Friday, July 11, 2008 |
FCC set to punish Comcast
This is perhaps one of the greatest pieces of news that I have heard in a while and may very well be one of the first times that the FCC administration has announced something that is worthy of support. The FCC (especially in this recent administration) has almost always ruled against the interest of the consumer but less than 12 hours ago the FCC Chief announced that he believes Comcast DID violate internet rules and should subsequently be punished. Perhaps the greater excitement of this ruling would be that the FCC may be taking steps to defend Net Neutrality. It is important to note that this proposition has not been voted on but it is expected to pass and be put in to effect.Read more: Labels: comcast, isp, net neutrality, p2p (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
Saturday, May 31, 2008 |
A few more Comcast thoughts
I really don't mean to turn my blog into a "How Comcast Screwed Me" blog but there was a post to my CPLUG message and it made me think a little more. After I wrote my response I figured that it was interesting enough to add to my blog here.From what I was told by comcast is that they are using QAM for everything now and I need a set top box for them. Even if channels 30-70 are being broadcast on the line in ATSC I'm sure they are still filtered out at the pole. The kicker is that it was the day they were "fixing my internet" to get me more speed. They checked my box and found nothing wrong and then the next day I got a call from someone else saying they *did* find something wrong at the pole and were sending a truck out to make adjustments at the pole. Ironically I think the guy that called me to tell me they found a problem at the pole was Bill from the ComcastCares department. My theory is that corporate or the local office tricked Bill into being used to limit my TV rather than fixing my internet because I was specifically told by the local office that they found nothing wrong with my internet and that no adjustments were going to be made. Anyway you look at it Comcast is still Comcast and are professionals only at screwing their customers. When the local sales guy called me he confirmed this by saying "FCC mandate" multiple times and trying to hide behind a law that doesn't even apply to them. They play this game all the time because 95% of the people they call don't have a clue about it and only see Comcast's commercials saying there is a digital transition happening and that comcast is working hard to have it not affect their customers. I guess to them its worth the risk of ending up telling one of the 5% that understand because they'll make up losing those customers by the ways they are screwing the 95%. Labels: comcast, customer service, isp (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 |
Comcast's FCC Smokescreen
Today I received a call from the regional sales manager (at least I think that was who it was) at the request of Bill and/or Frank so that he could better explain to me what was going on and how they were not misleading their customers. He did accomplish that and he set it straight that they are not removing the stations that I lost from analog at this time but that they are in an analog package that costs around $50 per month. Sounds pointless? Well, it's not if your Comcast.If you think that the concept of a set top box is solely to give you a better quality and user experience, you're wrong. While those things are very true there is another aspect of this that people don't realize. If you subscribe to a service that is one way then your experience can not be interactive and, of course, interactive experiences are generally better. Another thing is true if a service is one way communication: there is no way to raise an income above the base subscription level. Now think about your set top box. How many Pay Per View movies and events are on there? How many additional services can you sign up for or order at the press of a button. The difference between a customer with a set top box and a customer without a set top box is very different to Comcast. It makes it a little clearer on why for me to continue the service that I had (or at least thought I had) without a set top box Comcast would want to charge me a much higher fee than if I get a set top box. Additionally they also are collecting a monthly fee for each TV connected instead of just a signal that can be sent to any TV in my house without extra equipment. So what's the answer? Is Comcast falsely advertisting? Well... the answer is no. Because of the fact that I *CAN* still subscribe to the channels I had been getting via an Analog signal then I am "not affected by the digital conversion because I am a Comcast customer" .... The uneasy feeling comes in finding out that the pricing goes up for people in my scenario.... Oh... and I was specifically told that they may still remove the channels above 25 from analog signal later anyway.... Are you ready for this one? Here is what completely pissed me off to no extent. The words that I had been waiting to hear to confirm that Comcast IS using the digital TV conversion as a way to fool people came not once, not twice, but AT LEAST 3 times in this conversation. What were those words..... "Due to the FCC mandate"..... Oh yes.... Comcast is telling their customers that all of this is because the FCC is mandating them to switch to digital signal. The first time I heard these words I stopped him and said "Sir, I know exactly what the FCC is mandating and the mandates are in the 700mhz over the air frequencies and DO NOT pertain to your signals broadcast on your own network" .... Apparently I caught him by surprise and he said "well, yes, your correct" .... Now he continues on to tell me how Comcast is doing me a favor because they are going to receive the channels digitally and then convert them to an analog signal for their analog customers. Does this sound like they are doing you