Comcast Cable out? No refunds, but enjoy a free movie on us if and when your service is restored.

Colorado Comcast customers suffering service outages due to defective cable company equipment are being told they are not entitled to service credits for extended outages and instead are now offered vouchers for discounts off pay-per-view events and movies.

Janice Howard sent word to Stop the Cap! customers are still annoyed with Comcast after a major outage knocked out service for more than 100,000 customers last fall because of a “router problem.”

“The outage hit right in the middle of a Broncos’ game against the Cowboys — a must-see event for any football fan in this state,” Howard recalls. “The reason I remember this now is the local paper has started a sort of movement encouraging residents to cancel Comcast service, if only because of their arrogant attitude during and after the outage, and the fact many of us just had another one.”

Howard called Comcast at the time looking for a credit on her next bill for the outage, but Comcast refused her and tens of thousands of others.

“I will never forget the surly Comcast representative who told me, and I can repeat it word for word because I recorded the call, ‘We don’t do no refunds for service outages anymore,'” said Howard. “Everyone who asked, including me, got nothing more than a pay-per-view movie voucher, which does no good if you cancel service.”

Enterprise columnist Armand Lobato confirmed that, and the fact his family finally “fired” Comcast this month:

Yes, Comcast is fired. We took a page from young adults’ playbook and canceled the phone. It seems nobody younger than 40 these days owns a land line, why should we? Even our smart friend Barbara said the only reason she hangs onto the land line is so she can use it to locate her misplaced cell phone.

No more. And no more TV either.

That was the tough one for me. But come to think of it, I don’t miss scanning through the scores of channels I never watched to get to the one I did. Nor do I miss mostly contrived reality shows or the endless blocks of foreign language stations for which we needlessly paid. No mas, Comcast.

With few exceptions, I find I don’t miss cable TV that much. We both like to read and with warmer weather, we’re outside more anyway, which it makes it easier to avoid the boob tube altogether.

I sure don’t miss the insanely ballooned, end of the month statements. Comcast’s bills, you have to admit, started to rival those hokey emails from the fictitious Zaire lawyer who promises the world if only you agree to hand over all your financials. Uh-huh.

For the record, Comcast’s official refund policy for most customers is that they are entitled to credit for some service interruptions exceeding 24 consecutive hours if Comcast is in the mood.

Howard has sympathy for Time Warner Cable customers about to be absorbed into the Comcast family.

“I feel for you because we have family back east who have Time Warner and they hate it, but we’ve always been able to prove Comcast has them beat when it comes to bad service, high prices, and customer service only a mother could love, assuming it was her child answering the phone.”

Britt

Another two weeks, another stock sale for retired Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt. The man that oversaw a business now rated worse than the MERS coronavirus no longer has to worry about the day-to-day ordeals of running a cable company under fire. His biggest challenge is where to stash all the cash he collects selling off the generous profligate number of shares he received during 12 years at the helm of the cable operator, as well as those granted in his golden parachute retirement package.

Last Friday, Britt dumped another 30,000 shares on the open market at an average price of $136.04 a share. His total take home: $4,081,200.00.

Incredibly, no matter how many shares Britt sells, he seems to end up with the same number he started with. The Legacy reports Britt still owns 177,542 shares in the company after the sale, worth an estimated $24,152,814. That does not include what he has cashed out over the last several months.

When you consider your last rate hike, remember one of the “increased costs of doing business” facing Time Warner Cable is paying exorbitant salaries, bonuses and benefits to top executives that increase annually. That is money out of your wallet.

Rensselaer County is just a short drive to the east of New York’s capital city Albany, but for residents in the southern half of the county, it might as be in the middle of nowhere.

Welcome to the world of broadband have’s and have-nots. If you live in the county seat — Troy, Internet access is widely available. But if you live in a community like Nassau, in the southern part of the county, getting Internet access is strictly a hit or miss affair, and in practical terms, the only entity that will decide if you have reasonable access to broadband is Time Warner Cable.

