A group misrepresenting itself as part of Comcast is offering customers substantial discounts on cable and broadband service, if they agree to pay in advance. Customers accepting the offer don’t get any upgrades and lose their money.

Stop the Cap! reader Don Nelson alerted us that a group calling itself the “Loyalty Rewards Department of Comcast” has called residents in Comcast service areas offering huge discounts and upgrades on cable and Internet service for as little as $80 a month.

Nelson was offered Extreme 105 Internet, HD Premier with an X1 set-top box, Unlimited Phone, and HBO, Starz, Showtime & Cinemax for $79.99 for 24 months if he agreed to pay $239.97 to cover the first three months of the promotion in advance. If he was willing to prepay for six months, Nelson would also receive a free Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 tablet as a gift. It sounded like a great deal. Comcast’s own website sells the same package for $159.99 a month for 24 months with a two-year contract.

“It’s a very slick operation and they have your personal information and exactly what services you receive from Comcast, so I strongly suspect Comcast’s systems have been breached or some of their employees are involved in the scam,” Nelson said.

When he told the representative it sounded like a deal too good to be true, Nelson was reassured he was speaking with Comcast by telling him his account number and current level of service, including the number and types of set-top boxes already in his home. They knew his street address and had two phone numbers on file, a fact that now bothers Nelson because one of them was an old throwaway prepaid cell phone number he gave Comcast five years ago when he signed up to avoid future telemarketing calls.

“Only four companies had that phone number, including Comcast, and now so do these guys,” Nelson told us. “Something is wrong at Comcast for these scammers to have this information.”

As an extra assurance of good faith, the Indian-accented representative invited Nelson to call him back at 866-694-8573 — the same number displayed on Nelson’s Caller ID.

“Most of these scammers go fishing for your personal information, but the person I talked to didn’t ask me any personal details at all because he already had them,” Nelson said. “When I called back, the interactive system that answered sounded professional and authentic, with options to make a payment and report service problems.”

What started to raise Nelson’s suspicion was exactly how the “Loyalty Rewards Department of Comcast” expected to be paid.

Nelson was told he shouldn’t visit Comcast to make a payment, read his credit card number over the phone, or send a check in the mail. Instead, he was asked to acquire a Green Dot MoneyPak “Scratchable Prepaid Card” at his local CVS, Walgreens, or Kmart and load it with the expected pre-payment. Instead of mailing that card to the “Loyalty Department,” he was supposed to call back and read the numbers off the back of the Green Dot card.

“I was assured everything was okay and this was a co-promotion between Green Dot and Comcast that covered part of the cost of the cable deal I was getting,” Nelson said. “But that sounded strange and I requested an email confirmation to make sure I understood the offer.”

The “Loyalty Department” did, in fact, send an email “verification,” which only further raised suspicion because of its word choices and lack of familiarity with common colloquial expressions. The grammatical errors did not inspire confidence either:

No legitimate company will tell you to buy a prepaid card to make a payment. Scammers cannot afford to accept standard credit cards that can and will be traced back to them eventually.

Dear Customer,

Good Day!

This email refers to the promotion on your current/new services with Comcast Xfinity, this promotion offers you free upgrades in your existing (new services)services of Comcast.

With this up gradation you will be having i.e.

i) Up to 105Mbps download speed. This package gives you liberty to enjoy unlimited uploading and downloading with no fair usage policy applicable.

ii) The upgraded cable package will be Digital HD Premier Package with 260 digital channels with 40 premium movies and 25 sports packages.

iii) The upgraded Comcast voice package will give you unlimited Nationwide and North American talk and text.

