Comcast Pays $800,000 To U.S. For Hiding Stand-Alone Broadband 201
First time accepted submitter vu1986 writes "The Federal Communications Commission has settled with Comcast over charges that the cable company made it hard for consumers to find stand-alone broadband packages that don't cost an arm and leg. As part of the settlement Comcast paid the U.S. Treasury $800,000 and the FCC extended the length of time Comcast had to provide such a service."
but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does Comcast have to make it any easier for customers to find the stand alone-packages? I don't see that requirement anywhere in the summary or article ..
It's a settlement. Basically the FCC and Comcast sat down and decided that it would be... cheaper... if they simply didn't use 2 point font to describe the alternatives than to put it through the legal system and an endless appeals process. If you're a conservative, it amounts to a government agency fleecing an innocent business to support their habit of taking businesses to court to enforce arbitrary standards. If you're a liberal, then it's a way of making a monopolistic business play well with others. And if you're politically agnostic, then it's a slow news day and this just confirms your belief that people are stupid and lazy.
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According to TFA, yes, they are required to advertise it at $49.95/month for a 6Mbit connection for the next 3 years, at which time they can raise prices. That is what I pay for 7Mbit DSL service with a static IP (it would be 10 in other areas, but they need to upgrade the hardware at the switching station, which I expect to happen maybe the day before never, and I get a consistent 6.2-6.3). Since Cable is slower than DSL unless they have more bandwidth (with cable I can get 20GB for about $79, and then it
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The key word in your paragraph is "monopoly". Conservatives and libertarians have no problem with regulating a natural monopoly (water, electric) or government-granted monopoly (Comcast). As far as I am concerned the government should not only require Comcast advertise their Basic CATV and Naked-internet options, but also place a cap on how much they charge. (As is down with the electric monopoly.)
Alternatively the state government could revoke the monopoly and open the state to any cable company that wishes to come. Bring some competition against Comcast.
Re:but... (Score:5, Funny)
Free-market conservative type of guy here. Just not a dumbass like the ones you conjure up.
*facepalm* The SARCASM TYPE=DRIPPING html tag gets eaten by the editor.
Re:but... (Score:5, Informative)
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I think the issue raised was that girlintraining used the extremist vocal side of "conservatism" in the US as a definition for conservatives, while using the very moderate and benign side of "liberalism" in the US as a definition for liberals. It's like someone using the OWS stereotype to define liberals. Slashdot liberals would naturally find that offensive because it is an obvious bias. The same consideration should be shown to conservatives.
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
A reasonable conservative wants .. a reasonable amount of regulation.
Unfortunately for you (and everyone else, actually), reasonable conservatives are a dying breed in many places. You're saying the sort of things that are frequently treated as outright heresy, at least among conservative politicians and media personalities held in esteem in certain parts of the United States. They are perfectly happy to have businesses rip us off in any way possible, under the make believe principle that the free market is a bag of magical fairy dust that can solve any problem that faces mankind. How appropriate or effective a market can be to a specific enterprise is entirely irrelevant, because there isn't any rational thought behind the belief. They literally believe that free market capitalism is Jesus Wizard Sauce that just needs to be slathered on.
If you don't believe these things? More power to you. Don't go running for office anytime in a red state, though. Here in Texas, candidates for most offices only compete on how far to the right they can claim to be and how much they hate Obama (even if they are running for state and local offices and are unlikely to actually interact with him at all during the course of their term). Candidates go down in flames for uttering much less liberal blasphemy than what you've mentioned.
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No, those aren't conservatives, they're Libertarians. Libertarians think that the marketplace is a panacea that can cure all of society's ills.
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City ownership of roads (Score:2)
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Of course, the best choice would be for the cities to install conduit. Nice big pipes like the ones used for the sewer systems. This way, even if you had 20 cable companies in a city
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately for you (and everyone else, actually), reasonable conservatives are a dying breed in many places
From a non-american POV, Obama walks and talks like a "reasonable conservative".