Verizon has decided that the days of expanding DSL in rural areas are over. There is no possibility those without access to DSL now will ever see Verizon’s fiber network FiOS coming their way either. That has left many residents with an unfortunate choice between heavily usage-capped and slow satellite Internet access or heavily usage-capped and expensive wireless Internet from a cell phone company.

Nassau does have a franchise agreement with Time Warner Cable, the only cable operator willing to offer service in this part of upstate New York. The contract specifies Time Warner will bring service to any neighborhood where there are at least 20 residences within a one-mile radius.

The Record News covered negotiations for a franchise renewal for the cable company last year, and found Time Warner Cable held all the cards and the town had almost no leverage in the negotiations:

A rare sight in southern Rensselaer County.

“We really have no negotiating leverage or power and the Public Service Commission (PSC) was helpful in looking at the contract, but told us we were basically out of luck with any efforts to require anything,” said town Supervisor David Fleming, who said he was told by Time Warner Cable that specific areas in Nassau are “not currently serviceable.”

The town had marked out all the areas that were not served and met with Time Warner to try to gain extensions of service.

“This only succeeded in a couple of areas,” he said. “This is because PSC told us we have no bargaining power. The only big concession we were able to get was to reduce the number of houses per mile needed for service, but this was a pretty standard fall back for Time Warner.”

The town succeeded in negotiating standards down to 20 dwellings per cable mile from 30. “We continue to explore this matter, but frankly, there has been a great deal of unwillingness to expand service in our community,” Fleming said. “The state has been of no help in expanding services.”

As a result, Time Warner has been generally adamant about not expanding service to residents like Alan Austin, who lives on a street where 11 houses are built within a half-mile, technically the same ratio required by Time Warner Cable.

“We’ve asked them to bring the service and they won’t,” Austin told the newspaper.

Actually, Time Warner is willing to expand into Austin’s neighborhood — for the right price.

Time Warner agreed it would install cable service if the 11 homes collectively paid a $12,000 installation fee.

“We’re out of luck because we’re never going to get another nine houses in this mile,” Austin said. “We can’t get anybody to bring service here, unless we’re willing to pay an exorbitant amount.”

As for alternatives, don’t call Verizon, they’ll call you. The phone company has suggested rural residents consider their wireless broadband and phone service, assuming a cell tower can reach them with a reasonable signal. But the cost is very high — at least $50 for only 4GB of usage per month and another $20 for telephone service.

Austin is lucky enough to receive some reception from Sprint, which is slightly more reasonably priced. But to get a reliable signal, he has to place his mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in his non-climate-controlled attic. When temperatures fall or soar, the hotspot stops working. Austin has rigged a remote-powered fan in the attic to blow cool air on the hotspot this summer to keep it up and running.

“It’s ridiculous,” he admitted. “People don’t believe me when I tell them these things, but that’s what we deal with.”

The newspaper also pondered the impact of being an Internet have-not with respect to education. In more than a few communities in the county, teachers avoid giving assignments that require students to do research over the Internet, putting them at a potentially serious disadvantage when they attend college.

Businesses also avoid areas where broadband poses a significant challenge, which affects jobs. Selling a home in a broadband blackout zone can also be difficult as savvy buyers increasingly now insist on Internet accessibility.

Without the benefit of bundling discounts, rural Americans pay substantially higher prices for telecommunications services. A promotional bundle from Time Warner Cable can provide phone, Internet, and television service for less than $100 a month. Austin says his package costs more than twice that — more than $220 monthly between paying bills for Verizon phone service, DirectTV television and Sprint for broadband Internet.

These kinds of challenges are ready-made to be addressed on the local government level, but cable and phone companies lobbied successfully for near-total deregulation, making it impossible for town officials to provoke change. In fact, had the community successfully revoked Time Warner Cable’s franchise, no other commercial provider would be willing to step in. That remains common in every community considering its future relationship with the area’s cable company. An informal understanding between cable operators keep them from competing outside of their defined territories.

