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Wouldn't Comcast want customers to know, then? Why would Comcast not be jumping in joy at the chance to explicitly state "Hickville Municipal Broadband Tax/Fee"
by crote 3y ago
Wouldn't Comcast want customers to know, then? Why would Comcast not be jumping in joy at the chance to explicitly state "Hickville Municipal Broadband Tax/Fee" on their bills and get people to complain to the municipality about it?
- tptacek 3y agoBecause nobody realizes that these are taxes; most customers just look at the bottom line, then scan up to see all the nickle-and-dime bullshit Comcast is charging them, and municipalities know this and slip into it. It's a dark pattern.
- crote 3y agoIt sounds like Comcast would not be having this problem if they were being honest - which is exactly what the FCC is trying to do.
- ryandrake 3y agoI don't think anyone cares if they are called fees or taxes. The question is: Why can't Comcast calculate/list them at the point of sale? They seem to be able to easily calculate and list them when it's time to bill. Shouldn't there be an API endpoint somewhere called listAllFeesForStreetAddress(address) that both the billing and the marketing system can call? The fact that the billing systems do this but the marketing systems don't must be a deliberate choice by the company.
- tptacek 3y agoWhy aren't you asking for a legal standard municipalities have to adhere to to publish a machine-readable summary of cable/internet franchise fees given a URL with a zip code embedded in it? It's the municipality behind these fees, not Comcast.
- ryandrake 3y agoBecause it is not relevant to the question of why Comcast can easily list these costs on one web page but not on another page.