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Canceling Comcast Is Like a Bad Breakup – Listen and Cringe As Comcast Desperately Begs You to Stay

Comcast-LogoDo you remember that high school love that killed you when they decided it was time to move on? You begged, you pleaded for them to change their mind to no avail. Nothing you said made any difference.

Some people never get over that teenage tragedy… and then they go to work for Comcast’s customer retention department indefatigably browbeating departing customers in a misguided effort to salvage damaged relationships with the cable company.

Stop the Cap! reader Bryan shares with us several minutes of the Block family’s life they’ll never get back. After 10 minutes on the phone repeatedly requesting to cancel Comcast service, Block and his wife decided to record the ongoing absurdity to share with the world. The result is eight more minutes of cringing embarrassment as an increasingly exasperated retention representative repeatedly demands to know why they want to leave.

never leaveIt all sounds like eavesdropping on your roommate’s breakup with their boyfriend. Or leaving a cult. This guy just can’t understand what the heck you were thinking when you decided Comcast was no longer right for you. Block was in no mood to explain himself, but for the benefit of others, we’d love to arm you with a few reasons to explain why you don’t want anything more to do with Comcast:

“Being that we are the number one provider of Internet and TV service in the entire country, why is that you are not wanting to have the number one rated Internet service available,” the retention rep demanded to know.

Our answer: Because you want to cap our broadband experience, you charge outrageous prices for renting a cable modem, and your speed claims mean nothing if we don’t actually get those speeds because of yet another outage or service problem.

“So you’re not interested in the fastest Internet in the country,” Comcast’s rep asks.

Our answers: Sure I am, which is why I am switching to the fiber competitor that delivers those speeds -0r- Not if you are putting a usage cap on me. Who wants a Ferrari they are told can’t be driven beyond the block?

“You don’t want something that works? …So why don’t you want something that’s good service and something that works,” asks Comcast’s rep.

Our answer: Do you actually subscribe to Comcast yourself? You guys didn’t win Worst Company in America honors for nothing.

“I’m really ashamed to see you go to something that can’t give you what we can,” argues the rep.

Our answer: That’s right. My long ongoing nightmare of bad service, high prices, and usage capped Internet is finally over. See ya.

If you really want Comcast to convince you to stay, tell them you want a permanent waiver in writing from any usage limits and/or overlimit fees. Demand aggressive discounts that deliver real savings, and never take their first offer. If they can waste 18 minutes of Ryan Block’s time, you can be just as ruthless when demanding a better deal for yourself.

As Ryan indicates, this retention representative is the perfect example of how Comcast won its reputation as one of most hated companies in America.

Stop the Cap!’s Testimony Before the N.Y. Public Service Commission on Comcast-TWC Merger

lousy-tshirt-640x640For the benefit of new visitors, text items in bold are clickable links. A complete video from this event will be posted as soon as possible.

Good evening. My name is Phillip Dampier from Stop the Cap!, a Rochester-based all-volunteer consumer group fighting for better broadband service and against Internet usage caps.

This is a critical moment for New York. The Internet has become a necessity for most of us and the future is largely in the hands of one company capable of delivering 21st century broadband to the majority of upstate New York. That company isn’t Verizon, which has ended FiOS fiber expansion while abandoning most of its upstate customers with slow speed DSL. Indeed, as their market share will attest, our broadband future is held in the hands of Time Warner Cable.

Comcast could have become a big player in New York had it chosen to compete head to head with Time Warner. But large cable operators avoid that kind of competition, preferring comfortable fiefdoms that only change hands at the whim of the companies involved. As local officials from across New York have already discovered, no major cable operator will compete for an expiring franchise currently held by another major cable operator.

Ironically, Comcast is using that fact in its favor, noting that since neither company competes directly with the other, making Comcast larger has no impact on competition. But that should hardly be the only test.

