Comcast subscribers are finding out the hard way that excessive bandwidth use could lead to an unexpected termination of service, as well as a subsequent one-year reconnection ban. The kicker, however, is that Comcast refuses to provide any hard data to customers documenting their bandwidth usage.
Taken from the storied pages of the How To Stick It To Your Customers manifesto, Comcast has once again proven that just when you think a company can’t possibly tarnish their public image any further, there’s always a new low that can be achieved.
According to PC Magazine, Comcast is now pulling the plug on “bandwidth hogs” and will not allow those customers to re-establish service for a full year. Of course, subscribers have no actual way of monitoring their bandwidth usage, and Comcast is all but refusing to provide any of its own data to support their decisions.
In the PC Magazine Article, Comcast outlines the process:
The customers who are notified of excessive use typically and repeatedly consume exponentially more bandwidth than an average residential user, which would include, for example, the equivalent of sending 256,000 photos a month, or sending 13 million e-mails every month (or 18,000 emails every hour, every day, all month).
In these rare instances, Comcast’s policy is to proactively contact the customer via phone to work with them and address the issue or help them select a more appropriate commercial-grade Comcast product.
Frank Carreiro is a former Comcast subscriber who got the ax from the Internet provider despite being assured by the company’s customer service department that he was in no danger of service termination.
Carreiro finally got Comcast to provide a figure concerning his bandwidth usage. In a blog post, however, he reveals that the information he received wasn’t accurate when compared with figures from his current provider:
My ISP (xmission.com) provides a stats section where I can see exactly what I’m consuming. The numbers are shocking. I’ve learned we are actually using much less than Comcast told us. I could post what my firewall is telling me but hey, I might have faked it right? After all, I’m a bandwidth hog. Or am I?
It’s baffling why Comcast would voluntarily terminate paying customers. When looking at figures posted by fellow writer David A. Utter, however, perhaps the company is afraid that subscribers might actually be getting their money’s worth out of the bandwidth.