A quick review of the available programming is mentioned below:

FAMILY CHANNEL:
ABC Family, Bloomberg TV, A&E, Cartoon network, Disney, Bravo, E!  etc.
MOVIE CHANNEL:
Action Max, AMC, HBO, CINEMAX, STARZ, SHOWTIME, HALLMARK, ENCORE etc.
SPORT CHANNEL:
Big Ten Network, CBS College Sports, ESPN, Fox Soccer Channel, NFL, NHL, NBA etc
NEWS CHANNEL:
ABC News, Weather, BBC, C SPAN, CNBC, FOX NEWS etc.

Green Dot offers this fraud advisory.

Payment Procedure:

This promotion is applicable once you prepay your account for $239.97 (good for 03 months).

As this promotion is brought to you with the Co-operation of Green Dot Inc.

So you have to pay Comcast for the promotion with Money Pak billing card by following 3 simple steps:

i) Go to any of your favorite leading chain store’s checkout counter e.g. CVS Pharmacy, Kroger, Walgreens’ 7/11, Kmart, Circle K, Rite Aid, RadioShack etc, and get Green Dot Money Pak Scratch-able prepaid card (This is a hard paper twofold card without any plastic wrapping in the color green)
ii) Carry enough cash. You can’t use your debit or credit card to buy this Card. ($4.95 Service fee applicable on top of your billing)
iii) Call back the Billing department of Comcast Xfinity at 1-866-694-8573 and pay your bill using that card.

This is a contract free offer for 24 months, with a fix monthly bill of $79.99 after the first three months of Subscription.

Bonus offer: If you are able to clear your billings within 24 hours,  you will automatically will be qualified to earn 100 Loyalty Reward points as good as cash from Comcast Xfinity that can be redeemed by you any time to get one month of extra services.

Bonus offer: If you are able to pay for 06 months of service up front, you will be qualified to receive a Samsung Galaxy Tab® 4 tablet free.

Please feel free to contact for further queries from 8am till 6:30pm PST (Operational timings) at 1-866-694-8573.

Regards,
David Clarke
Employee ID LHM
Loyalty Rewards Department
Comcast Xfinity

*  30 Days money back guarantee. No cancellation or recurring fee applied.

This is a service-related email. Comcast will occasionally send you service-related emails to inform you of service changes, upgrades or new benefits. Services and features are subject to Comcast’s standard terms and conditions of service and are subject to change. Copyright 2015 Comcast. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners. Comcast respects your privacy.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Green Dot BBB MoneyPak Scams What You Need to Know 6-2015.mp4[/flv]

The Better Business Bureau offers its advice about how to avoid Green Dot MoneyPak schemes, which are increasingly common online. (:55)

“That email message convinced me it was all a scam,” Nelson said. “No cable company would write something like this and send it out to customers. They also don’t apparently realize Walgreens and 7-11 have nothing to do with each other. Can you imagine Comcast telling a customer they have to get the ‘green’ prepaid card -without- the plastic wrapping. Most of their customers cannot understand their monthly bill. They are not going to understand the confusing world of prepaid credit cards. It made no sense.”

Stop the Cap! called the “Loyalty Rewards Department of Comcast” and we were disconnected each time we asked a question that did not involve taking advantage of their offer. We called back, trying different departments, and each time we were connected to the same Indian-accented man who had hung up on us before. After the fifth call, they blocked our phone number from reaching them.

We next called Comcast’s security department and got nowhere. They were not interested because we were not Comcast customers inside a Comcast service area and invited us to have our reader call them directly. When Nelson tried, he was left on hold for over 45 minutes and when he finally spoke to someone, they couldn’t be bothered.

“It amazed me how little interest they showed in this operation, which has apparently suckered customers all over the country,” Nelson said. “I asked them to call the number and hear how these people are directly misrepresenting themselves as Comcast, right down to repeating their Xfinity slogans. The representative seemed to have heard the same story before and seemed mostly concerned about telling me Comcast was not responsible for any money paid to the scam artists. They did not even seem to care when I told them they had my personal Comcast account information and suggested the scammers got it off Facebook. Yeah, because I always put my Comcast account number on Facebook, if I used Facebook.”

