  DaveDudeNo Fear
join:1999-09-01
New Jersey |
end comcast/ nbcThis is why comcast like bell, needs to be broken up into tiny small companies forced to compete. | |
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Re: end comcast/ nbccan you please explain how "TINY SMALL COMPANIES" would compete once broken up?
RBOC's didnt compete with each other after the MA BELL Murder, and neither would cable companies under your bright idea.
On a sidenote, this article made me chuckle. I must be a bad man. | |
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| |  Zenit_IIfxThe system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA ·Comcast XFINITY
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Re: end comcast/ nbcI laughed too, but being trapped by Comcast is not fun...
The Ma Bell murder was just that - a murder planned by industry robber barons and the government jointly. Silly Charlie Brown and his vision of Western Electric PC's taking over the market - 5 years too late! | |
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| | | BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT  ·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68
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BiggA
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 6:31 pm
Re: end comcast/ nbcThat's incorrect. SNET was only minority owned by AT&T, hence it was not considered part of the AT&T system. It and Cinci Bell were the only two independents. Unfortunately, SNET didn't survive, only Cinici Bell did. CT would be much better off today if SNET had survived as an independent, they would have rolled out tons of FTTH by now, like Cinci Bell did. | |
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cybah
Member
2015-Jan-28 7:37 pm
Re: end comcast/ nbcactually rumor has it that SNET had planned on wiring up the entire state with FTTH. They already had the preliminary equipment installed in certain areas when AT&T bought the majority stake. Once that happened, AT&T told SNET to pull the plug on it. And this was in the late 1990s/early 2000s. SNET could have very well lead the way in FTTH rollouts.. long before Verizon and AT&T/SBC would have. | |
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| | | | | BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT ·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68
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BiggA
Premium Member
2015-Jan-29 5:19 pm
Re: end comcast/ nbcYeah, it's unfortunate. The whole state would have way better fiber and cable service today if they had gone through with that. Connecticut probably makes just as much sense as anywhere to run fiber everywhere. Tons of suburban and exurban areas, relatively wealthy, but the state overall is still pretty small. | |
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to DaveDude
said by DaveDude:This is why comcast like bell, needs to be broken up into tiny small companies forced to compete. That's not a bad idea in terms of decreasing their lobbying power but it won't really help competition. The real solution is to force cable ISPs to rent their lines out to third party ISPs. Real competition at the retail level would force Comcast to invest more money into customer support (and lower prices) or risk losing customers. | |
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| |  djrobx
Premium Member
join:2000-05-31
Reno, NV |
djrobx
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 6:21 pm
Re: end comcast/ nbcThe real solution is to force cable ISPs to rent their lines out to third party ISPs. Real competition at the retail level would force Comcast to invest more money into customer support (and lower prices) or risk losing customers. Forcing incumbents to rent their lines out only creates the illusion of competition. The value you get from that is marginal at best. I already have a "choice" between Earthlink Cable and Time Warner Cable, but really if TWC doesn't keep their lines maintained, or wants to foist caps, I'm most likely stuck with the same connectivity regardless of which ISP I pick. Earthlink Cable cannot provide better performance than TWC itself, they are limited by whatever technology TWC has decided to deploy. We already tried that with DSL. CLEC-based DSL was a pretty good thing (where competitor can rent the physical copper wire). We still see some advantages from that (Sonic Fusion DSL), but the value went down when it came to ISPs, again like Earthlink, which just resold the ILEC's IP services. Given the shared topology of cable, we can't duplicate the success of CLEC-DSL, only the far less fruitful IP variant. | |
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Re: end comcast/ nbcsaid by djrobx:Forcing incumbents to rent their lines out only creates the illusion of competition. The value you get from that is marginal at best. Yeah that's assuming the incumbent will not have any other barriers to the best service. Look at Crapcast above, barriers to a great service are more than just infrastructural, I'd rather deal with their "VNO" than them. | |
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to djrobx
