Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Internet Network

Comcast Wanted Man To Pay $19,000 After Falsely Advertising Service On His Street (arstechnica.com) 125

Posted by BeauHD from the sorry-for-the-inconvenience dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: What's it like to spend $10,000 for Internet service and wait six months for Comcast to hook it up? Jonathan Rowny knows the answer. Rowny and his wife and child moved from Virginia to Washington state in May 2021. Rowny told Ars that before closing on the house in the city of Buckley, he checked Comcast's website to confirm that he could sign up for broadband. "I went ahead and placed my order and scheduled the install for the day after we moved in or whatever... I think it was about four days before closing [on the house] that Comcast canceled my order," he said. Rowny said that someone from Comcast called him with the message that "your house is not serviceable."

Comcast initially told Rowny that he'd have to pay over $19,000 for a line extension. After spending a couple of months investigating his options, Rowny hired a contractor to do part of the work and paid Comcast to do the rest, for a total of about $10,000. Construction took a bit longer than expected, and there was one final frustration after the line extension was completed: Comcast wouldn't send an installer to Rowny's house because the company's records incorrectly showed the work wouldn't be done until April. Rowny had to contact a senior vice president to get that issue sorted out and finally got service in mid-January.

We confirmed last week that Comcast's online ordering system was still giving false availability information on Rowny's street. At another house about 400 feet further down Rowny's street, the Xfinity.com address checker said that Internet service is available, and the website let us add an Internet plan to the cart for purchase. That was on Tuesday, and we notified Comcast of the likely error. Comcast has since corrected the address checker so that it now says the home is "out of footprint" and "Xfinity service is not available at this address." A Comcast spokesperson told Ars that this address "doesn't have service and is not currently connected to our network, and we have never had a request for service construction to that address... that is an error and our local team is looking into why it is listed on the site." If someone had ordered service for this address before it was corrected, that person would have faced the same problem Rowny encountered in May 2021. We also asked Comcast if it is evaluating the rest of the area for similar mistakes and did not get an answer.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Comcast Wanted Man To Pay $19,000 After Falsely Advertising Service On His Street More

Comcast Wanted Man To Pay $19,000 After Falsely Advertising Service On His Street

Comments Filter:

  • Is Starlink a valid option? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by maitas ( 98290 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @06:52PM (#62417528) Homepage

    I was just wondering why Starlink was not available at his location. Seems a simpler/better solution.

    • It isn't. Starlink is a great solution if you are remote enough that nothing else is worthwhile. There is a place for Starlink the array of internet providers, but not the end-all-be-all. Cable will outperform it handily.

      • Maybe cable outperforms Starlink, but Starlink isn't going to cost you $10,000 to install.

        • Maybe cable outperforms Starlink, but Starlink isn't going to cost you $10,000 to install.

          If you are only interested in the cheapest why not just strap a second hand mobile phone to the side of your PC and call it a day.

          • As with many things, there usually is a middle ground. $10,000 is a lot of money to pay for an internet connection. For most people's needs, there are cheaper options, even if they aren't at fiber-like speeds.

            I actually had to make do with a connection not far from what you describe. I was at my in-laws home in rural Michigan, a place with no easy access to cable. For three weeks I used internet tethered from my cell phone for my job. It wasn't blazingly fast, but it was fast enough for video calls. For mos

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by necro81 ( 917438 )

          Maybe cable outperforms Starlink, but Starlink isn't going to cost you $10,000 to install.

          Yes, but can you even get it right now? (Yes, you can place an order - that doesn't mean you can be assured of getting it at some predictable time.) Could this guy have gotten it at the time this dispute was playing out? Starlink was still only beta at the time, limited to a very few scattered coverage areas.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        Starlink is only a good as a last resort and even then isn't necessarily an option. There is a >$500 up front cost and $100+ cost per month. For some people this might not be a problem for others it is a bit steep for their Internet needs.
        The other problem with Starlink is that you need a rather wide clear area of the sky for it to work (at least until they get a lot more satellites up).
        The final problem is that getting Starlink is a bit of a crap shoot at this point. You can sign up for Starlink an you

    • I was just wondering why Starlink was not available at his location.

