Tavares, FL March 10, 2018 - Updated Sept. 1, 2019 by Vance Jochim
The short link to this page is: http://www.fiscalrangers.com/Comcast-Sucks.html
Update Sept. 1, 2019 - Competition for Comcast. Citizens in Fort Collins, Colo. are so fed up with Comcast fees, escalating costs and weak service they voted two years ago in a referendum to float a $145-million bond issue and create a CITY run internet provider service. Just now the first homes are coming on stream for the new Connexion service which, for $60/month (no extra fees) provides ONE GIGABIT upload and download internet speeds. In comparison, here in Lake County, Comcast charges in the 60's PLUS FEES and TAXES for just 30 Mbps download and a flaky 2.3 Mbps upload speeds ( or, Fort Collins upload is 438 times FASTER than Lake County). READ all about the new way to replace your cable and internet provider HERE.
Update June 16, 2019 - Comcast was fined on June 6, 2019 over $9-million by the State of Washington for violating their Consumer Protection Act. It was reported by well known tech vlogger GamersNexus on June 14, 2019 HERE.
The WA Attorney General filed a more than one-hundred-million-dollar lawsuit against the cable television and internet giant in King County Superior Court in August of 2016. The suit asserts Comcast misrepresented the scope of its Service Protection Plan (SPP) as part of more than 1.8 million violations of Washington’s Consumer Protection Act (CPA).
"A King County Superior Court judge today ruled that multi-billion dollar telecommunications conglomerate Comcast violated the Consumer Protection Act more than 445,000 times when it charged tens of thousands of Washingtonians for its Service Protection Plan without their consent. Judge Timothy Bradshaw ordered Comcast to pay nearly $9.1 million in penalties, in addition to providing restitution to tens of thousands of Washington Service Protection Plan customers."
Update June 16, 2019: I reported below that my Comcast upload speed fails to meet the promised 2.3 Mbps upload speed many times, harming my ability to upload videos of local community and city council meetings. That is still the case as of this date. I run Speedtest.net before most uploads, and it usually is under 1, which means upload speed is about 1/3 of the rate I am paying for.
Update July 2, 2018 - My Comcast upload speed drops for 2-3 days to .3, then I unplug the Comcast modem and plug it back in and speed goes up to expected 2.4Mbps. As mentioned earlier, I pay monthly to rent THEIR modem so they cannot blame problems on my modem. Here is a graph showing the ups and downs of JUST the upload speed. The lower valleys are about .3Mbps, and highs are about 2.33 Mbps.
And here are the most recent scores on July 2, 2018:
Update May 20, 2018 - My upload speed problem may be fixed. See the May 18 entry for background details on my "upload" issue. Today the Comcast tech visited and after initial diagnosis, determine there was a "filter" on their pole connected to my line that seemed to cause the break in upload speed and reliability. He removed it, and also tightened internal cable connections to reduce possible problems, and now Speedtest.net is consistently giving me the expected upload speed of 2.4 Mbps, not unacceptable speeds of .2 or .4. He said if I had not run speedtest, I would never have known the lost upload speeds. The lesson is periodically run speedtest, use the SAME server (i.e. city connection) for each test, ensure all your cable connections are tight, and if online support doesn't fix it, demand a tech visit in person to diagnose the problem. I am still amazed they have no automatic diagnostic routine that checks upload and download speeds to detect issues like this, and they only rely on the customer running speedtest. Here is a picture of approximately what the filter looks like that the tech showed me (not the actual one).
Updated May 18, 2018 - More substandard upload speeds. I am paying for download of 30 Mbps and UPLOAD of 2.4 Mbps. Downloads always work, but upload is 1/5 to 1/10th of the promised speed. I spent about 50 minutes on the phone with tech and no solution. They are coming out on the 20th. Here is a screenshot of speedtests even after rebooting THEIR Xfinity Modem, them sending a reset signal, and them running an 8 minute diagnosis. A MAJOR ISSUE is they have NO program that runs to detect when promised upload or download speeds are not provided. That is like running a car which does NOT have an "idiot" light to tell you fuel or oil pressures are below expected levels. I made a video of the phone conversation and will add a link here WHEN THE UPLOAD SPEED WORKS TO I CAN UPLOAD IT TO YOUTUBE.
