Comcast not-at-all an abusive monopoly with not-at-all deceptive business practices!!!




  • user BLAKEYRAT has entered room
    
    analyst Rizz has entered room
    
    Rizz: Hello BLAKEYRAT_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Rizz. Please give me one moment to review your information.
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: My Issue: Trying to understand my bill & upgrade options
    
    Rizz: My pleasure to have you on this chat! I will gladly assist you with your concern for today. Hope you're doing fine.
    
    Rizz: I understand that you have questions with your bill. I know how important it is to have a clear picture when it comes to the services you're being billed for. Let us work together to have your questions resolved.
    
    Rizz: First of all, would you mind if I put you on hold for 2-3 minutes while I review your account?
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: Hi
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: Sure
    
    Rizz: Hi there!
    
    Rizz: Thank you.
    
    Rizz: Thank you for waiting, Blakeyrat.
    
    Rizz: I now have your account and I see here that you have our Performance internet on its regular rate of $66.95 per month.
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: Right, but here is my confusion
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: I was looking into upgrading to the next tier, and when I go to the upgrade page, it shows that Performance is 53.95/month
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: So I'm trying to understand why I'm paying $66.95
    
    Rizz: Let me explain that because it is not clearly discussed on the website.
    
    Rizz: Since you are logged in to your Comcast online account, the system shows all the packages for existing customers. The price you are seeing online for Performance internet for $53.95 per month is the regular rate of this package if you have TV or phone service with it.
    
    Rizz: This is because internet is discounted if it is paired with another service.
    
    Rizz: But the regular rate of Performance internet stand alone service is for $66.95 per month.
    
    Rizz: The same is with Economy internet and Blast internet.
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: How do I see the stand-alone prices? Because even if I add to my shopping cart, it still shows the first price
    
    Rizz: Stand alone rate for Economy internet is $39.95 and $29.95 if with another service.
    
    Rizz: Blast internet is $76.95 per month stand alone and $63.95 per month if with another service.
    
    Rizz: So you can really save if you pair it with another service.
    
    Rizz: Are you looking to upgrade your internet to Blast?
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: I don't want any other services.
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: I was thinking about it but here is my other problem
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: When I added Blast into my shopping cart, it added a charge for modem rental. But I own my own modem.
    
    Rizz: I checked on your area and Blast internet is for $77.95 due to the recent price increase.
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: The website won't let me remove the modem, and it also won't let me empty my cart
    
    Rizz: I understand. Don't worry about that. That is an error on the website.
    
    Rizz: We can remotely upgrade your service to Blast from our end.
    
    Rizz: It will be $11 more.
    
    Rizz: And it will take effect immediately.
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: So to get this straight, if I added Blast to my cart right now, the cart shows $64.95. I have this open in another web browser window
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: But if I actually hit the "order" button, I'd be charged $77.95?
    
    Rizz: That won;t allow you to complete the order on the website, Blakeyrat because , you are not eligible for the price for Blast for $64.95 since that price is with another service.
    
    BLAKEYRAT_: Ok but you have a web store that lists the wrong prices for everything... nevermind
    
    Rizz: But if you want, I can transfer you to our sales team so they can check for promotions for Blast internet that you are eligible of.
    

    Right. Despite the website knowing exactly what services you already subscribe to, despite it knowing I don't have a "bundle" with TV or Phone or any bullshit I don't want, it just tells you the wrong price anyway. Then, despite it knowing that I own my own DOCSIS3.0, it goes ahead and gloms a modem rental onto that bill also, why not.

    I'm guessing that despite what "Rizz" says, if I had hit "order", it would have looked like a successful upgrade, but then their backend would quickly "correct" the billing error and give me the $78 price.

    But I didn't hit the button. WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN.

    BONUS DISCOURSE BUG! It's impossible to use the "4-spaces" method on the first line to put it in a blockquote. The second line? Sure. First? Nooo. (Still one bug-per-post.)

    SUPER BONUS DISCOURSE BUG 2.0 I changed my "title" from "Mediocre Poster" to "<none>" like 4 hours ago, and it still shows "Mediocre Poster" next to my name. How many decades until that change takes effect?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    BONUS DISCOURSE BUG! It's impossible to use the "4-spaces" method on the first line to put it in a blockquote. The second line? Sure. First? Nooo. (Still one bug-per-post.)

    It's impossible to use 4 spaces to make a blockquote anywhere. You want a > for that.

    like this



  • So, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if I were to ask you which of the very limited number of ISPs available in the Snohomish-Everett area was least shitty, your answer would not be Comcast.



  • When I order my current service from them, they pulled the tier I was ordering, and I ended up with a slower (cheaper) tier despite it not being what I put in my cart or purchased.



  • @ben_lubar said:

    It's impossible to use 4 spaces to make a blockquote anywhere.

    I give no shits for your pedantic dickweedery

    @HardwareGeek said:

    So, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if I were to ask you which of the very limited number of ISPs available in the Snohomish-Everett area was least shitty, your answer would not be Comcast.

    Which is worse, Frontier or Comcast?