      My father's got a place up in the BFE region of North Carolina and it's on the waiting list. Seems to be a common thing if you live where Starlink is your only only would-be option for broadband that actually qualifies as broadband.

    • I get a 5ms ping with Comcast cable... probably would be at least 15 times higher with Starlink

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

        I get a 5ms ping with Comcast cable... probably would be at least 15 times higher with Starlink

        Starlink isn't there yet, but satellite in general allows for considerably lower latency than optical fiber -- because the speed of light in a vacuum is 50% faster. Here's a technical explanation from a network scientist at University College London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          There's 2 parts to the equation, speed of light in whichever medium and distance. IIRC, Starlink satellites are about 300 miles up, so a minimum of 600 miles to get to a base station and use fibre. So for example, here it is about 50 miles to where a Starlink base might be, that double the speed still means 3 times longer travel time.
          Probably why https://www.starlink.com/ [starlink.com] claims latency as low as 20 ms in most locations and compare to traditional geosynchronous satellite internet rather then fibre.
          Eventuall

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Satellite will never be lower latency than terrestrial fibre for a few reasons, not least of which is that it's a shared frequency band. Each user must share it with many others, which means packets waiting their turn.

          Of course part of the terrestrial network is shared as well, but with much higher bandwidth. Often the servers are located physically much closer too.

      • I'd like to know how. The best cable latency I've ever had was 35ms, living all over a metro area. Friends with fiber don't even get 5ms. Early in the days of broadband I saw 15ms on a DSL line. Perhaps you missed a digit? Also, my friend with Starlink sees 50-60ms latency, and he has bad tree coverage. So its almost on par with (average) cable.
    • If latency and performance are thing then starlink probably isn't going to cut it. For example if you work from home and make heavy use of your connection. Satellite is better than nothing but being wired in is still vastly Superior

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

        If latency and performance are thing then starlink probably isn't going to cut it. For example if you work from home and make heavy use of your connection. Satellite is better than nothing but being wired in is still vastly Superior

        Starlink isn't there yet, but satellite in general allows for considerably lower latency than optical fiber -- because the speed of light in a vacuum is 50% faster than speed of light in an optical cable. Here's a technical explanation from a network scientist at University College London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        (I think people associate satellite with low latency because they're thinking of the high altitude satellites that have traditionally been used, not the low orbit ones used by Starlink).

        As

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kremmy ( 793693 )
          The latency numbers that satellite manufacturers give are laughably low in comparison to real world satellite numbers. Theory is so far behind practice on this idea that you can get lower latency on satellite. Don't forget the atmosphere that it has to punch through to reach them, that's probably going to burn your 50% increase right there.
          • Propagation does not work that way. Latency depends only on the distance plus any processing time at each hop, not on signal strength. The only things clouds can affect are reliability, bandwidth (Shannon-Hartley theorem), and power required. (Well, pedantically, latency could increase under heavy use because of buffer bloat, but thatâ(TM)s not how latency is measured.)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            I just happened to look up the speed of light in air, seems it is only slightly slower then vacuum. Clouds, rain, trees are going to mean needing more power though and some frequencies do terrible in rain.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by nbvb ( 32836 )

            Posting this from Starlink.

            31ms latency. As low as FiOS? No. But for a service that can work damn near anywhere without trenching and pulling cable and such? Amazing. Absolutely 100% usable day in and day out.

            I’m sure this’d be a hell of a lot more appealing than a $19,000 bill for Comcastic so-called service.

            Speedtest link;
            https://imgur.com/a/7Jrvf4r [imgur.com]

        • Satellite in general? What faster-than-fiber options actually exist? OneWeb is working on a LEO system, but it sounds like they will strictly serve businesses and governments, not end-users, and they're not there yet either.

