North Coventry Township Station 64 Fire Engine - Ready to Respond to Comcast Mishaps Anytime

“I called Comcast because I wanted the kitchen TV hooked up to cable,” she said, describing how the digital TV converter box hadn’t worked as planned. “They said no problem, we can do it, no extra charge.” Tyson was already a Comcast subscriber before the incident Monday.

“They drilled right into the electrical box,” Tyson said in disbelief, looking over at the side of her home where a long black burn mark extended up to the roof from a burnt electrical box and meter.

Verizon must be enjoying the irony.  Just a few days ago, we shared with you the ad that Comcast was running in Pennsylvania showing reckless Verizon FiOS installers tearing up yards and engaging in what can only be described as ‘dangerous antics’ by the telephone company’s installers.  Verizon wants those ads pulled for being out of bounds.

After The Mercury published an article detailing one 83 year old North Coventry woman’s plight (her house is now uninhabitable), Comcast may have to yank the ad just to save face.

Tyson, who was in her house while the cable man worked outside, said she heard “two loud blasts — ‘Boom, Boom’ — then I came out of the house to see what was going on.”

“It was burning like mad,” she said, when the serviceman ran up to her and asked if she had a fire extinguisher, which lay spent on Tyson’s front lawn as fire crews worked.

Tyson may have been lucky as fire officials found the arcing had sparked a fire in wood behind the electrical box in the basement which spread to the floor joists. But the majority of damage was to the electrical system.

“The house is not liveable until the electric is redone,” Schaeffer said. There also was no water for the home since the well pump won’t work without electricity, according to officials.

Jean Tyson’s home sustained approximately $20,000 in damage.  She, and her dog, are now staying at a neighbor’s home until repairs can be completed.

If North Coventry was wired for Verizon FiOS, they should be swooping in to offer her a free Verizon FiOS account, thus proving yet again that payback is a ….

To punish Comcast for being naughty, we bring you one additional FiOS ad, pointed out by our reader Smith6612, featuring Michael Bay.  It’s definitely worth the entertainment value:

Thanks to Broadband Reports for calling our attention to this story.

Beaumont & Golden Triangle, Texas residents were the first to face Time Warner Cable Internet Overcharging experiments.

For awhile there, it seemed like nobody in the Golden Triangle on the Gulf Coast of Texas was paying attention to the fact their region was the nation’s guinea pig for Internet Overcharging schemes.  How wrong we were.

Stop the Cap! reader Mark, who lives just north of Beaumont in the city of Silsbee, had been fighting a one man battle against not one, but two providers serving his community of 7,400 — Time Warner Cable and AT&T.  Mark may exemplify the average consumer in the Golden Triangle, unaware that their broadband service had been subjected to Internet Overcharging experiments until the bill arrived in the mail.  Both providers have a track record of not always disclosing such schemes to their customers when trying to sign them up for service in southeastern Texas.

Both providers have used the area for pricing experiments, providing paltry usage allowances and charging steep overlimit fees for exceeding them.

Mark’s problems began when he unknowingly set himself up to be overcharged later.  Originally a Time Warner Cable customer, Mark decided to give AT&T’s Elite DSL package a try, primarily because it was less expensive than Road Runner service and supposedly faster as well.  AT&T claims their Elite DSL service in Silsbee provides up to 6Mbps down/768kbps up speed for $35 a month, compared with Time Warner Cable’s Golden Triangle Road Runner, providing (at the time) 5Mbps down/384kbps up speed for $44.95 a month.

“After DSL was installed, we discovered we were too far from the [phone company facilities] to get Elite speed, and instead of informing us about the problem, they switched us to Basic service speed, which is up to 768kbps down/384kbps up, and never bothered to tell us,” Mark writes.

The bill Stop the Cap! reader Mark received showing $73 in Internet Overcharging penalties (click to enlarge)

After Mark’s family felt AT&T was too slow to meet their needs, they ventured back to Time Warner Cable for Road Runner service.  The salesperson offered a “welcome back” discount, and mentioned nothing about the fact Time Warner Cable had implemented an Internet Overcharging scheme on the residents of the Golden Triangle region.  Instead of his old service priced at $44.95 a month for unlimited use, his new standard service was priced at $54.95 a month, and was limited to 20GB of usage per month before a $1/GB overlimit penalty kicked in.