With further investigation, Stop the Cap! identified several numbers (as well as currently active 866-694-8573) associated with this operation. If any of these numbers call you, hang up: 855-328-7913, 855-859-6946, 800-526-1037, and 800-399-5791.

If you were scammed by these people or have other useful information to share about your experiences with them, please share in the comment section.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWMT Kalamazoo Scam targeting Comcast customers makes appearance in Michigan 6-18-15.flv[/flv]

WWMT in Kalamazoo, Mich. reports the Comcast Loyalty Rewards scam has affected customers across Michigan through aggressive telemarketing campaigns. (2:01)

One of Kansas’ fastest and most innovative gigabit fiber broadband projects will be built in a community originally bypassed by AT&T.

Earlier this month the Frontenac City Council approved Craw-Kan Telephone Cooperative’s plan to build a fiber optic network in the city that will sell 1,000Mbps service for $70 a month.

“It’s just superior to anything out there,” said Craig Wilbert, general manager of Craw-Kan. “We’ve been doing fiber for several years. We have well over 2,000 customers, and I think we just finally asked ourselves why are we restricting the use of this fiber optic cable when it can do so much more than what most people are receiving?”

Craw-Kan Telephone Cooperative Association, Inc., began in March 1954 serving 14 subscribers in southeastern Kansas, very close to the borders of both Missouri and Oklahoma. After a series of acquisitions, the cooperative grew to more than 24 community exchanges, all bringing direct dialing to customers starting in the mid-1950s with plans to bring gigabit fiber to customers in the mid-2015s.

Construction of the network starts this summer with a completion date of next year.

Think you are already paying too much for cable television? If you thought Comcast charges too much, consider what CBS thinks is fair to charge for an on-demand library of CBS shows and a single live stream of your local CBS station – $5.99 a month.

Retransmission consent disputes are all about the money. As your local provider fights with a local station or cable network over their latest demand for more money, channels get dropped, providers get blamed and the content owners get richer when networks are restored.

One of the richest of all is CBS, which has told investors it plans to empty $2 billion from the pockets of American cable customers by the year 2020, up from $500 million in 2013. Not only will CBS demand new programming fees from its affiliates, it is also cajoling stations to demand not less than $1.75 a month from every cable subscriber for access to the local CBS over the air station.

Each time a retransmission consent contract comes up for renewal, cable operators know as certain as the sun will rise from the east that programmers will demand a healthy rate increase for the next contract period. That is why many cable companies now look to broadband for much of their future profits, because the TV business is getting very expensive when everyone has their hand out looking for more.

Some cable companies want an end to being stuck in the middle of these disputes and are supporting a plan to compel programmers like CBS, ESPN, TNT, HBO, and all the rest to publish a retail rate for their channel or network and let consumers decide whether it is worth the asking price.

A proposal introduced last year called “Local Choice” would start the process with local television stations, which have demanded ever-higher carriage fees over the last 10 years, especially for network-affiliated stations.

Under the concept, customers would be given a choice of local stations by their provider. Theoretically, a customer could subscribe to CBS and ABC and tell NBC (and its local affiliate) to take a hike if they demanded too much. Another might be happy just paying for FOX and grab the rabbit ears for anything else they wanted to watch over the air for free.

Rockefeller

No local station or network would voluntarily say goodbye to the golden goose that lays compulsory retransmission consent fees programmers currently collect from every cable subscriber, so last summer Congress proposed to mandate the concept in a clause of the Satellite Television Access and Viewer Rights Act (STAVRA).

Then Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Ranking Member John Thune (R-S.D.) beat the bipartisan drum loudly for change. But lobbyists also had drums. Rockefeller and Thune began wavering almost immediately.

