Comcast users.....

[Unit74]

Check your bills my friends. They just slipped in a rate increase citing loss of market due to cord cutters. My basic internet, which is all I have went up from $50/month to $70 a month. Hell, for that much I can get a top tier Verizon Puck and probably have better reliability, which I am seriously looking at. 30% more for the same service.....yea right. This is exactly what perpetuates a death spiral of a company... Loss of market share, raise rates, more customers jump ship and then insolvency.

 

[asicer]

Hell, for that much I can get a top tier Verizon Puck

Does their "unlimited" service throttle when you hit the hidden cap? Or does it de-prioritize?

 

[Unit74]

No clue... We have been throttled a few times that I am aware of on Xfinity. Its pretty noticeable when they do. Usually after a weekend of streaming videos on multiple devices nonstop. My last Verizon Puck with Unlimited never had an issue, but that was 2 years ago. Not sure what they are up to now.

 

[Tom-D]

Check your bills my friends. They just slipped in a rate increase citing loss of market due to cord cutters. My basic internet, which is all I have went up from $50/month to $70 a month. Hell, for that much I can get a top tier Verizon Puck and probably have better reliability, which I am seriously looking at. 30% more for the same service.....yea right. This is exactly what perpetuates a death spiral of a company... Loss of market share, raise rates, more customers jump ship and then insolvency.

my bill went from 174 to 189. I 'm ditching Comcast too
What is HULU. ?

 

[gkainz]

Mine went up recently - I think $30ish... looks like they tacked on a whole bunch of new fees and increased other existing fees. Called and protested and they came up with a different package or bundle that brought it back down to a net $20 savings before the increase. Still paying too much for the bundle but unbundling would cost more in the long run. I work from home and must have high speed internet. Wife insists on keeping the home phone but I might convince her an additional cell number may be a cheaper substitute (which then reminds me I’m paying way too much for cell service). Crap, it’s a damn house payment between Comcast and AT&T! Wait, was that my dad’s voice there?
Greg

 

[Sac Arrow]

Mine went up recently - I think $30ish... looks like they tacked on a whole bunch of new fees and increased other existing fees. Called and protested and they came up with a different package or bundle that brought it back down to a net $20 savings before the increase. Still paying too much for the bundle but unbundling would cost more in the long run. I work from home and must have high speed internet. Wife insists on keeping the home phone but I might convince her an additional cell number may be a cheaper substitute (which then reminds me I’m paying way too much for cell service). Crap, it’s a damn house payment between Comcast and AT&T! Wait, was that my dad’s voice there?
Greg

Yeah I hate that. I only need basic Internet. I feel like I had to buy a bunch of crap I don't need to minimize the costs. The problem is Comcast owns the fiber service serving the house. I don't think I can ditch them.

 

[Bill]

Cutting the cord, going Hulu to get the sports networks, and according to various antennae locators we can get NBC. CBS, ABC, FOX, and TBN from local broadcast towers. Cutting a $130/mo cable bill down to $40/mo.

Cable is going to continue to lose market share.

 

[RJM62]

Does their "unlimited" service throttle when you hit the hidden cap? Or does it de-prioritize?

In theory, the prepaid unlimited Jetpack plan I've been testing out as backup Internet de-prioritizes traffic if warranted by network congestion. In practice, it has never happened. But I'm in the boonies, so YMMV.

Downloads average from 15 - 30 Mbps, and uploads from 8 - 16 Mbps. That's with 4 of 5 bars of 4G signal.

Video streaming is limited to 1080, but so is my TV, so that's not an issue. I really don't stream much anyway.

Setup was a bit of a hassle because of a Catch-22 with account verification, but the plan was brand-new then. VZW tech support sorted it out.

All in all, I'm happy with it. I put it through several "test days" of being my only Internet connection, and it worked out fine. It's slower than my wired connection, but fast enough for me to work through outages with little loss of productivity. It's also portable, which I don't often need, but which is nice to have if I do. For $65.00 / month with auto-pay, I think it's worth it.

