Comcast sued for – you guessed it – allegedly SCREWING OVER CUSTOMERS A Chicago man is suing cable giant Comcast for allegedly breaking the law by running a check on his credit history after he'd paid them not to. Keith Santangelo claims that even after he gave Comcast $50 to skip the check, his financial record was still obtained by the telco. His lawsuit, filed in Illinois, accuses the company …
From shafting their customers for every last penny (Oh look, my modem rental fee has gone up again on a modem they refuse to sell me), service that bites the big one (my tracert's show that my signal goes over 200 Miles out of it's way before coming back to make the ~50 Mile journey to the nearest Internet BackBone in Silicon Valley, and Comcast "can do nothing about it" even though I end up dropping signal from the 1 Full Second ping times), and "Customer Service" that goes so far beyond mere Unprofessional that it makes Cerberus look like a cute & cuddly puppy by comparison.
If I had any *real* competition in the area for broadband internet service, I'd ditch Comcast so fast it would make their head spin (a good trick given how firmly up it's own ass it's wedged), but when my "options" are paying AT&T to upgrade the copper to my house so they then overcharge me to provide mere DSL, or pay Verizon for a cellular modem & data plan that will rape me for every kilobyte they struggle to throttle my way, or the OH so lovely satellite providers that tell me I'll need to cut down my neighbors' trees if I want a clear signal...
And Comcast wants to merge with the Second Worst cable company in the nation, as if the "MegaComcast" won't STILL be The Worst Company In America?
Someone please take Comcast out back & put a bullet through it's head. We don't let feral dogs last this long, so why should Comcast still be wasting our oxygen?
"For $DIETY's sake - don't switch to satellite. If you think you have latency, throughput, and data cap problems now, you ain't seen nothin' yet."
I have friends in Upside Down Land somewhere in the boondooks in the middle of some heat blasted desert, scrub, bush or whatever you wish to call it.
They find using the interweb hopeless for anything other than eMail because of the latency and any form of instant messaging just is impossible if they want something 'live' going on.
If one uses something with a high latency then it's just best dealing with the internet as something that you post and it will get there. Rather much, really, like the modern day postal service.
A few months ago, I had to return some broken equipment to Comcast (Or is that Scumcast?), so I looked for locations of local Comcast customer service offices and I ended up getting a search referral to a list of them on Yelp. Yelp of course had their "X out of 5 stars" customer rating, and none of the Comcast offices had more than two stars!! Fortunately, the closest office to me had a 2-star rating, so I got what I jokingly told my friends was "Comcast Premium Support".
I think at the 1-star Comcast offices, you get clubbed on the back of the head when you walk in and you wake up in the parking lot a few hours later short one kidney and a couple pints of blood...
What could ever go wrong with government granting regional monopolies to a company with very little regulation? Make cable a common carrier (like often its only real competition the telecoms) and it solves most these problems very rapidly when better companies spring up to do things better and cheaper.
<<<What goes wrong is that then the smaller communities can't get wired up since this is usually the only way they CAN get wired up, due to the poor return on investment.>>>
Or the big ISPs have lobbied (and bought) the politicians so there is a ban on building a public ISP.
>IOW, better crappy Internet than NO Internet.
No better fast cheap internet in the cities and as for out in the sticks who gives a shit. Want the quiet of the country fine then don't expect your iPhone to have 4G. Actually what usually happens is a smaller player comes in and offers crappy cable service for a not great price (see Cableone) but again that's the price you pay living in Green Acres.
Today we had to talk my wife;s mother out of calling a "TV Repair Man" because her Comcast DVR has been broken for two days and every time she calls Comcast (AKA Satan) they tell her the computers are down and they can't help her.
Now my good night prayers end with "and God, thank you I have FIOS" (not perfect but on their worst day beats the best day I had on Comcast)
I think the people that run comcast sit around thinking of ways to gouge money out of anybody and everybody they do business with. Take their precious "on demand" service. Great service till you realize it's something that your're paying for and yet you have to watch more commercials using "on demand" than you do with live TV.