At issue is whether this merger is in the public interest. This year, for the first time in a long time, the rules have changed in New York. In the past, the Commission had to prove the merger was not in the best interests of New Yorkers. Now the onus is on Comcast to prove it is. It has fallen far short of meeting that burden.

Let’s start with Comcast’s dysfunctional relationship with its customers. With more than 75 citizen comments filed with the Commission so far. Comcast’s reputation clearly precedes it. The consensus view is perhaps best represented by one exasperated Clinton-area resident who wrote, I quote, “No. No no no. HELL no.

dream onThat kind of reaction is unsurprising considering Consumer Reports ranked Comcast 15th out of 17 large cable companies and called their Internet service and customer relations mediocre. Every year since 2007, Comcast’s CEO acknowledges the problems with customer service and promises to do better. Seven years later, the American Customer Satisfaction Index reports absolutely no measurable improvement. In fact, ACSI has concluded Comcast had the worst customer satisfaction rating of any company or government agency in the country, including the IRS.

In order to sell this $45 billion boondoggle to a skeptical public, Comcast has hired 76 lobbyists from 24 different firms and will reportedly spend millions trying to convince regulators and our elected leaders this deal is good for New York. If the deal gets done, Comcast’s biggest spending spree won’t be on behalf of its customers. Instead, Comcast has announced a $17 billion share buyback to benefit their shareholders. Imagine if this money was instead spent on improving customer service and selling a better product at a lower price.

don't careThe only suitable response to this merger deal is its outright rejection. Some may recommend imposing a handful of temporary conditions in return for approval – like the kind Sen. Al Franken accused Comcast of reneging on after its earlier merger with NBCUniversal. But this is one of those cases where you just can’t fit a round peg into a square deal for consumers, no matter how hard you try.

With respect to television, volume discounts have a huge impact on cable programming costs and competition. The biggest players get the best discounts, smaller ones are stunned by programming rate hikes and new competitors think twice about getting into the business.

AT&T said last week its 5.7 million customer U-verse television service was too small to get the kind of discounts its cable and satellite competitors receive. AT&T’s solution is to buy DirecTV, which might be good for AT&T but is bad for competition.

Frontier Communications has also felt the volume discount sting after adopting several Verizon FiOS franchises. When it lost Verizon’s volume discounts, Frontier began a relentless marketing effort to convince its customers to abandon FiOS TV and switch to technically inferior satellite TV.

Combining Comcast and Time Warner Cable will indeed help Comcast secure better deals from major programmers (including Comcast itself). But Comcast is already on record warning those savings won’t be shared with customers.

Comcast’s executive vice president David Cohen summed it up best: “We are certainly not promising that customer bills will go down or increase less rapidly.”

Is that in the public interest?

xfinity_blowsComcast suggests this merger will make its cable television market share no larger than it had in 2002 when it bought the assets of AT&T Cable. But this is 2014 and cable television is increasingly no longer the industry’s biggest breadwinner. Broadband is, and post-merger Comcast will control 40-50 percent of the Internet access market nationwide.

So what do Time Warner Cable customers get if Comcast takes over? A higher bill and worse service.

Several months before Comcast sought this merger, Time Warner announced a series of major upgrades under an initiative called TWC Maxx. Over the next two years, Time Warner Cable plans to more than triple the Internet speeds customers get now at no additional charge. Those upgrades are already available in parts of New York City, Los Angeles, and Austin.

A Time Warner Cable customer in Queens used to pay $57.99 for 15 megabit broadband. As of last month, for the same price, they get 50 megabits.

In contrast, Comcast’s Internet Plus plan delivers just 25 megabits and costs $69.95 a month – nearly $12 more for half the speed. Who has the better broadband at a better price? Time Warner Cable.