a favor? Well, to someone that doesn't understand the technology, I'm sure it does. But if this is a true statement than that means that Comcast has been using an analog antenna to receive the signal from the TV stations and then they push the signal through a cable and just charge us extra for the same thing we could get with a antenna on our roof. Bull. Not to mention that there is no market that has 25 over the air stations that someone can receive. Regardless, I am being told to buy a story about how we live in an age of sattelites and growing technology and Comcast still receives the signal to their network using tin can and string technology. While it's true that the picture quality can certainly make you think that its primitive I think the reality is that the entire story was bull. The beauty of this story is that no matter which way you look at it Comcast is horrible. Either they are using technology that is older than dirt and they haven't been upgrading their system like they have continually been telling us OR they are outright lying to their customers in telling them that they are doing us a favor by converting signals for us. But you think it's not bad enough? Well, try this on for size. After I explained to this guy that I knew what the FCC mandates where and that I knew they did not affect Comcast's signal on their network he continued to tell me the same exact story twice more. Either this guy has an EXTREME short term memory loss or he has been programmed to hide behind a false FCC mandate so deeply that he can't even break out of it when someone calls his bluff. To be quite honest with you if this guy would have explained that all of the channels I had could be subscribed to via an analog signal for a higher price I probably would have been upset that it was going to cost me more money but I wouldn't have been pissed or really even thought much about the shadyness of the situation. It was the moment that he pulled that FCC mandate out of his hat that really, truly, reminded me of what the true motive of the company that is Comcast is: Fool your customers into staying with you instead of actually being a decent company and making them want to stay. I want to again stress to everyone that @comcastcares (Frank), Bill, and their entire team is REALLY working wonders for Comcast customers. These people TRULY do care about their name and about their customers and I can only hope that corporate would start to learn from these guys who are trying to be as open and honest as they can be and are going WAY out of their way to help people. I just really hope that someday we might see some evidence that Comcast as a corporation wants to adopt the same policies. Labels: comcast, customer service, dtv (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
Tuesday, May 20, 2008 |
Comcast DTV lie?
Every Comcast customer has seen these commercials but is it really accurate? Sure it's accurate if you have digital cable with a set top box which is the same scenario if you have Dish Network or DirecTV. But about the people who still have the regular analog cable packages? I've been trying to figure out the answer to that question for about 2 weeks now. @comcastcares and Bill (a member of his team) have been looking into this as well. What happened was about 2 weeks ago my MythTV system started recording some shows as just total static. I had initially thought that one of the tuner cards had gone bad in my server but later found that the recordings of static were only on the shows on channels above channel 30. As a result I found that it wasn't a bad tuner card but, rather, that I was not getting a signal from Comcast on these channels. Interestingly enough this occured about the same day that Comcast did some work on the pole near my house to improve my internet speed. Fortunately, my speed certainly did improve so at least I have one good thing. What is becomming extremely frustrating is that Bill has been trying to get in touch with the local Comcast office and they aren't returning his calls. There is no solid answer on what happened. The initial report that Bill had given me was that those channels were, in fact, converted to digital only. Now there are people I know in Front Royal that still get those channels without a Comcast set top box but if the signals were converted to ATSC it would explain that because she has a newer TV and I have older analog-only tuners in my system. Could I upgrade my tuners? Sure but that isn't the point. They are advertising that NO ONE that is a comcast customer is affected by the DTV transition. False Advertisting? UPDATE: 3:10pm I just got a call from Bill and he had an answer to what was going on. Basically Adelphia cable used to have all the channels on their analog package and when Comcast took over their packages were different. Essentially what I was told was happening was that every analog customer was receiving more than what they paid for and they were fixing the "problem". What really upsets me is that there is no way to get these channels on analog because now you only have the option of signing up for digital cable. I'm extremely upset with this. I don't know if it can be called false advertising or not but one way or another it's shady. I canceled my TV service with them. It's time to go back to REAL TV -- aka sattelite. Quite honestly if I had another viable option for internet I would be going another route for that too just because I'm tired of the games that this company plays. I could have had another TV service set up by now if I would have just known what was going on -- or imagine the concept of a warning that this was going to happen. I continue to appreciate the help the Frank and Bill's team has been offering to people but it's obvious that Comcast is still the same old Comcast. Labels: comcast, comcastcares, customer service, dtv (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
Thursday, May 08, 2008 |
WTF Comcast?
