
Busting Comcast's $250 installation fee for 105 Mbps - nathancahill
http://comcastmyths.tumblr.com/
======
grecy
Can confirm.

I work for a telco and we recently upgraded our cable infrastructure to handle
100Mbit (previously 50Mbit was the fastest). All the customer needs is a
DOCSIS 3.0 modem, we re-provision in our system and they'll get 100Mbit. They
come into our store, swap modems, and they're done.

As for the hilarious/stupid/disappointing things OP was told by sales/tech
support/whoever, I can also confirm that. Every day I have conversations with
people all over the business who don't know the basics of our business like
the difference between Megabit Megabyte, etc. etc.

Our company has also started ripping people off in similar ways (like a $50
fee to downgrade internet speed) and they'll even use the same lies and stupid
answers when we as staff question this move. It's a money grab, plan and
simple.

~~~
larrys
"Our company has also started ripping people off in similar ways (like a $50
fee to downgrade internet speed) "

Explain why you feel that is a "rip off".

More specifically if this company came to you as an employee (I assume you are
an employee) and they said "hey we aren't making money and we need to reduce
your salary" how would that fly with you?

Anyway I'm asking a serious question. I'd like to know the exact metrics of
how you have come to determine that the company charging $50 to downgrade
internet speed is ripping people off. Is it because nobody else does that? Is
it because it doesn't cost them anything but a button click to downgrade?

~~~
grecy
It's for a few reasons.

One is, as you mention, because it's nothing more than a button click to
downgrade. Less than a 1 minute call with a CSR. How they can justify $50 for
that is anyone's guess.

The second is they're saying things like "it's to cover the cost of having
CSRs, printing bills, etc." But actually, the $110/mo charge covers that, and
always has.

Third is because the company is making plenty of profit, but the parent
company wants more, so they're pushing it to do stupid stuff like this.

A large percentage of employees are looking for work elsewhere, it's just
unfortunate there are not many options where we live (quite remote)

~~~
larrys
"How they can justify $50 for that"

They don't need to justify. The only reason they would even think about this
is if the detriment didn't outweigh the benefit. If perhaps x% of people think
that it's a ripoff and 90% don't or don't even know or think everything is a
ripoff anyway then why not get the extra revenue?

My guess is that the amount of people that even have any understanding of what
is involved is quite small.

"But actually, the $110/mo charge covers that, and always has."

What do you mean "and always has"? Are you saying because they consistently
turn a profit then you have decided they have enough to cover their fixed
expenses and they shouldn't try to add to the bottom line? Not to mention that
off the top with a billion dollar corporation you really don't know what is
going on there anyway.

"Third is because the company is making plenty of profit, but the parent
company wants more, so they're pushing it to do stupid stuff like this"

In a capitalist system there is really no such thing as "plenty of profit".
The mere fact that you feel like it's up to you (or anyone else who makes
comments) to decide "ok that's enough" really does not make any sense. I mean
you've never seen profitable companies go out of business or bankrupt that at
any point in time someone would have said "they make plenty of profit". (We
can start with General Motors, Chrysler etc.)

"A large percentage of employees are looking for work elsewhere, it's just
unfortunate there are not many options"

I'm unclear what the amount of employees looking for work matters with respect
to what they charge. Are you implying that things like this make employees
want to leave? I somehow doubt that.

~~~
mrxd
> The mere fact that you feel like it's up to you (or anyone else who makes
> comments) to decide "ok that's enough" really does not make any sense.

Actually it does. Consumers are allowed to make decisions about purchases on
any grounds they choose, including whether they feel that a company is taking
too much profit, or that the company is violating some ethical standard.

Consumers are also free to call for boycotts or otherwise persuade others to
not purchase products. If we think that a company should be transparent and
justify their pricing so that it's proportional to costs, then that's what we
think. If we think that companies shouldn't exploit the technical ignorance of
consumers, then that's what we think.

In a capitalist system, we're free to debate these questions, make purchasing
decisions based on them and start competing companies to serve dissatisfied
consumers. If we have more technical knowledge, preventing non-technical
consumers from being exploited by sharing information with them is an ethical
good. Most advocates of free markets argue that these capacities make the
system work.

