Couple bought home in Seattle, then learned Comcast Internet would cost $27,000
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Well, good thing it's a free market, so they can always just get internet from the competing... oh wait.
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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.
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Surely they can get internet service if they pay the $27,000 dollars?
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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.
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When I was purchasing a home, I checked that the house could get FTTH before I even made an offer. Sounds like they didn't do their due diligence before the purchase.
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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.
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Well, no on ever expects the Spanish Inquisition, either.
But: $27k for a <200 foot run? That's absurd. I would press for a detailed accounting, and offer to run the trench myself. For comparison, a drain replacement on my property required excavating, removing, and replacing a 110 foot drain line, plus interconnects to the municipal sewer and to my house, and that cost under $4k - which I also thought was excessive, but several bids came in right around that same amount. And cable runs don't have to be 4 feet deep, like drain lines here in the north; the final run from pole to my house for Comcast is barely covered with dirt, thanks to loads of tree roots that make trenching a chore, and it's been fine that way for well over 10 years.
All that said: these days, I would explicitly ask if Internet connectivity was available before buying a house. It might even be considered a known defect if it wasn't, and the sellers would be on the hook (again, in my state) to disclose it or pay for remediation.
So, Comcast absolutely sucks here and ought to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. But caveat emptor is still sound advice.
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I wonder why we never see these sorts of articles about people getting electricity or water at their houses, even in remote rural areas. Maybe the government should look into what happened there and figure out how to fix these crazy internet stories.
/S (in case you can't feel my eyes rolling through your screen)
/S (in case you can't feel my eyes rolling through your screen)
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The article discusses the possibility of Starlink at their address.
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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.
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Has Starlink been abusing its customers? If it's just about its jackass owner I have some bad news about literally every provider of every service in the United States.
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I don't disagree, but Comcast's quoted price for installation is way out of bounds here, unless they have to drill through 200 feet of obsidian to run the line or something.
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I wonder if costs could be reduced the next time the city repaves the roads. They're already torn up and have crews managing traffic.
It's a crappy situation to be in, but any sort of relief is good, though they may need to wait for a few years for that to happen.
It's a crappy situation to be in, but any sort of relief is good, though they may need to wait for a few years for that to happen.
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I truly hate to laugh at these people's misfortune, but I found this comment hilarious:
"Unless a service provider can find another way to help support recovery on the large capital investment (i.e., connecting more households in an area) then it's typical for the provider to expect the resident to support the cost of construction. In this case... there are no other potential customers gained by the buildout; the neighboring households are already on Comcast's network."
Basically, we already wired your neighborhood, so there's no benefit to us going back and wiring it again. The fact that we missed you the first time is now, therefore, your problem.
"Unless a service provider can find another way to help support recovery on the large capital investment (i.e., connecting more households in an area) then it's typical for the provider to expect the resident to support the cost of construction. In this case... there are no other potential customers gained by the buildout; the neighboring households are already on Comcast's network."
Basically, we already wired your neighborhood, so there's no benefit to us going back and wiring it again. The fact that we missed you the first time is now, therefore, your problem.
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It's very unlikely they need to tear up the road. We were once on a well and switched to city water; the city line was on the other side of a road, and then had to run underneath our circular drive, twice, before reaching the house. No pavement was touched; they used a directional drilling rig to run the line, even though it had to be several feet underground for frost protection in this part of the country. Cable has no such requirement, so it would likely be even easier.
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Depends. Road repaving rarely goes all the way down to the roadbed; it's a lot more common to just strip off the top couple inches and replace that unless there are notable structural problems that lie deeper.
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I would think they would do directional boring. It usually costs about $15 per foot for longer jobs. It would be much better than tearing up the road. I have had a lot of experience with installing fiber/cable for new businesses. Comcast is clearly up-charging for this cable run, as it should have run under $5k.
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Another option is to find a 3rd party that will bore the hole for the cabling following Comcast's specs. Should be orders of magnitude less expensive than Comcast's price.
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Comcast: We won't install unless the excavation is done to our specific specifications.
Customer: Ok, give me the specifications and I'll put it out for bid to meet them.
Comcast: No. They're our specifications, and you can't have them. We'll inspect the job after it's done to see if it meets our spec.
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Comcast couldn't be bothered to do it in the 1980s, and now wants the homeowners to pay to fix Comcast's error, all for the privilege of having Comcast take more of their money in exchange for what will doubtless be substandard service. Personally I think this sort of nonsense deserves to be highlighted at every instance.