    They're about equally shitty. But Frontier can give me 15 mpbs and Comcast 50. So. I picked my shit.

    I really liked Verizon, despite their slow speed their customer service was excellent and prices reasonable. When Frontier bought Verizon's landline business in this area, that was the end.



  • It's a US cable provider.

    The interaction didn't end up with them raping you and burning your house. So you should be happy.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    But Frontier can give me 15 mpbs and Comcast 50.

    ERROR: Unit mpbs not found



  • @aliceif said:

    ERROR: Unit mpbs not found

    millibits per second, duh.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    I'm trying to understand why I'm paying $66.95

    WOW! You pay a lot for your internet service. Are those prices typical in the US? Do you have any phone service bundled with that, or is it literally internet only?

    I currently pay £30 per month, but that includes free phone calls (although my service is only 16Mbps).

    I'm looking at upgrading to BT infinity which will cost me £36 per month but give me 76Mbps (max of course, probably only half that in practice).

    This is all ADSL, but BT recently started a thing where they've run fibre to the cabinet. If you live within 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of the cabinet you can benefit from the faster speeds.



  • Ok boys, whip them out and take out the measuring tape. My bill:

    • Monthly maintenance, basic cable: $10.60
    • Internet 15/1.5 flat: $14.50
    • Static IP: $6
    • D3 internet TV: $2
    • Govt tax: $6.5

    • Total: ~ $40


  • My rate's the same as @blakeyrat's, and it's also Comcast for the same reasons. For now.



  • 32 euros a month, 70Mbps, shared between me and my roommate... and I thought Ireland had pretty bad Internet in general!



  • £32 a month for 50Mbps, basic tv and phone line.

    will rise to £50 or so in 12 months when the discount period ends.



  • I’m starting to think that any price displayed on an ISP’s website will not match the actual price.

    • First one I’ve subscribed to: “100Mbps fiber for 29.99€/month” except that when you actually go ahead and try to subscribe, you see that you must rent their router, for 3€/month.
    • Second and current one: “300 Mbps for 29.99€/month, 1Gbps where available”. After entering my address, the website indicated that I would get the 1Gbps bitrate. Except that the contract only said 300Mbps, and I got 300Mbps in the end.

    Given the previous comments, I guess I can’t really complain, but still...


  • BINNED

    @VinDuv said:

    I’m starting to think that any price displayed on an ISP’s website will not match the actual price.

    Uh jeah, because of that kind of logic it is required here to display the full cost, even in adverts.
    All Service Providers (internet, phone, electricity, gas, ...) are required to provide pricing data to the regulator that is used to feed an official comparing website. For internet and phone that http://www.bestetarief.be/
    For a govnerment site it is even usable and has an english version available. So you can have a look what a comparable plan in Belgium would cost you.



  • This is one of several reasons I dumped comcast and went to Frontier. The service was more or less fine, but their rates, packages and trying to pull one over on you all the time just got old.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    I was expecting "introductory rate that applies to new customers only" rather than "bundled price".

    My old internet, as I mentioned in the good ideas thread, is supposedly 6mpbs for $29.99/mo* from Frontier. The new service is 50mbps for $50/month on fiber subcontracted from the front office.

    *I was sure it was $39.99 but I checked my bill again


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    It's impossible to use the "4-spaces" method on the first line to put it in a blockquote.

    Probably because four space indent is actually for code, not quotes - it's what the </> button in the compose window does.



  • Also in Ireland, 77.97 a month:

    Premium cable (HD, all non-sports/movies channels) DVR, second non-HD DVR, phone, 200/10 (actually achieve about 180/15) uncapped. Its all bundled so there's no obvious rate card but roughly €7 of that is the fee to go from 200GB cap to no cap, €8 for the second DVR and €40 for the main TV package.

    When you can get UPC things are quite good here now. When you can't...



  • 250/20 for ~28 USD a month, no limits and a free wireless router/modem.

    Until this year about 20 of those dollars were deductible for everyone.



  • I'm actually on Vodafone (I think. My roommate sorted it)

    UPC is definitely the leader, forcing the others to compete at least somewhat!

    I've friends with different providers, the consensus seems to be stay the hell away from Eircom and you're laughing.



  • In Finland: 21Mbps for €13.90 a month. I could have 50Mbps for...huh, €12.58. Only I'd have to get an LTE device and I wouldn't be able to make calls with it. Time to shop for a dual-sim phone, I guess.

    The lack of wires must be what's making it so cheap: 8Mbps ADSL costs twice as much, and that's the fastest wired Internet I can get.

    Edit: also, the €12.58 is supposedly a 15% discount off €19.90. I like their math.



  • I pay around $75/mo for 100 Mbps with no bundled services.



  • $30 for 15/1

    Having 1mbps upload is awful though. Apparently TWC is going to increase everyone's speed for the same price in my area because ~Google Fiber~



  • Getting 40 Mbps for $25.94/mo with CenturyLink.



  • @algorythmics said:

    will rise to £50 or so in 12 months when the discount period ends.

    That's when you call and ask what they can do for you. If there's any competition in your area, they'll probably give you a new promo price.