The only thing that wouldn't be permitted in a pure capitalist system is if
these ethical claims translated into a demand for government intervention,
which no one has done so far. Even so, it's easy to argue that these arbitrary
fees are a market failure caused by information asymmetry between Comcast and
consumers and could require government intervention. The issue is not the
price. It's that Comcast is misrepresenting the charge as technically
necessary, which could be seen as discouraging consumers from evaluating
competitors (assuming they exist) by implying that there are technical rather
than business decisions behind the charge.

~~~
larrys
All of what you are saying I agree with.

I guess it just bothers me that the crowd of people who try and influence
others (and yes you are correct that this is fully their right) either have no
skin in the game (in other words they only have one interest in mind) and
additionally may not really fully understand how business operates.

I guess I just react very viscerally to things being worded "ripoff" because
it's so easy for people to throw that around and pass judgement.

To me "ripoff" means take advantage and you could argue that in business there
is a fine line between what is acceptable in terms of "taking advantage" and
what is not. And you know what each of us has a different line. (It's just
like religion and cheating on your taxes. Anyone who does more is "really
religious" anyone who steals more is "a big crook").

Everyone draws the line at a different place. There are many people who
believe that YC takes advantage of young people. You know all those "should I
go to Harvard or to YC" would be seen by many people as totally taking
advantage of someone (and may or may not be depending on the circumstances of
the particular individual and what the particular person with the opinion
really knows about YC).

------
bensmcc
I had a related experience: Had 105 Mbps but called to try and lower our bill
with Comcast. Were told we'd keep the same service, but bill would be roughly
$50 cheaper. Next day when doing a speed test, turns out that our 105 Mbps
service had been downgraded to 30 Mbps.

Called to complain / change it to 105 Mbps and had multiple customer service
people try and tell me that we'd have to pay a $250 fee to have someone come
out and make sure that we could handle 105 Mbps service, even though 36 hours
earlier we had the faster service.

Finally managed to convince a service rep that we had it the day before so we
obviously were equipped to handle it - only wasted ~3 hours of my life.

------
drakaal
I worked at TCI prior to the certification of Docsis 1.0. Back then if you
wanted to go from 512k to 1M we would "roll a truck" because we needed to
check that your signal was good enough that you would not only get service,
but that we wouldn't go broke every time it rained and the signal would
degrade.

Basically you needed to have 20% better signal than was needed for the service
so that you wouldn't fall off-line when something created a small amount of
interference.

I suspect Comcast is doing something similar. Not really charging to do the
"install" but charging to certify that you have enough signal for the service.

It can also be that they want to check if they need to pull a new cable to the
edge of your house, or upgrade the Amplifier at the "block".

You probably can convince them to not do all of these things, but your service
may suffer in the long run.

Back in the day we would do "no SLA" installs and if your cable went out it
was yours to deal with. When your choice was that or a modem, lots of time you
took that rather than having a 33.6k connection.

~~~
jotm
I thought that can be done remotely? On one of my old ISPs I could change
_every_ setting on the modem on the company's website. It was quite scary,
actually, how little privacy I had in this regard. They could easily check the
signal strength to the modem that way...

~~~
DannyBee
It absolutely can be done remotely. Every one of these modems does SNMP,
exports _everything_ it has in the way of statistics, and they can read it
remotely

The modems are nowadays configured to only allow requests from certain ip
space with certain passwords because you could actually accomplish a lot in
the docsis 1.0 days by messing around with SNMP.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Depending on the modem manufacturer, you can still poison them with your own
locally-loaded TFTP configuration file to override the speed configured from
your cable provider.

Disclaimer: The FBI was cracking down on people who were doing this.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=tftp+hack+cable+modem](https://www.google.com/search?q=tftp+hack+cable+modem)

~~~
DannyBee
Yes, and you could JTAG flash a bunch of them even after this.

------
ck2
On a side note, what do you do at 105mbps that you cannot do at 50mbps?

Unless maybe you have a multi user household.

I pay $50 for 5mbps. It's highway robbery.

~~~
jseliger
_On a side note, what do you do at 105mbps that you cannot do at 50mbps?_

Me, years ago: What will I do with this massive 40 MB hard drive?

Me, years ago: What will I do with this massive 4 GB hard drive?

Me, fewer years ago: What will I do with this massive 40 GB hard drive?

Me, today: This 2 TB hard drive is almost full. How much are 4 TB drives going
for?

Me, years ago: Wow! The Internet speeds at college are _so fast_.

Me, upon every Internet bandwidth increase: I don't _need_ it to be this fast.
. . but it sure is nice!

What will I do at 105 that can't do at 50? I don't know yet. That's the point.
Almost no one does. 640 kb isn't enough for anybody.

~~~
berkay
The examples you're giving are mostly about stored data. We're able to foresee
why you may need more, photos, videos, etc. On bandwidth, it's harder to
imagine. With 50, you can stream multiple HD videos. What would 105 would give
me? I don't know. May be Google Fiber subscribers can provide some insight
since they have access to much more.

~~~
bigdubs
You answered your own question. How does the data get on those high capacity
disks? The faster your pipe, the more content you can fill quickly / easily.

~~~
berkay
In my case it does not provide a compelling case. With 50mb, it is plenty fast
and do not feel need for faster. backup of my content does not seem to require
more bandwidth either for PCs. I use both Backblaze and Dropbox, and they both
work in the background etc, again 50mb is plenty.

Thinking more about this, I think I may need more bandwidth if I were
consuming more real-time high volume data. May be the upcoming virtual reality
apps (Occulus, etc.) will be the next jump in bandwidth requirements.

