Couple bought home in Seattle, then learned Comcast Internet would cost $27,000

This seems like a lack of due diligence on behalf of the real estate agent and the home buyer. The last two homes I bought, I made sure I knew exactly what my internet options would be and even pre-qualified the service before finalizing the sale. I'd suggest anyone who views internet as important to their job or entertainment to include that as part of the home buying process.

No, this idea is wrong.
How about you be right and have faith in everything and we'll be wrong and have diligence?
 
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Derecho Imminent

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Simple solution, ask one of the neighbors if you can install a wireless transceiver at their house. Even high end line of sight airFiber would only be a $2000 hardware cost. No reason to use something quite that powerful for home internet though.

That may be a violation of their TOS so they would need to get permission from Comcast.
 
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FohENG

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“I was just flabbergasted that a house like this, in an area like this, could possibly have never been wired for Internet,”

Since there’s a small number of houses with significant space between them it sounds like they’re all on very large lots, maybe even small acreages. Which means this is likely an expensive house. Which, if true, makes the “house like this/area like this” comment sound very entitled.
Honestly, it's 2022, and if I was buying an expensive house (which mostly feels like redundant phrasing these days), I'd feel entitled to internet access too. In the same way I'd feel entitled to indoor plumbing, sewage, and electric.

If I was buying an expensive house I’d make sure to do my due diligence first. Along with paying for a detailed house inspection I’d also inquire about Internet (as numerous people have pointed out in this thread already).

Entitled people often forget to do this because, well, they’re “entitled”.
 
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How hard it is in a US city to start a new ISP ? Really strange heairing these horror stories


pretty easy, just open a LLC with a state, get your tax ID numbers and then just raise tens of millions or billions of dollars to apply for the permits and run the wiring and sell your service. and rent some space in a central office and pay to hook up to the backbone internet providers
 
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SixDegrees

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This is the kind of thing that first time home owners are most likely to miss. If only there were an agent of some kind to advise and help them through the process./s

So, in my state real estate agents can represent either the buyer or the seller. The agent you contact from the name on the "For Sale" sign is the seller's agent. You can contact your own agent separately and they will represent YOUR interests, but this isn't all that common unless you've already contracted one to help you sell your existing house. Anyway, with your own agent, they'll split commissions with the seller's agent, and look out for your interests.

Or - probably better - your attorney can act on your behalf.

Not sure how this works in other states, though.
 
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“I was just flabbergasted that a house like this, in an area like this, could possibly have never been wired for Internet,”

Since there’s a small number of houses with significant space between them it sounds like they’re all on very large lots, maybe even small acreages. Which means this is likely an expensive house. Which, if true, makes the “house like this/area like this” comment sound very entitled.
Honestly, it's 2022, and if I was buying an expensive house (which mostly feels like redundant phrasing these days), I'd feel entitled to internet access too. In the same way I'd feel entitled to indoor plumbing, sewage, and electric.

If I was buying an expensive house I’d make sure to do my due diligence first. Along with paying for a detailed house inspection I’d also inquire about Internet (as numerous people have pointed out in this thread already).

Entitled people often forget to do this because, well, they’re “entitled”.

when i bought my house last year i looked this up before even going to see it to make an offer
 
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Sajuuk

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“I was just flabbergasted that a house like this, in an area like this, could possibly have never been wired for Internet,”

Since there’s a small number of houses with significant space between them it sounds like they’re all on very large lots, maybe even small acreages. Which means this is likely an expensive house. Which, if true, makes the “house like this/area like this” comment sound very entitled.
Honestly, it's 2022, and if I was buying an expensive house (which mostly feels like redundant phrasing these days), I'd feel entitled to internet access too. In the same way I'd feel entitled to indoor plumbing, sewage, and electric.

If I was buying an expensive house I’d make sure to do my due diligence first. Along with paying for a detailed house inspection I’d also inquire about Internet (as numerous people have pointed out in this thread already).

Entitled people often forget to do this because, well, they’re “entitled”.
As mentioned here, and as evidenced across many articles on Ars, you can do as much due diligence as possible for an individual buyer and still get fucked when it comes to internet access. Did these particular buyers do as much due diligence as possible? Hard to say with the information available.
 
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Matthew J.

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It seems like the issue is straight forward. It's not Comcast's fault that they would need to do underground work, tear up the road, and then restore the road to serve one customer. They won't ever see any return on the costs of that. Something that might help is asking the city to run overhead poles to his house and then Comcast can use that and it would probably greatly reduce the cost, but I'd doubt they'd do it for the same reason Comcast won't take up an 80,000 dollar project so one couple can get high-speed.
And yet all these houses are wired for electricity because America was a middle class socialist democracy in the last century. Is this really harder than the more dangerous electricity lines? Or just not regulated as a utility like it should be?
No, it's not regulated as a utility in most places.

