Xfinity can lick my taint.
I have been paying $40 per month for 300 mbps Internet since we moved in. I am lucky to get 60 mbps most of the time. So this morning, I saw a deal on their website to increase speed to 800 mbps for $60 per month. I took the plunge.
A couple of hours later, I got an email confirming that I was now on 1000 mbps for the low price of $127 per month. WTF. Even worse? I was still only getting 56 mbps. (The BS clause of “speeds of up to” means never actually hitting that speed, but you would think paying 3 times as much would get you SOME kind of speed increase)
I called the customer service number and got some middle eastern moron who couldn’t really speak English. I got up and drove 45 minutes to the nearest Xfinity location. When I got there, they told me that there was no 800 mbps plan offered, only 300, 500, or 1000. So I told them to put my account back the way it was before they did this.
They said that price is no longer available. I can have the 300 mbps for $60 a month if I sign a 2 year contract, or I can pay $80 a month without a contract. That’s it, and fuck you very much. So now I am paying DOUBLE what I was for the same shitty service. I have few choices- I can stay with Xfinity, or I can opt to pay for Tmobile 5G internet, or try Starlink. The thing that makes me leery of Starlink being my primary Internet provider, because of the service disruptions that happen during thunderstorms, which we all know happen virtually every afternoon here in Central Florida.
Here is the thing- I have proof that they sold me a plan that they had no intention of actually giving me before putting me on a different plan at double the price. I took a picture of the screen- proving that they DO offer 800 mbps.
On Monday, I am calling Florida’s Attorney General’s office to report this obvious “bait and switch” scheme.
11 Comments
Out West · October 27, 2024 at 6:10 am
Starlink, DM. Installed it last year as we constantly had issues with CenturyLink. Put the router on a small UPS. We’ve had blizzards, heavy snow and wild thunderstorms (Rocky Mountain type, not Florida so YMMV) and zero issues. Speeds range from 75 to 150 MPS, typically around 100, which is good for us. My wife zoom calls frequently and has no issues.
Old Tool Fool · October 27, 2024 at 6:16 am
Public service commission, I’ve had good luck with them in the past. YMMV. Good luck
Capt Rick · October 27, 2024 at 7:41 am
I have had Starlink for a couple of years now, and it is bulletproof. We get heavy rain here sometimes (7″ in an afternoon) and it has never gone out. FAST, too.
It's just Boris · October 27, 2024 at 7:58 am
Xfinity (Comcast) is famous for this kind of crap. They tried to start billing us rental for a cable modem we owned, for instance.
May I also suggest a letter to the state agency that regulates them (if there is one in Florida) as well as the equivalent of consumer affairs? When we had our little “question” Xfinity wouldn’t even deign to respond until we cc’d them on a complaint to their friendly local regulatory agency.
Terrapod · October 27, 2024 at 8:25 am
I had this same “argument” with Commiecast/Xfinity about 8 months back. Paying for HS internet and getting piddly slow service. Complained to local office, they sent out a young green tech who proceeded to disconnect every cable found in the attic without checking where they went. Installed a new cable direct from pole outside house to the Xfinity box and called it a day. Took me a week to fix the mayhem he created by disconnecting all my off air coax and cable feeds to other rooms. Grrr. Then, the system got flaky again and their cable modem seemed to be at fault. Complained again (to HQ), this time Xfinity sent out a real grey hair tech from Chicago (about 80 miles distant). This guy knew what he was doing, traced the fault, installed a new modem and got it all operational (without messing up what I had repaired). Short of this is that you have to take your beef to the home office, which I did with a letter to Philadelphia addressed to the lead engineer of Xfinity cable, which in turn triggered the regional office in IL to step in and fix it right.
BTW, the screwup by Xfinity is entirely self inflicted, they have jacked up their cable signal bandwidth to over 1 GBS where the old wiring and infrastructure was originally designed for 300 MBS. At the much higher frequency older wiring gets “leaky” which does 2 things, radiates RF where it should not (as in destroying AM and even some FM reception) and 2) causes strange line impedance that slow down bit rate and/or introduces timing errors that crap their gigabit modem.
Noway2 · October 27, 2024 at 9:36 am
I too will put in a plug for Starlink. Using it right now. Have it both at my house and out at my parents (even more rural, as in the neighbors are horse and cow pastures) and it has been reliable as hell. Speeds of upwards of 300mb and I’ve seen it push 500 mb. The only time it went ‘down’ with weather was for about 2 minutes during a strong hurricane rain band.
Matt · October 27, 2024 at 5:49 pm
We had a similar problem with Dish years ago. Had a 2 year contract for $60 a month. 4 monthes later they raised the price to $85. Called them and was basically told to piss off we can raise prices and you signed a contract. In Ohio the satellite companies are not regulated by the public utilities commission. Filed a complaint with the State Attorney General. Got a call and a letter from Dish saying my bill would be $60 for the duration of the original contract. At 25 months they raised it to $125/month. I haven’t had T.V for 7 years and honestly I dont miss it one bit. We’ll get movies from the library or watch free ones on you tube. I never realized how much time I spent in front of the idiot box. I get so much done around the house, more range time and fishing, hiking. In way better health physically and mentally.
TRX · October 27, 2024 at 9:44 am
Comcast is usually near the top of various “American companies with the worst customer service” lists.
I have found that to be true.
Other top-5 companies (they trade rankings around a bit) are Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Spectrum, and Time-Warner.
I thought it was interesting that they’re all “communications” companies.
Going down to top-10, various airlines and banks make the list. All what I’d think of as “customer service” companies, but apparently they don’t see themselves that way.
It's just Boris · October 27, 2024 at 11:08 pm
I suspect what we’re seeing is the private enterprise equivalent of the Laffer curve.
Instead of a government trying to find the tax rate that maximizes tax revenue, companies that sell services to the public at large are trying to find the point on the curve that maximizes profit margin. (Actually it’d be an N-dimensional hypersurface, but the principle is similar and the goal is the same – find the global maximum.)
The service has to be just good enough that most people don’t get irritated enough to switch, and the response to customer problems has to be adequate to the point where most customers are taken care of with the minimum of expense. Go too low on that curve and you get more regulatory and government scrutiny and lose more customers; go too high and the customer retention increase isn’t outweighed by the additional spending on training and keeping better employees. Basically, be just bad enough that your customers don’t fire you en masse.
I suspect the bigger the company is the better they can optimize to the curve. So it’s not too surprising that the ones you mentioned might trade spots, but the top 5 are almost always the same.
lynn · October 27, 2024 at 3:18 pm
I have had Starlink at my small office building out in Fort Bend County in Texas for a year now. Worked great until the cable went bad two weeks or so ago. Starlink sent me a new cable, I just need four uninterrupted hours to install it through the machine room, attic, eave, and underground 20 feet to the antenna.
I have a Peplink 30 triple WAN multiplexer with two AT&T DSL lines so I am not dead in the water. I would not go without a backup for any supplier at this time, things are crazy and getting crazier.
KurtP · October 27, 2024 at 9:10 pm
After reading the comments, it sounds like Starlink is the way to go.
I was thinking about SL at Rancho Snakbit, but our co-op put in fiber for $64/mo- so I went with it.
We have T-mobile (don’t know the plan name…($80/mo SR) unlimited 5G data which with a hotspot is faster than the fiber.
The only reason I don’t go with T-mobile full time is that I like redundancy.
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