Resort communities like Wildwood, N.J. become near ghost-towns when the lucrative summer season comes to an end.  But Comcast expects motel owners to keep paying for cable service even after they lock their doors and shut down during the winter.

Now more than three dozen area independent hotel owners have told Comcast to take a hike — they are switching to satellite.

For owners, Comcast has added insult to financial injury with higher rates and new requirements for year-round service that nobody watches from October-April.

It wasn’t always this way.  Comcast formerly grandfathered seasonal service into contracts for area resorts.  No converter boxes were required either, making it easy to install in hotel rooms.

But no more.

The cable company claims it needed “rate consistency” in the region and raised prices.  Plus, Comcast has notified hotel owners they’ll need to accommodate digital set top boxes — one to a television, something owners considered the final straw.

James “Jimmy” Johnson, owner of the 48-room Imperial 500 told the Philadelphia Inquirer he invested almost $60,000 for flat panel televisions in his rooms that Comcast now wants to slap cable boxes on.  Johnson is not happy about that, because guests could walk off with them and their accompanying remote controls.

“I go through remotes like you go through underwear,” Johnson told the newspaper.  Comcast charges substantial fees for lost or stolen cable equipment.

Comcast also sought pricing changes that would charge motel owners for service per-television, instead of per-room.  Several motels have multiple televisions in each room, substantially raising prices.

As a result of the rate increases and what many owners have called the cable operator’s intransigence, they are kicking Comcast out, installing satellite television from DirecTV instead.

After an initial investment of $6,400 for the satellite equipment, many owners expect significant savings from DirecTV’s seasonal service contracts, although some guests may find regional sporting events exclusive to Comcast unavailable in their satellite-TV equipped rooms.

But for Johnson, the savings are worth it.

“I’m renting rooms; I’m not running a sports bar. . . . With computers now, you can get a lot of games on your computer, or your phone,” Johnson told the Inquirer.

Roberts - Too much to spend in one place

While your cable bill rose in 2010, so did Comcast CEO Brian Roberts’ compensation package, totaling $31.1 million dollars last year — a 14 percent raise.

Most of Roberts’ increased salary came from a performance-based cash bonus of nearly $11 million, earned partly from bringing home the merger of the nation’s largest cable company with NBC-Universal.  In fact, Roberts humbly declined part of his earned bonus, which was supposed to total $13.4 million, turning back the difference because of appearances.

Indeed, Comcast executives suffered from a salary freeze through much of 2010, which expired this February.  But since bonuses far exceed base salaries on the top floor of Comcast’s executive suites, it’s unlikely any executive had to cut back on their personal spending to compensate.

Besides, the company covers many of the “extras” considered mandatory these days at America’s top companies:

• Enhanced health insurance benefits which often never expire, even after retirement;
• Personal use of the company’s executive aircraft ($200k);
• Three million to his deferred compensation plan;
• A $10,000 special company contribution to his retirement account (petty cash);
• Free cable

Du Quoin, Ill.

Remember when your cable system delivered 60 basic cable channels with a handful of premium services, none in High Definition?  The people of Du Quoin, Ill. do — to this day.

They, along with several other small southern Illinois communities served by Comcast, are living a wired life free from HD programming, cable networks many take for granted, and a quality of service that has diminished as an aging cable system outlives its useful life.

Now the commissioner of Du Quoin has put Comcast’s franchise “on hold” until the cable company updates service for the town’s 6,500 residents.

Commissioner Rex Duncan told the city council last week he’s fed up with Comcast’s lack of interest in delivering even a handful of HD channels to subscribers, even as the company moves channels that used to be part of the basic cable lineup to a new tier that requires the rental of a digital converter box.

Until Comcast decides to invest in upgrades in the area, De Quoin joins the cities of Pinckneyville, Benton and Christopher and the villages of Tamaroa and Buckner in refusing franchise renewal requests from the cable operator.

Reviewing the lineup in Du Quoin shows subscribers confined to receiving the same number of channels most cities had more than 15 years ago.  Not a single HD channel is included.  Broadband customers can choose from two promoted packages, one promising “up to” 15Mbps and the other claiming 20Mbps with the PowerBoost feature.  But few residents actually see those speeds according to one of our readers.

Sid, a lifelong resident of De Quoin, says speeds approaching 7Mbps are more typical, except at night when they drop.

“I don’t think Comcast has changed a thing in southern Illnois in over a decade,” Sid shares.  “The company’s cable TV lineup still thinks it’s 1992 — we are lucky we even have broadband.”