When the first bill arrived showing his family exceeded that amount, it was quite a shock.  In addition to the $54.95 charge for “Roadrunner Residential”, there was a $73.00 fee entitled, “Road Runner Select Plan Additional Usage.”  (They also nickle and dimed him $0.99 for a “Paper Invoice Fee.”)

This was the first time Mark had encountered an “additional usage” overlimit fee, so he called Time Warner Cable to investigate.  Despite what the salesperson had sold him on, and online promotions were still selling to attract new customers, Mark learned for the first time Time Warner Cable changed pricing.  The Golden Triangle Division of Time Warner Cable implemented an Internet Overcharging scheme in June 2008, but only applied it to new customers.  Had Mark never left Time Warner Cable for AT&T, he would have never been an unwilling participant in the experiment to extract an extra $73 from his wallet.

Because he returned to Time Warner Cable after the “experiment” commenced, he was stuck.

Mark was angry.  He contacted the Better Business Bureau (BBB), the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission to complain about unfair business practices, improper disclosure of the Internet Overcharging scheme, and abusive pricing.

Time Warner Cable's 4/7/09 letter in response to a Better Business Bureau complaint regarding Internet Overcharging schemes implemented in the Golden Triangle, Texas (click to enlarge)

The most productive response came from Time Warner Cable, responding to the BBB complaint Mark had filed.  In addition to giving the standard talking points about Internet Overcharging schemes, Alberto Morales, Southwest Division Customer Advocate for Time Warner Cable, suggested the company would do a better job of training salespeople to disclose “the disclaimer regarding the consumption based billing when processing a new Roadrunner order.”  Morales also issued a one time credit for the $73 in overlimit fees charged to Mark’s account.

Mark recognized the language of the letter for what it was — propaganda from a cable broadband provider looking to cash in at the expense of their customers.  Among the dubious reasons given in the letter:

It’s also recognized that the Internet was not designed to handle the mass amounts of video that are now being consumed, therefore there is a risk that service speeds could slow down dramatically.  Video over the internet is an interesting and growing phenomenon.

So are Internet Overcharging schemes, but few would call them “interesting.”  Using the company’s own logic, Time Warner Cable should not be placing video on their own customer website, much less embark on a grand experiment called TV Everywhere to stream enormous amounts of video at broadband speeds to their customers.  Now that is interesting.  The “Internet brownout” theory of slowdowns and outages can occur when a provider chooses to pocket profits instead of keeping up with required investments to maintain their broadband network.  Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt disputes there is a problem with Time Warner Cable’s network as-is, telling a conference sponsored by Sanford Bernstein in May that, “I’m very comfortable with our plant… I don’t see a need for a massive upgrade.”

By implementing the Roadrunner Select Plan (where a customer can choose the level of speed they desire for their internet use), each level has its own cap of bandwidth consumption allowance per month.

Of course, customers cannot choose the one plan that has been an outstanding success for Time Warner Cable since its inception – the one they have right now (or had in the Golden Triangle prior to the “experiment”), unless they were willing to pony up 300% more for the same level of service, based on the last proposal Time Warner Cable introduced before temporarily “shelving the plan” due to customer outrage.

In the Golden Triangle, the maximum amount of usage was 40GB per month, followed by “the sky is the limit” $1/GB overlimit penalties.

Morales claimed that only “5% of users actually exceed their limit.”  But 100% of the Golden Triangle’s customers were left waiting for the arrival of a “gas gauge” measuring their usage, something they would now be required to check daily if they wanted to be sure not to exceed the paltry level of “bandwidth allowance” they were granted.

Time Warner Cable's follow-up letter of 4/29/09, in response to Mark's complaints that he was never told about the Internet Overcharging plan which subjected him to a 20GB monthly limit and $73 in overlimit penalties. (We assume the June 6, 2009 reference is a typo and should have read 2008) (click to enlarge)

Mark wasn’t sold by any of the arguments Morales was making.  That’s because he read Time Warner Cable’s own shareholder documents, as he had been accustomed to doing since he bought shares himself.  They told a very different story — one he shared in a letter to Morales:

“In 2007, Time Warner made $3,730 million dollars on high speed data alone, and then had to turn around and spend $164 million to support the cost of the network,” Mark writes. “In 2007, total profit on high speed data was $3.566 BILLION dollars.”

