Reader Daniel lives in San Francisco, where parking is notoriously impossible. He came home one morning to find a Comcast van blocking his drive way, and politely asked the driver to move. Ten minutes later he lost his internet and TV signal. Mysterious coincidence, or malevolent tech? Check out the details, inside.
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Sprint Gouges Business Customer For Over $30,000 In Inflated Fees
By 3.17.08
Allen Harkleroad of GMP Services writes, “A warning to all Sprint corporate customers that have dedicated access (T1’s, etc.) if you are out of contract Sprint may be gouging you and claiming outrageously high local loop charges as the cause.”
"HughesNet is Absolutely, Without A Doubt, The Worst Company I Have Ever Had The Misfortune of Relying On"
By 2.11.08
Reader Jeff isn’t pleased with HughesNet and has cc’d us on his email so that we can listen in. It’s more of a warning than a specific complaint that can be resolved:
I would just like to take this opportunity to reiterate, for the hundredth time, how much I loathe HughesNet. I have just been FAPed again. No one here is downloading any movies, music, books, or much of anything — just using the Internet. I have a guest visiting, and I’m assuming their additional drain on the ridiculously small 375 MB cap we’re afforded is what’s knocked us over the limit…so now I’m stuck at sub-dialup speeds for the next 24 hours.
Comcast Impersonates Users' Computers To Meddle With Internet Traffic
By 10.22.07
Comcast uses its own computers to masquerade as those of its users in order to disrupt and throttle internet traffic—specifically the peer-to-peer kind—whenever it chooses, according to nationwide independent tests carried out by the Associated Press. A Comcast rep dances around the charge by saying that the company doesn’t “block” access to anything—but he makes no mention of throttling or disrupting connections to shape traffic, probably because if he did, he’d have to admit to it or blatantly lie.
Comcast's Official Angry Customer Policy
By 10.10.07
This is an internal Comcast document entitled, “So you have an angry customer?” It’s a guide for technical support and customer service representatives for when unhappy customers call. It’s actually very good, full of plain talk and ways to think about the situation to help solve and defuse it. Apparently none of the Comcast customer service reps our readers complain about have ever read it.
115 Calls To Verizon, And FIOS Still Doesn't Work
By 8.8.07
Poor Jason. Eight months after ordering Verizon FIOS, he is still without decent phone, television, or internet service, though not for lack of effort on his part:
I have spoken with 115 service representatives and 44 supervisors over a period 64 hours combined on the phone with Verizon. I have been hung up on 37 times, placed on hold a total of 21 hours, and been promised callbacks, which I did not receive, a total of 18 times. It has been 8 months since I ordered the service, and I still have not been given a single resolution.
Jason’s full ordeal, after the jump:
Comcast Cut My DSL Line
By 8.4.07
Comcast cut Ian’s Speakeasy DSL line while installing a fiber optic cable for his live-in landlord. Ian couldn’t convince Comcast that cutting another company’s line was a problem:
All calls to Comcast have been met with cynicism, contempt, and out-right lies. Among the things i was told was: there was no independent line, the line belonged to Comcast, my landlord was the problem, the house was wired improperly when built (you know, back in the ’70s when DSL was all the rage, right?), and then was eventually hung up on.
Fed up with Comcast’s lies, Ian hopped in his car and drove to the nearest Comcast office. Ian writes:
OECD Says US Broadband Network Is Flailing; Telecoms Respond, "You Mean Superior!"
By 7.25.07
According to a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in a ranking of broadband penetration among 30 member nations, the US has slipped from 4th place (2001), to 12th place (2006), to 15th place this year. Corporations, lobbyists and politicians have skewered the report, but this follow-up piece from Free Press provides a point-by-point rebuttal and confirms that yes, by pretty much every account, the United States enjoys craptastic Internet access.
"Automatic Bill Payment" Means Verizon Pays Your Bill, Then Sends You Another One
By 7.3.07
Just when you think you’ve head everything, Rebecca writes you. She thought she’d set up her Verizon DSL with automatic payments. When she could suddenly no longer log in to her Verizon email, she called them up and found out that she was way overdue. Once she paid her past balance, and waited several days for Verizon to turn her service back on, she logged in to her account and sure enough she did have automatic payments set up:
Charter Communications Company Newsletter Details "No Lying About Install Time Policy" Same Day Negative News Article About The Same Appears
By 4.30.07
The same day a former Charter Communications customer service rep spilled her guts to the St Louis Post-Dispatch about how the cable company actively lies to its customers about when techs are going to show up, the subject appeared in Charter’s internal company newsletter. Which we, of course, have a copy of…
Does Harper Collins Know What You’re Downloading?
By 12.27.06
We were looking through the Freakonomics blog this morning when we came across this post from Dec 18th, concerning Harper Collins contacting the ISPs of customers thought to be sharing of illegal copies of the book Freakonomics. The post had a link to a letter that a customer received after illegally downloading the book.
How Fast Is Your Internet, Really?
By 8.1.06
Are you getting the bit rate you signed up for? Take this quick and easy test and find out. We know its from Speakeasy (which doesn’t have an unbiased interest in showing your speed as slow…) but it’s better than the one by Ookla because you can select a nearby server to do it at.
Verizon on Net Neutrality: “Trust Us.”
By 4.7.06
With the depressing defeat of the Net Neutrality bill before the House Telecom and Internet subcommittee yesterday, many Internet users are getting a bit nervous. Are we on the precipitous edge of one of those nefarious slippery slopes people are always talking about? Will common sense prevail? If it doesn’t, can we trust providers like Verizon and AT&T to not cripple the Internet?
