Comcast blasted for seeking "loopholes" in rule requiring disclosure of all fees.

Comcast blasted for seeking “loopholes” in rule requiring disclosure of all fees.

  • fubo@lemmy.world
    58·
    2 years ago

    If your billing is too complicated to be accurately described to your customers, then you may have put yourself in a situation where you are incapable of being honest with your customers. That’s on you.

    It’s the job of regulators to ensure that you are honest with your customers; therefore, they can reasonably forbid you from having billing so complicated that it cannot be described accurately.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
      24·
      2 years ago

      It’s funny, my local ISP tells me I owe X dollars a month and that’s what I pay. How on earth do they do that? Comcast is telling us it can’t possibly be that simple

      • fubo@lemmy.world
        17·
        2 years ago

        The airlines managed to figure it out, weirdly enough. Calculating the price of an airline seat is Turing-complete, and at least one airline software service, ITA, needed the runtime compilation feature of Common Lisp to do it efficiently. Yes, when a user asked for a ticket price, their systems wrote and compiled a piece of code to determine the answer.

      • xavier666@lemm.ee
        7·
        2 years ago

        Many companies, specially telcos, have a complex scheme of paid plans to confuse the users so that they become fed up and say “ok, so how much do I have to pay”. This is their exact objective.

        My local ISP (not a part of some huge elite ISP) is similar to yours. Pay X and you get unlimited internet for a month at Y Mbps uplink/downlink. Somehow it’s too complex for Comcast.

        • GreyBeard@lemmy.one
          1·
          2 years ago

          Heck, my ISP, which is a huge elite ISP, has a simple number too. You know why? There is competition in this market. I pay $80 a month for 1000/1000 fiber. That includes free HBO Max. Not as good as Sonic, but it’s a simple number.

      • keeb420@kbin.social
        5·
        2 years ago

        mine even manages to do it for the price they advertise. and without a data cap. and without having to have a comcrap router in order to pay more to not have a data cap. i had my own router i didnt want to use theirs mine was better. but the only way i could find to pay to not deal with the cap was to have their router. fuck that.

        • psudo@beehaw.org
          2·
          2 years ago

          Yeah, but are they making their faceless shareholders insane profits? I say this as a joke, but I do feel like that’s a large reason why Comcast and the like are so terrible to their customers.

      • misguidedfunk@beehaw.org
        4·
        2 years ago

        I’d love to have a local option. We get spectrum or wind stream, which means spectrum. They charge whatever they want because they have a pseudo monopoly.

    • ptsdstillinmymind @lemmy.studio
      3·
      2 years ago

      If the FCC is anything like the SEC/DOJ I wouldn’t hold my breath. All of these regulatory agencies are regulatory captured via the revolving door.

  • BackOnMyBS@kbin.social
    14·
    2 years ago

    That’s some straight up gaslighting shit. If they can figure out to charge it, they can print it on a bill.

  • Rentlar@beehaw.org
    12·
    2 years ago

    It’s a simple solution, Comcast. Don’t charge any fee you aren’t willing to spend the effort to disclose.

  • k32481@lemm.ee
    9·
    2 years ago

    If it is too hard/difficult for a company to itemize all their fees, they are charging way too many fees.

  • danA
    9·
    2 years ago

    I’m so glad I don’t have to use Comcast any more. A small local ISP (Sonic) expanded to cover my area last year and offers 10Gbps symmetric fiber for $40/month - half the price I was paying Comcast for 1.2Gbps down / 35Mbps up.

    • frostycakes@beehaw.org
      2·
      2 years ago

      I’m super jealous. At least I’m moving to a new apartment with fiber from CenturyLink at it, but even they are running $70/mo for gigabit. I’m living the T-Mobile 5G home internet life right now because CL only has DSL at my current place, and fuck Comcast in general.

      Even worse is, the new place has honest-to-God fiber from Comcast to the unit–sadly paired with an RFoG converter, so despite it being more than capable of symmetrical gigabit, they still only offer 35Mbps up there. Leave it to Comcast to make FTTP suck.

      • danA
        1·
        2 years ago

        Yeah I’m super grateful for it. Before I was living at my current place, I lived at an apartment, and we could only get Comcast cable. The apartment building had an agreement with Comcast that ensured they were the only available internet provider.

        Leave it to Comcast to make FTTP suck.

        Wow, that’s bad. I didn’t know they did that.

        Comcast have a legit fiber network where I live (San Francisco Bay Area). It’s not even GPON or XGS-PON or anything like that where multiple houses share bandwidth; with Comcast’s version you get a dedicated fiber run from your house all the way to the headend, no multiplexing.

        You do pay a premium for it though. It was originally 2Gbps symmetric for $300/month, now it’s 6Gbps for the same price (with 10Gbps coming soon).

  • worfamerryman@beehaw.org
    7·
    2 years ago

    They need to do a reset of their pricing them. Figure it out again from the ground up.

    I pay exactly what my isp advertises never a cent more.

    I live in a third world country.