said by djrobx:The real solution is to force cable ISPs to rent their lines out to third party ISPs. Real competition at the retail level would force Comcast to invest more money into customer support (and lower prices) or risk losing customers. Forcing incumbents to rent their lines out only creates the illusion of competition. The value you get from that is marginal at best. I already have a "choice" between Earthlink Cable and Time Warner Cable, but really if TWC doesn't keep their lines maintained, or wants to foist caps, I'm most likely stuck with the same connectivity regardless of which ISP I pick. Earthlink Cable cannot provide better performance than TWC itself, they are limited by whatever technology TWC has decided to deploy. We already tried that with DSL. CLEC-based DSL was a pretty good thing (where competitor can rent the physical copper wire). We still see some advantages from that (Sonic Fusion DSL), but the value went down when it came to ISPs, again like Earthlink, which just resold the ILEC's IP services. Given the shared topology of cable, we can't duplicate the success of CLEC-DSL, only the far less fruitful IP variant. DSL prices were jacked up the moment line sharing requirements were removed in 2004. It's no coincidence AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre's infamous "not over my pipes" statement that launched the Net Neutrality debate was made in 2005. Technological limitations aren't what's causing the proliferation of caps. There is no congestion, a fact admitted by the cable CEOs themselves. It's the lack of competition and shareholder drive for ever greater profits that pushes caps onto users. Earthlink's business was subject to the whims of the line owners. FCC enforced line sharing would regulate rates the same way they preside over wireless roaming rates that carriers charge each other. | |
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to djrobx
Cable network sharing seems to work better in Canada, where your traffic is handed over to your ISP of choice, rather than paying a different company for an identical connection. As for said by djrobx:Forcing incumbents to rent their lines out only creates the illusion of competition. This is totally untrue. I live in a country where the incumbent is required to wholesale its network, and the competition is very much real. There are lots of ISPs, lots of price points, and varying levels of service quality depending on which provider you choose. I am with a provider that costs slightly less than the telco's own ISP but the service and support is 100x better. The telco's own ISP has nothing to do with the provision of my service, too - I have a PPPoE tunnel straight to my ISP's own network, where my ISP then deals with routing and internet access. The telco here is running the DSLAMs/GPON OLTs and hauls the traffic to anywhere in the country that the ISP wants it to go. Other ISPs take an even deeper approach and simply either rent the copper line and have it connected straight into their own DSLAMs, or a "virtual local loop" provided over VDSL2 or FTTP, and get the traffic handed over to their network at the nearest central office/exchange from the telco's OLT (the same OLT handles GPON FTTP customers and is the "headend" for the street mounted VDSL2 DSLAMs) It works extremely well. | |
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to sonicmerlin
said by sonicmerlin:That's not a bad idea in terms of decreasing their lobbying power but it won't really help competition. It will also lower and bargaining power cable companies have with content companies thus content companies will charge even more, thus INCREASING pricing even more. Think about it this was if ONE company owned all the cable AND satellite companies then you think ESPN could be asking $6 a month per sub when that one company should just refuse to carry ESPN and kill it? The real solution is to force cable ISPs to rent their lines out to third party ISPs. Real competition at the retail level would force Comcast to invest more money into customer support (and lower prices) or risk losing customers. Why should they do that? So company A spent the money laying out infrastructure still has to lay out money maintain infrastructure and company B can come in rent lines with minimal cost and undercut company A an cause A to lose revenue and that's fair? If company B wants to come into an area let them lay out their own infrastructure. That's like the government forcing KFC to sell it's secret recipe because it's unfair that they are the only chicken place that has that recipe and they charge too much so forcing them to sell it will lower prices for chicken. | |
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Re: end comcast/ nbcsaid by AnonDude :Why should they do that? So company A spent the money laying out infrastructure still has to lay out money maintain infrastructure and company B can come in rent lines with minimal cost and undercut company A an cause A to lose revenue and that's fair? If company B wants to come into an area let them lay out their own infrastructure. That's like the government forcing KFC to sell it's secret recipe because it's unfair that they are the only chicken place that has that recipe and they charge too much so forcing them to sell it will lower prices for chicken. This is incredibly short sighted and misses the point. In other countries with extensive infrastructure sharing, the incumbent gets a very profitable rate per customer for use of their infrastructure. The telco for the country I live in frequently posts financial results that shows the infrastructure division being the most profitable, by far, despite the telco's own ISP being one of the biggest in the country. Forcing companies to build their own infrastructure results in no competition because no one wants to do it. It is extremely expensive, it is wasteful, and you get very limited coverage. That's why the US is only seeing very limited "competition" in the form of Google, with its deep pockets and cherry picked, extremely limited coverage, and the occasional municipal deployment. Economies of scale are important and infrastructure sharing enables them. | |
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Re: end comcast/ nbcYes, well, you explain how sharing is to occur when there is NOT ONE network of wires providing internet, in a majority of dense populations, but TWO, and in some cases, THREE separate networks already competing. Then , please explain why suddenly such rules would not apply to lets say a Dish internet, regardless as to how crappy the service is, OH, and Im sure youd give Google a pass on this as well. Yea right.
