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This does not surprise me, in fact a Comcast technician told me they do this (on a much smaller scale) by disconnecting or cutting competitors' cable runs to bu
by kodt 9y ago
This does not surprise me, in fact a Comcast technician told me they do this (on a much smaller scale) by disconnecting or cutting competitors' cable runs to buildings they are working on (and also sometimes their own).
I lived in a multi-unit apartment building and one day noticed my internet was down (I was a Comcast subscriber). I was suspicious because a Comcast technician was just out earlier in the day installing internet for a new tenant in the building. After going through the phone support steps they scheduled a technician to come out and check the line.
A couple days later, when the technician arrives, he checks the line only to confirm no signal. Then he goes out back to the cable box outside. I was unable to check this myself since it was mounted high on the building and required a ladder to access. Within a few minutes it was working again.
The Comcast technician then told me my line was just disconnected. I asked him if the previous technician made a mistake during the install. He said something along the lines of: "No, often in these multi-unit buildings we will disconnect people at random in case they are trying to steal cable. If they are a paying customer they will call and get it turned back on". He then went on about how they would have fun disconnecting competitors, and that competitors did it back to them etc.. all very nonchalantly and candidly.
I then called Comcast and got a 3 day credit for the outage they created "intentionally" to prove I am a customer.
- jajern 9y agoTypically all that is in those boxes is a coupler. A guy I used to know still had service running to his line. He was actually stealing it though. He just kept hooking it back up after they would come remove it.
- matt_wulfeck 9y agoDoes that still work on the day and age of encrypted cable boxes and modems that require 802.whatever certs?
- jajern 9y agoThis was before full-digital so probably not.
- douche 9y agoI've had this happen to me as well. Comcast technician came out to hook up one of the other tenants in the building, and went through the Comcast hookup box (there's only one for the building) and disconnected all the splitters that went out to the other units in the building - it's an old building with some almost certainly not-up-to-code coax running all over the place along the outside to hit all the rooms where drops have been put in... Meanwhile, the video conference I was on at the time suddenly dropped. Started to make me think about whether the other tenants were also getting the higher speeds I was paying extra for...
- javiramos 9y agoExactly this happened to me about a month ago. I switched from Provider_A to Provider_B. Provider_A totally sabotaged the connection hardware when it disconnected the service. Provider_B's technician had a very hard time redoing the connection hardware. It's amazing to me that all these connections are still physicial (as opposed to some software-defined switching between providers). Something akin to software-defined networking.
- Analemma_ 9y ago> It's amazing to me that all these connections are still physicial (as opposed to some software-defined switching between providers). Something akin to software-defined networking. What you're describing is called "local loop unbundling". Lots of other countries do it, it works great, and it would solve most if not all of the problems with the telco market in the US... so naturally these companies lobby hard to make sure it'll never happen.
- pjc50 9y ago> Something akin to software-defined networking What you want is "local loop unbundling". It's how this works in Europe where you have artificial non-free markets with real price competition, rather than natural monopolies without price competition as in the US.
- masklinn 9y agoAFAIK in LLU cases the (unbundled) ISP still needs to install their connection hardware at the local loop. VNO is the fully software one.
- moriarty-s3a 9y agoThis used to be the case in the US after the Telecom Act of 1996. However, the FCC decided on their own to give the ILECs a grace period of a year to implement LLU and then kept extending the grace period. After the dot com bust and the following recession in the early 2000s, most of the CLECs went out of business and Congress gave up and removed that requirement in 2006. The state PUCs didn't do much enforcement either, but the FCC deciding not to enforce the law killed it.
- kw71 9y agoVerizon engages in these shenanigans too.
- accountyaccount 9y agoI actually had a FiOS installer tell me that he cut a neighboring building's Comcast line because my line needed to run through their property and they were dicks about letting him on the property to run my lines. He was almost unreasonably nice and professional to me otherwise. One of the best/cleanest installs I've ever had for anything.
