If you don’t feel like reading the long story, the bottom line is in bold at the bottom:
for years we had a great little cable company with really fast up and download speeds - they were way ahead of their time. It was bought out by Comcast about a year ago whose speeds are about half and prices are about double. But, we were grandfathered under patmedia rates and speeds and this would remain that way as long as we made no changes to our account, forever. Good enough.
We got a letter from Comcast today saying that we had been receiving a tier of channels, but not paying for them, by their mistake. As of the next bill, they would add $15 to the bill. I called and told them, no we didn’t want those channels and didn’t want to be charged for them. This meant they had to remove them from the account. This meant they made a change in our account this meant we lost our grandfather clause. The woman did this without warning us.
I called back, and learned what I suspected was true, we are now a comcast customer - our patmedia settings have “vanished” and they claim they cannot get them back (BS) I duked it out with him for about half an hour.
Bottom line - my husband and I believe that Comcast sent that letter out as a way to trick us old patmedia customer to call, make a change to our account, and move us over to Comcast.
After I told him I was going to move to Fios the guy came up with a better deal but still for 12 months (when I asked why 12 months? he said that’s as long as he could give a deal - i told him that was BS, he could do anything he wanted to do.)
Anyway, I find this so incredibly disgusting that I’m going to move over to Fios. I’m wondering if anybody has any experience with it.
Sorry, I don’t have any experience with Fios, but I’d say you’ve got basis to file a formal complaint.
I do have experience with Comcast (not good), they just bought out the little guy here a couple years ago. Of course, they will never give you a “deal” for longer than 12 months, because they routinely increase their rates every 18 months to 2 years.
I no longer have cable. I bundled through my phone service, and now have Directv. In my opinion, it doesn’t get any worse than Comcast. (Just my opinion though :shock: )
Thanks Kim, interesting link. I’ll look into filing a complaint, but i’m still getting out of Comcast and on my way out i’m going to, not that it matters, get to a higher level somebody and tell them just how disgusting this ploy of theirs was and why i’m leaving. i’m also going to warn all my neighbors about it.
See, everybody is grandfathered in through patmedia. Comcast bought us up, but they can’t change our rates until they trick us into making a change in our plan. But hardly anybody knows this. The only reason I knew it is because a patmedia help desk person clued me in before the take-over was complete.
So Comcast bought us up, but we pay the old prices and have incredible speeds, competitive with Fios Business.
You are right, you can’t get worse than Comcast and I am outta here!
BTW, my phone and cell phones are already with Verizon so there will be some bundling.
I just switched last month from Comcast to Verizon Fios mainly to save money. I was paying $132/month just for TV and internet with Comcast and now I pay $117 for cable/internet and phone. I don’t see much difference between the two in internet, they seem just about the same. The TV though has much better reception in my opinion than with Comcast and the phone is incredibly clear. With FiOS however you have extra fees for the cable boxes, you have to have a box for each TV in your home. If you have kids with Xboxes or PS3’s the wireless connection doesn’t work that great with them. I had to hardwire my PS3 to the router. If you were into watching free movies on On Demand with Comcast you will miss that because Verizon only has a few free movies each month everything else is PPV but they have free independent and foreign films and it seems like a bigger selection of other things to watch than Comcast did. Customer service is so-so, you talk to an automated service before you can get anyone live but Comcast was always pretty bad too so I guess they are equal on that point. When mine was first installed, there was a problem within a day and it took 4 hours of phone calls and trying different things before they would actually send someone to see what the problem was. But once they did, the tech was great and did a few things for me to compensate me for all the time i wasted.
Was the problem with the TV or internet. I run an internet based business. I really have to make this move but I cringe at the thought of having internet problems.
I don’t have kids and we only have one TV, so extra fees won’t be much of a problem. Thanks for the warning, though.
We were going to go with the HD extreme package for TV and my husband was impressed with the movie selections. Maybe there are more PPV there than he thinks ?
You are right about Verizon customer service. I already have my phone by them and I even despise the sound of that automated woman’s voice. You should see me visciously saying “YES!” or “NO!” into the phone. She makes me sick :!:
I’ve learned to just keeping shouting “REPRESENTATIVE!” until finally i get a real human being. And then still the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. I remember when we first moved into this house, 6 years ago, we had a dial tone, but people would call us and the phone wouldn’t ring. The tech came out and came to the door with a look of chagrin and said, “you have a working phone, it’s just not your phone number” My clients were calling and somebody called Joe Schmoe was picking up the phone while I was getting calls for Nancy Cook! And Verizon had no clue why or how to fix it.
God, what am i getting myself into. Well, i have to get out of Comcast - thanks for your input, much appreciated.
The problem was with a splitter they had installed, it was defective. It effected two TV’s but it could have easily been the internet too depending on how things were hooked up.
When you get FiOS, the phone line runs through their optical cable and not the regular home line. Typically they change your phone number too.