| Riding the fence Economics
Leave the customer with the illusion of "PLENTY OF BANDWIDTH" and stay out of "FEATURE WARS"
As soon as you state what your limit is, someone will undersell you for the sake of taking your business whether they can handle the added business or not. Today, everyone thinks they can be a broadband, webhosting, ISP, provider.
Comcast is obviously protecting their assets (Their customer base) yet allowing the customer to think there is no limit, and that friends is riding the fence.
Nothing wrong with it. |
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| Too bad!!! I eat and eat and eat. I was told unlimited and I continue to eat at the fastest speeds possible. Oh and FIRST POST!! |
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 LC8290
join:2003-04-30
Cleveland, TX
 ·CMA Access
| unlimited.... It never means what it says  I did this with a web hosting account through aplus.net. It said unlimited transfer. But when I went to almost 30GB in the first month they terminated my service  Its the same with broadband, they say unlimited but if you put "xcessive strain"on their network  they will hit you. With my ISP I only get 5GB per month.
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"I can't use what I can't abuse."-Garbage, "Vow" |
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| reply to Anomus
Re: Too bad!!! Not hardly =) |
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 AthlGrondPremium,MVM
join:2002-04-25
Aurora, CO | reply to coastdweller4
Re: Riding the fence said by coastdweller4:
... As soon as you state what your limit is, someone will undersell you for the sake of taking your business ...
I had not thought of that as the reason for not saying what the limit is. But you are probably right about that. |
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approval from:
mirielverdy 
| Catchy Title Man he was quick, but I tried. Also I was kicked from RR cable by Time Warner because I refused to pay 89.99 for 40Gig/month upgrage. I use 400gig/month so their offer was useless to me. Did I cry about it? Hell no. I called earthlink and contracted with them 29.95/mon to rehook the cable up. I am on month 3 with them and it runs a little slower but I got 600 more gigs in my back pocket and still going strong. Thank you corporate competition. |
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 tiger72SexaT duorPPremium
join:2001-03-28
Saint Louis, MO
kudos:1 | What CAN you use the internet for? according to that letter, you cant use Comcast HSI for:
p2p, newsgroups, file sharing, streaming video/audio, and voice/video chat.
wow. that severely restricts what I can do on the web.
Basically anything that uses the "High Speed" of "Comcast High Speed Internet" is a violation of the AUP.
very nice.
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UMKC:15051/20689 kbps RoadRunner:2092/369 kbps |
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 RadioDocYeah, like it matters.Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
La Grange, IL
kudos:2
 ·AT&T Midwest
| reply to coastdweller4
Re: Riding the fence said by coastdweller4:
Nothing wrong with it.
Until that same customer base ends up with one of the posts from that fence up their "asset".
While this is a classic case of "what the large print giveth, the small print taketh away", it doesn't make it a good business practice. In fact, it shows a rather large disdain for customers, who are treated the same way most monopolies treat any captive audience.
The real reason for this is they are trying to drive off the heavy users so they can bilk granny out of an additional $30+ a month to just get email, surf the soap opera message boards and maybe look a the occasional picture of the grandkids, which may 10-20 megabytes a month. They don't want heavy giga-users and would be real happy if they all went away. |
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 DSun101To Tired To Make Sense
join:2001-03-23
Boonton, NJ | Ouch Kinda like OOL's unknown upload BW cap. Oh you can upload, just don't cross the invisible line. =/ Good thing they haven't "implemented" had any download "caps" yet.
(400g/month eh Anamus ^^ Nice leeching.) |
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 IIIBradIIIComm M-E-L Instr
join:2000-09-28
Greer, SC | Typical Comcast BS While I don't see myself coming anywhere near that limit, and I would certainly be pissed if my neighbor was the one pulling all that data down, Comcast really should state their limits clearly to be fair to everyone.
And economic reasons aren't good enough to purposefully withhold information from your customers. That's just wrong. Shame on you Comcast.
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Remember, there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.»www.FS2004.com |
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 pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | reply to Anamus
Re: Catchy Title said by Anamus:
I use 400gig/month so their offer was useless to me. Did I cry about it? Hell no. ... Thank you corporate competition.
Exactly. If a particular product or service isn't right for your needs, there is no sense in continuing to pay for it. A cable modem and/or DSL is not a poor man's T-x. It is clearly stated that these products are for casual, residential use and that if you want or need more, you either need something more expensive, or you will have to go with another provider.
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Jewel got Britney-fied! There is hope for the world yet! |
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| He did get all he could download... For a few months. Heres how I see it, through an analogy:
You go to an all-you can eat place. There is a big sign up "All You Can Eat!". You happily shovel down 40 plates of food.
As you leave, the manager pulls you aside and says, "I know it's all you can eat, but we are losing fist fulls of money on your food. If you eat that much again, we'll kick you out."
The next day, you go back in and shovel down the food. On your 30th plate, the manager says enough and sends you packing, refunding your $4.99.
