My Angst with Comcast

Since I teased you with my issue with Comcast Cable Internet yesterday, I will today share with my faithful listeners about why I am not happy with Comcast’s Cable Internet policies.

And I am sure that some of you can agree that they aren’t the best policy for customers who pay hard earned money for a good service (one that I will have a hard time giving up, but more on that later) that will cut you off for a year if you use too much bandwidth for two months in a row or throttle you if you are using too much bandwidth at the same time your neighbors are using it heavily also (if I understood the e-mail correctly).

Now, first, let me start off by saying that 250GB cap limit is REALLY generous, and I applaud them for going with that huge limit. And in order to better manage their customer’s usage, they have to limit their customers to 250GB per month. But no matter what they say about it being better for their network, I seriously don’t think it’s necessary for them to cut you off for a full year if you go over that cap for two months (and another oddity, it’s not two times in one year or two months in a row, it’s two months...period. So theoretically, I could have gone over it in November and stayed under that cap for three years and then go over it again in July of 2011, and they would cut off my service per their policy). I would prefer them charge me more per month, but that’s not their policy, apparently. Why not charge me five dollars for every 10 GB’s that I go over? That seems fair to me. Cutting me off for a year means that I wouldn’t have any other choice but to go to a competitor and use them for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t mind switching to Verizon DSL, now that they have 7Mbps down on their DSL. That is just about as good as I was getting from Comcast, and some could say that it’s a better service because Verizon doesn’t have a bandwidth cap. Not only that, it would be an easy switch to their FiOS service when it becomes available.

As for the throttling me when my neighbors and I use too much, well, that is another bad decision. Why? Well, I don’t see any reason to throttle me just because I am using a lot of bandwidth while the people in my neighborhood are doing the same thing. What if I were in the middle of an online computer course that relied on streaming video? Then I get throttled and miss my work. Or worse, I get throttled in the middle of a timed test that required a video to download/stream. I just see it as a way for Comcast to really annoy its customers and force them to go else where with their business.

I really hope that Comcast would come to their senses and remove the clause about being cut off for a full year. The rest I can deal with (yes, even the throttling issue doesn’t bother me as much) and remain happy. But for them to cut me off entirely for a year for two violations is just wrong. One question, though, if they cut me off, are they still going to charge me for that year?