No data caps: "Four simple national Internet tiers that include unlimited data."
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Stung by customer losses, Comcast says all its new plans have unlimited data
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All of that "new customers only" stuff is bunk. I play the annual game of "send me to your retention team" and get whatever the new customer deal was anyway.
My real beef with Comcast is their customer service. Being shunted to a call center with an overly smarmy agent doesn't help solve issues. I don't want friendliness; I want competence.
The only good thing coming out of their change in posture is finally admitting that data caps are bullshit. They always were bullshit. The real network "cost" is establishing connections, not pushing bytes once those connections are up.
My real beef with Comcast is their customer service. Being shunted to a call center with an overly smarmy agent doesn't help solve issues. I don't want friendliness; I want competence.
The only good thing coming out of their change in posture is finally admitting that data caps are bullshit. They always were bullshit. The real network "cost" is establishing connections, not pushing bytes once those connections are up.
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Nope sorry Comcrap there's no forgiving you. When I finally get another option for broadband at my address, all you'll see of me is a cloud of dust, Looney Tunes style.
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I'm stuck with Cox where I live, which has a measly 1TB data cap even on their 500mbit plan. My alternative is... starlink. I wish municipal fiber were more common.
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Comcast has been so shitty for so long that they are permanently on my "don't do business with them unless I have no other option" list. I suspect things like Starlink (as much as I dislike Elon) is helping give other people options.
I consider myself blessed to have fiber, and though I don't like the phone company, it's always been uncapped and symmetrical at a lower price than Comcast offers.
At this point, I'd happily pay more for the privilege of not having Comcast, and clearly I'm not the only one.
Their attempt to rebrand themselves as "Xfinity" feels like an attempt to wash the stink off in the same way that blackwater tried to.
I consider myself blessed to have fiber, and though I don't like the phone company, it's always been uncapped and symmetrical at a lower price than Comcast offers.
At this point, I'd happily pay more for the privilege of not having Comcast, and clearly I'm not the only one.
Their attempt to rebrand themselves as "Xfinity" feels like an attempt to wash the stink off in the same way that blackwater tried to.
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"Cavanagh said Comcast executives 'identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us.' He said Comcast planned to simplify 'our pricing construct to make our price-to-value proposition clearer to consumers across all broadband segments....'"
Hey, Comcast executives--it took you this long to figure this out. I bet 29 million of your customers could have told you that.
Oh, and this: Fuck data caps and fuck any ISP that imposes them. It's been a long time for that to sink in, I guess.
But congratulations! With this change, you've now moved up to the second worse ISP, second to AT&T! So good on you for breaking the tie for the two worst, most unethical ISPs in the world.
Hey, Comcast executives--it took you this long to figure this out. I bet 29 million of your customers could have told you that.
Oh, and this: Fuck data caps and fuck any ISP that imposes them. It's been a long time for that to sink in, I guess.
But congratulations! With this change, you've now moved up to the second worse ISP, second to AT&T! So good on you for breaking the tie for the two worst, most unethical ISPs in the world.
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Cavanagh said Comcast executives "identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us."
I don't need a super fast connection or unlimited bandwidth. And on the whole, Comcast has been a reliable provider (in a new neighborhood). But lord, when I do have a problem, dealing with customer service is a nightmare.
Often a Catch-22. If I do have a service interruption, they want me to use their online, automated service. But the interruption means I can't access the service. Talk to a human? Not in years.
I don't need a super fast connection or unlimited bandwidth. And on the whole, Comcast has been a reliable provider (in a new neighborhood). But lord, when I do have a problem, dealing with customer service is a nightmare.
Often a Catch-22. If I do have a service interruption, they want me to use their online, automated service. But the interruption means I can't access the service. Talk to a human? Not in years.
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That is a very good point. If this were really about retaining existing customers, they would improve the service on offer to them. But Comcast has both shown and stated that they don't care that much about customer churn as long as they see a net increase in subscriber numbers.
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It does have the convenient side effect of forcing any customers with a grandfathered plan, retention bribe / loyalty bonus, or anything else that they might be interested in fighting to keep to have to give it all up.
And since it's all voluntary, there's no way to be dragged into court for refusing to honour a fifteen year old contract.
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In this day and age, making your customers use a phone and call a person is absurdly outmoded. They could redesign their horrible website so that I visit, look at the options (speed and price), click a button and they switch me to that right away.
Maybe I want to switch around 10x a day to see what speed I really need. Maybe it's a fun game for me. Whatever. They have things called computers that can amortize the cost and charge me the appropriate rate. Not that I or anyone else would do that, but it's just to emphasize that they could remove all their stupid barriers and give their customers control.
Or they could even do it like Netflix: you subscribe by the month. When you change your tier, it kicks in at the end of your monthly subscription. Even that would be a massive improvement over the current situation.