- alexanderstocko 9y agoSomething similar just happened to me yesterday. My condo building has multiple providers: AT&T, Comcast, and Gigamonster. Apparently a Comcast technician "accidentally" disconnected my 1gbps Gigamonster service while setting up a new Comcast client in my floor's Telecom utility closet. I've lived in highrise complexes for the past decade and have experienced this type of outage four times. The common denominator seems to be Comcast.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ethbro 9y agoA Comcast tech (who was out as a preliminary to getting a run buried to my then-unserved house) cut my ATT DSL line because he "assumed it wasn't being used." (Even though he wasn't installing anything that day) Since then, I watch Comcast techs work, tell them exactly where to term and where to stop, and then to get the hell off my property.
- jamiepenney 9y agoI live in New Zealand and had Vodafone do the same thing when they installed the cable internet for the previous owners. They cut both the phone line and the satellite lines leading into the house. No bloody reason for that to happen, the Chorus tech that came out to fix it said he found the same problem at a bunch of other houses in the area.
- grawlinson 9y agoSo glad the Sky-Voda merger was declined. Two shit companies coming together like that can only mean one hell of a monopoly.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoVodafone Cable/FiberX is all sorts of terrible. Thank god we have a common installer for fibre, makes life a lot easier having only Chorus/whoever doing the fibre installs.
- qmalzp 9y agoVery similar story happened to me.
- openmosix 9y agoIf it is true, what is fascinating is that it means Comcast has no way to know who is a legitimate customer and who is not - if they have to rely on the customer to make the call and verify to be a legitimate user. How can they run a business like that?
- chadgeidel 9y agoThey can run a business like that by making the barrier to switch providers very high, and the ease to collect bills very low. This is pretty much standard experience in the US. Even if one lives in a region where there are competitors, it's annoyingly difficult to switch providers so most just don't.
- Larrikin 9y agoWhat is difficult about switching when theres actually competitors. I finally live in an area with multiple competitors and it was fairly painless. Comcast tripled my bill for internet after one year and was also charging me for occasionally going over their data limit they set after I had been a customer for a couple months. I called Comcast and specified the day I wanted my service to end and had it coincide with the day I scheduled for RCN to connect my internet. The only annoying part was having to tell them more than once that there was no discount that would make me want to stay a customer since they were just going to pull the same crap in another year.
- rprospero 9y agoPart of the problem is that getting Comcast to close your account can be a craps shoot. For you, it worked just fine, like it does most of the time. For my mother, it was a nightmare. My father passed away a few years back and my mother was trying to cut back on expenses, so she went to cancel the Comcast. The account was in my father's name, so she expected there to be some trouble. Comcast required that she bring in my father's death certificate. Also, they would be keeping the death certificate for their own records and a photocopy wouldn't do, so she'd need to go down to the county corner and get a second copy of the death certificate printed and hand signed. While this all seemed fairly onerous, I can at least appreciate the formality from an security standpoint. After jumping through all of the hoops set forth by the Comcast, my mother drove out to the local branch office and presented the paperwork. The case worker brought didn't know how to handle the situation where someone had actually done everything that Comcast had asked and brought in the branch manager. He then told my mother that they needed my father to personally deliver his own death certificate before they would close the account.
- r00fus 9y agoA 3 day credit? Sounds like they need a Public Utility Commission to lay the smack on them for usurious behavior. But they're an "entertainment" provider, not a utility. What a joke is our regulatory process. Completely captured.
- justinlink 9y agoLast year a neighbor had a comcast tech who identified a noisy signal somewhere on our block. He proceeded to disconnect every other house on the block and then left. He never told anyone at Comcast or the other houses. Took hours of battling with phone support and a two day wait to have another tech who came out and identified the problem. He said they do this often to get into houses to find problems but he's supposed to put a note on each door and put a note on our accounts. Whoops.
- rrauenza 9y agoYeah, happened to us, too. No note on our account, no notification.
- sxates 9y agoThis happened to me as well - Comcast tech A gets on our house to disconnect a "noisy line" and doesn't tell us or anyone else about it, requiring me to wait for Comcast tech B to come out and reconnect. And of course we heard nothing more about this "noisy line" issue, with no changes made to our connection. Just one of the reasons I no longer use comcast.
- at-fates-hands 9y agoReminds me of my days as a phreaker and phone slamming. It sounds pretty similar, albeit without the actual changing of the service provider.