          Meanwhile the geostationary options add roughly 72,000 km to the trip - almost twice the length of the equator. There's no lag reduction to be had there.

          Satellite *in theory* could be faster, at least for connections spanning more than around 1000 miles as the crow flies, but I'm not

  • Comcast wanted $210,000 from me to do the same (Score:4, Informative)

    by grimsnaggle ( 1320777 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @06:53PM (#62417534)

    Comcast told me over the phone that they could service a house I was thinking of buying. I bought it and tried to sign up for service. Turns out they couldn't. Fast forward 18 months and they wanted $210,000 to run a 700 foot line extension.

    • What sucks is the wrong answer upfront. Obviously they don't really see a profit in extending their lines for 1-off $60/mo service payment, I guess that's OK, but it would be nice if they would not just blithely give wrong answers to people who think to ask in advance.

      • Solution is to treat internet providers as utilities again - they have to hook it up if they want to do business in the state.

        • There are plenty of caveats to that, even for utilities. Just because you decide to buy some cheap land in the middle of nowhere with no taxes and no utilities doesn't suddenly force the power and waterline and sewer to come support whatever and wherever you decide to build.

          • A better solution would be to hold them liable for their claims. If you ask if coverage is available at X, and they say yes, then you'd better get either standard-rate service in a timely fashion, or a punitively fat payout to promote better accuracy in the future. At the very least it would encourage them to be honest about where their coverage is spotty or nonexistent.

            And that should go triple for the coverage maps provided to the government to assess compliance with various laws and assessing subsidy p

    • Re:Comcast wanted $210,000 from me to do the same (Score:5, Interesting)

      by FuegoFuerte ( 247200 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @07:06PM (#62417562)

      This is one benefit to PUDs and why we should let them provide internet services in rural areas. To run about a 500ft 7kV line across my property and install the necessary transformer, my local PUD estimated only about $6500. That's quite a bit of copper and a not-inexpensive transformer, plus labor to pull the wire and hook it up at the pole, and for infrastructure that no one else will benefit from (that's just from the pole to my building site, no one else further downstream).

      A 700ft cable run shouldn't be more than about $1k, assuming you dig your own ditch and run your own conduit (maybe a couple days work if you rent the right equipment). Total ought to be under $2k for something like that, and any portion that can be shared with future customers ought to be covered as a basic infrastructure cost.

      • I had a 5 mile bike commute to Google when I worked for them, and can see their main campus from my house. I can't possibly claim to be rural. Also I laughed at the idea of the California PUC doing anything pro-consumer.

        Also Comcast did not allow me to choose the point of termination of their services on my property. I had offered to put the box at a far corner to minimize their side of the run. Nope. It had to terminate on the side of the house.

        • Also Comcast did not allow me to choose the point of termination of their services on my property. I had offered to put the box at a far corner to minimize their side of the run. Nope. It had to terminate on the side of the house.

          Build a nice little shed there and call it the "guest bedroom" ... :-)

          • If only California zoning weren't so cursed as to make that the easy option.

            Instead I banded together with a bunch of neighbors in the no-Comcast direction to trench and lay fiber. I now have 10 gbps symmetric, but at an install cost of ~$13k. Better than Comcast though.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          You are correct that California's PUC doesn't give a damn about consumers. But they do, at least occasionally, love to screw over telcos.

      • $10,000 - $20,000 covers the node hardware cost + the cable run.

        Power transformer is an lot easier to tap in. But if you are at the end of an cabled area they may need to install an new node to be able to hit your home with an good signal

      • Maybe they have a higher class of people at those power utilities than at internet megacorps?

    • Sounds like it would have been less expensive to physically move the house 700 ft.