What does this mean..... it means they are double dipping. Customer's are paying for the service (no it's not itemized on the bill, but they won't let you drop it either) and they are getting paid by the advertisers.
Run by nothing but greedy pieces of human garbage.
...why the U.S. government consumer protection agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the state attorneys general, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Consumer Credit Reporting authority have not prosecuted Comcast for the litany of documented violations of law?
How is it that Comcast is exempt from prosecution over failed service that their customers have paid for? How is it that as this story notes Comcast violated the Federal Fair Credit Act numerous times yet they have not been prosecuted? How can Comcast illegally install a hot-spot in your home without telling you that your hardware equipment is open to anyone to use/hack and for which YOU are liable when they do? How can Comcast illegally block legitimate international e-mail sent to U.S. Comcast subscribers without any notice to said U.S. subscribers?
When all of these violations of law have been documented by multiple independent sources and Comcast customers, what the Hell are U.S. authorities doing to enforce their own laws against these crimes? Does it take Edward Snowden live from Russia on the six o'clock news to announce to the U.S. Attorney General, the state AGs and the other U.S. government agencies that Comcast is in violation of numerous laws before anyone will stop these criminals? I just don't get it how they can get away with fleecing and defrauding so many millions of customers.
...why the U.S. government consumer protection agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission, the state attorneys general, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Consumer Credit Reporting authority have not prosecuted Comcast for the litany of documented violations of law?
Short answer: Campaign Contributions
WTF did you expect from a bought and paid for government?
...among all television providers, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. ®"
Who has the worst? Time Warner Cable, whom Comcast has been attempting to buy and merge over the past year. Two rat awful companies combined into one. What a brilliant idea not. :-P
It sure seems as though Comcast is throttling Netflix in South Florida. Netflix is reporting streaming problems, but on Smart TV devices, not PCs. Though I'm getting excellent throughput and low latency everywhere else, Netflix keeps dropping. Maybe all my ancient snowbird neighbors are watching pron, but I kind of doubt they even have computers.
I did have a good chat with a Comcast billing "analyst" last night, though. They were trying to double-bill me for this month. Guess they need the money to buy Time-Warner. FSM, help us!
I think it works on the principle that if you have a lower than average rating and a lot of requests for credit ratings are logged then the next company will assume that you failed all those previous tests.
In the UK similar requests are recorded too and too many can also drop your rating because if you start to apply for lots of things; new car, new broadband, new rental agreement, new this that and t'other then it can look like you've failed a pile serially and you're shopping around for one which lets you in.
It's a crap system. I have a low credit rating as I do everything in cash, don't owe anything and this also can bite me in the bum.
This credit check/scoring system appears to be a one huge scam in its own right.
Based on the article contents, your credit score is marked down just by the action of a company initiation a perfectly valid credit check? And you can pay a fee to have that check not take place?
This all sounds very much like blackmail and/or bribery targeted at those with the least money and most to lose.
Since the company has an humiliatingly bad reputation, anyone doing business with it is a fool. However one has to accept that if there is no choice there are no choices.
But think of what else is involved.
Who would work for such a company and why?
Going along with the status quo just because there is no alternative, is never going to solve the problems. Is it?
"Who would work for such a company and why?"
Anyone starving. For many, it's far preferable to be working for Evil, Inc. and put food on the table than to be starving in the streets. There's a self-preservation instinct, you know?
"Going along with the status quo just because there is no alternative, is never going to solve the problems. Is it?"
Sometimes, one has to admit defeat and declare a problem intractable (or at the least, infeasible given the conditions). For example, hoping for a government that cannot be corrupted is considered infeasible given the human condition (the self-preservation instinct inevitably leads to corruption, which can occur in any form of government). So too may the status quo be an infeasible problem if the only alternative is to go without which in so doing leads to serious disadvantages.
So basically, while one can walk away, it's hard to walk away from the only watering hole within line of sight.
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