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no true 'left' in American politics anymore; there's the Democrats at the center, the Republicans on the right, with a few far-right groups like Libertarians thrown in for good measure.
Re:but... (Score:5, Informative)
Woah there Johnny. Libertarians aren't "far-right." Libertarians are slightly more conservative anarchists. It's a different dimension on the graph than the left-right:liberal-conservative scale.
And libertarians wouldn't be thrilled about this news bit either. Just more collusion and uselessness.
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If the political spectrum were a circle with Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right, and Libertarians far off to the right where the two ends meet, then where do totalitarians (e.g. Nazis, Stalinist Communists, etc.) fit? Since they're the opposite of Libertarians, they'd fit between the Democrats and Republicans (right in the area most people would label "moderate").
But they're not moderate of course, which proves one thing: that the political spectrum cannot be expressed as a circle, but instead
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a conservative, it amounts to a government agency fleecing an innocent business to support their habit of taking businesses to court to enforce arbitrary standards.
A reasonable conservative wants .. a reasonable amount of regulation. They don't want businesses regulated to a crazy and excessive degree. But they want business to be done openly and honestly too.
Unfortunately, there don't seem to be that many "reasonable conservatives" left. It's a shame... there are two distinct political philosophies that need representing and can coexist, but today's GOP doesn't do a very good job of it. I'm almost a socialist, but I firmly believe that the free market does most things better - even electricity, if the market is properly set up.
If today's GOP were really in favor of the free market, they'd see cap-and-trade as a reasonable way to hold people accountable for the externalities of pollution, and create an incentive to improve. But they're more interested in give-the-rich-guys-money-ism. It was pretty well understood in Reagan's time that trickle-down "economics" was a political sham with no basis in reality, but a lot of people seem to actually believe it nowadays...
tl;dr - Republicans need to be like you describe, for the health of our nation. Unfortunately, they seem to be forcing those people out as RINOs if they don't also buy the line about gay marriage and so on.
Re:but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I found stand alone internet from Comcast via an installer advertising in Craigslist. He listed all the different packages and costs associated with each. It was far easier than navigating the Comcast site.
What I do not care for with Comcast is the prices on the site, even after entering your zip code, are not necessarily the prices your local Comcast office will offer. An example, I wanted basic cable to go with my internet and phone from Comcast. Calling the number on my bill resulted in an offer for basic cable for 19.95. On the website it was 12.95. Even when presented with this information the person on the phone said that was not available in my area. I went to online chat with the Comcast site via a button they had there and had the basic service installed and added to my bill at 12.95
Well at the beginning of this year Comcast raised ALL cable TV bills by five dollars. So my 12.95 went to 17.95 a month. I called, complained, and dropped the service. Come to find out the work they did to hook up TV in the first place means I still get basic service for free as it rides on my cable internet. When they called to sell me TV again I asked them about it and they replied that cable ready TV's cannot be blocked at this time.
Some companies are just too uncoordinated to know what they do.... so I would not ascribe their making things difficult as a policy but the result of poor management.
sounds like there cable card pricing (Score:2)
sounds like there cable card pricing
where each area has it's own costs / fees and you can't tell based on the website.
Some areas make you have the HD fee (or have as part of the base package)
Some areas make you pay a outlet fee on the cable card.
and so on.
Read http://www.dslreports.com/ [dslreports.com] for more
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Does Comcast have to make it any easier for customers to find the stand alone-packages? I don't see that requirement anywhere in the summary or article ..
Yes, It is in one of the paragraphs toward the end of the article.
"Comcast didn’t admit fault as part of the settlement, but it did lay out some cash and pledge to make its cheaper stand-alone service more visible. It will train its call agents, make sure the offering is visible on its web site and it committed to a major marketing campaign around the Performance Started service for 2013."