  • I live in Canada, so I will have you beat for the highest prices. $70 for 80GB @ 25Mbps
    That is bundled with TV, which is another $93 on top of that.



  • Germany: about 8€ for basic cable (don't know exactly since it's included in the rent and I'm too lazy to get my last statement)

    29.99€ for unlimited calls to landlines and a 100/8 connection. WiFi-router was optional, the current modem acts as a router but can be reconfigured to passthrough so you can connect your own router if you want. IPv6 is also implemented.



  • England: £2 a month for broadband (about 20Mbps) plus £138 a year for line rental - that includes evening and weekend calls too; if I wanted daytime calls that'd be an extra £5 per month. They gifted me a wi-fi router as long as I didn't leave within the first 12 months.



  • I'd rather have 56K than Comcast...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @chubertdev said:

    I'd rather have 56K than Comcast...

    While I would accept that Cumcast must be pretty bad, 56K was not good at all. Yes, I've done remote GUIs over that sort of connection (specifically, FrameMaker). No, I won't ever again.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I ran into a similar problem last night. For the last week, a local pizza dump was doing a special offer where you could get a large one topping pizza for $4.99, limit 5 pizzas per customer. They had a special promo code to use when ordering online. I tried that, but it would only let me order one pizza for that price. So I had to call them up and place the order.

    Of course, it was carry out only, and when I showed up, somehow the onion rings had disappeared from my order so I had to wait around while they cooked them. Worth the wait, though.



  • @cartman82 said:

    Total: ~ $40

    Mine is about $20 for 60Mbps cable (no bundle, I don't even own a TV), but you have to take into account the paycheck (which, in my case, is just above $400 for a full month of 40h weeks - yep, it's not even $3 an hour).



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    Mine is about $20 for 60Mbps cable (no bundle, I don't even own a TV), but you have to take into account the paycheck (which, in my case, is just above $400 for a full month of 40h weeks - yep, it's not even $3 an hour).

    WTF!? In Serbia, that's slightly less then a junior intern's pay. I thought you guys had it better. WTF dude?



  • @cartman82 said:

    In Serbia, that's slightly less then a junior intern's pay

    Well, it is my current job title... To be fair, though, you can survive here for that amount of cash (at least if you have my kind of eating habits), and it's a very temporary deal anyway.

    The WTFness began, though, when our UK branch couldn't find anybody to fill a senior-level contracting position at one of the biggest UK companies and decided that a junior trainee from Poland will have to do...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    SUPER BONUS DISCOURSE BUG 2.0 I changed my "title" from "Mediocre Poster" to "<none>" like 4 hours ago, and it still shows "Mediocre Poster" next to my name. How many decades until that change takes effect?

    It is still "Mediocre Poster", unless you changed it back this is really taking a long time...



  • Yeah it's impossible to turn off once you've turned it on, apparently.



  • Or maybe you didn't save it. Or maybe it's a bug.

    But I just set mine to <no title> before posting and it has updated immediately as can be seen.



  • I just tested this, and while my title is gone, yours is still there.

    BONUS DISCOURSE BUG: I just started to type a reply, pressed "cancel", changed my title, came back to this topic, pressed reply, replaced my canceled reply (which was still there) with a new one and ... it posts the canceled one and completely ignores what I replaced it with.



  • It got fixed at some point I guess.



  • Nope, mine was gone to me on my posts - not just this one but other posts that were older (both before and after the last rebake)

    Something funky is going on.

    EDIT: then I went to my profile, put my 2^12 posts title back and it's there straight away again.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Arantor said:

    EDIT: then I went to my profile, put my 2^12 posts title back and it's there straight away again.

    Probably...your browser got the update, because it knew you were updating your own title. But other user's titles get cached. This happens all over the place here.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Several years ago when we bought the house we are in now, I called Comcast to get internet service. While on the phone with the woman, due to requiring a business level package, and due to a special promotion, it was cheaper to get TV and phone with it than to get internet service by itself. IIRC, ~$12/month? Of course, the woman thought I was crazy when she asked how many phone jacks I had and how many cable boxes I would need and I told her none. I only packaged the other services on to get a discount.

    Then, 3-4 months after they start their service I get a bill for ~$600. Comcast had bought out an ISP/cable TV provider that I had used years earlier and according to their records I had not returned my equipment when I disconnected my services (I had). That led to a whole clusterfuck of headaches. It culminated with me getting the CEO of Comcast's direct line through a friend of mine. I called up his office and somehow got right through, to both his confusion and mine. I expected the secretary to run interference, but no. I kept it brief and he transferred me to his secretary, who connected me to someone else, who took care of it right then and there with no more hassle.

    At the end of the 12-month promo period I called up to cancel the superfluous services and there was even more confusion when I told them I needed to cancel my phone and cable TV services, but I had no equipment to return. Straightening that out was not worth the ~$144 I had saved.



  • I'm paying 62€/month for 100/100 internet, TV, phone and mobile (plus around 30€ for 3 more mobile phones, which include 500 minutes to other providers [calls local to my provider are free]).


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