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Spectrum did this here, and you couldn't have been a customer in the previous 30 days in order to qualify for new customer rates. I'm sure Comcast will pull something similar.
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When I saw this information start to appear yesterday, I would have to see it to believe it. Have been a Comcast customer for many years (mostly for lack of choice) and never gotten any sort of "better deal" from them for nothing. The service speed may have grown over the years but prices have never gone down.
So, I immediately logged into my Comcast account, saw the announcement of new prices, and started the process to see if my account would actually go to $70 a month with the "new" rates. I currently have a 1.2Gb down/40Mb up service.
At the end of the process, before hitting "DoIt", this is what I found. The 1 Gb service level would cost me $110 (minimum) a month. About $13 dollars a month less for .23 Gb slower service.
The difference you ask - I use my own equipment. If you use your own modem router/firewall, they charge an extra $30 a month. AND, they want you to turn on auto-pay. They are charging another $10 a month to use a credit card for that. The other auto-pay option I believe is to give them your bank account info for direct payment pull - No, no, HE!! NO!
And not to say the info isn't buried somewhere in the fine print but I saw nothing about the use-your-own-equipment charge, or non-removal of the data cap for the same reason.
One last question.... Anyone care to speculate on why they would give you their connection hardware but charge you to use your own?
So, I immediately logged into my Comcast account, saw the announcement of new prices, and started the process to see if my account would actually go to $70 a month with the "new" rates. I currently have a 1.2Gb down/40Mb up service.
At the end of the process, before hitting "DoIt", this is what I found. The 1 Gb service level would cost me $110 (minimum) a month. About $13 dollars a month less for .23 Gb slower service.
The difference you ask - I use my own equipment. If you use your own modem router/firewall, they charge an extra $30 a month. AND, they want you to turn on auto-pay. They are charging another $10 a month to use a credit card for that. The other auto-pay option I believe is to give them your bank account info for direct payment pull - No, no, HE!! NO!
And not to say the info isn't buried somewhere in the fine print but I saw nothing about the use-your-own-equipment charge, or non-removal of the data cap for the same reason.
One last question.... Anyone care to speculate on why they would give you their connection hardware but charge you to use your own?
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The Cable Companies are being squeezed from both sides.
On the high end, PON fiber offers a better, more consistent product. Around a third of the country now has fiber available.
On the low end, 5G fixed cellular broadband, as well as younger people who are cellular-only, are cutting out budget-conscious customers.
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InfiniteJester
Ars Centurion
I wonder how much executives get paid to “learn” what everyone but them seems to know:
Gee, thanks. Brilliant work guys. Take the rest of the day off.
- No one trusts Comcast on prices and service levels
- The customer service is abysmal
Gee, thanks. Brilliant work guys. Take the rest of the day off.
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In my area, there are two smaller ISPs that people probably haven't heard of - Sonic and Cruzio. I'd gladly switch to either. I wouldn't even demand a lower price. It would be worth it just to not give my money to Comcrap. Mainly I just don't want to be supporting Comcrap in any way shape or form.
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these fucking people can automatically raise the billed amount on any random month, but they can't automatically remove the artificial data cap upcharging scheme they fuck their customers over with?
k
k
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Yeah, I know! It's a profound discovery, and it must have take the most brilliant business minds in the world to have achieved such an insightful understanding. Nobel Prize!
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5G home internet? An area with a population density high enough for Comcast to install infrastructure, is an area where $40/month 5G home internet from Verizon, Tmobile, or AT&T probably exists.
5G may not be as fast, or have as good latency, but if it is fast enough to play youtube videos at an affordable price, then I know which would be most popular in my area.
Also, there is Starlink. Again, not as fast, and maybe not as low latency, but fast enough, and with unlimited residential data.
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You can BYO modem and still get unlimited.
I believe the solution to that is to sign up in your partner's name. Which is, not that it needs to be said, still heinous and stupid.
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Wait, didn't Comcast say that the monopoly system was better for their customers? Having a captive audience gave Comcast the surety needed to invest in and improve their infrastructure leading to better, faster, cheaper plans for their customers?
That having competition would destroy access, making things much worse and more expensive for everyone?
Was Comcast wrong? <insert shocked face here>
Just kidding, I was on Time Warner Cable/Spectrum until fiber (by someone else) got trenched down my street 6 years ago. I went from $85/mo for 75/5 (that in reality was around 40/3) to $70/mo 1G fiber (just ran a speed test 584/382 - Edit: 20 minutes later 761/535). That fiber plan in 6 years has increased to $80 and my speeds have dropped a bit as more neighbors made the switch, but it's still a ridiculous difference. Additionally, I've gone from multiple outages each year to having only seen two outages longer than a few seconds in six years, and only a few of the blips total.