Ok, Comcast..... how about the left hand works with the right?A few weeks ago I blogged about how @comcastcares was really helping me out. I ended up with the 16 meg plan and after the upgrade things where sailing right along... I was seriously impressed..... well, at least for the first week. The past few weeks have caused things to be getting slower and slower and I mentioned it on Twitter and, again, @comcastcares jumnped in to help. The following day I had a call from Bill at Comcast who set up a technician to come out and take a look at the situation. I wasn't able to be home but he said that they wanted to check things on the pole because thats where they believed the problem to be. Great! Yesterday the tech called me to try to find my house which is totally typical... it took me a week or so before *I* could consistantly find my house. He said he was going to check it all out and then he'd get back to me. About an hour or so later I received a call from some woman at Comcast who asked if the tech had called me back and I said he hadn't. She said that he should have but she said that, regardless, the tech had reported back that they found nothing wrong. Quite honestly, I was not surprised. It really pointed more to the fact of what I thought it was: traffic shaping. I dont think anything is "wrong" with their system but that their system is designed to give me crappy speeds. So, whatever.... its the same old Comcast to me. ..... but wait! Today I received a call from Bill again but I wasnt able to take the call. In the voicemail message he explained that the technician did find a problem at the pole and that they needed to send a truck out in order to adjust the issues and that they would most likely be doing so tomorrow before 5:00pm. Well.... what? My gut feeling is that I should believe Bill. But what about the call from the woman from Comcast and why didn't the tech call me if the woman said that he should have? I dont think I totally understand it but my theory is exactly what I wrote in my Comcast vs Comcast post. I think that Frank and Bill are the people that are tasked with getting Comcast a better image - and in many ways they are. The problem, however, is that the core of the company still operates on the "smoke and mirrors" concept and is just as shady as it ever was and will most likely continue to be. I really appreciate all that Frank (aka @comcastcares) is doing and I respect it in huge ways.... but after seeing this episode I feel like its only a matter of time before either everyone realizes that he is the only way to get things done with Comcast and he is no longer able to do it or the company it's self stamps him out because they really don't see a point in keeping customers happy if they can continue doing what they are doing: forcing customers to stay with them. Labels: comcast, customer service, isp, net neutrality (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
Thursday, April 17, 2008 |
Comcast vs Comcast?
Anyone that has talked to me since I moved into my house knows that I have an ever growing hatred for Comcast and it's business practices. They have violated so many people on moral issues that its not even funny. My biggest problem with the company is that they put a ton of money into figuring out ways to keep traffic off their network (read: screw their customer) instead of using that money to actually build a network capable of supporting what the customer wants to do with the service that they are paying Comcast for. It doesn't make sense that you would work on finding ways to force someone to stay with you (monopolies, legal issues, etc) instead of actually creating a product that people want to stay with. This is why we are falling behind in internet access.So isn't this Comcast vs All and not Comcast vs Comcast? Well, it depends. Recently there is a new twitter account, @comcastcares, that has really been showing a different side of Comcast. What's so different? Well, the username that Frank Eliason (the owner of the account) picked is actually a true representation of him. He works for Comcast and he actually does care. My first interaction with him was less than a week ago and we debated for about an hour on Twitter about topics ranging from net neutrality to business practices, etc. Many did see me as outright attacking him but the truth was I really wanted to see how the response was handled... and I have to say I was VERY impressed. Frank responded as best he could to all of my comments and, as he should as an employee, he never once bashed what Comcast was doing but he was very understanding of the concerns that I was bringing up. That night I had a slightly new view of Comcast. A few days later I explained the customer service scenario I had when I called because my rate doubled and the CSR I spoke with literally told me to cancel my account and, when I asked for a manager, was told that no manager can speak with me but she assured me that the manager would say the exact same thing that she did. Frank was infuriated over the situation and said that he was going to pull up my account and look into the matter. Yesterday he got back to me and told me he was going to put me on a promotion of my choice and I selected a 16meg down and 2meg upstream connection for $24.95/mo for 6 months. Surprisingly my bandwidth test this morning is showing that I am getting the full 2meg upstream (which is actually more important to me than the downstream since I use remote access software) and I am getting 25 meg down. I'm impressed.... but I really am not going to comment until I see that speed sustained because I've noticed a lot of packet shaping in my bandwidth and I've seen connections during downloads start out super fast and then slow to almost unbearable before. But while Twitter is being used for good by Frank to help Comcast, it also is allowing consumers to share their experiences with Comcast and yesterday and today we were painted a picture of who Comcast is and, well, it's still the same old Comcast business practices that are consistently reminding customers of how horrible it is being trapped with a company and having no alternative. It's really sad when the only way to get any comfort from a company is to find a person that works for the company that is more excited about the product than the people who actually run the service. Business take such a focus on the financial aspects of their company that they are blinded from seeing what it's supposed to do to keep that product desirable. Fortunately, for now, we have Frank and his @comcastcares account on Twitter helping us out. What worries me is that he is single-handedly holding up a huge monster that's only desire is to crush people and I don't know how long he will be able to keep that up without the corporation actually getting behind him. Comcast should certainly take notice of Frank because he is literally the only good news that has come from Comcast in YEARS but, sadly, I'm more worried about the company attacking him eventually instead of embracing him. Either way, Frank, I appreciate what you have done and I hope that Comcast improves and that the company honors you for what you have been doing. With so many corporations grabbing twitter accounts in the interest of spamming people it is refreshing to see a corporate presence on Twitter that is actually a real live human being who is interested in helping. Kudos to you. Labels: comcast, comcastcares, customer service, internet, isp, twitter (C)2003-2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved |
(C)2008, Bob K Mertz - Some Rights Reserved
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