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they charge more for their standalone packages than their dual or triple packages.
Re:but... (Score:4, Informative)
I wouldn't say it buried at all the package is there and is clearly labeled on the price list in the same font/size as the other packages. It might be on fine print on advertisements nobody ever said a company has to advertise every service they offer they could choose not to mention it at all. There is nothing you need to find just call and ask about them nobody will proactively offer you the cheaper packages but if you ask they will tell you.
Re:but... (Score:5, Informative)
"nobody will proactively offer you the cheaper packages" -- _everyone_ does that if there's even a resemblance of competition on the market...
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This is true. I wanted stand alone internet. Bundled with basic cable the bundled package was lower cost than Internet alone. This and throttling were the 2 reasons I dropped them as soon as DSL came into my area. For 2/3 the price, I get 3X faster Internet (6 Meg instead of 2 Meg down). They call once in a while wanting me to return. I told them all they needed to do was give me a fair package in the monopoly market. I don't continue a relationship with a bad partner just because they have to compet
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Re:but... (Score:4, Informative)
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I wouldn't say it buried at all the package is there and is clearly labeled on the price list in the same font/size as the other packages. It might be on fine print on advertisements nobody ever said a company has to advertise every service they offer they could choose not to mention it at all. There is nothing you need to find just call and ask about them nobody will proactively offer you the cheaper packages but if you ask they will tell you.
What is interesting about this is that I checked and some of the cable companies say that broadband only packages don't exist. They certainly don't like it when you do only broadband from everything I've seen.
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Not just Comcast (Score:3, Informative)
I had a bitch of a time with Time Warner trying to get them to give me broadband without the TV, phone, and other crap that's pointless to me. What's the point of making it such a pain in the ass? All it does is ensure that wherever I move next it sure as hell won't be somewhere serviced by TWC.
Re:Not just Comcast (Score:5, Interesting)
My provider likes to call me every few months and ask if i'd like their telephone service. I keep having to explain to them that me and my girlfriend are in our late twenties, we don't have a landline and we don't want one and even if my cell phone exploded in my pocket tomorrow, i'd probably just use Skype.
Honestly I'm getting tempted to start threatening to cancel the cable too. It's something i've wanted to do for a long time, but being Canadian my options for cable-cutting are quite a bit, uh, shallower. The girlfriend likes certain sports and the occasional fit of channel surfing too (also, she's not very patient with finicky bits of technology), which just makes things even more difficult. If they keep pushing me though, I might just be tempted. The sad part is, I know no matter where I go (and there are really only 3 options where I live) i'd have to deal with the same shit.
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My provider likes to call me every few months and ask if i'd like their telephone service. I keep having to explain to them that me and my girlfriend are in our late twenties, we don't have a landline and we don't want one and even if my cell phone exploded in my pocket tomorrow, i'd probably just use Skype.
Perhaps they are confused because you're telling them your age as if it's somehow relevant to your phone choice. I know 18 year olds with landlines and I know 60 year olds that use a cell phone exclusively.
Though if it's your internet provider that keeps calling you (unless they also happen to be the phone company), they aren't really offering a "landline", they're just offering some VOIP service which is not nearly the same thing.
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Not all cable phone offerings are VOIP, some use a digital phone tech.
Do you have more details about this digital phone tech? I'm not aware of any cable company phone offerings that are not VOIP. They may not traverse the public internet (and may be able to take advantage of QoS routing for better performance), but as far as I know, they are all VOIP.
Re:Not just Comcast (Score:5, Funny)
Ask them "Do you offer a phone service that blocks assholes like you from calling?"
Re:Not just Comcast (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not just Comcast (Score:5, Informative)
My provider likes to call me every few months and ask if i'd like their telephone service. I keep having to explain to them [..]
Have you tried telling them that you don't want marketing calls to your number?