- rsj_hn 9y agoI was in a multi-unit building as a customer of RCN (back when they were in SF) and a Comcast tech cut my wires one day. I was without service for a few days. I deduced it was a comcast tech because the day it was a new neighbor had their comcast service installed, and when I traced the wire, it was clearly cut.
- alllbcuz777 9y agoAll because everyone needs a job "The markets don't create waste!"
- Chaebixi 9y agoI used to live in an apartment building and park next to one of the cable distribution boxes. One day, while was sitting in my car, I saw a Comcast technician walk up to the box, open it, clip one of the wires with wirecutters, close it up, and move on, all in less than a minute. I assume he was acting against a cable pirate, but it was so fast I have no idea if he actually got the right unit.
- londons_explore 9y agoGiving himself extra overtime work? Gotta be quick because his van probably has a GPS tracker on it, and he'd have to explain to his boss why his truck was parked there for 20 mins otherwise.
- MertsA 9y agoCable pirates generally don't know how to terminate coax. There's terminators that require a special tool to remove intended to deter cable theft but the design of those terminators means that just about anyone who's determined can open it with something like a fork. If they can't open it, they can always just disconnect one of the neighbors and use that or try to remove one of the terminators via brute force and break the tap. Cutting the drop cable would be very obvious to a cable thief and they wouldn't be able to do anything without being able to terminate coax.
- 36bydesign 9y agoThis happened to me in the Bay Area (Walnut Creek) about three months ago. I thought it was an isolated event. Fuck them.
- rincebrain 9y agoI had a similar, if less malicious, story from my past. At a prior home, I had Comcast, and my internet suddenly went out one day. Tech comes out, confirms it's not something inside, pops outside onto the pole behind the house and it comes back. A few days later, it suddenly goes completely out again. Call, get another tech out, he goes up on the pole, comes back and says "yeah, there's not enough plugs up there so the last few techs have presumably just been unplugging someone and plugging whoever complained in", and then we get some time spent to remedy this situation. [1] I spent a bit of time wondering how many people might have had spontaneous outages before this tech who actually tried to address the issue came out, as I knew quite a few people on my block had Comcast (aside from the xfinitywifi, you could tell because they'd all come outside almost immediately if they were at home and a persistent outage happened). [1] - I have no idea what the equivalent terms or appearance for a coax patch panel would be, my apologies for any mangling.
- cvburgess 9y agoThis happened to me with BrightHouse (now Charter) - they cut my line thinking it was a neighbor. They told me its customary because if they disconnect a paying customer they will call in. I went 5 days without internet because the tech's availability and my work schedule didn't match up until the weekend. I was credited for 5 days. I was NOT amused, but I hope there is some regulation in the future.
- drdeadringer 9y agoAt least you got a credit. I've been less lucky.
- dsparkman 9y agoYeah, they do this all the time. When I was having Comcast install the internet at my home the technician cut the satellite cables running into my home. I ended up having to have Dish come out and fix what the Comcast tech had done. The Comcast tech was like "sorry, but we always 'disconnect' old runs"
- ransom1538 9y agoofftopic: I always wondered why people don't do more internet sharing these days and screw over comcast? If you live in a multi-unit apartment and you get 100mps down and your neighbor does too - why on earth is everyone paying $60 permonth just for internet? In college (as a broke person) we all shared internet. But now in multi-unit apartment's everyone removes guest wifis and pays $60 each for internet. Sure you might be the %1 that does hardcore gaming, and you shouldn't share with other hulu types, but the old lady down the hallway who uses AOL mail doesn't need 500mps down -- and you both should cut costs --- and fuck over comcast.
- Klathmon 9y agoI know the reason I don't, because if my ISP were to find out (or even suspect this) and ban my account, I'd need to move. At my location the only other option besides my current ISP is sat based internet with crazy high ping times, and I work from home. If my ISP drops my service, I'm fucked.
- e28eta 9y agoI recently moved, and we paid for Comcast installation (instead of self-install) because at our utility connection there was just a bundle of cables with the ends cut off. I didn’t understand why anyone would have cut them. Now I’m upset that these shenanigans actually cost us money.
- nsaslideface 9y agoHmmm yea maybe time to start recording all conversations with internet technicians from now on?