs wrote: post #40
berkay wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my case it does not provide a compelling case. With 50mb, it is plenty fast and do not feel need for faster. backup of my content does not seem to require more bandwidth either for PCs. I use both Backblaze and Dropbox, and they both work in the background etc, again 50mb is plenty.

Thinking more about this, I think I may need more bandwidth if I were consuming more real-time high volume data. May be the upcoming virtual reality apps (Occulus, etc.) will be the next jump in bandwidth requirements.

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

#97

Post by eli »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #93
eli wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Of course not, your attempt to analogise the situation with Adobe is ridiculous. A better analogy would be if Adobe had a file-size restricted version and charged $300 to "upgrade" to the unrestricted version - the upgrade of course would be a simple patch to remove the restriction, that anyone could run locally by downloading the patch. Instead however they'd insist it was a hardware change and send someone to futz…

I don't see why my analogy is any more ridiculous than yours. Windows 7 Home is more-or-less an artificially limited version of Windows 7 Pro. You can pay money and "unlock" the Pro features. I'm OK with that. Even though I'm unlocking bits that were already on my hard drive, there's no scandal here.

If we both agree you can charge whatever you want and price differences don't have to relate to actual costs then what's the problem?

You are upset solely that they called it an "installation fee" rather than an "upgrade fee"? I see your point... but like I said, hardly the crime of the century.

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