National Do Not Call List: Who Can Still Call You? [lnnte-dncl.gc.ca]:
"If you do not want to be called by a telemarketer making an exempt call, you can ask to be put on the telemarketer's internal do not call list. Every Canadian telemarketer is required to maintain such a list and respect your wishes not to be called."
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Over the last few years, companies have found that they can get around the problem by hiring southern Asian workers, with half a dozen 3rd parties inbetween.
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Ah, maybe its changed, but Shaw and Rogers agreed to split the market here in Canada and as far as I know that is still the case. So where you can get Shaw, you can't get Rogers, and vice versa. Has that changed?
Here in Victoria, its Shaw or Telus for your internet connection, no other options available that I know of for a residential connection.
Since they both have similar price schemes (Pay $60/mo for a decent internet connection, and less only if you pay for other services (phone, tv) and increase the o
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It's the CRTC that did that and not any agreement between the two of them. You are simply not allowed to offer a competing cable TV service in some areas and the incumbent operators have in several instances even complained about building wide shared satellite service to the CRTC. Of course there was a time they swapped regions but that was because Rogers screwed up so badly in Vancouver during the 90s that they scrambled to trade Vancouver for anywhere else. In case that was before your time, they added
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Its not before my time by any stretch but I have spent a lot of my life without cable generally and I don't recall being a Rogers customer - although I lived in Vancouver in the 90's so you would think I might have been.
However, if you are not allowed to offer competing cable services in areas like Victoria, how is Telus allowed to participate - I can't say they compete because their prices are pretty much identical to Shaw's, and if you get Internet/Cable TV/Phone through either one you are looking at $80+
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Here is the negative option billing scandal from 1995 [thecanadia...opedia.com]
They did the swap in the year 2000 as you can read here [broadcastermagazine.com]. Telecom companies were only permitted to compete with cable a few years back but before that they were only able to using satelite dishes.
Re:Not just Comcast (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't paid for cable for years now. I cancel cable then get offered 6 months free. 6 months run up, I cancel, in 1-2 weeks I get a call offering free cable. This most recent spat is 1 year of full cable (no hd.. but doesn't really matter as I rarely watch it).
I also got my broadband upped to 50mbps for free (i.e. same price I was paying for "highspeed" which was something like 15mbps down). They may have finally got me on the internet though (I'm assuming the point is to get me to want to keep a service). The upwards bandwidth is finally higher than I had in the late 90s before they started capping upload speed and it has me hooked. I'll probably have to pay the extra $$ to keep the extra upwards bandwidth. No more ghetto uploading large files overnight (which really brought me back to dialup). Wish is was symmetric, but I don't want to pay what they'd charge for that.
Comcast rip offs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Comcast rip offs (Score:5, Insightful)
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But we'll all get a small reduction in our taxes...well, the tax increase won't be quite as high...
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My taxes just tripled. [ap.org]
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Ah, I crack myself up sometimes.
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Of course, the amount is so miniscule that if they were to give it to subscribers, it would come out to about three and a half cents per household.
Re:Comcast rip offs (Score:5, Funny)
You can not fine them too much, or they will be so scared of fines and court battles, they will hold back and not hire people, you do not want that do you?
Re:Comcast rip offs (Score:4, Insightful)
You can not fine them too much, or they will be so scared of fines and court battles, they will hold back and not hire people, you do not want that do you?
Corporations want to be people. They should pay like people then too.
Re:Comcast rip offs (Score:5, Insightful)
And tax cuts, let's not forget about those - if the Job Creators only have to pay a tiny amount in taxes then the middle class will have to shoulder the burden. But that's okay because with all of the jobs and money that the Job Creators will shower down upon us, there will be plenty with which to pay the taxes.
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Thanks but no thanks. I don't want Washington DC owning the copper to my home. Good luck ever getting anything done then.
Why can't cities own the last mile? Why is the answer always "NATIONALIZE IT!!!!" Can't smaller government entities do anything for themselves anymore? It seems one side only believes in nationalizing everything and the other believes in privatizing everything. They're both stupid.