    • These stories are why I'm willing to pay for any number of months of new cable Internet service on a house I'd be interested in buying (or even renting long-term, for that matter) at the time or before I make an offer. That way, if I can find out prior to escrow closing that they're lying about it, I'll know ahead of time and can plan accordingly. Not that the provider *says* they have it, but actually pay the $200 installer fee or whatever to have them come out, put it in, and test the connectivity. Che

      • I don't think you can do that without owning the property though. It's kind of unfortunate.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          Well, you likely can't do it legally without permission from the owner. If I were living there, though, and a serious buyer told me he wanted to provide me with a few months of internet at no cost to me, I'd certainly be cooperative.

        • I know when I bought my house in 2000 in a rural area I got permission from current owner and agent and I went in with a laptop and did a dial-in test.

          Yes, old days of dialup, my concern was crossing providers and area codes to get to my ISP.

          About a year after I moved in a drunk driver took out the big gray box down the road, and I suddenly got 56k connections after the repair. Then 3 months later I was able to get DSL. If I had known all of that, I would've taken out the big gray box myself ...

    • We need a law that says that if their service area checker says your area has service, then you can sue them for false advertising if they don't install your service for the normal installation fee. That's the only thing that will get them to stop deliberately lying about service areas. This is willful fraud, and they know it.

      • Hard to decide if stuff like this is wilful corporate fraud backed by policy (written or effective via management practices) or just a lazy tier 1 phone answering person who checked the zip and said "yep" to get the OP off the line so they could get their call time metrics down. Or maybe even a zip code based system, etc.

        Had a friend who moved into a named sub-division, called local cable office and told them which subdivision he was moving into, they said "yup" and as it turns out the builder/contractors

  • Head out to site (Score:3)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @07:07PM (#62417566)

    Buckley, WA - Pop. ~5,000

    Yeah, you want to head out there and visually and physically check for Internet service. I moved out to nowhere too with the whole work from home, so Internet is critical now. Place I was moving to said it had 1gbps fiber, and you're damn tooting when I got serious about putting an offer in I took my dumb ass out there and physically checked it myself. Strange enough, it's the local county's telco, like old school telco shit going on out here. They're the ones with the fucking 1gbps fiber. Fucking insane world where the community of 20k is getting vastly better Internet than anywhere I lived in a city of 180k, like not even a close comparison in current versus the Comcast/AT&T crap I received in the suburbia hellscape. I had BBQ about two weekends ago with one of the tech guys and we talked about how much he loves ubiquiti shit, showed me how he ran some fiber to his shed he's got out back so that he can hide away from the family, and so on. They've got like six "techs" that live in town and for the most part they're just running around helping out the old people read email and shit, but every once and a while they have to go repair shit or dig shit for laying down new fiber. Was showing me some hill where they got a ditch which, a shit ton of fiber, some other equipment I've never heard of, and ran a trunk over the hill for their expansion they're doing later this year.

    I digress though. Point being guy should fucking bite the bullet and double check. Comcast and AT&T maps are utter garbage. If I hadn't had a drink in three days and someone handed me a map from Comcast showing me where a lake was, I'd just take my chances wandering. Because odds are I'd have the same likelihood of finding that lake. And the way laws are with utilities (cough) lobbying (cough), if their map is 170,000,000,000% wrong, it's on you the customer, contract be damned.

    AT&T and Comcast are absolute shit and no one should take any word that they have to say as applying to anything remotely connected to reality. Especially the fuck sticks in Congress that they keep bribing, er, lobbying (cough) Marsha Blackburn (cough).

    • Re: Head out to site (Score:4, Informative)

      by friedmud ( 512466 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @07:18PM (#62417600)

      Yep, I live in a small town in Idaho (50k people). Not only does the telco have fiber at my house - but we also have municipal fiber from the city owned power company: both offer 1Gbps. The municipal fiber is cool because you just pay $15/month as part of your electrical bill - then you can use any of 10 different ISPs to get service.

      After trying all the services I settled on using the telcos 1Gbps service. It costs $60 total.

