A Nashville web developer who signed up for usage-cap exempted Business Class service in one of Comcast’s usage-based billing trial cities received a bill for nearly $3,000 in early termination fees after he was unable to transfer his Comcast Internet service to his new address.

Adrian Fraim followed the lead of other savvy Comcast customers who have managed to avoid the company’s usage caps by signing up for cap-free Business Class service. For years, Comcast has offered small businesses a commercial service for only slightly more than residential service, without any usage limits. But any customer is free to sign up.

Fraim thought he was getting a good deal and was happy with his broadband service, but Comcast took him to school when he tried to move service from Antioch to his new address in Clarksville, which he later discovered was outside of Comcast’s service area. The cable company treated his move as a violation of his three-year service contract and billed him an early termination fee of $2,789.

“I was just blown away,” Fraim told WSMV-TV. “That’s way too much money for somebody like me to be able to pay. They kept telling me the same thing, ‘you’re under contract, that’s what the contract says.'”

Only Fraim has never seen a printed Comcast contract. The company only offers its general service agreement and acceptable use policy online and it implies commercial customers are under a one-year contract.

In fact, Comcast’s terms require early-canceling customers to pay 75% of the amount they would have paid on their monthly bill under contract and 100% of any waived custom installation fees. A customer with a $100/mo broadband bill would owe a termination fee of $75 a month for each of up to 36 months of service.

“I didn’t think that was fair, to pay an early termination fee, because I wanted to keep their service,” Fraim said. “And due to them not offering it in my area, I feel like I was being punished because they don’t offer the service here.”

Comcast didn’t seem to care about Fraim’s predicament until reporters called the cable company.

Faced with the prospect of leading the local evening news, Comcast turned Fraim’s frown upside down and finally relented.

Spokesman Alex Horwitz said Comcast does have early termination fees, but because of the extenuating circumstances, “the new location is not serviceable by Comcast,” they will waive the fee.

Comcast has not modified its contract to offer that “get out of penalty jail free”-card to other customers, so be certain to carefully consider the term length of your contract and be sure you have no plans to move outside of a Comcast service area before signing it, unless you have very deep pockets.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSMV Nashville Man questions 3000 Comcast bill 11-17-14.mp4[/flv]

WSMV talks with Nashville web developer Adrian Fraim who discovered a nasty surprise when he moved outside of Comcast’s service area – a $2.789 early termination fee. (2:08)

Cable One’s history as a former part of the Washington Post and its publishers — the Graham family — will come to an end next year as it is spun off to shareholders, positioned for a quick sale as the march towards consolidation of the cable industry continues.

The board of directors of Graham Holdings authorized company management to spin-off the cable company in a tax-free transaction. Many industry analysts believe that is a prelude to maximizing shareholder value by selling the cable operator to a larger cable operator, most likely Charter Communications.

Cable One serves just under 500,000 customers in rural markets in 19 states. The company struggled in 2014 with high-profile battles over programming costs, notably with Viacom, that has led to channel blackouts running nearly seven months. Cable One’s small footprint has put the cable company at a disadvantage, unable to qualify for deep volume discounts for cable programming. Frequent competitor AT&T U-verse has taken a toll on the cable company’s video subscribers, down 15% since the fall of 2013. Cable One spent much of 2014 investing in network upgrades, particularly to improve its newly prioritized broadband service.

The news boosted shares of Graham Holdings stock, increasing in value as much as 12% to $886.05 per share late last week. Shareholders are positioned to benefit the most from a sale of the company, which could fetch as much as $2.5 billion in a sale. The most likely buyer is Charter Communications, which serves similar-sized communities in the central and southern United States and is ready to grow larger with acquisitions of smaller companies like Cable One.

Americans would rather deal with unwanted telemarketing calls, fight their insurance company, or pay top dollar for oil and gas because almost anything is better than dealing with the cable company, if it happens to be named Comcast, Time Warner Cable, or Charter.

As state and federal regulators contemplate allowing these three companies to co-mingle, Americans have bottom-rated them like never before in the most recent YouGov BrandIndex survey of consumer satisfaction.