New York State’s digital economy depends on Internet innovation, which means some customers need faster speeds than others. Time Warner Cable’s Maxx initiative already delivers far superior speeds than what Comcast offers, despite claims from Comcast this merger would deliver New York a broadband upgrade.

isp blockTime Warner’s new top of the line Internet service, Ultimate 300 (formerly Ultimate 50), delivers 300 megabit service for $74.99 a month. Comcast’s top cable broadband offer listed on their website is Extreme 105, offering 105 megabit speeds at prices ranging from $99.95 to $114.95.

Is the public interest better served with 300 megabits for $74.99 from Time Warner Cable or paying almost $40 more for one-third of that speed from Comcast? Again, Time Warner Cable has the better deal for customers.

But the charges keep coming.

At least 90 percent of cable customers lease their cable modem from the cable company, and Comcast charges one of the highest lease rates in the industry – $8 a month. Time Warner Cable charges just under $6.

So I ask again, is this merger really in the public interest when broadband customers will be expected to pay more for less service?

Then there is the issue of usage caps, a creative way to put a toll on innovation. Usage caps make high bandwidth applications of the future untenable while also protecting cable television revenue.

If the PSC approves this transaction, the vast majority of New York will live under Comcast’s returning usage cap regime. There is simply no justification for usage limits on residential broadband service, particularly from a company as profitable as Comcast. Verizon FiOS does not have caps. Neither does Cablevision. But the majority of upstate New Yorkers won’t have the option of choosing either.

In 2009, Time Warner Cable lived through a two week public relations nightmare when they attempted an experiment with compulsory usage caps on customers in Rochester. After Stop the Cap! pushed back, then CEO Glenn Britt shelved the idea. Britt would later emphasize he now believed Time Warner should always have an unlimited use tier available for customers who want it.

Whether intended or not, Time Warner actually proved that was the right idea. In early 2012, the company introduced optional usage caps in return for discounts. They quickly discovered customers have no interest in having their Internet usage measured and limited, even for a discount. Out of 11 million Time Warner Cable broadband customers, only a few thousand have been convinced to enroll.

comcast sucksComcast doesn’t give customers a choice. In 2008, a strict 250GB usage cap was imposed on all residential customers with disconnect threats for violators. Since announcing it would re-evaluate that cap in May 2012, it now appears Comcast has settled on a new residential 300GB usage allowance gradually being reintroduced in Comcast service areas starting in southern U.S. markets.

Comcast executive vice president David Cohen cutely calls them “usage thresholds.” At Stop the Cap! we call it Internet Overcharging.

Cohen predicts Comcast will have broadband usage thresholds imposed on every city they serve within five years. Whether you call it a cap or a threshold, it is in fact a limit on how much Internet service you can consume without risking overlimit fees of $10 for each 50GB increment over your allowance.

Unlike Time Warner Cable, Comcast isn’t offering a discount with its usage cap, so those who use less will still pay the same they always have, proving again that usage caps don’t save customers money. (See below for clarification)

At the end of May I watched CNBC interview Comcast CEO Brian Roberts who implied during a discussion about Comcast’s usage caps that usage growth was impinging on the viability of its broadband business. Moments later, Time Warner Cable ran an ad emphasizing its broadband service has no usage caps. Both companies are making plenty of money from broadband.

This merger is bad news for customers faced with Comcast’s legendary bad service, its forthcoming usage caps, or the higher prices it charges. Even promised innovations like their much touted X1 set top platform comes with a gotcha Comcast routinely forgets to mention. Customers have to pay a $99 installation fee.