      Meanwhile - I lived in Boston for a while and had to beg for 250Mbps at $100ish. Ridiculous!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by taustin ( 171655 )

        It's a hell of a lot expensive per mile (in addition to fewer miles) to run fiber in small town than in a big city. Around here, the lawsuits alone over the right-of-way access would cost more than the entire job in a small town in flyover country. Took us 14 months to get a circuit installed in one of our stores (and 13 in another a couple of years ago).

        And if there's a military base anywhere nearby, it's entirely possible that there's a considerable amount of normally unused infrastructure already in plac

      • My parents have had fiber for 15 years. They live in a town with a population under 2000. It isn't municipal fiber, it's from a private company. They actually have several good options for real broadband. It's amazing what you can get when the local government doesn't make corrupt deals to grant monopolies.

  • There needs to be law (Score:3)

    by madbrain ( 11432 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @07:12PM (#62417578) Homepage Journal

    Clearly, the ISPs web sites and maps can't be relied upon. Internet access is as vital as electricity and water nowadays. It's bad enough if you are renting, but at least you can move. When buying, is is a lot harder. I think this is a case where utilities should be required to state in writing whether they can provide service at that address before closing.

    • the maps may cover an town but it takes someone to come on site to check the local line levels / cable runs to see what they really are like.
      and some systems well it may been 20-30+ years ago when this town got cable and that was 5-6+ Mergers and Acquisitions ago.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by madbrain ( 11432 )

        In that case, the utility can either respond that they can't provide service, or send someone on site before responding in the affirmative - they only need to check signal outdoors, not indoors, at least in my area where everything is aerial. Either way, it's an essential service, and something buyers need to know before closing. Maps and web sites checks clearly aren't sufficient.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      I think this is a case where utilities should be required to state in writing whether they can provide service at that address before closing.

      Well, it sounds like they did just that. What they should be required to do is live up to their promises. You took an order to install internet at a certain address for a standard install fee? Then that's what you'll do. If it costs you $200,000 to do so, that's on you for not checking before you accepted the order.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by madbrain ( 11432 )

        No, they didn't do just that. They checked the website. From TFA :

        "Rowny told Ars that before closing on the house in the city of Buckley, he checked Comcast's website to confirm that he could sign up for broadband."

        IANAL, but checking a web site isn't the same as a letter from Comcast stating service is available at that address. Web sites have errors on them all the time, unfortunately. Their content changes dynamically, also, in a way a letter doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I think Comcast should be liable

        • I don't know that further regulation is required - Comcast is clearly guilty of *at least* false advertising already. I see no reason we shouldn't enact a mandatory minimum sentencing for such socially endemic crimes perpetrated by a relatively small number of repeat offenders.

  • And then there's Spectrum... (Score:3)

    by Mr Foobar ( 11230 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @07:30PM (#62417644) Homepage

    Here in the general Orlando area, Comcast is not too bad, they get the work done. And that I can say *nice* things about AT&T these days compared to a decade ago, well that's just black magic! Then there's Spectrum.

    In several satellite offices of our company we needed to setup business Internet service. These offices are in strip malls and medical office plazas, and we knew going in that Spectrum was available at those places. So when we requested service, we'd have independent contractors come out with the damn router (invariably an Arris DS1670a), look for a cable, and tell us there wasn't one. They'd have to call in "Construction" to get a cable run to the building. Construction would "do something" and say the contractor could come out. And again, contractor said there was no cable, they'd call Construction. This went on for over three months at one office, spread among seven services calls. At the last contractor visit, I asked to speak with Construction directly. Well, turns out I can't, and I can't even get them to call me back. I dutifully reported this back to our Telecom department, who made very nasty calls to Spectrum to get this straightened out. Which eventually did happen. By the way, the contractors are not paid if there is not a cable to connect the router to, it's considered a failed install, and they get nothing for the trip. Waste of time for them and me.

