acrufox
join:2004-07-14
Canada
1 edit | Oy, yes here we go again...long read ahead....
First off to b18c1crx:
I'm not defending anyone here but just because you download a lot doesn't mean you are a "warez kiddie" and by you just saying "warez" implicates that you know the lingo and one could assume you're doing illegal activities yourself. I haven't heard that term used in years.
I was a former user of Comcast and I fell victim to their "service". Can we all just give it a break on the anything over 50GB is a lot? The world of warcraft TRIAL download is over 4GB!!!! 3dmark is hundreds of megs to download now. 3D demos for newer videocards are as well up into the half gig territory.
I was on the service since before it was Comcast. I had 5-6 Megabit speeds and was happy. Then Comcast bought out our area, chopped my incoming speed 3/4 and my outgoing by 3 fold, meanwhile maintaining their wonderful pricing. After I started reading the threads, I installed a bandwidth monitoring device in Nov. I monitored the bandwidth and in Dec I did 104GB downloading and in January 101GB. Comcast was so nice with their "policies" to get both a Dec and January warning at the beginning of Feb! I called up and complained that I received both warnings within days of each other and their excuse was "it got lost in the Mail because of the Christmas rush" Yeah it got lost from my house to downtown where the bill comes from for TWO months.
Needless to say if I did it again it would be my last warning and I would be banned off their service, was even told how to curb my usage.
At that point they DOUBLED the service to 3.0 for free....so....say what?!?!?! now you're doing what?!?!?! "We at Comcast don't like you, you download too much, stop it....oh and we love you, here's a 3.0 speed upgrade for "free"; half of your @home speeds!"
On top of that I was on auto pay and was being charged $10 in late fees. You'd see on my bill "payment received on time thank you" Then the following day "payment received late $10 fee" Since that time I had no other choice I had to live with it, every month I checked for DSL. Then once my number came up, went through hell to get it, 2 months later I was on Verizon.
Then just for fun, I went in, their equipment in the bag...I went to their local office and the clerk said "yes we are auto charging you and this is a billing error, but the system won't let me correct the error and I can't give you a refund because the system won't let me" After standing there for over half an hour, she just looks at me like I'm just supposed to live with the $10 overcharge per month and walk out the door.
At that point I just put it all on table and pushed it towards her and said "I'd like to cancel my service with Comcast, I cannot deal with bandwidth abuse letters, being overcharged $10 a month, and have "basic service" all of which come in snowy because the box in the yard has it's cover falling off and leaning 45 degrees to the right and rusted all to hell.
This is the Very reason I left Comcast, because I knew down the road, game patches would get bigger, linux iso's would become dvd iso's, and driver sets alone would be over 50 MB JUST for the video card. They would bring out their "invisible caps again"
As for my usage? I beta test for Microsoft in my spare time, at the time I got the bandwidth abuse letters I was downloading weekly and biweekly builds of Windows XP, and sometimes several versions at once, like home and professional as well as server. I was also dabbling in redhat linux. Reaching 100GB on my own was easy, then take into consideration other family members using the internet. One of them loves to stream music and browse through flash animation sites, and watch movie trailers. All within the norm, just not Comcast's norm.
Now with FiOS in the area they have generously upped their customers speeds to 10-15 depending on the package. Comcast is playing the numbers game where Competition is now an issue. Why bother? at those speeds you could easily blow through their invisible caps, if you could actually attain those speeds, with 15/1 service, with DHCP overhead, obtaining the full download speed is next to impossible. I tried on FiOS once. The upstream was between 768-1Megabit. Which on Comcast means no breathing room.
Don't even get me started on the newsgroup service they provide...what is it now....2GB? Miserable limit if you ask me, again, more than one family member uses the service, 2GB can easily be eaten through in under half a month or even one week.
Comcast only wants you if you play games, do VOIP and take your bandwidth usage on Sunday afternoon drives.
Funny how FiOS came to town and they upped the speeds and are still doing that promotional plan of "for 6 months it's only" and don't state what you'll pay after that.
They're losing so many customers now, I had an employee spying on the dish; we got a call a week later..."we noticed you have Dish network...if you trade in your receivers" I stopped her and asked her how she got that information...her response was "from our database" My response "no, from the Comcast guy that did not service the box, but came up to our dining room with a notepad and went down the block noting customers not on Comcast services"
Funny, the line went dead. I wouldn't touch Comcast with a ten foot pole, heck a car side swiped one of their boxes MONTHS ago, they just came out with some orange plastic bags and some electrical tape and put it over their box to weather proof it. It's been that way since.
Comcast wants to compete while sitting on the couch drinking a beer, they think by setting modems to speeds of the competition they will keep their customers; because of their bandwidth abuse letters, even though Verizon support sucks. I have convinced over two dozen people to switch to Verizon DSL or Verizon FiOS. Comcast loses out big time with me, I know and do a lot of house calls, and when asked "what do you think?" I always say Verizon, expect stupidity, but in the end you'll end up with a service that won't jack your prices up in one year, or your promotional plan ends.
Comcast really is a sad sad company :/ |
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