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I’ve had a similar experience (in a rental apartment) in North London. No cable run in the initial 1990s rollout, and very difficult to get connected afterwards (lots of faxes to legal departments without any luck). Ended up using a public WiFi hotspot across the road running through my own WiFi router. Slow, expensive and problematic. Thankfully only for 12 months.
As a home owner, $27,000 should theoretically get you a long way with your neighbors. I think many Ars readers could come up with compelling solutions to deliver shared network access securely and reliably at a considerably lower cost (and probably legally).
As a home owner, $27,000 should theoretically get you a long way with your neighbors. I think many Ars readers could come up with compelling solutions to deliver shared network access securely and reliably at a considerably lower cost (and probably legally).
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this, the two providers in my area just use direction drills to do this kinda of thing.
https://www.vermeer.com/na/utility-directional-drills
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sjlongland
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Sounds like my workplace… we're in Douglas Street, Milton (Brisbane) and fibre runs down the street.
To run it the distance from the footpath to the MDF in the office, the bill came out at AU$10000 (might've even been more, I know it was outrageous). They ended up going for a 500/500Mbps fixed-microwave link.
To run it the distance from the footpath to the MDF in the office, the bill came out at AU$10000 (might've even been more, I know it was outrageous). They ended up going for a 500/500Mbps fixed-microwave link.
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That's what I was thinking. I would have likely offered a neighbor free internet for as long as I'm resident, just string over a cable or point a wireless bridge at my house. Install something VLAN capable as the router at the neighbor's, put their traffic on one VLAN, the bridge on another and that's that. Even if it's like $100/month, that's 22+ years of free internet for a neighbor.
If there's a legal problem with on the same property, I'm sure that the council could help renumber the houses officially to make sure there's no problem.
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The worst part about this (because I wasted the better part of a year and a half trying to get Comcast before Starlink became available), is that Comcast will only accept a single payment. While I would have been willing to do such a thing, we had literally just finished the house and didn't know our neighbors. Would they trust us with thousands of dollars to hope that we'd pay Comcast? Could we do the same for them?
And Comcast Business isn't any better, now. I was working with them to divide the cost on monthly payments over 3 years. We had everything set up, but when Starlink came knocking (at $170/month cheaper and $500 down instead of $4500), we cancelled and got a refund. The rep told me they were losing too many people to residential after the initial contract expired; they were changing their rules, so that you have to pay upfront, just like residential.
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After 19 years in the rural house I finally got Comcast in 2018. The closest endpoint that I could see was 11 pole-attachments away, through woods and fields. Comcast (Xfinity) would never even quote an installation. I’d been a Comcast Business customer for several years at a different location and so I just thought I’d request a quote for a business account. I got a call about 2 weeks later from a rep saying they were going to give me service, and cover the cost of build-out! I asked how this came about and he said the business division has a much bigger budget and can authorize new projects. I first put in my request I early April, and the install finally happened on Black Friday!
Also of note, I referred a friend who was in a similar situation to the Comcast rep I worked with and he ended up getting the same deal.
Also of note, I referred a friend who was in a similar situation to the Comcast rep I worked with and he ended up getting the same deal.
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Omega_Prime
Ars Scholae Palatinae
While I feel for them... Running the line costs and it's for their benefit alone, so they should pay if it's required. Going under a significant road complicates and therefore increases the price and should be expected.
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While I do feel sorry for the couple, I’m in a semi-rural area, and am looking at multiple tens-of-thousands of dollars if I want to get hooked up to city sewer. I’d really lay the blame at the sellers feet, in this case. For once, I don’t blame Comcast very much. Having to bore underneath a busy city street? I suspect a large amount of that cost is liability protection.
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The city might not have the authority to do so, but they absolutely should. Cities provide access to right of ways to companies like Comcast in order to provide services to taxpayers, the corollary to that is that companies who benefit from the use of those right of ways should be required to extend those services to every City residence, on request, for no cost.
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They don't tear up the road to run a cable under it. They basically bore a hole under it and put a flexible conduit with the wire in it. Cox was doing this in my neighborhood about two weeks ago. Pretty cool watching the machine basically punch a hole under my driveway.
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Pay for your neighbor 's internet if they let you run an Ethernet cable to your house?
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Ultimately irrelevant.
Service providers claim all sorts of coverage they don't, and won't actually provide, and it's often only once the initial stages and payments involved in setting up service are complete that they'll come back and say, "Well actually... no."
The only reason I believed AT&T when they claimed I could get fiber at my house was because I woke up one morning and discovered they were trenching through the front yard and actually installing a box and cable.
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