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If you factor in that Comcast is likely to impact more people than any individual, it might be closer to a tenth of a cent fine.
For something like this, I'd argue that fines should be proportional to impact per person per unit time. $800m would seem more reasonable, on that basis. The EU's fine on Microsoft was much closer to the figures corporations on that scale need to face before they'll pay much heed.
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Hmm. $800,000 fine. For a company that grossed 4.4 billion last year. If this was an individual making median income (47k USD), then this would be like fining them $0.09. That'll teach them!
If you're earning 47k with those math skills...
It's $9, not $.09
He's just adjusting for inflation.
As an inhabitant of Chattanooga... (Score:2, Informative)
Comcast sucks. They've been making advertisements lately where they claim people go back to them or something. They even claim that according to PCWorld they have the nation's fastest broadband.
Not hardly. Not when our local fiber provider can drop a gig to your house.
Of course the wannabe libertarians screamed about public money and a monopoly abusing its power.
Lying fuckers.
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Chattanooga does have gigabit fiber to the home. It's not dirt cheap, but if you are decently employed, and love the high speed, you might be willing to pay the $350/mo.
EPB Fiber Optics [epbfi.com]
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I consider myself "decently employed", and I would not be willing to drop a car payment every month on my internet connection.
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Then you don't love the speed enough. Internet is not as big a part of your life as for some. You want your car, too. In summary ... You have a life!
Go for the 100 megabit. It still beats Comcast.
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You want your car, too.
Not enough to pay for one, which is why I commute on the bus five months out of the year and a bike the other seven.
price no greater than $49.95 (Score:2, Informative)
TFA says:
price no greater than $49.95 for three years.
Well shit. I have Comcast's cable internet service, without TV or anything else from them, and they're charging me around $70/mo.
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Sounds like something worth at least ten, maybe fifteen bucks a month. I'd be happy to get three years for fifty bucks ...if they upgraded to fiber.
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They did upgrade to fiber, just not fiber to your house. Fiber to the house is dumb as they dont have the bandwidth back at the OTN to give you more than what the RG6 coax can give you.
Your speed limitation is the Executives being cheap not the technology.
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Salesperson the phone told me the slower service is more expensive. That's how they work, milking the legacy customers. Beyond Comcast, web hosting works the same way. You can't even find the expensive plans people are still on when you go to the host's websites.
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When I got Comcast a few months ago* the phone salesperson offered me 20Mbps for $29.99/month. When the bill came in, they charged $39.99. After fighting with them (and not paying the bill for 3 months), a Better Business Bureau complaint resulted in me getting the price I was offered (at least for the remainder of a year).
* I HATE Comcast, but I had essentially no choice: neither alternative (Clear WiMax or AT&T DSL) could do better than <1Mbps in my area.
Go get 'em Government! (Score:3)
I spend $35 a month for stand-alone 12mbps. It's not great, but it's hardly an "arm or a leg". Maybe they're guilty of not advertising it, but I didn't know that was a crime.
Re:Go get 'em Government! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we do with only 2 viable options in most of the US, if you're lucky, we can't count on market forces. Ultimately, it's either settle for whatever the ISPs want to give or force them to something about it. Having watched the prices rise and the connection speed not for over a decade, I definitely think we need more government as less isn't working.
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The message I got from Comcast the last time that I consider(and discussed canceling cable outright was that if I were to do so, then the cost of my broadband service would go up. (cable ~$14-$15 for the bare minimum and broadband internet @ ~$55).
I have no real leverage in my area - no legitimately competitive providers.
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When you have monopolies or near-monopolies like these Internet companies seem to be in certain places, the government is the only power that can rein them in and keep them from buggering you up the ass. Since it appears that there is no meaningful competition for Internet service in many parts of the United States, the government stepping in to regulate these companies is an appropriate thing for them to do. Otherwise, these monopoly compa
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Absolutely. Corporations will ... by definition ... take everything they can get. A handful of privately owned corporations are exceptions. None of the publicly owned ones deviate from that lest they lose the institutional investors. Read my blog for more info on my political direction.
