Review by quintin3265 
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 1.4 years, 56 visits, last login: 122 days ago
 State College,Centre,PA
 $53 per month
 about 12 days
 "Speeds higher than advertised rate and low ping times, when usable"
 "Unspecified bandwidth caps, deceptive and misleading advertising, poor customer service"
 "Don't be fooled by their 16/2 connection offer. They will not allow you to take advantage of the higher speeds."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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I ordered Comcast in December 2007, taking advantage of their 16/2 offer, the highest tier of speed. I paid significantly more for this upgrade, mostly for the increased upload speed. I run a business offering high definition 1080i wedding videos (updated for clarification: occasionally, three times a year on average), and I post these videos on a website and upload them to an FTP account for access by customers. One month, I uploaded a video several times after making corrections.
Comcast called one day with a "high priority message," instructing me to call back ASAP. When I did so, a technician told me that I was using too much bandwidth and that I had to reduce bandwidth usage in order to remain being serviced by Comcast. I pointed out that they advertised "unlimited" usage and that I had paid a significant amount more than their competitors for a higher-bandwidth connection. When the technician refused to be of any help, I asked for a definite figure as to how much usage I was permitted. The technician, rather rudely, wouldn't say, stating that I only had to "significantly reduce" my usage to remain in compliance with this under-the-radar policy.
In response, I reduced my service level to a lower amount of bandwidth (8/768 in this case) until I switch providers. What's the point of having a higher bandwidth rate if you will go over their invisible cap by using it? Comcast engages in deceptive advertising by touting their "unlimited" usage, and then buries in their terms of service somewhere a clause that allows them to harass their customers over bandwidth usage. I can understand that Comcast needs to keep its network operating at full capacity, but what I cannot understand is why I could not obtain from a technician the exact limit that I should abide by. How am I supposed to adhere to a policy when I don't know what it is?
This incident made me research other options in my area. I found that DirectTV has more channels than Comcast, and that there is DSL available as well. As soon as the guy arrives to install the dish on Aug 2, I'll be ditching Comcast for cable, internet, AND phone. Until Comcast decides to be ethical in its business practices, I suggest you avoid them as well.
UPDATE: I called several different departments at Comcast in an attempt to see if they all had the same story and if one of them would provide the limit. The sales department claimed that they "had never heard of that," and it wouldn't be surprising if Comcast withheld this information from salespeople. The tech support department was more knowledgable, but not by much - first the tech claimed the limit was 4GB/month, then it was "maybe 40GB/month," and then he said he's seen people disconnected for using "300GB /month." He rather rudely said "wow - what do you need that bandwidth for anyway?" When I told him that purchasing a game online and then downloading it (which I prefer over traditional boxed copies) can take 10GB easily, he seemed shocked.
On August 3, I called Comcast and disconnected my TV service for the first part of my switch to other providers. When the representative asked why, I told him this whole story, and he was as surprised as I had been to learn of this policy. Comcast might start by informing its customer service people of ALL its policies, not just those policies it thinks people would like to hear.
(Updated again in mid-July to correct mistake in rated speed.)
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For some reason, the system doesn't allow another review of Comcast in a different zip code, so I can't post my review of them when I lived near Philadelphia, in zip 19006, before December 2007. When I lived there, their customer service was very good, believe it or not, and they never harassed me for bandwidth even though I burned through twice or three times as much as I do now. The speeds near the big city are slower than they are here in central Pennsylvania, only 8/768 at the time I had their service.
While the customer service was OK when I lived there, the service quality there was poor (compared to a much better connection here with incredibly rude customer service). There were constant dropoffs and low downloading speeds. They said that the signal strength coming into the house was too strong and that I needed equipment to attenuate the signal, but even after that there was no improvement. They came over five times before I canceled my service out of frustration and switched to FiOS.
Followup comments:  
ztmike
Mark for moderation
Premium
join:2001-08-02
Michigan City, IN
 ·Comcast
| Facts Have you not been following the news on this? Comcast states their cap will be 250gb/month
They also don't advertise that they are "unlimited"
I'm not defending Comcast here..but if your going to post a review, you need the facts.
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdYueIC1pjM | |
|  | quintin3265
join:2008-06-07
State College, PA
·Comcast
 ·Verizon FIOS
2 edits | Re: Facts The representative didn't say anything about a 250GB/month cap. As stated above, I specifically asked what the cap was, and they repeatedly refused to tell me how much I was allowed to use.
