New Homeowner Has To Sell Home Because Of ComcastÂ’s Incompetence, Lack Of Competition

[FlyingPenguin]

I know there's a couple of you who can relate to this...

http://consumerist.com/2015/03/25/new-h ... mpetition/

Only months after moving into his new home in Washington state, Consumerist reader Seth is already looking to sell his house. He didn’t lose his job or discover that the property is haunted. No, Seth can’t stay much longer because no one can provide broadband service to his address; even though Comcast and CenturyLink both misled him into thinking he’d be connected to their networks and in spite of the fact that his county runs a high-speed fiberoptic network that goes very near to his property....{more}

[Pugsley]

I would sue Comcast and Century Link for lost time.

[wvjohn]

I could write a long story on this issue. Comcast only wants about $8k to run a line about 2000 feet up the road to me. When I first moved up here, I ordered my Comcast service transferred from where I was. Never heard back from them. I started bugging Comcast business when they kept sending me fliers

It is not a coincidence that the FCC cable division if run by a former Comcast (or similar) exec.

I love reading the stories about apartment buildings in Asia where all the local cable providers have switching boxes in the basement and sales people will call on you in person when you first move in to try and get your business. As memory serves, their low end service is 50/5.

I feel sorry for the guy and can relate, but if broadband was a 100% need for my business, I would have wanted see it in action first.

Cable industry has also blocked so many municipalities from offering service. I read a good article about Memphis, TN recently. They set up a 1000+ municipal system, and amazingly businesses are relocating there.

[FlyingPenguin]

Yeah, I think what I would have done is paid the previous owner to have Comcast install internet, and then just cancel the account (the one nice thing about Comcast is that you aren't on a contract unless you buy into a bundle). But then again, I'm enough of a techie to know, in the first place, whether or not there's a line run to the house already, and that would have been a red flag for me.

[Pugsley]

Granted this was many years ago. I had dialup and the phone company had just put in some new stuff down the road for a new subdivision. I asked again and again when broadband would be available to me and they kept putting it off for years. So one night I make up a bunch of 1000' cables and go open up that box and just pluged my cable into a unused port on the switch and ran the cable on the ground back to my house.

It went through 6 peoples yards but I didn't care. I called them up and told them that I could and do have broadband at my house. Later that week they buried a cable and served about 10 more houses from that node. I had removed the cable but they knew someone had been in there.

[wvjohn]

Two houses ago, there was a cable box for the subdivision across the street from me. Comcast claimed that they didn't offer service in that area b/c is wasn't wired. One of my neighbors finally got hooked up, he managed to get a cable tech to come out and do a feasibility study, the guy said WTF? and hooked him up. A couple of months later the came out and ran a line for me, which had to go halfway around a 2 acre lot b/c that's the way the power lines ran, buried the cable in the yard and that was that. Pugs - back in the day we could do lots of things without worrying about black suburbans showing up

[Pugsley]

Yep.

[Losbot]

Lmao

[ZYFER]

Seeing where the guy is, another option is Metropcs. They cover a large part of that county and right now you can get $50 unlimited phone (extra $5 for the hotspot) from them.

This guy could buy a phone which has a short return window and the service does as well to test it out. No Contract either. It runs on the T-mobile network, so it should be available since its on the list.

The saddest part about this article is that the county is a 60 mile drive from Seattle which is the 21st most populated city in the country, and the man can't get broadband in his home. This is why internet needs to be reclassified as a utility.

Fortunately for me, I haven't had issues like many have experienced, but I don't have Comcast either.

I remember having Verizon DSL, and their website said I couldn't get it but when I called I could signup for me and did get it installed and was using it. Then I go online to check again, and it thinks I can't get it when I am using it... Right now it says I can get Verizon DSL but not FIOS, who knows, maybe with a call I might find out a truthful answer.

Keep hoping Google Fiber will get out here, will get it in a heartbeat.