“During the last month, Chairman Rockefeller and Ranking Member Thune have successfully begun a discussion on Local Choice, which would empower TV viewers, maintain our policy of broadcast localism, and ensure TV stations get fairly compensated for the retransmission of their signals,” read a joint statement issued last September. “Because it is a big and bold idea, Local Choice deserves more discussion and a full consideration by policymakers, and the committee may not have time to include it as part of STAVRA. Rockefeller and Thune are focused on passing STAVRA next week, and continuing to work with their colleagues on Local Choice.”

After the sudden insertion of Local Choice into a satellite television bill, an orange glow filled the night sky at 1771 N Street in Washington. It was Gordon Brown’s hair on fire. Brown is president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the very powerful lobby representing television stations and networks. But that night, he sounded exactly like a cable guy.

“NAB opposes this proposal because it eliminates the basic [cable] tier upon which millions rely for access to lifeline information,” Brown responded in a statement. “It proposes a broadcast a-la-carte scheme that will lead to higher prices and less program diversity. Furthermore, STAVRA appears to confer unfettered and unprecedented authority for government intervention into private marketplace negotiations.”

The cable industry has fought its own battle against a-la-carte on exactly the same ground Brown was now occupying.

Rockefeller later claimed he was only poking the Broadcast TV Bear to provoke a response, and he got one. The idea of Local Choice was stripped out of the bill by the fall. Rockefeller was reduced to saving face.

“What we wanted to do was introduce those ideas,” Rockefeller later told The Hill. “We made it sound like it was the focus of the bill, and K Street just went crazy, which is always good. But we knew that we’d have to take it out.”

Yes they did, after the NAB and their allies launched a major PR campaign against Local Choice, attracting over 130,000 comments against the plan.

Polka

But Rockefeller knew the idea was not going away.

“As people get a taste of being able to say ‘I only watch 10 channels so I should only pay for 10 channels,’ they’re going to love that. It’s going to spread like wildfire,” Rockefeller said.

Fast forward to this spring and it was back to business as usual. Retransmission consent disputes yanked several networks and stations off cable systems, providers mailed their annual rate increase notices, and the cable industry’s popularity and reputation with customers now rivaled ISIS.

Much of the collateral damage (apart from the collective emptying of your wallet) continues to be felt by America’s smallest cable operators that cannot negotiate for what passes as fair and reasonable programming rates from networks like ESPN and CBS. They cannot qualify for volume discounts that are so compelling, it drove AT&T (U-verse TV) into the arms of DirecTV just to get enough subscribers to knock a few more cents off the monthly price of regional sports channels. Only the biggest players in the game have the power and get the savings.

Matthew Polka, president of the American Cable Association (ACA), the other cable trade association representing the interests of small, often family owned cable systems, may not have the most power but he could have the strongest argument against the status quo. While the National Association of Broadcasters spent tens of thousands of dollars arguing today’s retransmission consent system works just fine, some of America’s smaller TV stations apparently didn’t read the NAB’s talking points.

The “TV Station Group,” an informal collective of small market TV stations seeking a renewal of their carriage contract with DirecTV has been stonewalled by DirecTV for months. Last week, the station owners filed a complaint with the FCC asking them to stop or block AT&T’s merger with DirecTV until the satellite provider agreed to negotiate in good faith. It was clear from their filing DirecTV’s idea of negotiation is to send ‘take it or leave it’ nastygrams to the TV stations, serving markets like Spokane, Wash., and Yuma, Ariz. The only thing clear from the back and forth is that DirecTV has no doubt it can squash the stations like little bugs:

[W]e will not fall victim to your silly and obvious tactics to try to audit our retrans deals so you can see them all. We did not ask you to send to us your supposed rates, and your unilateral decision to do so doesn’t give you the right to see our other deals. But trust [us], no other station group – especially small groups such as Northwest – are paid by DIRECTV nearly what you have proposed, let alone what your sheet says.

A few weeks later, in response to another request from the broadcasters, DirecTV scolded them like a misbehaving teenager:

To repeat yet again, DIRECTV is not going to get pulled into your transparent trap to define what is ‘market’ by seeing our other deals. That is a precedent we will not set, including for NW. Please do not ask again.