If they did set the cap at 250GB, then that would be acceptable. I would consider retaining Comcast if they were upfront about their terms and I knew what I was paying for. I'd even pay for two accounts if I needed 500GB. As it is, though, I can't risk Comcast deciding one day to disconnect service because I didn't reduce my usage enough past their "unspecified" level. | |
| krazymon2
join:2008-01-13
Coraopolis, PA
·Comcast
| How many videos did you upload? I don't understand why you would have paid so much more for the speed boost. I am over here in Pittsburgh and its only $10 more per month. Also you had a residential account anyhow, the TOS also states that you can't run a business off of it. How many videos did you upload anyway? | |
| | 
Cjaiceman
Premium,MVM
join:2004-10-12
Parker, CO | Re: How many videos did you upload? Yea, for something like this you should be on a business account. They leave you alone and as far as I know they don't really have caps on the business accounts. | |
| | quintin3265
join:2008-06-07
State College, PA | The $10 extra is for the premium service. However, it's an additional $15 over that $10 for the Blast! service, which is what I was paying for. | |
| chgocolt
Premium
join:2004-07-10
Chicago, IL
 ·AT&T Yahoo
 ·magicjack.com
| You're in violation of the TOS Also, if you purchase a residential DSL service, you will be in violation of their TOS as well. If you're running a business you need business quality connectivity. Yes, it will cost you more, but in the case of DSL it will give you a more stable service with better upload speeds and service level agreements. | |
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ztmike
Mark for moderation
Premium
join:2001-08-02
Michigan City, IN
·Comcast
| Re: You're in violation of the TOS said by chgocolt :Also, if you purchase a residential DSL service, you will be in violation of their TOS as well. If you're running a business you need business quality connectivity. Yes, it will cost you more, but in the case of DSL it will give you a more stable service with better upload speeds and service level agreements. Actually Comcast has better upload speeds than DSL, but dsl is not that worried about how much data you use as Comcast is.
--
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdYueIC1pjM | |
| | | quintin3265
join:2008-06-07
State College, PA
·Comcast
·Verizon FIOS
| Re: You're in violation of the TOS Everyone here is bringing up irrelevant topics. Whether or not I'm in violation of Comcast's terms of service is for another discussion. There are people who use the same or more bandwidth with BitTorrent downloads or by downloading huge games who have likely been issued these shady warnings by Comcast. These people are not using their connections for any sort of business-related activity and likely use much more bandwidth than I do.
I repeat that it is unethical for Comcast to refuse to tell its customers what they are allowed to use. If Comcast decides to set a limit, then they should announce it to their customers so that they can abide by the standard. Some friendly customer service might help too.
I can't believe that I was a Comcast shareholder until a month ago. I can see why their stock is going nowhere but down, because a company that engages in such behavior is going to see a class-action suit or a fine by the FCC sooner or later. | |
| | | | Bill03
Premium
join:2007-11-26
Richmond, VA
clubs:
| Re: You're in violation of the TOS "There are people who use the same or more bandwidth with BitTorrent downloads or by downloading huge games who have likely been issued these shady warnings by Comcast. These people are not using their connections for any sort of business-related activity and likely use much more bandwidth than I do."
I don't think it's likely. I'm sure they were issued warnings if they used as much or more bandwidth than you. It doesn't matter what you or they used the bandwidth for. If you need that much bandwidth take the commercial service.
"I repeat that it is unethical for Comcast to refuse to tell its customers what they are allowed to use. If Comcast decides to set a limit, then they should announce it to their customers so that they can abide by the standard."
Might it also be unethical to use a residential class service for business purposes? Especially after you were warned? I don't think knowing the limit would help you in this situation. Suppose you knew the limit and kept track of your usage. Are you going to turn down a client because you were about to exceed your monthly limit?
"I can't believe that I was a Comcast shareholder until a month ago. I can see why their stock is going nowhere but down, because a company that engages in such behavior is going to see a class-action suit or a fine by the FCC sooner or later."
The stock is up 3 dollars since the end of March. They also just issued a dividend. I wouldn't say it's going nowhere. | |
| | | | | quintin3265
join:2008-06-07
State College, PA
·Comcast
·Verizon FIOS
1 edit | Re: You're in violation of the TOS They did not warn me of using the service for business purposes. This isn't a registered corporation - it's a side endeavor where I go to three jobs per year. I uploaded three videos, each 15GB. The majority of the bandwidth was used by backing up a hard drive using an offsite backup service, and by purchasing games online. Downloading A-list games like Team Fortress 2, the Half-Life series, and so on can easily take 3-4GB a pop, and I just reinstalled Windows, necessitating a redownload of everything. I hadn't bothered saving the install files because I had figured I would just redownload them again if necessary.