Stop the Cap! will submit a more comprehensive filing with the PSC outlining all of our objections to this merger, and there are several more. We invite anyone in the audience to visit stopthecap.com for this and other matters related to cable television and broadband. We appreciate being invited to share our views with the Commission and hope to bring a consumer perspective to this important development in our shared telecommunications future. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TWC News Hearing on Comcast 6-16-14.mp4[/flv]

Time Warner Cable News covered the Public Service Commission hearing in Buffalo, which included testimony from Stop the Cap!’s Phillip Dampier. Also appearing was a representative from the National Black Chamber of Commerce advocating that telecom companies merge as fast as possible. The Chamber has received significant support from Comcast for several years now and representatives routinely testify in favor of Comcast’s business initiatives. (2:30)

Clarification: Comcast has different trials in different cities:

Nashville, Tennessee: 300 GB per month with $10/50GB overlimit fee;

Tucson, Arizona: Economy Plus through Performance XFINITY Internet tiers: 300 GB. Blast! Internet tier: 350 GB; Extreme 50 customers: 450 GB; Extreme 105: 600 GB. $10/50GB overlimit fee;

Huntsville and Mobile, Alabama; Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah, Georgia; Central Kentucky; Maine; Jackson, Mississippi; Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee and Charleston, South Carolina: 300 GB per month with $10/50GB; XFINITY Internet Economy Plus customers can choose to enroll in the Flexible-Data Option to receive a $5.00 credit on their monthly bill and reduce their data usage plan from 300 GB to 5 GB. If customers choose this option and use more than 5 GB of data in any given month, they will not receive the $5.00 credit and will be charged an additional $1.00 for each gigabyte of data used over the 5 GB included in the Flexible-Data Option;

Fresno, California, Economy Plus customers also have the option of enrolling in the Flexible-Data Option.

Comcast suggested customers can enroll in a cheaper usage plan in some of these markets. Yes they can, but only if they downgrade to Economy Plus service which offers speeds only up to 3Mbps. Their $5 discount is not available on any other plan.

Comcast Tries to Prove Its Usage Meter is Accurate Before Slapping the Caps Back On

Phillip Dampier June 5, 2014 Comcast/Xfinity, Consumer News, Data Caps, Editorial & Site News, History, Public Policy & Gov't Comments Off on Comcast Tries to Prove Its Usage Meter is Accurate Before Slapping the Caps Back On
Keeping an eye on the scale

Keep an independent eye on the scale

Without independent verification by an unbiased third-party, providers’ usage meters can measure any amount of usage — correct or not — with no recourse for those facing overlimit fees or service suspension.

That is why companies like Comcast depend on the patina of credibility a third-party company can offer when certifying Internet traffic measurement tools as accurate, even if that company has a vested interest handing Comcast the results it wants to see.

NetForecast just completed its third paid study of Comcast’s Internet meter declaring it amazingly accurate with an error rate of just -0.75 to 0.36%.

NetForecast claims it performed independent traffic measurements using real user traffic in subscribers’ homes as well as its own in-house PC and server.

“Based on our measurement results, Comcast subscribers should be able to rely on Comcast’s meter accuracy,” NetForecast says.

Comcast subscribers should also be able to rely on the fact that any cable company that involved with its usage measurement meter has a clear agenda to use it as part of a nationwide return to usage caps or usage-based billing.

NetForecast is no substitute for utilizing a financially uninvolved third-party to oversee any measurement tool that could expose customers to additional charges.

The country has been through this before.

Offices of Weights and Measures represent one of the country’s oldest efforts at consumer protection and trace their origins to the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta and the United States Constitution. Most states created their own bureau to verify all sorts of measurement tools from scales to gas pumps in the early 1900s after an epidemic of widespread fraud shortchanged citizens.

Measure with confidence.

Measure with confidence.

By 1910, the California Legislature was engaged in a battle with the railroads over the accuracy of scales used to weigh railway cars. Railroad tariffs for hauling goods were based on the weight or measurement of the commodity carried. The railroad industry occasionally hired so-called “independent” third parties to certify the accuracy of railway scales to fend off government regulation and oversight after reports of widespread fraud reached the legislature. It didn’t solve the problem.

In 1920, 52.4% of railroad scales, including those “certified” accurate were found to be well out of tolerance. When the industry knew the state of California’s Office of State Superintendent of Weights and Measures would oversee testing a year later, every scale tested in 1921 was suddenly accurate within tolerance.