Original March 10, 2018 Overview for this document:
I live in Lake County, FL and I have used Comcast since I moved here in 2006 from California.
About 2012, as a retiree trying to control costs, I "cut the TV cable" and halted my EXPENSIVE Comcast TV cable subscription, keeping only the internet cable connection.
As a former IT Auditor, software developer, 800 member PC user group President (in Orange County, CA), Certified Fraud examiner (CFE) and anti-corruption manager, I understand technology and how to collect evidence and research computer problems.
Comcast has all of those, and on top of that, is a MONOPOLY which is not subject to Federal, State, or local regulatory oversight like telephones, over the air TV, roads and radio. There is no one to complain to about lousy service, slow speeds, etc.
So this page will be my log of issues related to Comcast. I fully believe the entire cable TV and internet industry should be investigated for predatory pricing, poor service and excessive pricing due to lack of competition and regulation.
I will be adding older situations when I get time, but here is the issue that triggered creation of this page on my local fiscal watchdog blog website, FiscalRangers. com .
You can find many, many "Comcast Sucks" memes on the internet here.
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March 10, 2018 - How Comcast provides substandard rental modem/routers that have a glitch that reduces promised upload speeds.
- Comcast is apparently renting some modem/routers to customers that actually cause drops in promised upload speeds.
- If you are using any device or PHONE using wifi over that router it is probably causing drops in connections and speeds also.
For the first quarter of 2018, I have an internet only account promising 30 Mbps download and about 2.4 Mbps upload. Internet up and download speeds can be measured easily using http://www.speedtest.net/ . There is a separate version Comcast wants you to use, but I would not trust it, since it could be biased to make Comcast look better. If you run that test, you will get three scores: Ping, Upload and Download. My expected scores I am paying for should be about 25-40 ms ping, 30 Mbps download (I used to have 12.5 and it was adequate for me), and 2.4 Mbps upload speed.
I periodically upload 15 min to 2+ hour videos of community events, city or government meetings, election campaign speeches, etc. They can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/FiscalRangersFlorida .
Thus upload speed is important to me. Even the low upload speed of 2.4 Mbps is acceptable, and a long video may take 4 hours to upload to YouTube.
However, I have been getting much lower speeds like .39 or lower, resulting in upload times as long as 22 hours for a 4gb video that was 1 hour, 20 minutes long. I have made frequent calls to Comcast service, getting "resets" and various explanations but no improvement. But I finally aggravated a tier 1 support person so much (the 4th I had called in one day) that she gave up and forwared me to a much more experienced, ENGLISH speaking tier 2 support person in the US.
He knew within 5 minutes what the problem was. I am using an Xfinity rented modem/router (I will explain that later in another section) with a present user ID and password. They are unique and not the same as any other unit, so I left them as is. However he told me that my late model modem version had an internal glitch that caused upload speeds to
I have recorded the entire conversation, so have proof of what I learned, since I asked a lot of questions and the tech was upfront.
The slowdown is caused by retaining the original (default) user ID and password which are on a decal on the side of the router.
The solution is to CHANGE the default user ID and password, which the tech was able to do online. That required me having the re-initialize my wifi connection for the internet connection on my PC, but also all my other devices like phone, tablet, and a laptop. It also requires me to reset my two Amazon Echo dots which connect to the wifi on the router, and I haven't yet been able to do that.
Once I did that, turned the router off and on, and waited about 7 minutes to reconnect, then ran speedtest, the upload speed has been consistent at the expected 2.2-2.4 Mbps. I have to wait 7+ minutes, and the tech said my Xfinity router model is SLOW in re-connecting the internet when turned off and on. He admitted they have another model that is much faster in reconnecting like my old personal Motorola modem/router combination.
