Comcast Charges Customer $1500 For Data They Didn’t Use

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Good ol' Comcast. Where would we be without stories like this? Sad part is, the people even unplugged their cable modem for a week and Comcast still showed that their account was using data. I'd say it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on your bill if you are a Comcast customer.

The testing process, though, did indicate that Comcast’s meter was not occupying the same reality as the subscribers’ home. It racked up high usage during a time when nobody was at home to use the internet, and showed low usage during a four-hour stretch when they were actively streaming video. In the end, nothing got solved. The ludicrous bill went away, thanks to media attention, but neither Comcast nor the customers never did figure out what caused their meter to go nuts… and Comcast never admitted that it did.
 
That's because Comcast's provisioning system has been screwed up since before 2003 and STILL continues to be screwed up.
 
I read a much longer version of this article this morning. Apparently, Comcast hired a company to test their metering, and found it 99% accurate. Of course, they only tested just under 60 connections. Out of their millions of customers.

If you go to a restaurant, or a grocery store, you get an itemized bill. You don't with Comcast. They say you are over, then claim that their tool is "perfect", and refuse to tell you where your data usage went.

I'm lucky in that I have at least 3 ISP's to choose from: AT&T, Comcast and WoW. I'm sure there are more, one of the benefits of being in suburban Chicago. I currently have WoW, and have no data caps. While I want to move, I'm loathing getting stuck with some company that has caps. And then lies about my data usage.
 
Good ol' Comcast. Where would we be without stories like this? Sad part is, the people even unplugged their cable modem for a week and Comcast still showed that their account was using data. I'd say it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on your bill if you are a Comcast customer.

The testing process, though, did indicate that Comcast’s meter was not occupying the same reality as the subscribers’ home. It racked up high usage during a time when nobody was at home to use the internet, and showed low usage during a four-hour stretch when they were actively streaming video. In the end, nothing got solved. The ludicrous bill went away, thanks to media attention, but neither Comcast nor the customers never did figure out what caused their meter to go nuts… and Comcast never admitted that it did.

This is one of many reasons I have business class. do not have to worry about these stupid meters, I get to always deal with Americans...that's just two reasons..:)
 
Having a problem now with Comcast because they reported me at 1.7TB when my usage was at a few hundred GB. And then the month after they hit me with that, they upped the data cap to 1TB. This is for a household with two xboxes and 1 pc. Yeah pretty weak I know. Now of course their metering system is accurate yet the billing system was double charging me for HBO. Meanwhile when my power goes out my router loses its usage tracking. Then again I guess its up to all consumers to upgrade their hardware to something DDWRT and install their own monitoring.
 
It's obvious to me what's going on here; Concast has registered somebody else's meter to that account and is unable to see what they've done wrong.

When I swapped out a Concast cable box awhile back, Concast assigned my new cable box to somebody else's account. In the process, they gave me a piece of paper with that random person's account info on it; if I hadn't been paying attention, both that other person and me would have had a hell of a problem.
 
Hell, I can't even get them to bill me. Not that I'm reallllly complaining.
 
I had a failed attempt at hooking up Comcast for Internet service recently (my DSL company was having a technical issue that they were refusing to acknowledge). The modem was connected for about half a day while their support people were telling me that the problem was mine (it wasn't - frankly, neither the cable nor the phone lines in this area are adequate). I disconnected the modem, told them I was canceling, and that was that. A month later, they sent me a bill for a month of service. I called them, told them I'd be happy to pay for 1 day of service and not a penny more. They said not to worry about it and they were not charging me anything. Two weeks after that I got a phone call telling me I owed for 2 months of service and that I would be in collections if I didn't pay immediately. I lost my shit before hanging up. I called their customer service 10 minutes later, asked for a supervisor and sat there and refreshed the web view of my account until they zeroed it.

As annoying as my occasional outages and slow speed are (I can do one 1080p equivalent stream but that's my limit), the experience confirmed once again that Comcast is the absolute worst.
 
Yeah. I simply will not move into a comcast area. Have had cox forever and never any issues. They always hook me up.
 
Having a problem now with Comcast because they reported me at 1.7TB when my usage was at a few hundred GB. And then the month after they hit me with that, they upped the data cap to 1TB. This is for a household with two xboxes and 1 pc. Yeah pretty weak I know. Now of course their metering system is accurate yet the billing system was double charging me for HBO. Meanwhile when my power goes out my router loses its usage tracking. Then again I guess its up to all consumers to upgrade their hardware to something DDWRT and install their own monitoring.

A small UPS, enough to power the cable modem and router (and maybe a laptop), isn't very expensive.
 
I've had Comcast in the past and hated them like poison. I have Mediacom now, and they aren't perfect, but much better.
 
It's pretty appalling to not have a limitless data plan. I have multiple full speed LTE connections that have a fixed price of 30 dollars/month and no data cap. In a cable modem or DSL connection data caps are completely unheard of.
 
Not surprising.

We found out a while ago that my friend, who was using a Comcast modem/router, found that transferring and using data on his NAS was actually counting AGAINST his monthly data cap.

He eventually just bought his own router and modem and the problem went away.

Comcast are some scumbags.
 
I can't do it. I will never go back, as much as I hate my current ISP... I got 99 problems, but a cap ain't one. I can blow through 300GB in a few hours, why would I want to make that my whole month!?

PMKUnHB.png
 
I can't do it. I will never go back, as much as I hate my current ISP... I got 99 problems, but a cap ain't one. I can blow through 300GB in a few hours, why would I want to make that my whole month!?

