John in SJ / asjamias: no, my comment that it does not cost Comcast (in this specific location) $3 extra every year to deliver the same level of service, is fundamentally correct. The infrastructure upgrades in this area were done long ago and haven't been upgraded again since. At that time the bill went up maybe $4 or $5 a month I think, and I understood the reasoning for that and did not complain about it.
In fact as they pay off all those facility costs (maintaining the same number of employees in the area basically), their overall costs likely go down a little bit for delivering service to existing areas where no further digging / installing / etc needs to be done. At worst it's probably a wash. Cost of wages rise VERY slightly for customer service people and the like (in fact avg worker wages have barely kept pace with inflation the last 20 years - look it up), while the cost of the facilities go down over time.
No one here addresses the core concern though, because you can't do so without using rationalizations like "it's just business" and "it's not illegal" and "you should just accept it and leave". I never said it was illegal or that other businesses don't have similar practices of annually boosting fees without some type of regular, incremental improvement to the service. I said it is unethical, and it is.
Dr Drew: why do you ask? The modem is DocSis 3. As stated multiple times, I AM getting the amount of bandwidth allocated by the plan. This is not a connectivity issue or a "I'm getting half of what they said I would get" issue. The upgrades I'm talking about are hypothetical / related to what Comcast is doing in Verizon markets. And no, now that Verizon has mysteriously abandoned one of the largest markets in the country, Comcast has no reason to do anything but continue screwing people who readily accept it as "normal".
I will be leaving sometime this spring, once I have more time to look into the options. I even thought about paying the $150/month or whatever it is to get their business speeds but let's be real... the same people will be answering the phones and chat lines. We're all just numbers, not people.
Hortnut: You may well be right about people in different regions getting different quality service. That seems to be the case (that the west coast customers claim a better experience), and it makes sense given there is more access to broadband providers out there / more choice. Comcast has to play ball and bill people ethically, not bait and switch on credits, etc. (Another thing no one has addressed because there is no excusing it...)
I'm glad you guys are happy (truly) with your level of service. I wish someone from Comcast had made an effort to value me as much as they evidently value you.
BTW I didn't realize there was a dedicated rants forum. I just categorized the message as rant so it would go to the right place, etc. If there's one place for rants and messages categorized as such aren't placed there that's on DSLRR. But sorry if the placement is confusing. As for Google people, not sure what you mean. Either someone comes in here and reads the OP and tries to comprehend or they don't, instead skimming around and trying to offer solutions based on partial information about the problem.