Next solution.... | |
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to DaveDude
Why do I get the feeling there is much more to this than we will probably ever know about? | |
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anon2223541 to DaveDude
Anon
2015-Jan-29 1:17 pm
to DaveDude
yeah that worked out so well. All those companies have merged into two today. | |
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1 recommendation |
en103
Member
2015-Jan-28 4:32 pm
Commiecast management has thick skinThey'll take all the lashings out on their employees while they keep pulling in the (higher) profits. | |
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|  gar187erI DID this for a living
join:2006-06-24
Seattle, WA
1 recommendation |
Re: Commiecast management has thick skinwhy shouldnt they?!!? not like Brian Roberts did this! | |
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 Frank
Premium Member
join:2000-11-03
somewhere
4 recommendations |
Frank
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 4:34 pm
Doesnt surprise me.Doesnt surprise me, however, you might want to blur out the account number from that picture of the bill. | |
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|  CodeeCB
Premium Member
join:2001-10-01
Minneapolis, MN |
CodeeCB
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 5:14 pm
Re: Doesnt surprise me.Maybe the customer who sent their bill around for display and publicity should have thought of that? | |
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5 recommendations |
46436203 (banned)
Member
2015-Jan-28 4:37 pm
Asshole BrownThat's hilarious! Guess somebody's never heard of bleaching... | |
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2 recommendations |
Disgraceful, and INexcusable! Customer should sue Concrap.I think the customer should sue Comcast for defamation of character, and slander.
There's plenty of "ambulance chasers" out there that would love to take the case.
The fact is that until Concrap faces a threshold of financial and public relations pain, they will not change their way of conducting business. | |
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|  koolman2
Premium Member
join:2002-10-01
Anchorage, AK |
koolman2
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 4:55 pm
Re: Disgraceful, and INexcusable! Customer should sue Concrap.Defamation of character and slander don't apply here unless they're going around telling people that this Mr. Brown is an asshole.
The employee should be fired and someone in upper management should reach out to this customer to apologize personally.
Edit: I read the article now... Looks like they did that and gave credits as well. The customer wants more. | |
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Re: Disgraceful, and INexcusable! Customer should sue Concrap.defamation ! lol ! Who brought this public? Comcast ? or Asshole Brown? | |
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ROTFLOL to koolman2
Anon
2015-Jan-28 5:39 pm
to koolman2
said by koolman2: someone in upper management should reach out to this customer to apologize personally.
Edit: I read the article now... Looks like they did that and gave credits as well. The customer wants more. Of course the customer wants more - because he is an a**hole. | |
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Re: Disgraceful, and INexcusable! Customer should sue Concrap.said by ROTFLOL :Of course the customer wants more - because he is an a**hole. The customer should want more, if Concrap had control of their customer services personnel this wouldn't have happened. Now because of incompetence they pay the price. | |
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to koolman2
said by koolman2:Edit: I read the article now... Looks like they did that and gave credits as well. The customer wants more. Yes, there was this update to the original article on the Chris Elliott website (» elliott.org/is-this-enou ··· writing/ ): quote:
Update (4:20 p.m.): Brown says Comcast contacted her this afternoon, offering her a full refund for the last two years and two years of service at no charge.