So, there you have three reasons why Comcast sucks:
- Comcast is not telling their first tier techs about the user id / password problem with specific modems, which explains two problems I had:
1) slow upload speeds, and
2) constant breaks in wifi phone connections (so tell that to Verizon or AT&T - customers may complain of their connection, but it could be a badly designed Xfinity modem / router is causing the problem.
3) The third reason is the slow internet re-connection speed when the Xfinity modem / router is turned off.
I insisted I get a credit for the slow speeds, and was forwarded to billing. They verified the slow speeds and gave me a $60 credit.
Now, officially, I am guessing Comcast will refuse to admit this, but I trust a very competent Tier 2 insider who FIXED the upload problem and explained why reconnect speeds were so slow.
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I will add other horror stories below later:
- If you drop cable TV, Comcast will constantly jack up the rate you pay for just internet to continue subsidizing (my opinion) ESPN and other cable TV channels you are not getting. When I first cut the TV cable connection, my internet only rate was about $22. They then started jacking up the rate until it got to $77, then I threatened to quit entirely, they dropped it to $39 as a "promotional rate" and started jacking it up again without notice in $10 increments. Right now I am being charged about $52 (excluding their modem rental fee) for what I used to pay $22.
- Strategies to get Comcast to reduce the increased rates.
- Constantly use Speedtest to check your speeds. If they are low, call support and demand it be fixed.
- If you own your own modem and router, even if on the Comcast approved list, Comcast won't investigate connections past the signal going to the modem. Thus I rent, so I can hold them accountable for connections all the way to my computer screen. The Tier 2 tech above said he also does that for his home system for the same reason.
- Don't use Comcast email. If you get so fed up that you want to cancel the service, it is questionable about what happens to the @Comcast.net email accounts. In 2009, when I took an overseas assignment, I wanted to cancel my Comcast account for the 12 months I would be away, but they said I would lose my email accounts, so I had to pay the monthly fee to retain my email. More recently, I was informed by a support person that now you can keep your email and address even if you drop the service if moving, but I have no reliable info on that (yet).
Resources:
Check out ideas for TV Cable Cutting and strategies at the Facebook page below. "Cable Cutting" refers to halting TV cable, and only paying for internet cable services.
- https://www.facebook.com/CordCuttersNews/
- On Facebook, search on "Cable Cutters" and find other advisory groups.
- Install an over the air antenna (OTA), then connect the antenna to a TV with the coax cable to get local TV channels like we all did before cable TV. However, the constant TV ads drive me nuts and I don't watch it much.
- Buy a device from Amazon called HDhomerun (research the models) which takes the OTA coax signal and processes it so you can watch on your computer with a better TV guide.
- Setup a media server software called Plex which can act as a DVR to record OTA and internet TV shows using the HDhomerun signal. Other similar products and services exist, but many leading YouTube tech video channels use those products.
- Subscribe to an internet "TV" provider like Hulu, Netflix or Amazon Prime to see movies and TV shows, and learn to be happy with just what they offer. I don't watch any sports so I don't care about that. There are other internet service providers that provide sports.
- You can find many, many "Comcast Sucks" memes on the internet here.
If you know a US Congressman or elected state legislator, ask them to initiate an investigation into the cable TV and internet industry, and create oversight regulations and agencies to ensure they are competitive and provide reasonable prices. The problem is the cable firms have huge lobbying efforts to ensure Congress or legislators don't regulate them.
If you know other sites that track Comcast or Cable TV performance, pricing and support issues, send them to me at [email protected] and I may add them in the resources section here.
Vance Jochim
Retired Certified Fraud Examiner, Certified Information Systems Auditor, and Certified Internal Auditor.
LAke County Fiscal Watchdog blogger at www.FiscalRangers.com (and a "FiscalRangers" page on Facebook also, but not that much)
Lake County, FL
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