The problem of accurate measurement was not limited to the railroads. Californian cattle and livestock ranchers faced dishonest hay balers that ginned up the cost of hay by sneaking in heavy debris like rocks and using inaccurate scales to charge higher prices. The 1919 Hay Baling Act was passed to ensure accuracy in the sale of hay and to stop the fraud and abuse the hay balers denied ever existed.

In Maryland, the fraud came from scales used by grocers and gas pumps — both rigged by their respective owners to deliver bigger profits at the consumer’s expense.

In the 1971 Report of the 56th National Conference on Weights and Measures, E.E. Wolski, manager of quality control at the Colgate-Palmolive Company considered it unthinkable that anyone other than a truly independent, financially uninvolved third-party should monitor the accuracy of measurement tools.

This Maryland gas pump is being verified for accuracy by the Weights & Measures program run by the state government.

This Maryland gas pump is being verified for accuracy by the Weights & Measures program run by the state government.

“I do not think anyone will be so naïve as to even suggest that an elimination or reduction of inspection or enforcement would result in anything other than a return to the situation which made the need for them so apparent,” said Wolski. “It is a well-known fact that where enforcement drops off, so does compliance.”

In one state where private companies were permitted to self-certify, inaccuracy turned out to be rampant.

“I was informed that the average gallon was about a half pint short and that an average pound had been a little less than an ounce short,” Wolski said. “The shortages had been statewide and were almost universal.”

The state-employed director that finally established independent oversight of weights and measurements in light of the widespread fraud Wolski talked about was firm in his conclusion that “everybody, literally everybody (and that includes you and me), needs to know that someone is there watching what he does.”

Any financial interest in the outcome of a weight or measurement involving money is a temptation to cheat consumers, one that has effectively only been tempered all the way back to the days of King Solomon by truly independent oversight, typically by a state or local authority. That authority is on display today in the form of a compliance sticker found on commercial scales, gas pumps, and other measurement tools, attesting to their accuracy.

While it is nice Comcast at least bothers to investigate the accuracy of its usage meter, consumers should not be asked to trust the findings of a third-party paid to produce results. Consumers should insist that a truly independent regulator of weights and measurements regularly test and verify usage meters wherever they could be used to suspend a customer’s account or result in extra fees.

Comcast Uses Offline Game to Show the Speed/Responsiveness of XFINITY Internet

Phillip Dampier June 2, 2014 Broadband Speed, Comcast/Xfinity, Competition, Consumer News, Data Caps, Editorial & Site News, Video Comments Off on Comcast Uses Offline Game to Show the Speed/Responsiveness of XFINITY Internet

comcast whoppersComcast is using an offline console game that misrepresents the speed and performance of its Internet service in its latest advertising.

Eagle-eyed game fans were annoyed to find Comcast promoting its speedy Internet service with a mall demo of Ubisoft’s Trials Fusion, a game that has no online multiplayer mode.

“If you’re a real gamer then you need the speed of XFINITY Internet,” advises a Comcast spokesman in the 30-second ad.

“Do you find that when you’re playing games online with your current service that it’s slow, a Comcast representative asks gamers.

“Yes,” says one, they do! “I get some lag,” says another.

“Do you want to try XFINITY Internet,” asks the employee.

“Sure.”

“Do you notice any buffering,” asks the employee.

“No sir.” “There is certainly no lag at all.”

The smooth game play and responsiveness looks impressive, until one realizes the game was never connected to XFINITY Internet. Without an online mode, there is no Internet connection with slow speeds and lag to worry about while playing. Games like บาคาร่าจ่ายจริง, which don’t require high-speed connections for complex graphics or fast reaction times, would run just as smoothly. The game would work just as well in the middle of a Kansas wheat field, 50 miles from the nearest DSL connection.