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| | | cramer
Premium Member
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC |
cramer
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 7:52 pm
Re: Disgraceful, and INexcusable! Customer should sue Concrap.I'm putting $5 on them getting a non-zero bill within 3 months. | |
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Re: Disgraceful, and INexcusable! Customer should sue Concrap.said by cramer:I'm putting $5 on them getting a non-zero bill within 3 months. I'd wager more than that....LOL | |
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| | | | | cramer
Premium Member
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC |
cramer
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 8:55 pm
Re: Disgraceful, and INexcusable! Customer should sue Concrap.I'm putting the rest of my money on their service getting disconnected for "non-payment". | |
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Re: Disgraceful, and INexcusable! Customer should sue Concrap.Aahahahaaaaa.....By God I think you nailed it. | |
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| cramer
Premium Member
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC
1 recommendation |
to ham3843
Invoke the FBI. It's a "hate crime"... 3 months in jail, 1000hrs community service, 1 year anger management counseling. | |
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to ham3843
said by ham3843:I think the customer should sue Comcast for defamation of character, and slander.
There's plenty of "ambulance chasers" out there that would love to take the case.
The fact is that until Concrap faces a threshold of financial and public relations pain, they will not change their way of conducting business. The only thing that will make Comcast make meaningful changes to their method of conducting business is competition. That's by definition impossible in an infrastructure market with such high barriers to entry. Our only hope is for the FCC to enforce line-sharing under Title II. | |
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 train_wreckslow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN
3 recommendations |
Note on the picMight wanna block out the guys account number in that picture, maybe? | |
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| CodeeCB
Premium Member
join:2001-10-01
Minneapolis, MN |
CodeeCB
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 5:13 pm
Re: Note on the picMaybe the customer who sent their bill around for display and publicity should have thought of that? | |
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 EUSKill cancer
Premium Member
join:2002-09-10
canada
2 recommendations |
EUS
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 4:48 pm
I laughedI'll admit it. | |
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 FureverFurryRIP Daphne: 3/12/05 - 6/19/12
Premium Member
join:2012-02-20
49xxx
ARRIS WBM760
Vonage VDV-21
1 recommendation |
How ???How in the bloody heck was a name change processed without "proof". Any other Tom, Dick, or A-hole has to go to a Comcast office with proof. And even better -- how did the customer manage to actually reach someone at HQ ?  Can't wait to read further updates on how Comcast spins this. | |
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| train_wreckslow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN Cisco ASA 5506
Cisco DPC3939
2 recommendations |
Re: How ???said by FureverFurry:How in the bloody heck was a name change processed without "proof". Any other Tom, Dick, or A-hole has to go to a Comcast office with proof. Ya see that's the scariest thing about this, that their back-end systems are screwed up enough that this was allowed to happen unchecked. | |
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|  Pirate515
Premium Member
join:2001-01-22
Brooklyn, NY |
to FureverFurry
I don't think that whoever designed and implemented their system had this situation in mind until shit actually hit the fan.
