It's a bad time to be Comcast. They dropped 7% in the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. They banished public access channels to expensive and less visible digital tiers. Rumors are flying that the Comcast Hammer Lady got dropped off the air while she was on Good Morning America. Then they get caught trying to stuff a poll on Comsumerist. (FYI, they still lost.) Add on the abysmal customer service record and some are wondering how much longer Comcast will be alive to kick around.
It's not going to help when they're continuing to kick their customers while they're down. Customers in Washington got a notice in the mail that prices were being hiked yet again. Users who want TiVo service will have to cough up an extra $2.95 a month (on top of the DVR rental) for the feature. Then there's incidents like this where customers are getting overcharged or billed for services they never got.
It's no wonder the company is set to lose customers in 2008, though Comcast is in full-on denial. They lay the blame on the housing slump and competition from FIOS. (Speaking of FIOS, those markets are the most likely to see DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts next year; don't expect any love for Utah.) Ars Technica seems to think this battering will ultimately be good for Comcast customers, but I'm not so sure. They're still terminating accounts for using "too much" of their unlimited Internet, the price hikes seem to have no end in sight and the amount of online hate for the cable giant seems to grow every day.
I don’t know how they expect to stay in business with all that crap beating them over the head. Their indifference to the customer will catch up to them as more and more people switch away where the option exists.
I haven’t meet a single person who likes them yet. And yes I’ve told my story which people find shocking. You can’t false advertise before it finally catches up to you (Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee is what I purchased).
DSL is not bad. At least it’s improved my CounterStrike Source game play. I’m actually on the top 20 list on a couple of servers (out of over 30,000 players!!!). I couldn’t do that with Comcast. 256k up just didn’t work very well 🙂
The only thing that could make things better is if Utopia / FioS comes to my neighborhood.
Oh and has anyone heard about Senator Stephenson’s Bill dying after leaving committee?
I spoke with Leif Elder about it this afternoon. He said no bill number has been attached which usually means it doesn’t move on. He couldn’t find anything tied to it but did mention there were other telecommunication bills which may touch Utopia. I have some homework to do if this is the case. I want to know exactly what these tards are planning on.
And I’ve written letters to Sen. Frank Lautenberg regarding S. 1853: Community Broadband Act of 2007. I’m hoping it will pass and hopefully prevent our legislature from further slowing Utopia from fulling it’s promise.
As I mentioned to Leif today,whatever the solution is, ignoring that other countries are pushing fiber to the home and business is bad for America. They are not ignoring the future so why are we???