A please switch back piece of junk mail arrives at least once per week. If they only invested that solicitation money into actually serving their customers....
I assume Comcast, Cox, and Spectrum are all basically the same thing. All the horror stories I've hears are identical.
And all three have spent the last 20 years in my state fighting municipal broadband in the courts and with lobbyists. Again, if a fraction of that money was actually spent on infrastructure.
That having competition would destroy access, making things much worse and more expensive for everyone?
Was Comcast wrong? <insert shocked face here>
Just kidding, I was on Time Warner Cable/Spectrum until fiber (by someone else) got trenched down my street 6 years ago. I went from $85/mo for 75/5 (that in reality was around 40/3) to $70/mo 1G fiber (just ran a speed test 584/382 - Edit: 20 minutes later 761/535). That fiber plan in 6 years has increased to $80 and my speeds have dropped a bit as more neighbors made the switch, but it's still a ridiculous difference. Additionally, I've gone from multiple outages each year to having only seen two outages longer than a few seconds in six years, and only a few of the blips total.
A please switch back piece of junk mail arrives at least once per week. If they only invested that solicitation money into actually serving their customers....
I assume Comcast, Cox, and Spectrum are all basically the same thing. All the horror stories I've hears are identical.
And all three have spent the last 20 years in my state fighting municipal broadband in the courts and with lobbyists. Again, if a fraction of that money was actually spent on infrastructure.
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Same here. Went from Comcast Business at 75/15 for $150/month to Frontier at 5000/5000 for $130/month.
Comcast called me back a few weeks later and asked what they could do to get me back, and when I explained my new deal, the guy argued that I didn’t need that much bandwidth for a residence, and rather than trying to push the benefits coming back to Comcast, he instead tried to argue that I made a bad decision moving to Frontier. Pretty much told me what I needed to know. I suspect they’ve had a lot of those conversations recently, if the rate they’re laying fiber around my local area is any indication.
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As an existing customer I figured I'd go see what kind of deal they offer me on the web site. Weirdly they only offer me one option which isn't even one of the new ones in the press release. It's a 2Ggig up/down (which I'm skeptical of but that's what it says) for $70/month for one year (a $10 autopay discount is part of that). So apparently a better price than the announced deals? But only for a speed I can't utilize and don't really think I'll get? I'm glad they simplified things!
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With Cox and Charter merging, that may change for you. From what I understand, Spectrum internet plans don't have data caps.
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I've long assumed pushing their gateways is about data vacuuming, but given how much I loathe them I can't be trusted to be unbiased there.
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Which (meaning of) unlimited are they using?
This is the USA (USA! USA!), juice is anything with 10% actual juice in it, cheese is anything with 51% (maybe 50%) actual cheese in it, and the accepted telecom/internet advertising meaning of unlimited has been no meaning whatsoever.
This is the USA (USA! USA!), juice is anything with 10% actual juice in it, cheese is anything with 51% (maybe 50%) actual cheese in it, and the accepted telecom/internet advertising meaning of unlimited has been no meaning whatsoever.
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I pay for their current stupid data cap to be removed, and judging by how much my kids push through it with gaming it's truly unlimited, but who knows with the new 'unlimited'.
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When I moved almost 8 years, one of the factors in deciding where I would move to was that alternatives to Comcast existed. Comcast had provided such consistently shitty service for decades that I wanted to 'escape' to a place with alternatives. My new place had AT&T fiber to house, which I've had since I moved and for which the price hasn't changed by a single cent since I got it. No mysterious "fees" being added every 6 month. The few times I've had issues, AT&T has been reasonably responsive and helpful. And this week there are crews in my neighborhood finishing up a city-sponsored fiber network that will give me an alternative to AT&T in case they start going down Comcast levels of enshittification. At this point, I would literally turn down a job offer if it meant having to go back to Comcast.
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That's probably so the customers have to make a new contract, with new minimum contract duration. I had that with my old provider, which I still have to pay, despite switching to a new one almost a year ago.
With the new one I get an unlimited 10GBit/s or 25GBit/s fiber link for 777 CHFr/year (this is with taxes, fees and everything else included! I don't understand how anyone could be allowed to advertise anything other than the final price), without minimum contract duration, but excellent service. (Effectively I don't get even close to 10GBIt/s transfer since the servers are too slow, but if I use multiple streams I can reach it.)
Yay for government-enforced competition. The national telecom provider built the dark fiber, and other providers can rent it and resell it with their own equipment.
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50 years can work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft
or 116 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP
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From a dominant market position, you can abuse your customers for a long, long, long time apparently without repercussions. Comcast has always known their customers have no choice, and they have always taken advantage of that power imbalance. They have always known we hate them and were unhappy, and they have never cared. Our cries for lubrication fell on deaf ears. How the turn tables.