That leaves Nassau officials with no options, except whether to renew Time Warner’s franchise on the company’s terms for five or ten years. Time Warner wouldn’t hear of a five-year contract so the town capitulated and agreed to a 10-year franchise renewal that will continue to leave residents like Austin without much hope for cable broadband service indefinitely.

All Jim Frey wanted from Comcast was cable service for his new home in Joliet, Ill. Instead, the installer ruined his home’s air conditioning system and then passed the buck to Comcast, keeping Frey waiting more than a month for a resolution. Regular maintenance is essential to keep your home cool, so make sure to get the right hvac services. If you need air conditioning service or AC repair, then get in touch with Ambrose Air in Orlando. You may also want to consider specific regional needs like Indianapolis heating repair service for comprehensive home comfort solutions. It’s important that you know how to tell if furnace ignitor is bad so that you can contact an expert to fix it immediately.

Frey suspected there might be trouble as soon as the installer pulled out his oversized drill.

“He had a bit that was well over a foot long that he was using,” Frey said of the April 1 incident. “I don’t know why he would need a bit that long because the walls aren’t that thick.”

While installing a phone jack, the installer explained he thought he hit a stud inside the wall but instead of pausing to investigate, he just kept on drilling… right through Frey’s air conditioner, seriously damaging its expensive condensing unit.

“Time to install a phone jack.”

After apologizing, the technician took pictures of the damage and left Frey with the names and numbers of his two supervisors.

Frey told the Chicago Tribune’s Troubleshooter that Comcast initially seemed less than engaged in addressing the problem, telling Frey to find and call area repair shops and produce at least two estimates for the repairs. When Frey informed Comcast some of the repair companies charged an upfront fee of up to $90 to visit Frey’s home and offer a quote, the cable company balked at paying the bill and told Frey they would handle it themselves.

Only they didn’t.

Three weeks later, Frey learned from a repair company he consulted on his own that the repairs would cost $2,500, or he could buy a new air conditioner for $2,200-2,700. Comcast’s supervisors refused to commit to either option, leaving Frey to start over with Comcast’s customer service line, where he was given a ticket number and a brush-off.

“They keep telling me they are waiting on their contractor,” Frey said. “I don’t understand why it is taking so long to get someone to even estimate the damage and put together a plan. It won’t be long before hot weather is upon us and I am stuck. I just want some money for the repair and I will get it done if needed. I understand they want to save a little money, but all they want to do is put a Band-Aid on this thing and hope I’ll go away.”

Frey took his problem to the Chicago Tribune’s Problem Solver, who in turn contacted a Comcast spokesperson.

The following day, a technician, from a renowned AC installation company, arrived at Frey’s house with a new air conditioner, telling Frey it was a higher-efficiency unit than his damaged one.

Somebody also mentioned to Mr. Frey that whether it’s regular maintenance, tune-up, or replacement and repair services, he gets nothing but the best from these cooling service professionals here!

“We sincerely apologize to Mr. Frey for the damage to his air-conditioning unit and the delay in inspecting it,” added a Comcast spokesman.

Britt

While your cable bill reached an all-time high this year, Time Warner Cable’s retired CEO Glenn Britt dumped another 30,000 shares of his stock in the cable company on Monday, raking in another $4,208,400.

Ordinary shareholders have to pay $140.28 a share for Time Warner Cable stock at this week’s prices. But Britt was able to acquire many of his shares at a substantial discount last fall – paying the executive-only discount “strike price” of just $23.48 a share.

It seems no matter how many shares Britt sells, he never seems to deplete his stock in Time Warner Cable. In January, Britt had 158,947 shares remaining in Time Warner Cable. But after selling 30,000 shares in February, his number of shares remaining actually increased to 177,542 shares. Despite this week’s sale, Britt still owns the same amount of stock — 177,542 shares — the same as before, worth $24.9 million at current prices.

Britt has sold about $4.3 million in Time Warner Cable stock just about every month since last fall, earning around $4.2-4.3 million a month.