“Judging from the TV stations’ complaint, it is evident that the retransmission consent market is broken and not working for these broadcasters any better than for cable operators,” Polka wrote in a press release issued today. “The time has come for these TV stations and others that have also filed good faith complaints to step out from NAB’s long shadow and join ACA in supporting efforts to update the rules and equip them with a strong referee that can help protect consumers and competition when negotiations break down.”

Polka continues to advocate letting customers decide whether they want to pay for local stations and cable networks. He argues CBS is already doing that today with its All Access program for broadband customers. In 94 markets, serving 64% of U.S. households, consumers can voluntarily subscribe to a live stream of their local CBS station and access a large 6,500 title on-demand library of CBS content for $5.99 a month.

Nobody besides CBS knows how many have agreed to pay for All Access, but executives have told investors they are pleased with how the program is working. Still, Marc DeBevoise, executive vice president and general manager of CBS Digital Media at CBS Interactive knows he walks a very fine line promoting a product that could eventually undermine CBS’s current commitment to today’s retransmission consent system. DeBevoise told The Drum it does not market or intend to offer All Access as an alternative to the current cable model.

“At a high level, our strategy in launching CBS All Access was two-fold. First, to delivery our best fans access to the most CBS content we could on any device at any time – really delivering a service for our ‘superfans,'” DeBevoise said. “Additionally this service enables us to reach ‘cord-nevers’ that want to watch CBS content but don’t have a traditional cable package –a significant audience, with industry estimates ranging from 6.5 to 16 million households.”

But at $5.99 a month, that price may prove too steep for many casual viewers looking only for a show or two. Many viewers now rely on ad-supported Hulu, a project of the major American broadcast networks except CBS. Most Hulu customers watch their favorite network shows for free. The future possibility of paying $6 for each of four major American broadcast networks will likely be seen as out of line, especially by more casual viewers.

But for Polka and ACA member cable systems, the idea that customers will direct their All Access price shock wrath out on CBS, not the cable company, may be worth it.

Vestager

Rampant consolidation of the telecom industry in Europe may help companies, their executives and shareholders, but more often than not it leads to higher prices for consumers. Those are the views of the European Union’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in a speech on antitrust issues delivered earlier today in Paris.

“Incumbent operators argue that if they cannot merge with their rivals […] they will be unable to increase their investment,” said Vestager. “I’ve heard this claim quite often, but I have not seen evidence that this is the case. Instead, there is ample evidence that excessive consolidation may lead not only to less competition and more expensive bills for consumers, but that it also reduces the incentives in national markets to innovate.”

Vestager believes much of the drumbeat for industry consolidation is coming from the financial markets. But competition on the ground suggests more competition, not consolidation, brings improved service.

“Infrastructure investment can be stimulated by competition,” Vestager said. “In 2009 a new player, Free Mobile, entered the French telecom market. Following that entry, the overall level of telecoms investment in France grew, and remains at higher levels than at the moment of Free’s entry.”

Free Mobile also triggered a major wireless price war in France, leading to dramatic drops in the cost of wireless service. Independent research from Rewheel seemed to confirm Vestager’s thesis. After Hutchison and Orange merged in Austria, for example, prices rose sharply.

Vestager argued the real motivation behind consolidation is limiting competition, which also helps operators avoid or delay necessary network upgrades.

“In these markets, we have also seen established players abuse their dominant positions to try and prevent competition from alternative operators,” Vestager added. “And we shouldn’t forget that these alternative operators are also behind major network investments in the EU.”

Vestager’s speech could pose major problems for European dealmakers like Altice and Hutchison Whampoa, because they signal the EU will likely closely scrutinize future mergers and acquisitions on antitrust grounds.