So, how does a dominant market player like Comcast go bankrupt? In the words of Ernest Hemmingway, "Gradually, then suddenly."
To whit: I had Comcast internet many years ago with the typical creeping monthly charge and the piss poor customer service. When it got too expensive, I cancelled the service. But here is the more important bit: It was a gauntlet to cancel. They made it so difficult to get rid of them that I ended up issuing a stop payment on my checking account, else they would just keep taking my money. I might have held my nose and signed up again in the future, but my experience on the way out was so bad that I never forgot the bruise, and swore never to do business with them again.
Comcast did not miss me. It didn't appear on their bottom line and wasn't discussed at the next board meeting. But I'll never be back. Ever. And for 20 years I've probably told 100 people what a shitty company they are. I have shit-talked Comcast at length whenever anyone has asked my opinion. I hope it was worth the $70 they stole from me.
Multiply that by the literally millions of enemies they made, one at a time. Pretty soon you run out of people who don't already hate you.
So, how does a dominant market player like Comcast go bankrupt? In the words of Ernest Hemmingway, "Gradually, then suddenly."
To whit: I had Comcast internet many years ago with the typical creeping monthly charge and the piss poor customer service. When it got too expensive, I cancelled the service. But here is the more important bit: It was a gauntlet to cancel. They made it so difficult to get rid of them that I ended up issuing a stop payment on my checking account, else they would just keep taking my money. I might have held my nose and signed up again in the future, but my experience on the way out was so bad that I never forgot the bruise, and swore never to do business with them again.
Comcast did not miss me. It didn't appear on their bottom line and wasn't discussed at the next board meeting. But I'll never be back. Ever. And for 20 years I've probably told 100 people what a shitty company they are. I have shit-talked Comcast at length whenever anyone has asked my opinion. I hope it was worth the $70 they stole from me.
Multiply that by the literally millions of enemies they made, one at a time. Pretty soon you run out of people who don't already hate you.
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Is the upload still 20mbps? I love how they advertise GIGABIT BLAST ULTRA and then you realize that with their top plan, you'd cap out at about four simultaneous HD Zoom calls.
What a world where they can spend basically zero dollars on infrastructure, use an ancient coax network they built out (and paid off) last century, but still collect $150/month.
What a world where they can spend basically zero dollars on infrastructure, use an ancient coax network they built out (and paid off) last century, but still collect $150/month.
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Couple of questions:
1. Do you have to use their craptastic hardware to get the price?
2. Is the hardware rental cost factored into the price, or is it extra?
I was looking to upgrade to Comcrap Business so I could get a fixed IP. Only problem is you have to use their modem for the fixed IP. And OFC, the hardware is "rented" and costs extra.
1. Do you have to use their craptastic hardware to get the price?
2. Is the hardware rental cost factored into the price, or is it extra?
I was looking to upgrade to Comcrap Business so I could get a fixed IP. Only problem is you have to use their modem for the fixed IP. And OFC, the hardware is "rented" and costs extra.
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One thing that the stories aren't mentioning is they dropped the mid-split upload speeds. Used to be 300 for all the tiers above 500 (if I remember right). The 2100/300 is now 2000/250. The sweet spot one of 1100/300 is now 1000/100.
So more money, less speed.
So more money, less speed.
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As an at times over-zealous Linux user I can assure you I dislike Microsoft immensely... but I still can't put them on the same level as Comcast.
Well, Vista aside that is.
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Time to look into AT&T when it comes to renew. I pay Comcast $60 for 800 down. Now $60 gets me 300 down.
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We should all take a moment to thank Comcast. It had an opportunity to be a perfect and universal solution, a specialized and competent deployer and maintainer of an essential utility, with as much visibility to everyone’s life as your water bill.
It sure was brave of them to kick themselves in the balls every day for twenty years so I could pay someone that isn’t them less money for symmetric gigabit on newer infrastructure.
It sure was brave of them to kick themselves in the balls every day for twenty years so I could pay someone that isn’t them less money for symmetric gigabit on newer infrastructure.
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Exactly. If I were ever desperate and injured in the head enough to go back to Comcast or ATT I suspect a delicate part of my anatomy would be put in a vice by them.
I have 3 other options in my area, and even if I pay $10 a month more than the special rate Comcast is offering me it's well worth it to tell Comcast to keep sucking it. The Metronet service has been reliable and stable enough that I've never once had a serious thought about switching minus maybe a major rate hike.
Comcast in my area was such shit I was calling monthly to other places to see if they were in the area yet. Had the Fiber lines not dropped a few years back I might seriously have looked at Starlink because my cable was just that unreliable and ATT was worse.
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Probably they are trying to extort the local government. Either they want to get tax incentives for the buildout, or they require easements which the city won't grant without coverage guarantees and they are trying to get those constraints removed (or add even more incentives).
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