Verizon decided a year was long enough to give away 100MB of LTE data every month. It unilaterally cancels the 2-year offer after 12 months.

Verizon’s credibility in keeping its word with customers is under fire this week as owners of Google’s $1,450 LTE Chromebook Pixel discover their free 100MB data plans are being shut off a year earlier than promised.

One year was plenty for you.

Google’s high-end LTE-enabled Chromebook Pixel was supposed to include two years of free mobile data, but Verizon unilaterally reinterpreted “two years” to actually mean “one year” and began terminating the free data plans this spring. In its place, Chromebook owners were invited to sign up for new paid Verizon data offers:

• Unlimited: $9.99/day
• 1GB: $20/month
• 3GB: $35/month
• 5GB: $50/month

Computerworld’s J.R. Raphael got nowhere with Verizon Wireless customer service:

Verizon is telling customers that as far as it’s concerned, the plans were valid only for one year — and that’s why those initiated last spring are now expiring. I called the carrier’s customer service line and, after holding for 15 minutes and then talking in circles to an agent for another 10, was able to get through to a supervisor. That person politely told me he wasn’t aware of any two-year commitment and that — despite my pointing out official documentation to the contrary — there was nothing he could do to help me.

With Verizon unwilling to budge, Google has stepped in with $150 Visa gift cards for all affected customers to make up for Verizon’s stinginess and broken promises.

“While this particular issue is outside of our control, we appreciate that this issue has inconvenienced some of our users,” a Google spokesperson told Computerworld.

Affected customers can contact Google Play Store customer service to start the process of obtaining the gift card.

A non-customer

Comcast’s customer service isn’t just bad — it can be downright predatory.

An 88-year old South Florida woman living on Social Security promptly paid her Comcast cable bill of $29 on time each month for 13 years. The only problem is, she isn’t a Comcast Cable customer. The condominium where she lives switched to a different provider back in the year 2000, but that didn’t deter Comcast from continuing to bill her month after month eventually totaling $4,500 for non-service.

When she finally discovered the error, she ran into the Comcast “Don’t Care” Bears in the company’s customer service department.

“Give me my money back! Because I paid for them for so many years, and they’re rich. They are rich, and I’m poor,” she told a Miami TV station. Comcast told her they don’t give those kind of refunds.

Perhaps it was her fault for not recognizing the fact she was making payments in error. Comcast first offered a $20 “courtesy credit” and then stopped negotiating after making their final offer of a six-month refund — $174. After WPLG put Comcast on the 6pm nightly news, they agreed to give her a full refund.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WPLG Miami Woman pays for 13 years of cable she never got 6-9-14.flv[/flv]

Whether it was colossal ineptitude or magnificent indifference, Comcast’s money collection machine grinds on, billing consumers for services they don’t receive and refusing to offer refunds until embarrassed on the evening news, which is exactly what happened when WPLG in Miami heard about this consumer’s plight. (2:12)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/psc-meeting-tweaked-audio.flv[/flv]

My apologies for the poor audio. You will need to stay close to the volume control on this one because the volume may suddenly change between speakers. We had less than ideal recording conditions and no access to the microphone output. Testimony from Comcast begins 5:40 into the video. Our testimony starts at 36:30, which closely follows the transcript already published. Q&A follows me and then the public input session begins.

Note if you wish to receive a copy of this in higher resolution for rebroadcast on a public access channel or for other purposes, please use the Contact Us button and we’ll be able to provide a copy. File size will exceed 1GB, however. (1 hour, 35 minutes)

Roku

Time Warner Cable is preparing to solve one of its customers’ biggest annoyances — the expensive and unruly set-top box — by getting rid of them for customers who don’t want them.

CED reports Time Warner Cable provided insight into its “Boxless Home” project at the SCTE Rocky Mountain symposium held last week in Denver.

“One of the projects that I lead is called Boxless Homes where we can take a different device and use it instead of our set-top boxes,” said Time Warner’s Louis Williamson. “We’ve actually addressed the big screen with the Roku. We’ve launched it but we haven’t officially launched what we call our Boxless Homes because its missing a couple of the key Title 6 requirements. and the most important one we’re trying to get working right now is secondary audio. We have closed captioning and other things in it.”

The new project would let subscribers pack up and return their current set-top boxes (not DVRs just yet) and replace them with Internet-enabled Roku, Xbox, and Samsung Smart TVs, potentially saving customers close to $100 a year or more. It is part of the broad transition away from analog service cable companies are making as they gradually move towards IP distribution of content — creating one large broadband pipe across which cable television, Internet access, and phone service will travel.

“We describe things like the iPhones, and iPads and other stuff as companion devices,” Williamson added. “You can use them with your TV, they work as remotes and they’re good for looking at TV for a bit. When you go to something that fits on the big screen, the 10-foot experience like a Roku or the Xbox, or our work we’ve done as an app on Samsung TV that does [live TV and video-on-demand], that’s where we look at as Boxless Homes. You don’t have to have one our boxes; you can use one of those devices as outlets in your home. We’ve been driving heavily to get to that point where we can enable all of our services on a device that is theirs. In a couple of markets the channel lineup is pretty much there except for the transactional video on demand. It’s just getting all the Title 6 compliance in and a good marketing strategy around how you drive it.”

Time Warner management likes the initiative because set-top box equipment is costly to buy and support and many customers would prefer to do away with the frustration and cost of extra equipment, especially when many cable set-top boxes installed in homes before Jan. 1, 2014 use more electricity than a home refrigerator, consuming an average of 446kWh hours each (about $50 a year per box, depending on local energy costs).

Time Warner Cable customers looking to save money already have the option of returning their old energy vampire set-top boxes for one of several new models Time Warner has introduced this year. Contact your local office to find the Time Warner set-top boxes available for service in your area:

Feature Key

For now, Time Warner expects most of those going box-less will be in the under-30 age demographic. They already have game consoles or Internet-enabled set-top boxes like Roku and are comfortable switching in and out of the Time Warner Cable TV app.

“I think its to early to say how its going to impact the traditional world,” Williamson said in response to a question about whether Boxless Homes will replace traditional MPEG-2 services or augment them. “Currently we don’t even market it or tell anyone about it. The IP video stuff has rolled out word of month. These are the early adopters who are understanding that there’s a TWC app that goes on the Roku box. They decide to go down to their kid’s room or somewhere else and make that their secondary outlet. That’s how it’s evolving now. I think as it gets more and more prevalent and we get on more and more devices, which is going to take time, then its going to be more interesting. Our app on Samsung TV is much closer to our same look and feel as on our se-sop box. Unfortunately these are the real high-end Samsung TVs with the smart hub technology and things like that. There’s not enough of them to understand what the impact is on our footprint.”

Comcast is also working on a box-less approach, but only for college campuses. Its “XFINITY on Campus” project offers streaming cable TV over students’ laptops or portable devices exclusively while on campus. The service is now limited to Emerson College, Drexel University, University of New Hampshire, Lasell College, and MIT. Comcast currently has no plans to offer box-less service to residential subscribers.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/BTIG Demo of New TWC TV App on Roku 12-23-13.flv[/flv]

Rich Greenfield at BTIG Research produced this hands-on demonstration and review of the TWC on Roku app. (6:23)