My letter to Comcast
My issues with Comcast that are entirely the fault of Comcast:
1.) Billing staff incompetence – The billing staff are rude and don’t have a good feeling for
what’s going on. I typically will have a mistake on my bill, then have to call a few times
before I get someone competent enough to understand my issue. I was once told by one of your
billing staff that I incurred charges because of my unwillingness to climb a pole outside of my
apartment. That is completely unacceptable. The aforementioned Customer Service Representative
was also reluctant to let me speak to a manager, and when I finally was forwarded to a voicemail
box, I didn’t receive a call until much later (5 hours) when I was no longer at home.
2.) Service Outages – These are ridiculous. I was told that my service was interrupted once for
two days due to a technician unplugging the wrong customer’s cable (mine instead of someone who
didn’t pay their bill). This level of incompetence is unprecedented in the industry. I am an IT
professional and work for a large IT company dealing with networking, and frankly it’s insulting
when customer service repeatedly tells me that the issue is on my end when I’m running all Cisco
equipment behind my cable modem (to which the diagnostics page has been disabled — it was
enabled before it was re-flashed by Comcast). Why do you disable the diagnostics information
from customer access? I would be able to tell if it’s a line issue or a carrier issue if I were
allowed access to this. I typically experience at least a few hours of downtime per month.
3.) Deceptive Advertising with switch to digital- Your offer for two services for $20/month each
is misleading. I thought that I was to receive the same basic cable that I’ve had for years. To
my surprise, this is not the case. Before, apparently, (for the last ~15 years) I had been
receiving “more channels than I was paying for” (words from a CSR) for my basic cable. I had no
cable box, just a cable plugged in to my TV utilizing the TV’s internal tuner. When the switch
to digital occurred and I saw the notices on the channels that I used to watch (mostly Discovery
/ History channel, more or less the only two in which I have any interest), I purchased a digital
converter box from a local retailed, which did not function with Comcast’s service.
I then called and spoke to a CSR and was told that I was eligible to receive free converter boxes
(either two or three, I forget. I only have one TV, so this was adequate — no complaints
there). When I went to the local Comcast branch office to pick up my converter boxes, I was told
that my plan only came with the broadcast channels, HSN, QVC, and a few other channels which I
never watch. I was told that all the channels that I had previously been watching are now part
of a different package that is significantly more expensive. This is unacceptable and the only
reason I have cable at all at this point is because my internet package is cheaper with it than
without it. I have since ceased watching TV entirely.
4.) Commercial Scheduling – I were a local business paying money to run commercials on your
monopolized network, I would be very upset. I frequently see commercials that run for only about
one second before being switched off, or commercials that are just black screen — dead.
5.) Unfair competition – Comcast monopolizes markets — simple as that. If I had ANY other
option for cable service, I would switch in a heartbeat. For Internet access, I have the option
between 1.5mbit DSL and Comcast cable modem service that is around 6-8mbit average. Again, if I
had any other DECENT option that wasn’t laughable in terms of speed, I would switch immediately.
Comcast has offered only marginally improved speeds for the past 10 years. When I first
subscribed to cable modem service when it was first available, I was getting between 1-4mbit
throughput. The throttling is artificial and not competitive with the offerings of other
companies (U-Verse, FiOS, etc.). The only reason that Comcast is allowed to get away with this
is complete lack of competition.
Why isn’t DOCSIS 3.0 rolled out yet? All of the evidence I have points to lack of competition —
Why would Comcast invest in building out infrastructure when they’re already getting $60 / month
+ for each subscriber for internet access?
6.) Network Management “policies” – Face it, Comcast HATES paying for bandwidth and will do
everything in their power to cut down on spending. Take, for example, your recent trouble with
the FCC.
This is deplorable: “We felt our network management practices were reasonable and consistent with
the Internet Policy Statement.” (Source:
http://blog.comcast.com/2010/01/comcast-the-fcc-and-open-internet-rules-where-we-stand.html )
Does the person making this statement even know what the Internet Policy Statement states?
(source: http://www.publicknowledge.org/pdf/FCC-05-151A1.pdf)
Here it is, for your review:
A.) To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected
nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of
their choice.
B.) To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected
nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of
their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
C.) To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices
that do not harm the network.
D.) To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected
nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to compettion among network providers,
application and service providers, and content providers.
Here is how Comcast fails on all accounts:
A.) Opt-out DNS service that provides “valuable” suggestions – hese are advertisements and most
users won’t know to log in to their control panel to disable this “service”. I personally use
Google’s DNS system since it does not offer this “service”. This is deceptive and relying on the
incompetence of users for advertising dollars.
B.) Comcast specifically forbids: “use or run dedicated, stand-alone equipment or servers from
the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your
Premises local area network (“Premises LAN”), also commonly referred to as public services or
servers. Examples of prohibited equipment and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail,
Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers”
(Source: http://www.comcast.net/terms/use/ ) . This goes dirctly against the IPS.
C.) This is false. A CSR refused to authorize my Cisco equipment for direct use as a cable modem
because it was “incompatible with [Comcast's] management software”. This, again, goes directly
against the IPS.
D.) There is no competitive offer from another service provider available at my residence. See
point #5 above.
7.) “the median usage for Comcast’s customers is about 2 to 4 GB per month” (Source:
http://blog.comcast.com/2009/12/comcast-data-usage-meter-launches.html ) Not sure where you’re
getting these creative statistics from, please provide the source materials for your statistics.
In a study conducted by the University of California and sponsored by reputable companies such as
AT&T, Cisco Systems, IBM, Intel Corporation, LSI, Oracle, and Seagate Technology , which cites in
Figure 7 that consumption PER PERSON, PER DAY is estimated at 18.54GB, for 556.2GB over 30 days,
above the Comcast bandwidth limitation and WELL beyond Comcast’s figure. (Source:
http://hmi.ucsd.edu/pdf/HMI_2009_ConsumerReport_Dec9_2009.pdf)
