Looks like they're trying to get revenge for not being able to act like evil overlords of the internet on the whole net neutrality thing. Typical shitter businessmen using new shitty business practices.
Software Engineer Forced to Sell Home After Comcast Lies About Service
- Thread starter StewShearerOld
- Start date
Sadly, there's an incredibly simple answer to that. Comcast, for a large part of their service area, are a monopoly. Your choices are to either eat their shit with a forced smile and say you love it, or not have internet. I'll admit I haven't read his blog post, as frankly, I've hit my internet negativity quota for the week, but it sounds like, if he's in a remote enough area where thinking to ask if Comcast covered it actually came to mind, then Comcast is probably the only provider in the area.Boba Frag said:
And if someone tried it in Australia, in which Telstra, by virtue of being a formerly government owned monopoly has a legal responsibility to provide service to all but the most remote locations...Adam Jensen said:
(Not that this is reliable, and Australian internet is terrible anyway, but whatever)
Of course, the existence of these laws is part of a set of laws designed to help out people living in rural areas, many of which are so far from everything that were it left to market forces nobody would even dream of trying to offer them telecommunications services...
See also roads, and power provisions for remote areas...
(And schools, medical services, police, fire... All quite expensive to provide relative to what it costs in a city...)
2500 feet is less than 1 km. There is no way they'd get away with denying that in Australia.
Maybe if it were 50 or 100, they might object, but more likely they'd suggest sattelite service instead of trying to run cables...
Now THIS is an appropriate use of the South Park cable company picture.
There are few companies that I hate more than Comcast. If AT&T is better than you, you're doing it wrong.
There are few companies that I hate more than Comcast. If AT&T is better than you, you're doing it wrong.
Madness upon stupidity...
Only Comcast would go to such lengths to chase a POTENTIAL sale that they cannot afford for no good reason.
This is the bloat of corruption rising past the surface and smothering everything; a membrane of marketing cellulose so thick that not even the simplest of query of "Do you sell this here?" can pierce it without being forced.
It takes maybe a 3 minutes to look up whether that address lies in a serviced township.
Less than 1 if it's done with any modern GIS system; I know because I've located service lines before with ArcGIS (INCLUDING COMCAST'S!).
Only Comcast would go to such lengths to chase a POTENTIAL sale that they cannot afford for no good reason.
This is the bloat of corruption rising past the surface and smothering everything; a membrane of marketing cellulose so thick that not even the simplest of query of "Do you sell this here?" can pierce it without being forced.
It takes maybe a 3 minutes to look up whether that address lies in a serviced township.
Less than 1 if it's done with any modern GIS system; I know because I've located service lines before with ArcGIS (INCLUDING COMCAST'S!).
Hes a software engineer, he should have known better. you should never for any reason go with comcast.
and yes, if your home plan is not stable enough to work from home your ISP should be sued to death. there is no excuse for not providing good and stable internet in 2015.
There is absolutely no need for business class internet for anyone working from home. a simple home internet plan is enough. you need business plans only if you are doing the multigigabyte bandwitches and the like. as in hosting entire companies servers.Baldr said:
and yes, if your home plan is not stable enough to work from home your ISP should be sued to death. there is no excuse for not providing good and stable internet in 2015.
As someone that lives in rural area--I know what this guy is going through. Unfortunately, he screwed up his hand with the cable company. I have lived 3,000 feet and 10,000 feet from the closest serviceable cable drop. My trick has been to find some independent that signs folks up for cable television--and sign up for both TV and internet. If you can sign up for a two year contract--DO IT!! The key is to find someone more interested in signing you up for the largest package and what their commission will be more than if the area is serviceable. Pay a bill or two over the next few months with zero service. After those bills have been paid--don't bother calling the cable company to ask when the cable will be connected. Call the state utility commission.
Service works both ways. If you stop paying your bills the cable company will shut off your service. In a contract with the cable company and the cable company expects 24 months of payment. And here is were you get the cable company to spend the $50K+ to setup your house--the cable company entered into a contract with you to provide service, you paid for the service--and they need to honor the contract.
My latest cable company win was being upgraded by Charter sales folks to 50MM service in an area that only supports 20MB. After paying the extra $10 for three months I called up corporate to ask why my speeds aren't 50MB. Their offer was to refund my money and change my plan back. What they ended up having do was install a second cable modem.
Service works both ways. If you stop paying your bills the cable company will shut off your service. In a contract with the cable company and the cable company expects 24 months of payment. And here is were you get the cable company to spend the $50K+ to setup your house--the cable company entered into a contract with you to provide service, you paid for the service--and they need to honor the contract.