Rich

 

[baboss]

You pretty much have truly unlimited internet w/ your DSL/Cable Modem provider. I don't believe you'll find a Wireless carrier data plan that gives you truly unlimited data, you'll be throttled or deprioritized eventually. The grass is not always greener.
Verizon is trying to kill off their grandfathered truly unlimited plans (different from the newer "unlimited" prepaid plan @RJM62 is referencing above). I still a grandfathered truly unlimited plan and I keep it below 100GB of usage every month. Folks that have gone over that have received cancellation letters from Verizon in the past year, mostly if the line is out of contract. They wont let me get mine back on contract either so it's clear they want to rid themselves of these old plans.

I'd kill for even a 10MB DSL/Cable modem line for $70/month.

 

[ARFlyer]

I pay $130 for internet and limited basic cable. It’s high but really the only option.

 

[dmspilot]

I tried to change my Comcast plan to an internet only plan but they told me such a plan did not exist. About a month after cancelling all together and using my phone's mobile hotspot they magically had one

 

[GeorgeC]

$50/mo internet only here.

 

[Unit74]

$50/mo internet only here.

Is that the one you have to put the handset on and it goes..... Eeeerrrrrrr.............rrruuurrrrrrrrrrrrrr..................arrgrgrgrgrgrgrgrgrgrg ?

 

[GeorgeC]

No, Comcast.

 

[rbridges]

$50/mo internet only here.

we pay roughly $75/month with cox. We got rid of the cable box 3-4 years ago. paying almost $200/month back then. Hulu TV for $40/month is doing fine for me.

BTW, my daughter had comcast at her apartment when she was attending college in atlanta. I thought cox was bad, but they're really not. Comcast was just plain awful. Terrible customer service, and technicians that lied about cancelling/rescheduling appts. High cost and terrible service. Great business model.

 

[Tom-D]

I got my bill changed today, called and bitched about it.. got the same services for 130. not 190.

 

[Ghery]

I stopped by the Verizon store today while I was in the mall to ask about a new problem I've been having with my cell phone. It receives notification when the phone rings at home (Comcast VoIP) which is OK, but the last week or so when it starts ringing for the home phone it keeps ringing until you shut it down. 5 minutes this past Friday while we were driving down to Vancouver from home, and then it didn't stop until I dug the phone out of my pocket and handed it to my wife to silence (I was driving). This for a voice message left on the answering machine. The Verizon rep simply brought up the Comcast app and shut off the ring notification. They've had a number of people come in recently with this problem. Sounds like I need to call Comcast and complain that their latest "update" to their app is broken.

I have a 4 application package with Comcast. Internet, TV, VoIP and security system. Once the contract on the security system expires I'm going to have them take that out. The country sheriff does not respond to calls related to them as there have been too many false alarms. Kind of defeats the whole purpose. We're currently paying about $220 a month for all four. If it goes up with the next bill I'll call and complain.

 

[Sundancer]

Dropped the Verizon movie channels and cut back the internet speed on FIOS; was already an Amazon Prime customer, so those movies are free with a Firestick. Dropped Verizon cellular, went with Consumer Cellular, cut the bill for two lines in half. Landline is next to go, unless Verizon starts blocking the spoofed numbers and IDs on incoming calls.

 

[schmookeeg]

Check your bills my friends. They just slipped in a rate increase citing loss of market due to cord cutters.

I can't imagine saying to my clients, with straight face, "Not enough of your peers have hired me, so I just jacked up YOUR bill"

 

[RJM62]

I can't imagine saying to my clients, with straight face, "Not enough of your peers have hired me, so I just jacked up YOUR bill"

At some point, hopefully, they'll have to break the bundles and stop forcing people to pay for 200+ channels they never watch and couldn't care less about in order to get the half-dozen that they actually like.

Rich

 

[kyleb]

At some point, hopefully, they'll have to break the bundles and stop forcing people to pay for 200+ channels they never watch and couldn't care less about in order to get the half-dozen that they actually like.

Rich

The issue may be that the non-value-added channels don't charge the cable provider much, if anything. So if you strip out 150 crap channels, the bill may be essentially the same because the 20 channels you do want each charge the cable provider a non-trivial amount.