I called about the business class service after people here suggested it, but I was told that their business class service also had caps. They wouldn't tell me how much the caps were, although they said "they weren't monitored as much as the residential service." I didn't upgrade to business because I simply don't trust Comcast to make good on that promise.
As to the limit being defined, if the wedding videos were the main user of bandwidth, and it came down to potentially losing a job, I would have no issue with paying for two accounts for my house. | |
| | | | | | JerryTimes
join:2002-01-09
Roseville, MI
·Comcast Digital Vo..
·Comcast
·Cox HSI
| Re: You're in violation of the TOS Read the user agreement. It's in the information provided when you order the service. I'm sure it's also online.
There is a reason why companies provide restidential service and business service. If you are using your service for a business, you should order that service. You say that you only uploaded 3 videos, and you also said that they are 1080i high def videos. Sounds to me like the file sizes should be way more than 15gb each. | |
| | | | | | | quintin3265
join:2008-06-07
State College, PA
·Comcast
·Verizon FIOS
| Re: You're in violation of the TOS I already stated that my issue here is not with the amount of bandwidth provided, nor with their terms of service. The problem is with the way that Comcast refuses to clearly state its terms and conditions.
Files encoded in AVCHD H.264 aren't that big nowadays. A 105 minute video with AC3 5.1 surround can run only 11GB, with good compression. Such a video only takes about 12 hours of encoding, too. | |
| | 
ire
join:2003-04-23
Woodridge, IL
1 edit | Just a +1.
I use SBC business DSL, I work from home. Cost is more, but you get more bang for your buck (6MB down, 768K up). No caps, nothing. They also gave me a /29 of public IP, which is mighty nice for the site to site VPN.
Never got in any sort of trouble when I was with comcast and doing this, just got fed up with it all | |
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MemphisPCGuy
Senior Systems Engineer
Premium
join:2004-05-09
Memphis, TN
·Comcast
| Re: You're in violation of the TOS They don't explicitly tell you the cap because everyone would run right to the cap each month. Now that you "know" *wink* *wink* the cap how can you continue to gripe? They only gave you a warning you were approching the limit. 15 x 3 = 45GB so you aren't telling us the whole story since we all know the cap is around 250Gb a month.
They recently upgraded all 8MB packages to 2MB upload for free... maybe you should reconsider and save yourself some money and enjoy the free speed.
--
Computer Repair & Networking Services
»MemphisPCGuy.com | |
| | | | | quintin3265
join:2008-06-07
State College, PA | Re: You're in violation of the TOS Of course that's the reason they don't tell you the cap, but just because we know their justification doesn't mean that deceiving their customers in this way is OK. | |
| | | | | villabus
join:2002-06-18
Miami, FL
| said by MemphisPCGuy :They recently upgraded all 8MB packages to 2MB upload for free... maybe you should reconsider and save yourself some money and enjoy the free speed. They said they did and they do charge for this but it does not get 2mb upload or even close except the first 10 seconds. | |
| | | | | | villabus
join:2002-06-18
Miami, FL
1 edit | Re: You're in violation of the TOS There is a good utility called speedconnect that will show you that you get buco latency and little of the promised speed after the first 10 seconds(upload or download).
Attach is my test results. Find the speedconnect trial and check for yourself.
 | |
| tcg
join:2008-08-04
Hermitage, TN
| powerboot Up to 16/4 here in nashville, tn. I want to stress the "UP TO" part becauce it is 8/2 and the powerboot "can" up to double it for "FREE". You are paying for 8/2 services and anything above that (due to the FREE powerboot) is a bonus.
My 2 cents... | |
| Tigerpaw509
Premium
join:2006-07-15
Huntley, IL | bandwidth totals My personal totals for 5 machines and tivo box since 8/3/05
is 149gb.How do ppl go over 250gb in one month? | |
| | 
Torrent User
@comcast.net
| Re: bandwidth totals said by Tigerpaw509 :My personal totals for 5 machines and tivo box since 8/3/05 is 149gb.How do ppl go over 250gb in one month? With ease. | |
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Re: You're in violation of the TOS