A Prattsburgh, N.Y. family-owned company has picked up where Verizon left off and is busily wiring up small communities across western New York and the Southern Tier with fiber to the home service, giving both Verizon and Time Warner Cable some competitive headaches.

Empire Access is concentrating its service in areas where Verizon FiOS will never go and Time Warner Cable maxes out at 50/5Mbps. The company recently launched service in downtown Batavia in Genesee County and will be launching serving in Big Flats later this year.

Empire promises no data caps or usage-based billing and offers 100/20Mbps at introductory prices ranging from between $45-65/mo. Gigabit broadband speed is also available.

Where it has franchise agreements with local communities, Empire also offers cable television packages ranging from $31.45-73.40, with up to 130 channels. The packages are not as comprehensive as those from Time Warner Cable, but customers may not mind losing a dozen or two niche cable channels to save up to $30 a month off what Time Warner charges. Nationwide home phone service is also an option.

Empire relies heavily on two public/non-profit fiber backbone networks to deliver service. The Southern Tier Network comprises a 235-mile long fiber backbone that runs through Steuben, Chemung and Schuyler counties. Further north, Axcess Ontario provides backbone connectivity across its 200+ mile fiber ring around Ontario County.

With the help of public and non-profit broadband infrastructure, residents in small communities across a region extending from Sayre, Pa., north to Batavia, N.Y., will have another choice besides Verizon or Frontier DSL, Comcast or Time Warner Cable.

Residents in some communities, like Hammondsport and Bath — south of Keuka Lake, love the fact they have a better choice than Time Warner Cable. Empire has reportedly signed up 70 percent of area businesses and has more than a 20% residential market share in both villages after a year doing business in the Finger Lakes communities.

Empire targets compact villages with a relatively affluent populations where no other fiber overbuilder is providing service. It doesn’t follow Google’s “fiberhood” approach where neighborhoods compete to be wired. Instead, it provides service across an entire village and then gradually expands to nearby towns from there.

Most western New York villages are already compact enough to attract the attention of cable companies, predominately Time Warner Cable, which has an effective broadband monopoly. Verizon and Frontier offer limited slowband DSL, but Verizon has stopped expanding the reach of its broadband service and will likely never bring FiOS fiber to the home service to any western N.Y. community outside of a handful of suburbs near Buffalo.

The arrival of Empire reminds some of the days when the first cable company arrived to wire their village. Word of mouth is often enough to attract new customers, but a handful of local sales agents are also on hand to handle customer signups. From there, one of the company’s 80+ employees in New York handle everything else.

Bryan Cummings, who shared the story of Empire Access with us, “is pretty stoked.”

“Bye, bye Time Warner Cable,” Cummings tells Stop the Cap!.

Time Warner has treated most of western New York about as well as its service areas in Ohio, often criticized for not keeping up with the times. With fiber overbuilders Empire Access in the Finger Lakes region and Southern Tier and Greenlight Networks in Rochester, the fastest Internet options are not coming from the local phone and cable company anymore.

WSKG in Binghamton explores fiber broadband developments in the Southern Tier of upstate New York. Empire Access is providing the fast fiber broadband Verizon, Frontier, and Time Warner Cable won’t. (3:54)

You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

At present, Empire Access provides service in:

• Village of Arkport
• City of Batavia
• Village of Bath
• Village of Canisteo
• Village of Hammondsport
• City of Hornell
• Village of Montour Falls
• Village of Naples
• Village of North Hornell
• Village of Watkins Glen
• Village of Waverly (N.Y.)
• Boroughs of Sayre, Athens, and South Waverly (Pa.)
• Borough of Troy (Pa.)

Communities on Empire’s radar for future expansion include Urbana, Dansville, Wayland and Cohocton. Further out, there is some consideration of larger cities like Corning and Elmira, as well as other towns in far northern Pennsylvania. With Empire’s expansion into Naples, the company also has many options in affluent and growing communities in Ontario County, south of Rochester.