Comcast was good for me (Score:5, Informative)
I had no problem finding an internet only package with Comcast and I was quite happy with their service.
I used Comcast for internet service for 3 years and it worked great. Consistent 15 mbit service, never hit any usage caps despite being a heavy Netflix user with no cable service (I used Comcast only for internet). Only one instance of downtime in 3 years, they had a truck there within 4 hours and re terminated the connection at the pole to get me back online (the tech said it was water damage - it had been rainy and exceptionally windy - many people lost power). I considered DSL, but the local Telco could only promise "up to" 1.5mbit of bandwidth and said that due to my CO distance it might be lower.
Now I have AT&T U-Verse (my only option) and after 2 missed install appointment (no call for either one - they just didn't show), it's been ok, but there have been 2 outages in 3 months. One lasted around 10 minutes, the other was 60 minutes but it was the middle of the night.
If I could use Comcast again, I would.
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If I could use Comcast again, I would.
Bah. If I could get U-Verse, I would. There's fates worse than not being able to get comcast. Not being able to get anything wired faster than dialup, for example.
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They quoted me $48/month to add internet to the basic cable we already have. I guess they know people want cable over DSL. (No FiOS to compete here.)
The salesperson really made a fuss of trying to walk me through a script, and I'm not confident he even tried to give me the best price.
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Let me just say this is very typical, I work for a big company that provides internet service, and it comes down to luck really, Any of these big ISP's can provide good service for a very long time with no issues, but if for some reason you have a hard to trace down issue that happens intermittently, the chances of you getting the attention it takes to solve that issue is not good. The bigger the company the smaller your problem is to them. If its something obvious that can be fixed quick you are ok, but if
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I need to make a call. (Score:5, Interesting)
I need to make a call.
I just haven't figured out who I need to call--the FCC or Comcast.
When I purchased this house new, it had existing cable hookups but had never had them activated. I called Comcast and asked to have internet service activated. No problem, except that lady I spoke to automatically added cable service in the price--$69.00 a month. When I corrected her and stated that I did not want cable she stated that it was the same price anyway, with or without cable service.
So, in effect, the stand-alone internet service was never offered. In it's place, I was offered their bundle and was forced to pay a premium to have the cable access removed if I really desired to. Obviously, since the price was the same I now have both cable and internet service when all I wanted was the broadband.
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Fuck you, shill.
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69 is not free. it's buying an expensive cable service and expensive internet bundled into one package, idiot.
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That's not what's happening. They are just trying to trick people into thinking they are getting a good deal, something for free, when in reality you are paying too much for both services bundled together.
They want you to think that the internet costs $69, and then you get cable for free. That's rubbish. You're getting charged something like $40 and $30 for each service individually. They're just "bundled". So if I want to get rid of cable TV, I shouldn't have to keep paying for it. My bill should drop by $
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Glad to see comcast employees are still here astroturfing.
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This is a practice called "bundling". To use a car analogy, let's say you have a monopoly on cars. One day, you realize the people are having car radios installed, and you decide to enter that market. So, you build the cheapest, crappiest car radio you can, and you say "it now comes standard in every car! Also, we're raising our prices.". This is illegal. It is a use of one monopoly to try to harm competition in another market. It's what Microsoft got sued for with Internet Explorer*, and it's exactly what
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Raise a fuss and it WILL get corrected.
Yeah, probably by levying a meaningless $800,000 fine.
Wrong target for the fine (Score:4, Interesting)
More and more companies are being found to have behaved badly and are fined, just today Barclays is fined £290m [bbc.co.uk]. The company pays it and probably keeps going on other scams for which individuals earn large bonuses or commissions, nobody really suffers, the company just makes a little less profit that year.