When I worked at Help Desk some time ago, we had similar kind of situation, although no obscenities involved:
We supported a website that sold investment research reports, where anyone could sign up and as part of sign-up process, it would send you weekly newsletters. One day, we get an angry e-mail from some high-level IT person at the White House. Apparently, president@whitehouse.gov was getting spammed with our weekly newsletters and they wanted it stopped immediately as they said that neither POTUS nor anyone on his staff has signed up for our website or authorized it. That was back in 1999, before many sign-ups had to be confirmed. | |
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I'm not even madIf anything that's probably the most real and sincere thing a Comcast employee could have ever said or done. | |
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Hmm...Only 2.50 for TV service? That's a bargain. They could call me anything they want for 2.50 a month TV services. | |
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True
Member
2015-Jan-28 5:12 pm
oppsSomeone at the call center is SO fired. | |
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CodeeCB
Premium Member
join:2001-10-01
Minneapolis, MN |
CodeeCB
Premium Member
2015-Jan-28 5:17 pm
2 sidesI'm sure this customer was a perfect angel on the phone? There are 2 possible sides to this and although it's fun to blame Comcast for everything including murdering kittens and an employee obviously changed the name, it certainly wouldn't have been without what was "justification" in the employees opinion. Again, not saying it was right but definetly wouldn't have randomly happened if the customer wasn't being extremely rude. | |
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1 recommendation |
deja vu?Me thinks this happened before... possibly with Time Warner or the other smaller companies like Charter.. also a chance it happened with a Telco too.. somewhere on BBR, this has come up before | |
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1 edit
2 recommendations |
Re: deja vu?I was pretty sure I remember writing something like this before too, but for the life of me I couldn't find it. Update: Now I remember, this same thing happened back in 2005. | |
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But they can't spend itThey keeping spending that money on Lobbying | |
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5 recommendations |
Don't pay unless your name is A**hole | |
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I really fell out of my seat reading this. Thanks MR BrownWhat a funny prank for late payment. That's what should happen to every late or non paying customer. | |
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 bmccoy
join:2013-03-18
Port Orchard, WA |
bmccoy
Member
2015-Jan-28 5:37 pm
Rude“I am requesting everything back I paid Comcast for doing this to me.”
Just from that sentence, I can already tell she sounds really rude. Did Comcast do the right thing? Hell no. But, we're hearing her side of the story, not the CSR's story. | |
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| FureverFurryRIP Daphne: 3/12/05 - 6/19/12
Premium Member
join:2012-02-20
49xxx Zoom 5341J
ARRIS WBM760
Vonage VDV-21
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Re: Rudesaid by bmccoy:“I am requesting everything back I paid Comcast for doing this to me.”
Just from that sentence, I can already tell she sounds really rude. Did Comcast do the right thing? Hell no. But, we're hearing her side of the story, not the CSR's story. How is that "rude" ? Regardless of the CSR's story, there is zero/zip/nada excuse for changing a customer's name like that. And as I have posted elsewhere, obviously a system failure as every other "a-hole" has to provide written documentation of a name change. | |
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| | bmccoy
join:2013-03-18
Port Orchard, WA |
bmccoy
Member
2015-Jan-29 3:44 pm
Re: RudeI'm not trying to defend Comcast, and there's definitely no excuse for changing your customer's account name to "Asshole Brown". I'm just saying that demanding back everything paid to Comcast for years of (hopefully decent) service when you already are behind on your Comcast bill is really... odd. | |
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1 recommendation |
Why pay the bill?Are you still obligated to pay if the bill is not to your name? I would just stop paying. | |
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AnonDude
Anon
2015-Jan-28 6:00 pm
Customers CAN vote with their walletsThe article seems to say they can't. Which Comcast customers can't switch to DirecTV or Dish or simply go OTA? Now sure maybe for internet they don't have a choice but trust me if all of customers TV customers went away it wouldn't matter if they kept all their internet customers they would lose BILLIONS. and they would change. The attitude of I MUST have TV or even internet is why companies get away with things. | |
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Yes, this is bad, but I laughedI know, I know, the rep shouldn't have done this and should be fired, but, as someone who has worked in support, there's a very tiny part of me that thinks maybe whoever did this must've had their reasons. Who among us, one one day or another, hasn't dealt with some jerk who made us want to throw our headset up against the cube wall? Like the guy who was practically cursing me out because "our server was down", and he was losing a gazillion dollars for every minute he couldn't get on E*Trade, only for me to show him that the real problem was that he was running his phone line through a cheap surge protector, which was causing frequent disconnects. Or the guy who ignored the multiple e-mails we'd sent out for weeks on end informing folks that we were retiring an old mail server, and the few customers still on it needed to download all their stored mail before we took it offline, only to call in screaming about where all his mail had gone. Or the little punk who went by the username BossHogg, who cursed at our techs so many times that, after numerous warnings, he got his account permanently closed for abuse. Kinda served him right, since we were the only ISP with a POP in his small town.
So yeah, I know that there's no excuse for this, but part of me wonders how things reached that point. | |
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