But Comcast’s Internet service does eventually come into play when game enthusiasts want to download software updates, which can be enormous for many titles.

XFINITY Internet does not come with infinite usage. The company is now testing a return of usage allowances tied to overlimit fees in several cities and a senior vice-president predicted Comcast will be limiting how much Internet usage customers get without paying more within five years. So while you may not notice any buffering issues when using your offline content with XFINITY Internet, the more you do go online, the closer you get to Comcast’s arbitrary usage allowance.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Xfinity Internet – Gamers Tent May 2014.flv[/flv]

False Advertising: Comcast uses offline game play to prove the speed and responsiveness of their Internet service. Your Keurig coffeemaker is also 50% faster when inside a home powered by XFINITY Internet. So are your cats. (0:30)

Comcast Shakes Its Innovation Money-Maker: Considers Launch of All-New, Deluxe $ Unlimited Internet

"Customer service says you have the right to pay more."

Comcast says you must have the option to pay more for the same broadband service you already get, only now with an allowance

Comcast has announced it is considering testing an innovative new plan in several test markets offering “unlimited Internet access” to customers for a yet-to-be-determined price. Whoever heard of such a thing?

Comcast’s executive vice president David Cohen raised eyebrows last week when he predicted all Comcast customers nationwide would see usage-based billing for their Internet access within five years.

Such statements tend to muck up things like a $45 billion dollar merger with Time Warner Cable that both companies must prove is in the public interest. The buyer wants to limit your Internet usage and the seller got its fingers burned back in 2009 when it tried its own usage cap experiment and now advertises it has no data caps.

Telling Time Warner Cable customers it is in their best interest to lose unmetered Internet plans may be too tough to sell, so Cohen has spent much of this week backtracking and claiming he was “misunderstood:

To be clear, we have no plans to announce a new data usage policy.  In 2012, we suspended our 250 GB data cap in order to conduct a few pilot programs that were more customer friendly than a static cap.  Since then, we’ve had no data caps for any of our customers anywhere in the country.  We have been trialing a few flexible data consumption plans, including a plan that enables customers who wanted to use more data be given the option to pay more to do so, and a plan for those who use less data the option to save some money.  We decided to implement these trials to learn what our customers’ reaction is to what we think are reasonable data consumption plans.  We certainly have no interest in adopting any plans that our customers find unreasonable or disruptive to their Internet experience.

It’s important to note that we remain in trial mode only.   We’re now also looking at adding some unlimited data plans to our trials. We have always said that as the Internet, and our customers’ use of it, continues to evolve, so will Comcast and our policies.

Cohen makes a careful distinction between a strict usage limit and the kind of usage-based billing that will fill the company’s coffers with overlimit fees. But any usage allowance is a limit of how much you can use the Internet before something bad happens — either your access is shut off or your bill explodes.

comcasticStop the Cap! has talked with more than a dozen customers in Comcast’s test markets about their experiences with Comcast’s “data usage policy.” Although the company claims it is seeking customer reactions, it never asks whether those customers want usage limits or not, only what kind.

Giving customers “the option to pay more” is exactly the type of thinking that won Comcast the dubious distinction of being the worst company in America. No usage plan tested by Comcast actually offers savings to customers. It simply places an artificial, arbitrary usage allowance on the overpriced broadband service the company offers now.

At this point, Comcast is not offering any unlimited use trials, but we have learned the value they are likely to place on “unlimited” based on what certain customers have paid all along for that privilege. Ars Technica reports some avoided the 250GB cap by signing up for business class service. The cost? $133.79 a month for 50/10Mbps. If Google Fiber was in town, you’d pay $70 for unlimited 1,000/1,000Mbps service, and the search engine giant would still be making money.

Cohen claims nothing is set in stone, but considering Comcast’s “don’t care” attitude towards its customers, it is a safe bet they will do what is best for shareholders and ignore complaints from customers that often have nowhere else to go for 21st century broadband speeds.

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