He adds, “in 2008, Time Warner made $4,159 million dollars on high speed data alone, and then spent just $146 million to support the cost of the network, a decline from the year past.  Total profit in 2008 on high speed data: $4.013 BILLION dollars.”

Mark realized “it cost Time Warner 11% less money to keep their network running in 2008 than in 2007.”

He also knew Time Warner Cable’s experiment in his city was done where the only alternative was his AT&T DSL service, which hardly offered comparable competition.

In a follow-up letter responding to Mark in late April (after the four city experiment was shelved), Time Warner Cable made it very clear their position was firmly planted in the ground:

“There are no plans to deviate from the consumption based billing plan.”

The company also elected to blame the customer for not understanding that an Internet Overcharging scheme had been introduced in the first place.

“When a customer goes online at www.roadrunneroffers.com, a disclaimer appears on the page with the first sentence including the following, “Subject to change without notice.  Some restrictions may apply.  Installation fees may apply.” This information is in view for anyone to read before proceeding with an order entry.

The fact this kind of disclaimer is, in the company’s view, sufficient notice for implementing Internet Overcharging schemes, is hardly adequate.

“We eventually dropped them again,” Mark writes. “We thought a usable slower Internet was better than a faster one we were not going to use.”

Mark realized Time Warner Cable’s business practices and models aren’t a good fit for the way he feels companies should treat their customers, and he dumped his Time Warner Cable stock and did what so many customers have also chosen to do: use the one word Time Warner Cable did seem to understand during their Internet Overcharging experiment:  C A N C E L.

As long as broadband providers continue to believe that Internet Overcharging schemes are the best way to protect their business models and leverage even more profits from their broadband division, action on every front, from legislative to direct consumer protest and refusal to do business with such companies remain the best course of action.

Stop the Cap! will continue to help deliver that action, along with a consumer education campaign that doesn’t require focus group testing to sell, because it’s based on common sense and not dollars.

Still to Come: Mark takes his battle to AT&T and gets an upper level AT&T retention agent to mark his account “exempt” from Internet Overcharging fees and penalties.  Perhaps you can, too!

In this wrap-up report on the saga of FairPoint, it's not hard to see a risk for establishing "telecommunications backwaters" in states where major phone companies exit for "greener pastures." The companies taking over service must be held to high standards, even if it means rejecting the deal. (Image courtesy: pfly)

Unlucky part thirteen is especially appropriate.  Is this the final chapter?  Hardly, as the telephone company’s endless problems perpetuate a never-ending saga of bad service, woefully inadequate planning, and unprepared regulators.  It’s an illustration of the future telecommunications backwaters that many communities will cope with as major providers leave for richer returns elsewhere.

However, we have reached the end of the beginning — the review of the entire sordid history of Verizon-FairPoint transaction from its beginning in 2007 until June 2009.

In this wrap-up, the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are coping with ongoing delays in service requests, major billing problems from FairPoint, and company requests to begin enforcing collection action against those with past due accounts.

We begin with a friendly interview, from FairPoint’s perspective, with WMUR’s New Hampshire Business.  Host Fred Kocher is one of the few people we’ve seen speak in positive terms about FairPoint.  FairPoint spokesperson Jill Wurm didn’t exactly need to squirm in her seat in this interview on May 22nd.

[flv width=”480″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WMUR Manchester Status Check On FairPoint Issues 5-22-09.flv[/flv]

Billing issues have been part of the long lasting problems customers have faced with the switch from Verizon to FairPoint, with wrong amounts, payments going unapplied, and new charges for disconnected lines driving customers crazy.  FairPoint sought approval to begin collection activity on past due accounts, and as WMUR reports on June 3rd, state regulators wanted to monitor the process to make sure a new nightmare wouldn’t begin:

… Continue Reading

Comcast introduces the nation's capital to 50Mbps "wideband" service

Back in the 1980s, cable television systems in suburban Washington, DC and northern Virginia often showcased all that was possible for that era of cable operators.  When legislators and other movers and shakers were done for the day, they found some amazing cable services waiting for them when they got home.  Media General’s cable system in Fairfax County had an unprecented two coaxial cables going into each home, with up to 60 channels on each cable, and this was in the early 1980s, when most cable systems provided no more than 40 channels.  Up to 120 channels at prices often cheaper than cable systems with 30 channels, Media General received a lot of praise.