Residents have complained regularly to local officials about Comcast’s performance in the region, especially when they compare the service they receive with what residents in nearby Carbondale, the self-styled “capital of southern Illinois” receive.

“I realize southern Illinois is between nothing and nowhere, with large cities like St. Louis and Evansville whole states away, but considering how many people depend on Comcast to get reasonable reception of local stations pretty far out, they do a good business here,” Sid says.

Sid does not expect many upgrades in the near future, either to his cable or broadband service.

“DOCSIS 3?  What is that?”

The final results were no help to Comcast in this square-off.

Comcast will do anything to avoid being labeled the Consumerist’s Worst Company in America, even if it means encouraging employees to stuff the ballot boxes with votes for one of their colleagues — Charter Communications.

Instead of improving service and making friends with their customers, Comcast sent asked employees to send in multiple votes to beat up on Charter Cable, one of America’s smaller cable companies that emerged from bankruptcy in late 2009.  Consumer Reports gives Charter low marks anyway, so why not pile on?  Comcast sure did in not one, but two memos begging for employees to vote soon and vote often:

Comcasters,

We need your help to show that Comcast is a great company.

The Consumerist website is currently hosting its poll of the “Worst Companies in America.” Comcast is part of the first round of this poll, which started today and ends at 9 a.m. (ET) this Friday. Unfortunately, this same poll named us as their worst last year. If you feel that Comcast does not deserve this label, we hope that you will participate and vote for the company that is paired against Comcast.

To vote, just click on the following link and place your vote: https://consumerist.com/2011/03/23/worst-company-in-america-round-one-comcast-vs-charter/.

Of course, your participation is voluntary. Naturally, we don’t want to vote for any company to receive this label; unfortunately that is how the Consumerist poll is structured.

You can only vote one time from a single IP address, so we hope that you will consider voting today/tonight and at home from your cell phone, iPad, personal computer or other web-enabled devices with a unique IP address. You can use company devices as well as your personal devices. (If you are having trouble voting, please send an email to us here and someone will contact you to assist you.)

We have all worked very hard to make Comcast the terrific company that it is today and to create a customer experience that we are all proud of. We hope you will consider defending our company name by participating in this poll. Thanks in advance for your assistance and for the great work you do every day.

Version 2:

Comcasters,

Our great company has been nominated by The Consumerist as one of the “Worst Companies in America in 2011” in their annual survey. We have all been working very hard to create a customer experience that we are proud of and need to come together to send a strong message that we simply don’t deserve this title.

We encourage you to participate in this poll and to vote with your heart to tell America that we are proud of our company. Participation is purely voluntary, and in the event you choose to vote, here’s what you need to know:

* DO NOT vote for Comcast. When you cast your ballot, vote for the other company. Remember, you’re voting for the “Worst Company in America.”
* Click on the following link and vote: https://consumerist.com/2011/03/23/worst-company-in-america-round-one-comcast-vs-charter/
* Feel free to vote from the office and at home on your personal computers and laptops. You can also vote via the web browser on your cell phones, iPads, tablets and other web-enabled wireless devices.

When you cast your ballot, vote for the other company. Remember, you’re voting for the “Worst Company in America.”

It’s good the memo clarified… repeatedly, not to vote -for- Comcast in case anyone got confused.

In the end, it was to no avail.  In fact, the Consumerist exposed the attempted vote rigging and Comcast won the square-off in the first round.

Meanwhile, the rest of the finalists consist of a remarkable number of telecommunications companies among the perennial favorites — financial vampire banks Chase and Bank of America and gougers like WellPoint, UnitedHealth and Ticketmaster.  All of the major telecom companies made the list, including Comcast (which won top honors last year), Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Charter, Verizon, Dish Networks, and DirecTV.

Time Warner Cable has lucked out in today’s competition.  It faces off against the ultimate evildoer – BP.  The cable company should come out ahead.  It only jacked up your cable rates.  It didn’t hemorrhage oil into the Gulf of Mexico for a good part of last summer.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WMUR Manchester Comcast Service Outage 3-23-11.mp4[/flv]

More than two dozen New Hampshire communities were left without their Comcast “digital phone” service last week when a major service outage disrupted incoming and outgoing calls across The Granite State.  As businesses and consumers were advised to have cell phones on hand in case of phone outages, WMUR-TV in Manchester didn’t even mention the other alternative: the phone company… namely FairPoint Communications, the dominant landline provider in the state.  As some businesses and consumers panicked over the loss of their dial tones, they evidently forgot all about the company many New Englanders disconnected from their lives just a few years ago. (2 minutes)