------
eli
It's not exactly the crime of the century to want to charge you a fee for
upgrading service.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Don't you find that it should be at least somewhat commensurate with the work
required though? $250 to set the value for speed rating from 50 to 105Mbps on
the backend service menu and then reboot the router; doesn't that seem a
little bit like they might be playing on peoples lac of knowledge of the
systems involved?

~~~
larrys
"Don't you find that it should be at least somewhat commensurate with the work
required though?"

Business doesn't work that way. You make hay when the sun shines.

And there are cases when you can't charge. Because of things your competitors
are doing.

In a restaurant they don't charge you for napkins and water although they
could. (Actually they do charge for premium water but that's a fairly recent
invention).

The idea of business is to make money.

It's not up to anyone to decide how much profit is "enough" for comcast to
make. If they could simply charge more per month without games they would.

Sometimes it's easy sometimes it's hard.

Take airlines. They would like to charge you more for a ticket but if they do
you might not book the ticket. Better to be able to advertise a cheap price
plus extras than an all inclusive price without extras. Why? Because people
are not rational buyers (generally) who can figure in all the things and the
"total cost of ownership" as they say with cars.

"doesn't that seem a little bit like they might be playing on peoples lac of
knowledge of the systems involved?"

Well of course they are. But so what?

There are many times when companies take features out of a product just so
they can make different tiers and charge premiums.

Take web hosting. Take companies who sell people extra disk space that they
will never use and don't know they don't even need at all. There are many
examples of this in business.

~~~
nitrogen
...and this is why the last mile needs to become a regulated utility. Whose
place is it to say Comcast is making too much profit? Mine, as their former
customer.

~~~
JWLong
That's a rather large non sequitur you're wielding there. You had your say
when you cancelled on them.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Seems like it works just fine for my natural gas, electric, and water/sewer
utilities. The last mile is well on its way to being the next one to be
regulated.

------
jbraithwaite
Comcast charged me a "wireless setup fee"[1] when the technician came over to
setup my new connection. The problem is: he didn't touch my personal wireless
router nor was there any mention of the wifi fee on the receipt when he left.

After some time on the phone, I was able to get my monthly cable modem fee
removed (seemly forever) but they tried to sneak it back into my bill
recently.

I wish we had more options for ISPs in america.

[1] Not sure of the exact name or cost but it was around $75-$90.

------
linuxhansl
Related... Recently Comcast claimed that they did an "internal audit" and
found that I was not charged a monthly fee for the modem I rent from them.

The only wrinkle is that I provided my own modem.

Then they insisted that I "prove" that I purchased a modem, I suggested that
if they charge me for something that they have to proof that they sold me said
service.

Anyway, I haven't heard back since. Waiting for the next bill. Has anybody
else experienced this, seems like a scam to me.

------
holyjaw
Bit of a different experience here: Cox Cable recently performed the same
upgrade, but instead of charging me $250 for an installation, they instead
decided to inject JS and HTML into every non-https site I visited (wel, once
every hour or so) with a reminder that I've been upgraded to a new tier at no
additional cost, but I need to buy a DOCSIS3.0 router.

I... I think that's a fair deal better than being charged $250.

------
msellout
I was able to avoid the appointment and fee by telling the sales rep that I am
a computer scientist and able to handle the installation myself.

------
res0nat0r
I can verify this. I just built the house I live in now last year, so I'm the
very first person to ever have Comcast / cable installed at my house. I have
105 megabit internet and there is no fee.

I've talked to a couple techs who mentioned it, but the appointment I made
there was no such mention of fee nor was I ever charged.

------
sriram_sun
Question for folks who have 50 or 105 Mbps connections. Do you really get that
speed? I have Century link and am supposed to get 12 Mbps. However, I'm lucky
if I get 5 Mbps. Sometimes it slows down to a crawl - 50 to 60 Kbps.

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aestra
Isn't this the same as the $30 "activation fee" that almost all cell phone
providers charge? Not for anything but just to add a fee for the hell of it?
Because I can fee?

------
ulfw
These things happen when you have a monopoly on internet providers.

------
kyleblarson
"After 10 hours on the phone with customer service, two trips to the local
Comcast office and a chat with a rogue technician, the myth has been busted"

So the author spent maybe 12 hours figuring this out? Is his or her time worth
more than 20 or so bucks per hour?

~~~
captainmuon
It doesn't work that way. If you can take any given hour and trade it for a
certain amount of money, then you're lucky. I don't know anybody who can take
12 hours and trade them for $240, or say $600 (as you are hinting that this
time is worth significantly more than $20/h).

I could get a second job, but that would pay less per hour, would start at a
higher (fixed) number of hours, and bring a lot of responsibilities. Plus, it
would cut into my precious free time.

Only for hyper-demanded successful freelancers time is completely fungable and
arbitrarily tradeable into dollars. The rest of us can't monetarize their free
time so easily. And I think a $250 saving for a day's work is pretty good for
regular people. Besides, I think there was a bit of hyperbole in the "10
hours"...

~~~
grecy
Thanks for explaining this so well.

I constantly see people misinterpret "opportunity cost" in a situation like
this, and you cleared it up nicely.