The only way of altering behaviour is to fine the individuals who are behind the scams. Only when these crooks start loosing their houses and pensions will they stop thieving. Their primary interest is themselves, not the company. Hit them where it matters to them - then, and only then, might the regulators truly find their teeth.
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Who are you going to fine? The manager that signed off on something his bosses probably decided and delegated to him to enact? The president of the company? Maybe the union? It can be hard to find out where a decision came from when you work within a corporation. It is even harder from outside of it.
I would argue that the problem is the fines don't fit the crime. In these business cases you always hear the same scenario. Company A does some slimy, and illegal, thing and makes 100 million dollars in profit f
Why make them available at all? (Score:3)
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Because there is a law that states they cant require other services to be bundled. Granite State Communications is breaking the law by requiring a phone line. They are banking on that you wont complain to the FCC About it because you are not educated in the law to know this.
They now need to go after Verizon. (Score:5, Interesting)
Verizon recently sent out letters claiming that you cant have un-bundled DSL anymore and demanded I call and change my service to something that has a phone line. I refused and I still only have DSL and no phone line. I still get calls claiming that I have to convert from them.
This is illegal, yet the FCC is not jumping on them or Frontier for pulling pretty much the exact same stunt. I am all for forcing companies to comply, but apply it across the board evenly. And no I'm not a Comcast fanboi, I worked there, I know how evil they are. But I dont like single sided enforcement.
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Have you lodged a complaint with the FCC? If you still have the letter they sent, include a copy of that as evidence. Add in the dates of calls, and descriptions of what was said (as best as you recall.) Depending on your state's laws, you might be able to record the next call from them insisting that you have to change. The combination of the letter, and multiple calls, makes it harder for them to claim it was merely a "mistake" by the operators due to "training issues".
Sometimes these agencies literally c
Not their only scam (Score:2, Interesting)
Even if Comcast does offer you reasonable broadband only service, they still try to get you another way. I just moved a few months back and decided to skip out on the TV service for now but I needed the broadband service for when I work from home. I went to their website about 2 weeks prior to my move to sign up for service. I was able to sign up and they made me prepay my first month's bill. During the process, the website said it was unable to select an installation appointment for me so I needed to call
Comcast via Earthlink (Score:3)
I was a Comcast customer for a couple of years, when Earthlink sent me a promotion to switch to their cable Internet service. Turns out it's still Comcast, just resold by Earthlink. The price is lower, and they didn't charge me an extra fee for not having Cable TV! Their price has never changed, unlike Comcast's prices, which keep going up. I even pay my bills to Comcast and get repairs by Comcast employees, the only difference is that my router's default domain name is earthlink.net! I've decided that going with a reseller like this is a great idea.
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Screw that - I'll believe the FCC has some teeth when they start revoking $MEGACORP company charters for doing $STUPIDSHIT
Until then, DOJ v. Microsoft proved that no govenment agency has the balls nowadays to go up against a major corporation - no matter how bad they get.
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Until then, DOJ v. Microsoft proved that no govenment agency has the balls nowadays to go up against a major corporation - no matter how bad they get.
It proved nothing of the sort. The only thing it proved is that if you have enough money and connections you can get out of anything. We don't even know what price Gates paid for his hubris, though I suspect it had something to do with the Foundation's mission to spread western IP law throughout the developing world.
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It mostly had to do with the case not getting fast tracked. Once they got that decision, they already won, since the delay would mean it wouldn't be finished under the existing president's term, allowing them to influence the DOJ with massive campaign donations to both parties.
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The only thing it proved is that if you have enough money and connections you can get out of anything.
My point exactly.
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You are unlikely to find it online but its on the price list you can probably pick one up or call them and ask about it. Its only 6mb speed but its at a fixed price of $49 if you have cable its cheaper to get the higher speeds as internet is discounted with another product