And yet, large-scale ISPs like Comcast and Charter are always making noise about how they should be able to charge for their services like a utility, comparing Internet service to electricity--you wouldn't expect to pay one monthly fee for all the electricity you could consume, would you? How would that be fair to your neighbors?

And yet when it comes to being regulated like a utility--having their "internet meters" inspected and certified by a 3rd party for accuracy, publicly publishing their tariffs and notices of change, getting approval for rate increases, being required to service all dwellings in their service area, etc... they want it both ways!

Unfortunately, the regulators in large parts of this country are sufficiently captured that they are presently allowing them to have it both ways.

Write your assemblymen & congressmen.
 
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wxfisch

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I was thinking it would be cheaper for everyone for comcrap to just put up a pole and run it overhead, after all they are a telco and can own telco poles as opposed to just connecting to existing ones. But then I remembered that comcrap refuses to own any poles, at least around me. They mooch off Verizon if they need just a telco pole or use the electric utilities poles. Something about liability or some such.
 
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Derecho Imminent

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This is the kind of thing that first time home owners are most likely to miss. If only there were an agent of some kind to advise and help them through the process./s

So, in my state real estate agents can represent either the buyer or the seller. The agent you contact from the name on the "For Sale" sign is the seller's agent. You can contact your own agent separately and they will represent YOUR interests, but this isn't all that common unless you've already contracted one to help you sell your existing house. Anyway, with your own agent, they'll split commissions with the seller's agent, and look out for your interests.

Or - probably better - your attorney can act on your behalf.

Not sure how this works in other states, though.

Ok, I always thought it was common practice for there to be a buyer's agent and a seller's agent.
 
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Comcast's charges are their way of saying $FUCK.OFF and not much else.

If the customer is going to pay the cost of the install, why give them a fuck-off price? You have a captive customer who obviously has no better options than forking over thousands to you for the privilege of that house paying you for the rest of time.

It's much more likely they're price-gouging for the same reasons. "He has no options, he'll pay."

And Comcast knows that they'll have a tough time getting full value from the house in the future unless they pony up.
 
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sanjamal

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It's not always the service providers fault that this is the case. There's a cost involved with all that work, whether you agree with the quote or not, it's going to be expensive to trench through and subsequently repair a road. Having worked for a cable provider previously, sometimes it's the home builder's fault that there's no service to the house.

I've seen builders who refuse to allow another company to run service to the home when running it is feasible, only to sell the home and the new owner expect that we now magically run service without digging, drilling, or even having cable distribution inside the home.

I've seen countless people renovate a home, removing one provider's cable distribution because "cable's old" or "company x sucks", and then sell the home, and the new owner questions why there's no cable distribution anywhere. Add to that, the customer doesn't call in to say that they removed all service on their own, so the company's database continues to erroneously show that service is available to the house.

I've seen entire neighborhoods developed with only one service option. Customers complain "company x has the monopoly on this place," but knowing the history, I was able to say "that's because company y dropped the ball by not cooperating with the developers thereby handing company x a monopoly."

When buying a house, you need to know what you're looking for in regards to service distribution, and get your eyes on it to make sure it's there and can be used, because you can't entirely trust the seller or the service providers to give you accurate information.

Crazy people all over the place waving their respective flags chanting "freedom" whilst actively removing freedom of choice from others. The takeaway being, if you're building a house, allow and request that all potential service providers install service to the home, and if you're renovating, leave the service distribution in place unless you're planning on spending the rest of your life in the house and then burning it as a funeral pyre when you die.
 
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SixDegrees

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It’s gotten to the point where if I move, I will preinstall internet service before signing. Hard to trust availability websites, disclosures, etc.
But the housing market is so crazy, you might have to sigh before even checking out the build quality of the house.

That's already coming to an end as mortgage rates rise. Prices are also beginning to fall, but I'm not sure if that's an actual drop in prices or a shift toward the lower end of the market.

Also: imo, except in the rarest of circumstances you shouldn't be buying a house under that kind of pressure; you should be waiting for a market that's more sane.
 
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Steveferg

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I had a worse problem with CenturyLink/Lumen. I was quoted 28,000 for a hookup. They sent an engineer, quoted me a price, I wired the money, they sent me a modem, then…. Nothing. 6 months later that said that even their line goes through my front yard, they would have to connect to their main office 4 miles away, for only the low low price of $1,045,000. Yup, you read that right, but they would generously discount it a 1000 dollars. Their contract clearly states that I’m not responsible for any cost overruns. I am currently suing them in federal court.
 