My latest cable company win was being upgraded by Charter sales folks to 50MM service in an area that only supports 20MB. After paying the extra $10 for three months I called up corporate to ask why my speeds aren't 50MB. Their offer was to refund my money and change my plan back. What they ended up having do was install a second cable modem.
I got to say I am impressed. I hope this is true because it's nice to see someone game the system not the system game them.Zhit said:
Nowhere in the article is anything said which states that, or even anything said that would allow you to infer that. I'm sure the man had a lot of criteria for choosing where to move, and being able to get appropriate internet service was only one of those factors. Granted, one which would be a deal breaker if service weren't available. But I have little doubt that had he been told up front he couldn't get service he wouldn't have bought the house and would have made an offer on another or kept looking.Strazdas said:
I wouldn't just make Comcast the only bad guy here. In the Consumerist article [consumerist.com/2015/03/25/new-homeowner-has-to-sell-house-because-of-comcasts-incompetence-lack-of-competition/] I read (the blog post linked here only gives them a quick mention), CenturyLink also jerked him around by saying they could provide DSL service, then called the next day to say no, his area is in "Permanent Exhaust" and they won't add customers, then later charged him $100 for service they already said he couldn't get, and finally danced around with the services managers that were supposed to take care of the issue, the way we expect Comcast to.Atmos Duality said:
There's also the law forbidding the county's public broadband utility running close by his house from expanding. I can't say for sure, but I'd put money on both Comcast and CenturyLink lobbying to get the law passed in the state of Washington. They don't want to pay for any expanded infrastructure in the area, nor the maintenance costs and customer service visits, but they sure want the area clear of competition if it ever someday looks like it could be profitable.
All of the major ISPs are pretty much equally greedy scumbags. Comcast is just the one getting the most news coverage. I really wish the linked blog post and this article explained CenturyLink's involvement more.
You're preaching to the choir on that one.Hairless Mammoth said:
I've done temp-contract work for some of those scumbags. (Comcast, and InsightBB before the buyout most notably)
My brief contact with their business structure was more than enough to spook me away from pursuing more stable employment.
Cronyism, nepotism, and sheer incompetence reigned management. My contract liaison at Comcast (temp-boss) was a shiftless moron that barely understood what his branch did. Best I could tell, he was a dime-a-dozen business-associates crony fresh out of college, who was just following orders from upstairs.
His scheduling and routing plan for service tickets was "hot-seat" oriented, meaning the teams take tickets from an existing pool themselves rather than being assigned a service route. (it's the most "hands-off" approach possible for management)
Meaning that if someone called in a ticket that couldn't be handled remotely, they would get to play roulette with the on-site teams, assuming anyone was actually on the job to begin with (and not fucking around at a convenience store en-route, which happened a LOT when I filled in).
Not that it helped, because half of their onsite personnel were barely capable of performing their job at all, let alone within building code and I have a dozen+ horror-stories about that.
And yes, at one point I was privileged enough to bear witness to some of the patented "back-end optimization" (read: throttle-bots) on their "blazing-fast" 10-year old routers. I've known for a LONG time just how hideously outdated their tech is, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that branch of Comcast was still using those C-2000 series.
I literally opted to change career paths in part because I did not want to be subjected to the mind-crushing stupidity of that, despite being a surefire job.
It's only because of the insane costs and legal barriers (that they created) of laying new lines that these scumbags are in business.
So, yeah, I know.
I can see that and agree.
In my defnse, I only read the initial article in passing since I just got home when I did.
So it turns out Comcast's Customer service is rated by the Better Business Bureau as a grade of 'B'.
Something to think about, eh?
Something to think about, eh?
Perhaps I'm just misreading your post.Vivi22 said:
However, if you'd read his blog post, linked at the bottom of the article, he clearly states that internet service was his absolute #1 criteria when looking for a home. He called Comcast twice, once to Comcast Sales, and another call to Xfinity, both answers were "Yes, we can provide service to that location. A previous owner even had Comcast in the past!". When he finally got the "We're not extending service to you." call, he even remarked that if Comcast had told him that they couldn't provide service to him that he wouldn't have even placed an offer on the house.
Again, perhaps I'm misreading, but I felt like I needed to point this out since it seemed that you had only read the article, and not the blog post itself.
I'm guessing he can't do that because he doesn't have anything in writing proving that they told him they would provide internet to that home. I'm guessing it's all verbal, but I could be wrong.Mike Pothier said: