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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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...
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."
Re:but... (Score:3, Informative)
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."
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.
Re:but... (Score:4, Informative)