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People are suggesting sharing the neighbors wifi. What if Comcast installed a directional wifi just for this house? From pole or box to residence. Seems like that could be done for a lot cheaper than digging.

They'd have to train engineers and technicians to install, monitor and service the equipment. The cost would not be trivial.

Comcast already has public wifi access points mounted on utility poles. It probably wouldn't be difficult or expensive to install one on a utility pole with line of sight to the customer's property, and then the customer could install a directional receiver on a pole on their property.
 
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BWP1984

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For that kind of cost it would be worth going back to the city and asking them how much it would be for permitting on overhead poles, and see if it can be done that way - at least then they can take as much of the cost impact away from the single "service provider" and they have an option to string further cable later if there are additional problems.
 
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Bigdoinks

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At what point does it become cheaper to just start your own ISP?
Never, when the incumbent monopoly ISP can simply undercut you on your 20-50k investment at any time for their true cost.
The legal solution should be that if an ISP makes an offer for internet service, and that offer contract is completed via checkout, the ISP should be estopped from backing-out from the service at the agreed upon price.
 
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I had a problem similar to this at our business a few years ago. We were on a major street, but we had no frontage, and no poles on our side where they could drop to. Then we were about 200 feet back. No way to access from the back side, it was all forest and creek. When they built the building originally (late 70's) there was no need for cable.

We made do with dialup for a long time, then finally went to a wireless system just for internet access. Eventually we started getting a lot of requests for wifi which we didn't have.

Quotes from Comcast were in the range of $12-13k. Eventually they came down to $4k as long as we signed a 4 year contract. That was doable, and it took them about 4 months to get the permits and get the construction done. They had to go under a 5 lane road, make a 90 degree turn, underground for another 100 ft, another 90 degree turn, then under 150-200ft of pavement. All in all, it surprises me not one bit that it was expensive to have done.
 
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hexbus

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Stories like this are all over. The fact of the matter is that both Cable Companies (Comcast, Spectrum, Cox) and ILECs (AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink/Lumen and Frontier) only want to spend the money that they have to, or where they can get a ROI.

What does "have to" mean? Well, some areas, it's in the franchise agreement for cable companies. Or agreements with local municipalities for tax breaks.

Next down from "have to" is "can we make the money up quickly for our shareholders?" This means that if you have a neighborhood who's captive and would likely have a lot of people use your service, and you can cable it easily with coax/fiber, then you'll get the service.

There's many ways to look at the ROI point.

1) I've seen subdivisions with landline and discontinued AT&T DSL (once you disconnect it, you're not gonna ever get it back), and no cable. Cable TV apparently doesn't think the ROI in that subdivision would mean that they can be profitable. And ILECs couldn't be bothered to put fiber in or invest in tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands + to invest either because they are concerned about profit.

2) I've seen subdivisions with a decent tech like VDSL (ex: AT&T U-verse that offers up to 100M). But only the ones in the front can get it. Cable was built there due to franchise agreements. 80% of the neighborhood (or more) goes with the Cable provider because the ILEC speeds just can't keep up. And they have to deal with the yearly pricing games that Cable providers like to play. AT&T or the other ILECs will refuse to install fiber because they look at the 20% subscription rate and say that it wouldn't be profitable.

3) I've seen many edge cases like this post. Literally hundreds of feet away from an access point. And they want in the five digits to do an install. The install should not cost five digits.

- this guy built his own fiber ISP and I believe he billed people $5000 for construction costs. At $75/mo, that will mean that they will be able to start covering other costs after over 5 years of service.

- this guy had to pay for a whole page ad to get AT&T's attention and shame them. They must have figured the cost to install was worth fixing the PR nightmare of the issue.

Lastly, I really wish that "hey, let's be nice responsible corporations and do good for the customers and put Internet everywhere" was part of these business' mantra, but it isn't. They entirely look at their bottom line. Things that they likely consider include: How much will it cost to install vs. the amortized cost to recover that install cost? When will they make a profit from it? Is that soon enough for investors? Will someone create a public affairs nightmare out of an edge situation and cause them to have to sink the cost into an install to fix the public perception issue? And more. No longer do we have the universal service mandate of the old Bell System (pre 1984).

The only thing that's going to fix this is to give some regulations teeth and hold these companies accountable to ensure that everyone has a universal right to high speed Internet, much like everyone used to have a right to have a landline.

edit: grammar
 
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bluey636

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Amending my post to give franchise agreement definition of "drop" to make clear this should be free not $27K. This is a violation of the terms listed on page 58 of Comcast's King County franchise agreement and this couple should contact the franchise authority to have those terms enforced.