Providing a high level of service with robust competition in the nation’s capital is a great way to diffuse complaints about poor quality monopoly service at high prices reaching members of Congress from constituents back home.  More than a few elected officials opposing pro-consumer legislation in the 1980s and early 1990s used to rave about cable service they received in Washington, forgetting things were hardly as rosy back home.

Now Comcast, which provides cable service through large parts of the metro Washington, DC area, has announced the arrival of 50Mbps cable modem service, made possible with DOCSIS 3 upgrades.  Comcast will reap the profit potential of offering consumers and businesses higher tiers of broadband speed, making customers happy and reporting higher broadband revenue, which will also keep investors pleased.

Unlike Time Warner Cable, Comcast is bullish on deploying DOCSIS upgrades across all of their cable systems.  Comcast COO Steve Burke said, “We are hardcore on DOCSIS 3.0. We want to have two-thirds of our footprint by end of year.”

Comcast is also positioning itself to compete with Verizon FiOS, now being wired in parts of DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

The company announced the new “wideband” service was now available in the Anacostia area east of the river.  Over the course of the summer into fall, it will become available in parts of Arlington County, the City of Alexandria, Montgomery County and Prince George’s County.

Comcast promises to have 100% coverage by the end of the year.

New Speed Tier Pricing (assumes customer has at least one other Comcast service)

Extreme 50 — 50 Mbps down/10 Mbps up — $99.95 per month
Ultra — 22 Mbps down/5 Mbps up — $62.95 per month.
Deluxe (Business Class) — 50 Mbps down/10 Mbps up — $189.95/month (includes business class extra features)

Existing broadband services at slower speeds will also remain available at current prices, but customers may find reduced congestion made possible by DOCSIS 3 upgrades.

Where is the downside?  Comcast is keeping a strict limit of 250GB of consumption on these new residential tiers, which reduces their value, particularly on the higher priced plans.

From $199 to much more, Apple & AT&T expect premium prices for iPhone addicts.

High demand for a product often carries a premium price to acquire and use it.  The Apple iPhone, one of those few mobile products that can generate lines extending out the door of a retailer, is one such product.  AT&T Mobility, which still holds an exclusive contract with Apple for iPhones in the United States, has made it clear it will not be making any price changes to its wireless data plans with the introduction of the Apple 3G S on June 19.  Speculation about lower pricing started with AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de le Vega, who spoke at a conference last month indicating he was amenable to “limited data plans for lower fees.”  That message was soon modified into a more generic ‘price cut’ as the story traveled.

“We’ve been very happy with our pricing,” AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel told Dow Jones Newswires.

AT&T already charges a pretty penny for iPhone users on their network.  Customers signing up for service face a minimum voice plan of 450 minutes for $39.99.  An “unlimited” data plan, required for the iPhone, adds $30 per month.  AT&T claims the average iPhone customer spends about $90 per month for voice and data.  The company also reserves the right to crack down on excessive data usage and limits some applications.

Should de le Vega’s tolerance of limited data plans become reality, plans with more specific usage limits may be forthcoming, at a moderately discounted price.

AT&T has had a bad week in the public relations arena, as current iPhone owners continue to object to the full-price upgrade price they may have to pay if they are in a two year contract.  Thousands have signed a Twitter petition and have filled AT&T’s online support forums with complaints about AT&T “price gouging” loyal customers.

AT&T has enjoyed significant revenue from their exclusive arrangement with Apple.  But iPhone users are dedicated to their combination phone and data device, and try to get their money’s worth.  That has put pressure on AT&T’s network, and despite the company’s revenue from its premium priced plans, has been criticized for not keeping up with that demand.

Verizon Wireless, AT&T’s biggest competitor, trashed AT&T’s proposed upgrades as inadequate:

Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam characterized AT&T’s promises as “too little too late”. He said that AT&T’s “ceiling for their network will be the floor for our network.” McAdam called AT&T’s announcement on its network upgrade old news—about a year old. He also noted AT&T’s promises to upgrade speed are spin.