Did you get all you could eat? Yes, on the nights you paid, you got all you could. It was unlimited. The manager simply used his reserved right to deny service to anyone (so long as he did not break Federal civil rights laws). |
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alalperPremium
join:2000-08-20
Philadelphia, PA | It appears to me that . . . . . . . while caps on the amount of downloads or uploads is not, in itself, a bad thing, there are certainly some legal ramifications to them when there is no published (or even available) documentation as to what these caps actually are.
It would seem that a class action lawsuit based on 1) false advertising (unlimited really means limited), 2) unenforcable clauses in the contract (tos) where the tos is too vague to be legally binding and/or 3) unenforcable clauses in the contract due to the fact that a party cannot legally be bound to portions of an agreement that are totally unilateral, would stand a very high chance of success.
The class here would be huge (how many Comcast customers are there?) and could be a huge money maker for some game law firm willing to front the costs.
While Comcast may have the money to fight such a suit, just the very REAL threat of such a suit going forward and what such a suit would cost them, both monetarily and in bad PR, would probably force them to either 1) make unlimited mean unlimited or 2) get rid of references to unlimited in their advertising and set published hard caps in their TOS.
Just my opinion from a non-legal mind.
Al |
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Stumbles
join:2002-12-17
Port Saint Lucie, FL Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| Its called bait and switch. Here's a question. Suppose for whatever reason you have to blow W2K or XP off your machine and install from scratch. Ok, you've done that, now you need to run all the updates, security patches, etc for W2K. Has anyone ever added up all those critters? Isn't it approaching at least a gigs worth?
That could substantially cut into your 2gig a day limit. Suppose also you have to PCs at home and did the same thing. I wonder if Comcast ever took those things into consideration. I doubt it. |
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| reply to Anomus
Re: Too bad!!! Thing is, most of the "all-you-can-eat" places who tried to bar large eaters, or limit diners LOST.
I remember a near riot at a Howard Johnson's near here about thirty years ago when they stopped serving all the chicken the kids could eat. They called the cops and tried to have the kids ejected.
They ended up having to serve the chicken.
Other places would give you less and less of the main course and more french fries. The french fries went back..... |
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bhugel
join:2001-12-09
Easton, PA | VOIP What are these companies going to do when everyone jumps onto VOIP??
"Beep- We're sorry, your call can not be completed because you have exceeded your allocation for the month, Please try again later"
These companies need to grow the networks to fit the customer base. |
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 roamer1sticking it out at you
join:2001-03-24
Atlanta, GA | reply to Stumbles
Re: Its called bait and switch. said by Stumbles:
Here's a question. Suppose for whatever reason you have to blow W2K or XP off your machine and install from scratch. Ok, you've done that, now you need to run all the updates, security patches, etc for W2K. Has anyone ever added up all those critters? Isn't it approaching at least a gigs worth?
I did this over the weekend on a "new" laptop, and I figure I used around 200 or 250 MB to get XP "current"... (One batch of patches alone was 84 MB, others were various sizes. Then there was updating Norton SystemWorks, drivers, etc...)
-SC
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No-Bull SE US Wireless Info: »www.sewireless.info/
Atlanta Apt/Condo Cable & Broadband Info: »www.atlaptcable.info/ |
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| If you get capped... ...I'd wager that you most likely deserved to be capped. Or cut off. Probably serving and/or downloading stuff that you're (a) not supposed to under general ISP TOS provisions/copyright laws or (b) that's taxing a network resource in your local area. Turn off the PC, go outside, and look at that lovely thing called the sun every once in awhile and you'll keep Comcast (or your ISP) off your back. 
IronChefMorimoto
P.S. - Seriously -- they're just trying to get you outside and reasonably tanned. Part of their public image plan.
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Desktop: Abit KG7-RAID | AMD AthlonXP 1800+ | 512MB PC2100 DDR | 128MB ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
Laptop: Dell Latitude C810 | Intel PIII-M | 512MB PC133 SDRAM | 32MB Nvidia GeForce2 Go |
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wwb_99
join:2003-02-14
Washington, DC | Actually have done the math Actually have done the math, for win2000.
From a fresh, SP-0 install to fully patched SP4 w/ IE6 and MS Media 9 is now about 275 megs.
WWB |
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 miclVisit Lovely Downtown Port StarboardPremium
join:2001-10-25
Silver Spring, MD | reply to coastdweller4
Re: Riding the fence said by coastdweller4:
Economics
As soon as you state what your limit is, someone will undersell you for the sake of taking your business whether they can handle the added business or not. Today, everyone thinks they can be a broadband, webhosting, ISP, provider.
Comcast is obviously protecting their assets (Their customer base) yet allowing the customer to think there is no limit, and that friends is riding the fence.
Nothing wrong with it.
Whether they are protecting their assets or not, they can't just lie to their customers in the name of competition.
If any customers reasonably rely on their representation of unlimited bandwidth and then get disconnected for excercising their "unlimited bandwidth", then Comcast in running afoul of fair trade practices and should be held accountable.
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If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture |
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