# An open letter to Comcast **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 26, 2005, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820 "2005-01-26T21:25:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/21 "2005-01-27T00:25:05Z")
> [@UncleBeer](#): > > Your district attorney bring those government officials and the cable operators up on charges? Or is this just bluster? > > And how? I engineer and design CATV systems for a living. I assure you existing systems are overbuilt by other MSO’s quite frequently. If an incumbent operator is charging exorbitant prices, then that makes it more feasible for a competing carrier to overbuild - not the reverse. It was quite a few years ago, but nobody was prosecuted. It was not egregiously illegal by the lax/nonexistent ethics laws of that day. Various county officials were given “sweetheart” investment opportunities in the cable company. Relatives of those same county officials were given high-paying, low-work jobs. This is the state that produced Spiro Agnew, Marvin Mandel, and a long and glorious history of political corruption. Competing cable companies are a rarity in the United States. I define competition as where a subscriber has a choice between cable providers. ---
**Author:** ![Stuffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f17d59/32.png) [@Stuffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stuffy)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/22 "2005-01-27T01:26:18Z")
> [@buttonjockey308](#): > > As a matter of fact, I usually follow the prescribed method, however because we recently decided to upgrade, and because of that ever-so-reliable fucking MAIL system you two pixies are so hung up on, there was a 30 dollar discrepancy in the bill, (we never got the proper bill, that Comcast INSISTS they mailed) which I had to pay in order to restore service that was THIRTY DOLLARS OVERDUE FOR A TOTAL OF 11 DAYS. NO NOTICE, NO PHONE CALLS, just wake up one morning and BAM, no TV, no internet, nothing. This after several YEARS of good payment history. No, fuck comcast, AND their fucking monopoly. Sorry, mea culpa. I should have thought of that as Comcast did the same to me about two months back over $11 dollars so I feel your pain. ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/23 "2005-01-27T01:32:34Z")
Comcast tried to charge me $3/month for a cable modem. When I protested that I had been using my own modem, they demanded that I **bring the modem to their office so they could confirm that I did indeed own my own modem.** I told them to shit in their hat, and they backed off. ---
**Author:** ![chinbender](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c77e96/32.png) [@chinbender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chinbender)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/24 "2005-01-27T16:59:00Z")
God I hate Comcast. After 2 weeks of intermitant cable, and 2 visits by their techs, we were still having problems. Had the GF not had ties to the state oversight board, we never would have gotten two techs to come out and work on our problem, taking them 8 hours to fix the issue. And what kind of service company only schedules techs between 9-5, Monday-Friday and weekends? And add a completely imcompetant call center making the angiush of reporting a problem worse than the problem itself. Dickheads. (But thanks for the reliable and speedy internet connection…credit where credit is due and all that). (FWIW, they are the only cable provider available to me, and the landlord won’t allow a dish.) ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/25 "2005-01-27T17:42:10Z")
Not that I’m defending Commiecast, but when I lived in Indianapolis, I never had any real issues with them, and that was 10 years of service. For that matter, Cox isn’t that bad, either. The only problems I’ve had with them are self-inflicted, like the time the wife bounced a payment to them, didn’t tell me about it, and had service disconnected for a week. ---
**Author:** ![absoul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@absoul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/absoul)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/26 "2005-01-27T19:17:35Z")
I worked in the Video on Demand support business for a while and nothing will get a technician to your house faster than using the phrases “underage/children”, “Parental controls broken”, and “porn” in the same sentence. You also may want to verify the address number or serial number on the set top terminal with Comcast. If the install technician mixed up the set top addresses with another residence you may be getting billed for someone else’s porn. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/27 "2005-01-27T20:12:53Z")
> [@This Year's Model](#): > > Where, for example? I don’t doubt you, and I’ll try to avoid hair-splitting over the meaning of the word frequently ( 🙂 ), but in my (limited) experience, I’ve never lived anywhere there were two CATV’s competing over the same territory. (What’s MSO mean?) MSO is Multiple System Operator; it is term used for CATV providers which operate more than a single discrete network. And the community in which I’m sitting right (Perrysburg, OH) now has two wholly independent cable systems - one operated by Adelphia and the other by BuckeyeCablesystems. Here are some industry journal articles about overbuilds and potential overbuilds. (Access to most of these articles requires a subscription, but, in any case you can see that overbuilds are a hot topic.) [http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=searchResults&content=all&text=overbuild](http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=searchResults&content=all&text=overbuild) Here’s a short list of companies (and a brief profile of each) that do nothing but overbuild existing systems. [http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2001/0101/id2.htm](http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2001/0101/id2.htm) Here’s a story about the financial aspects of a few overbuilders. They’ve scraped together quite a bit of investor cash for financing their projects. [http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2001/0101/id4.htm](http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/2001/0101/id4.htm) I would also like to make the point that most of the Fiber to the Home networks out there currently offering triple-play services (voice, video & data) have been deployed as “overbuilds,” including one in St. Mary’s, Ohio which was designed by my company in 2003. Here’s a [link to a .pdf](http://www.ftthcouncil.org/dbfiles/techexchange/2004%20-05-19%20OptFiberCommunList.pdf) dated 5/19/04 from the Fiber to the Home Council listing the communities served at that time by an FTTH network. Any of then that shows CLEC in the provider column is almost certainly providing video on an overbuild basis. CLEC = Competitive Local Exchange Carrier; a CLEC competes with an ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) directly in the same geographic market by overbuilding. These two terms, CLEC & ILEC, have been historically applied alomst exclusively to telcos. But with the lines between voice, video and data becoming increasingly blurry, those terms are being used more widely to refer to any company providing any combination of the three services. It’s all just packets now as the Internet Protocol is becoming pervasive. ---
**Author:** ![LibrarySpy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f9ae1b/32.png) [@LibrarySpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LibrarySpy)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/28 "2005-01-27T20:21:07Z")
I just moved from Reston to Vienna, and felt a little silly celebrating the end of my relationship with Comcast. No more. Woohoo! Cox roxs. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/29 "2005-01-27T20:33:13Z")
> [@UncleBeer](#): > > And the community in which I’m sitting right (Perrysburg, OH) now has two wholly independent cable systems - one operated by Adelphia and the other by BuckeyeCablesystems. Thanks for all the info. It certainly looks as if overbuilds are a coming thing, and not before time. ---
**Author:** ![Indyellen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/indyellen/32/4176_2.png) [@Indyellen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indyellen)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2005, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820/30 "2005-01-28T03:22:10Z")
> [@absoul](#): > > You also may want to verify the address number or serial number on the set top terminal with Comcast. If the install technician mixed up the set top addresses with another residence you may be getting billed for someone else’s porn. Don’t shoot me, but my boyfriend is a service tech for Comcast (with his _own_ issues with the company, but that would warrant a separate thread) & I ran the situation by him. His first thought was this exact thing - that either there is another box on your account being credited to you erroneously (i.e. it shows on your account but it’s in a different location) or the serial numbers were crossed when your service was activated. (Comcast serial numbers start with GI, then 4 numbers, 2 letters, and 4 numbers.) The problem should be fixed if they come out & swap out your box. (If you can get them to.) The other thing he suggested is keeping copies of all bills, and notations of exactly what happened after EACH call (with names, if you’ve got them) and report it to your local Cable Franchise Board. That gets REALLY FAST action here. I understand your wanting to leave, and I’m certainly not defending Comcast to keep you as a customer, just wanted to give you a little inside skinny on how you might get the issue resolved. (If that’s not appropriate for the Pit, I apologize, but this is my first post here.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-open-letter-to-comcast/286820.md?page=1)