"The Franchisee must provide Cable Service to all Persons within its franchise area upon request...standard installation charge to all Persons within its Franchise Area where the drop distance is one hundred and fifty feet or less, measuring from the point of entry to the premises to be served to nearest right-of-way that the franchisee has the right to use"

https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/it ... ashx?la=en

So the 181 feet to the nearest Comcast box cited in the article is not the drop distance and given that this house is in central Seattle, there is no way their front door is farther than 150 feet from a right of way.
 
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It’s gotten to the point where if I move, I will preinstall internet service before signing. Hard to trust availability websites, disclosures, etc.
But the housing market is so crazy, you might have to sigh before even checking out the build quality of the house.

My agent warned us about those people. There were some people waiving inspections, buying houses sight unseen, paying well over asking. It took us 3 months to find a house, but we eventually found one without resorting to any of that. In the meantime we stayed in an extended stay hotel scouring the websites for houses...not a pleasant experience but there were no available apartment and rentals.

I would never buy a house without checking it out. Or at the minimum checked out by someone you trust.
 
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It was in the documents, seller did not have internet (in 2022 near Seattle...red flags). I checked the outside of every house I looked at for FTTH. If I didn't see a box on the outside of the house, I wasn't buying.

No internet run to the house at all in 2022 seems like a huge red flag in a dense suburban area like this.

My agent warned us about those people. There were some people waiving inspections, buying houses sight unseen, paying well over asking.

In the Bay Area, and other hot real estate markets, you'll absolutely never win a bidding war without waiving all contingencies. I'm glad things worked out for you, but people aren't waiving those things because they're stupid, there's no other choice if you want a house.

We brought a GC with us to the home viewings and had him look around before we made offers.
 
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This is a violation of the terms listed on page 58 of Comcast's King County franchise agreement and this couple should contact the franchise authority to have those terms enforced.

"The Franchisee must provide Cable Service to all Persons within its franchise area upon request...standard installation charge to all Persons within its Franchise Area where the drop distance is one hundred and fifty feet or less. "

https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/it ... ashx?la=en

But according to the article the drop distance is 180 feet no?
 
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Mustachioed Copy Cat

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Might be too much for this otherwise thorough article, but is it clear whether the city has leverage to require Comcast to fill these gaps?

Even if it doesn’t have the authority to issue orders to Comcast, can it revoke or tax usage of utility infrastructure? Does the city own the poles, or does the power company, and are the two meaningfully distinct from one another? Can it wave fees associated with access to the infrastructure that currently exists?

Seems like the city would want to do something to avoid having these sink hole properties that aren’t fit for any modern use all over the place.
 
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Frankbeans

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When Zachary Cohn and his wife bought a house in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, they didn't expect any trouble getting home Internet service.

What's not clear from my reading is whether Comcast told them service was available at that address before they bought the house. Buying a house without checking if service is available at that address is like buying a house without checking if it has city water or a well, i.e., moronic.

It seems pretrt clear. He didn't check. Not even after the disclosure. Colossal mistake on their part.

"Comcast availability data wasn't a problem in this case, as Cohn said he didn't think to check that there was a Comcast connection before closing on the Seattle house. "Honestly, I didn't even think to look. What house in the middle of Seattle wouldn't be wired for reasonable Internet?" Cohn said."
 
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Hinton

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Sounds like the disclosure in the purchase agreement was pretty shaky. There is a difference between "does not have internet service" and "cannot get internet service". In California I am not sure that would be considered a full disclosure. I don't know about Washington but they might want to talk to a real estate attorney.

It has internet service per the article.
 
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simplepurple

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It seems like the issue is straight forward. It's not Comcast's fault that they would need to do underground work, tear up the road, and then restore the road to serve one customer. They won't ever see any return on the costs of that. Something that might help is asking the city to run overhead poles to his house and then Comcast can use that and it would probably greatly reduce the cost, but I'd doubt they'd do it for the same reason Comcast won't take up an 80,000 dollar project so one couple can get high-speed.

They wouldn't need to tear up the road. They'd use directional boring, like a Ditch Witch. It's quite common these days.
 
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Rainywolf

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It’s gotten to the point where if I move, I will preinstall internet service before signing. Hard to trust availability websites, disclosures, etc.
But the housing market is so crazy, you might have to sigh before even checking out the build quality of the house.

Yes this. It seems that multiple people in the comments are suffering from amnesia and don't remember that houses were being sold in less than 24 hours in major cities, Seattle included. It was ultra common for people to wave all inspections to close on a house.

Now if they bought a house today in Seattle that might have about a week to think it over.
 
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