Any number below 60 results in the failing grade of “F” and shame for all concerned. The three cable operators managed a grade of just 13.2, nearly twice worse than the next lowest scoring industry – wireless providers. The cable sector once again achieved the lowest scores among 43 rated industries and has sunk to a level reserved for a war criminal popularity contest.

YouGov BrandIndex

Although Time Warner Cable’s scores were called “crap” by one consumer advocate reviewing the data, Comcast performed much worse, plummeting to new lows after customers related to the gone-viral recording of Ryan Block’s customer service call from hell. Block spent more than 20 minutes arguing with a cocky and insufferable customer service representative who repeatedly resisted Block’s efforts to cancel his service. It hit a familiar nerve with Comcast customers and the company took a major hit, according to Lance Fraenkel, head of client services for BrandIndex.

“That to me stands out as a major event over the last few months that has damaged the brand and category perception,” Fraenkel told The Huffington Post.

The proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, although well received by non-profit groups and politicians receiving Comcast contribution checks, is a dead on arrival proposition for average consumers. This allowed Charter, which typically rates about as popular as burnt popcorn, to achieve a new high in its perennially dismal consumer satisfaction score. It can take its “barely neutral” rating to the bank.

But it isn’t bad for everyone. Verizon FiOS in particular achieved top grades for service, with AT&T U-verse also doing better than the cable competition.

“If you have a couple brands in negative territory and the category average is still firmly positive, then you know that there are brands that perform well in the sector,” Fraenkel added.

Comcast and Time Warner Cable both acknowledged their lousy ratings, both promising to continue spending millions improving the customer service experience. Comcast has promised that annually since 2007 and its ratings continue to decline. Many blame offshore call centers and intransigent operators unwilling to depart from a script that emphasizes giving credits and refunds only as a last resort. Most complaining customers are offered temporary discounts on service upgrades, which eventually expire and result in an even higher bill.

Charter couldn’t be bothered responding to a call for a comment. When the alternative is DSL from Frontier, CenturyLink or Windstream, why should they?

Stephenson: No fiber for you

AT&T’s decision to suspend fiber broadband upgrades over the Obama Administration’s strong support for Net Neutrality may backfire on the telecom giant’s multi-billion dollar bid to acquire DirecTV.

The Federal Communications Commission has dispatched a letter to Robert W. Quinn, Jr., AT&T’s senior vice President and federal regulatory & chief privacy officer, inquiring whether AT&T really meant what it said about plans to suspend fiber expansion and that might impact at least two million additional homes that are part of a broadband expansion commitment included in AT&T’s offer to acquire DirecTV.

The FCC’s Jamillia Ferris wants AT&T to clarify CEO Randall Stephenson’s comments at a recent investor event, requesting information that may reveal whether AT&T was using the suspension of its fiber buildout as a political weapon against Net Neutrality.

“We made some comments in the DirecTV announcement that we would build fiber to two million additional homes,” Stephenson said at a Wells Fargo technology conference last week. “We will obviously commit to that once the DirecTV deal is done, we will keep going. But what we have also announced on top of that is that we are going to deploy fiber to 100 cities. And look, we can’t go out and just invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities other than these two million not knowing under what rules that investment will be governed. And so we have to pause and we have to just put a stop on those kinds of investments that we are doing today.”

The FCC’s request suggests the company’s answers may impact how the FCC treats AT&T’s request for approval of its merger with DirecTV.

Requested from AT&T no later than Nov. 21:

(a) Data regarding the Company’s current plans for fiber deployment, specifically:

(1) the current number of households to which fiber is deployed and the breakdown by technology (i.e., FTTP or FTTN) and geographic area of deployment;

(2) the total number of households to which the Company planned to deploy fiber prior to the Company’s decision to limit deployment to the 2 million households and the breakdown by technology and geographic area of deployment; and

(3) the total number of households to which the Company currently plans to deploy fiber, including the 2 million households, and the breakdown by technology and geographic area of deployment;

(b) A description of

(1) whether the AT&T FTTP Investment Model demonstrates that fiber deployment is now unprofitable; and

(2) whether the fiber to the 2 million homes following acquisition of DirecTV would be unprofitable; and

(c) All documents relating to the Company’s decision to limit AT&T’s deployment of fiber to 2 million homes following the acquisition of DirecTV.