    At another site, where practically every office and business on the plaza has Spectrum service, we were told it was not available at that particular office. This, despite having been in the office before build-out, and finding their ground feed and splitters. At another site, they honestly did not have their cable run in place, but took over four months to get the run in place, including a couple of months where they dug their colorful plastic cable conduits into the ground, but left them in pretty loops at the side of the building. To be clear, these are places where our nextdoor neighbors have Spectrum service, yet Spectrum tried to tell us *we* couldn't have it. We're an international company, don't tell us such crap. They took the order, said they could do it, then attempted to welch out of it.

  • some franchise setups force the ISP to cover the full town at the ISP cost.

  • Confusing Headline (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Asynchronously ( 7341348 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @07:36PM (#62417668)

    Am I the only one that found this headline confusing? It almost reads that the man himself falsely advertised Comcast’s services.

    • No, your not. My first impression was some guy was pretending to be Comcast, like putting up flyers or something on his street and "falsely advertising" either for or actually as Comcast; and then Comcast sued him for $19,000. Was totally expecting the weirdest story ever, instead it's just another a$$hole mega-ISP story.
    • It's a misplaced modifier, not a conspiracy by Comcast. I think.

  • Same fight, 2016 (Score:4, Informative)

    by wowwashington ( 117784 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @07:49PM (#62417718)

    At the time I was a 13 year customer of Comcast. In 2016 I was looking at a new house that had just been built and had no cable lines run through its underground conduit, was told that it would cost $2,700 by Comcast Site Survey to get services at this newly built house. Site Survey goes quiet for a month! After I purchase they said it's suddenly $6,500 to get services installed!

    I read Comcast's King County Franchise Agreement, engage King County Cable Administration and suddenly the installation is FREE. And the installation should have been done nearly four months prior (Eight months if you count the builder who was quoted $8,000 in Feb 2016), The franchise agreement clearly stated a few key things, 1) In an area with more than 1,000 people per linear mile they cover install and 2) costs for install for the first 150 feet are covered by Comcast

    For me, I have a 350 foot driveway, but they were trying to charge me the fee to attach to the power pole for my property which was 20 feet across from their lines on the main road. That was the major charge right there is Comcast's 'lease' of the power pole that was only there to service my house...

    Makes you wonder how can a $6,500 bill suddenly be zero unless someone is trying to screw over the customer?

  • If an area has internet service? I guess you can knock on doors and ask. But given you're going to have to call over to a call center otherwise and call center employees simply are not going to care... And I've heard horror stories of people who found out that their neighbors had internet but they were literally just outside.

    Before we started letting mega corporations buy all the houses you could put a rider into a housing contract. But nowadays the house market is so screwed up any seller is just going

  • They did the same to me (Score:3)

    by Breakerofthings ( 321914 ) on Monday April 04, 2022 @10:35PM (#62418110)
    Bought my house in 2009. Checked the website, even called to be certain. After we closed, we got "We don't service that address." I pushed and escalated, finally talked to a sparky little "VP", who told me they'd be happy to run service to me for $136k. Service was active less than a mile down our road, in each direction, mind you. Rumor has it they tried the same game on a development just down the road, whose HOA sued, won, and the court forced Comcast to provide service. Apparently, that's actually what eventually drove service to our area.

  • When I bought my apartment the building had fiber preinstalled. I contracted the internet the same day I closed on the apartment and had the modem installed couple hours later. I could choose between dozen different companies and signed up for a pre-paid service offered by local company. Installation was free, modem was free, I pay 20 Euro for 200MB/s but they offer up to 1GB/s for 30 Euro. And we're talking about a small town, population 25.000.

  • This is probably the same data they use to collect various government subsidies for making broadband "available".

  • Before I bought my current house I called Comcast to triple-check that service was available. I work remotely a lot, so no broadband would mean I'd have to move. I moved in, placed the order for service, the installers came, and said it would be $8k to run service to my address. They had service on the cross street and my $ would have been to pay to bring it down half a mile to reach my house. If AT&T hadn't had DSL as an option, I would have had to pay it. Either that or buy a closet from the peopl

Slashdot Top Deals

What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey

Close