Uh, what are you doing exactly? Are you torrenting 24/7? :geek:
 
Good ol' Comcast. Where would we be without stories like this? Sad part is, the people even unplugged their cable modem for a week and Comcast still showed that their account was using data. I'd say it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on your bill if you are a Comcast customer.

The testing process, though, did indicate that Comcast’s meter was not occupying the same reality as the subscribers’ home. It racked up high usage during a time when nobody was at home to use the internet, and showed low usage during a four-hour stretch when they were actively streaming video. In the end, nothing got solved. The ludicrous bill went away, thanks to media attention, but neither Comcast nor the customers never did figure out what caused their meter to go nuts… and Comcast never admitted that it did.

The problem may be "Intermittent Internet Service due to Broadcast TV". I had the same problem with Comcast saying I was using 3 GB/hr or 2.1 TB/month. I changed my password on my wireless router (16 random characters), then turned off my wireless, then unplugged my cable modem, all to no avail. Comcast was saying that I was still using data. As a last attempt, I went outside and unplugged all the cable connection in the house, and the problem stopped. Then I plugged back in my cable modem only, and there was still no problem. When I looked at the logs on my cable modem, I noticed that I had a new Channel ID of 129. The frequency for that cable modem channel exactly matches a local TV station, WLBT. There was my problem. The broadcast TV was going through unused cable ports at my house which messed up Comcast's metering. I reported it on the Xfinity website.
 
Dude, they put a meter on it. I think it may be time to call your local state department of weights and measures. If they don't care, call your local legislator, tell them how their constituents are getting defrauded, AND how the entity doing it has pockets many billions of dollars deep and is fraudulently metering a measurable quantity.
 
It's bad enough they want to meter data at all, but at the very least they need to make sure that if they are going to do such an awful thing, that it is accurate.

I don't have a clue how much data I use, and I'd like to keep it that way. if my plan went metered, i'd switch to something else overnight, and I'd never sign up for a new plan if it only came in metered varieties.
 
Not surprising.

We found out a while ago that my friend, who was using a Comcast modem/router, found that transferring and using data on his NAS was actually counting AGAINST his monthly data cap.

He eventually just bought his own router and modem and the problem went away.

Comcast are some scumbags.

Hey man, local LAN peering agreements are expensive. How else do you expect them to profit?!? Moving data from one end of the house to the other without limit is just plain abusive. Don't you know that you are in a a comcast area, yeah sure it is your home, but that's their turf!
 
I've had Comcast in the past and hated them like poison. I have Mediacom now, and they aren't perfect, but much better.
I lived in a Mediacom area about five years ago. Had constant outages and they sent their tech out numerous times and never found a problem. When I moved I turned in the modem and cable box in person. They then claimed that I didn't and sent a collection agency after me. Fuck Mediacom.
 
Makes more sense than ever today to include which ISP's are available in the neighborhood as house/apartment shopping criteria.

I made sure FiOS was available in my area before I signed my lease :p
 
Well since corporations are people too... Comcast may your crotch burn hotter then the blazes of hell and be infested with the fleas of thousand camels!!! And may your arms be to short to scratch!!
 
The problem may be "Intermittent Internet Service due to Broadcast TV". I had the same problem with Comcast saying I was using 3 GB/hr or 2.1 TB/month. I changed my password on my wireless router (16 random characters), then turned off my wireless, then unplugged my cable modem, all to no avail. Comcast was saying that I was still using data. As a last attempt, I went outside and unplugged all the cable connection in the house, and the problem stopped. Then I plugged back in my cable modem only, and there was still no problem. When I looked at the logs on my cable modem, I noticed that I had a new Channel ID of 129. The frequency for that cable modem channel exactly matches a local TV station, WLBT. There was my problem. The broadcast TV was going through unused cable ports at my house which messed up Comcast's metering. I reported it on the Xfinity website.
That's some pretty impressive troubleshooting. I bet nobody ever follows up on it.
 
downloading 60 full copies of an mmo, 80 1080p movies from iTunes... I could see it being used but not likely. The odds are there is someone stealing cable between them and the slam or Symmetrical Logic Access Module or router. I still think it is funny when they call the router or digital switch boards a fancy name so no one figures out that half the cost is the property they are on not the hardware or the setup. There is two ways to build isp nodes bury and expensive router in the ground that over heats and cost about eighty thousand dollars to set up a construction site and get the permits in an urban area or they buy a building and run the wires to the building so they maintenance to the electronics is done in a temperature controlled room without having to dig up any ground to push the reset button on it.

My guess is there tool simply measure the load on the circuit like the electric company does it is close they assume it is right it is not they count packet headers. Or they could simply count packet headers but if someone's mtu is set really small and the packet headers process the mtu's of any size then a one hundred megabyte packet would look it a five byte packet. those are just random numbers since routers can break up packets as long as they reassemble them before they leave their network. meaning header header 000561 footer footer could look like 0000 1111 0000 0561 1111 0000 as long as when it hands it to the next network it looks like 000561...

Everything you send across a network has a size and to in order to sent it you can stream it or you can use get or put.... those second two need sizes and steaming the packets can simply be increments as they are sent or counted. of course that has nothing to with cs and billing... snicker. those are people some decent people, some griefters, some bored people and some sleavy people, and many more motivations and outlooks on if they care about fixing the issue or not.
 
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