Comcast Customer Discovers Huge Mistake In Company’s Data Cap Meter

Megalith

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
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“There was a technical error associated with his account, which we have since corrected.” (But we have no idea how many other people were wrongly charged, tee hee!)

Comcast told Oleg that its system had him confused with another customer, he said. “It turns out their system had my modem MAC address entered incorrectly, there was an off-by-one typo that was hard to see so they were counting data from some modem who knows where,” Oleg told Ars. Before discovering that mistake, a Comcast customer service rep had told Oleg that the company's meter is "94.6 percent accurate." After the truth was revealed, Comcast restored his three courtesy months. Oleg says he would switch broadband providers but Comcast is the only viable option where he lives.
 
And Comcast will give millions to politicians in his area alone to keep being the only viable option where he lives.
 
94.6% accuracy is shit. That means more than 1 in 20 is wrong. How many millions of wrong results is that throughout Comcast's customers?
 
I had an ISP once that tried to slam me with overages. I had changed plans, from a grandfathered "unlimited data" to a faster package. I was not made aware of any data caps. Then they said i was at 4tb of data and would be slammed with overages. Needless to say, I was not happy and I am no longer a customer.

This ISP also offers business lines for 3x the cost of home connections and they have the same speed, TOS, subscriber agreements: you are not permitted to host any sort of a server, no VPN, email, or web server. Nothing, period.
 
scobar said:
I had an ISP once that tried to slam me with overages. I had changed plans, from a grandfathered "unlimited data" to a faster package. I was not made aware of any data caps. Then they said i was at 4tb of data and would be slammed with overages. Needless to say, I was not happy and I am no longer a customer.

This ISP also offers business lines for 3x the cost of home connections and they have the same speed, TOS, subscriber agreements: you are not permitted to host any sort of a server, no VPN, email, or web server. Nothing, period.
Click to expand...

That's a common practice. It's the same system. Little known fact, you can take your home cable modem and plug it into your business - it'll work just fine (assuming it's not physically disconnected and same ISP). They use the "oh, you get better support" argument but it's really just about squeezing more profit out of it because of the lack of competition.
 
jfreund said:
94.6% accuracy is shit. That means more than 1 in 20 is wrong. How many millions of wrong results is that throughout Comcast's customers?
Click to expand...

If Amazon had a 94.6% accuracy rate in shipments, they would be out of business in less than a week.

Imaging the uproar if the police only had a 94.6% in not shooting people they stopped.
 
nutzo said:
If Amazon had a 94.6% accuracy rate in shipments, they would be out of business in less than a week.

Imaging the uproar if the police only had a 94.6% in not shooting people they stopped.
Click to expand...

depends on the neighborhood...sometimes it seems they don't beat that by much


but yes, your point is well taken, in what world is that acceptable?
 
jfreund said:
94.6% accuracy is shit. That means more than 1 in 20 is wrong. How many millions of wrong results is that throughout Comcast's customers?
Click to expand...

exactly what i was thinking. why even have data caps in the first place and then this miserable way to even handle them..
 
Weights and Measures are the ones who keep honest people honest, by auditing and testing anything that relies on metering. They are one making sure people are not being cheated at the gas pump...

So let's get the bureau of weights and measures involved! If Comcast insists on usage-based billing, then its routers and billing infrastructure should be inspected, certified, and sealed just like gas pumps, water meters, and electric meters. A sticker should be placed over the management port of any network device to prevent tampering, and by law IP based administration should be disabled. Any time Comcast want's to make a configuration change, that device should need to be re-certified.

However first, we need a standard way of measuring the data, because there's a heck of a lot of different ways, so we need to standardize. Things like - what headers are or aren't included - IP level headers? transport headers? (Some providers charge for DOCSIS headers too!). Then you have to define the quantities - what's 1 GB - 10^9 or 2^30?

Next, what traffic do we use? This one is important because there's a LOT of unsolicited traffic out there - do we count it? Or not? Does being the victim of a pingflood mean you'll be billed extra? Seriously, these are important questions (especially unsolicited traffic).

Then we can develop measurement boxes that Comcast and others have to use to determine traffic, sealed and inspected like your electric, water or gas meter with a display that's human readable, so when you get your bill (no one said the meter couldn't be electronically readable) you can check against the box.

Anything measured for trade has to be certified. If you look closely, you'll see seals, calibration stickers and sometimes expiry dates on the meters (be it gas (natural or petrol), electricity, or water).

All of this should be paid for directly by Comcast as well.

Yes, we do this because people have cheated in the past. Scales that were off, calibrated weights (for balances) that weren't correct, etc.
 
/usr/sbin said:
Weights and Measures are the ones who keep honest people honest, by auditing and testing anything that relies on metering. They are one making sure people are not being cheated at the gas pump...

So let's get the bureau of weights and measures involved! If Comcast insists on usage-based billing, then its routers and billing infrastructure should be inspected, certified, and sealed just like gas pumps, water meters, and electric meters. A sticker should be placed over the management port of any network device to prevent tampering, and by law IP based administration should be disabled. Any time Comcast want's to make a configuration change, that device should need to be re-certified.

However first, we need a standard way of measuring the data, because there's a heck of a lot of different ways, so we need to standardize. Things like - what headers are or aren't included - IP level headers? transport headers? (Some providers charge for DOCSIS headers too!). Then you have to define the quantities - what's 1 GB - 10^9 or 2^30?

Next, what traffic do we use? This one is important because there's a LOT of unsolicited traffic out there - do we count it? Or not? Does being the victim of a pingflood mean you'll be billed extra? Seriously, these are important questions (especially unsolicited traffic).

Then we can develop measurement boxes that Comcast and others have to use to determine traffic, sealed and inspected like your electric, water or gas meter with a display that's human readable, so when you get your bill (no one said the meter couldn't be electronically readable) you can check against the box.

Anything measured for trade has to be certified. If you look closely, you'll see seals, calibration stickers and sometimes expiry dates on the meters (be it gas (natural or petrol), electricity, or water).

All of this should be paid for directly by Comcast as well.

Yes, we do this because people have cheated in the past. Scales that were off, calibrated weights (for balances) that weren't correct, etc.
Click to expand...

^This guy, right here

You sir need to file an FCC complaint with this info

You sir need to go to your congressman's house, knock on his damn door, and get his ass moving

You sir need to go knock on your mayors door, and get him to demand comcast certify its shit in your city.

You need to do this now, like now now, like get up and go!
 
I found they were often off when i compared it to my router. I also hated how they'd arbitrarily change the end date for a period. Sometimes it was the end of the month, sometimes it was a few days early. You might think, "oh it's 30 days," but no it wasn't that either.
 
Maybe they should try to increase customer satisfaction by letting glen from the mail room dj while customers are on hold? He did deejay bills wedding ya know.
 
" “It turns out their system had my modem MAC address entered incorrectly,"

If they had wrong mac addy on their system for him, then how was he able to be online? Since the way a cable modem can get online is the mac addy of the that modem has to be linked to a valid billing account. If it was wrong then he wouldn't had internet access. If this can't be explained kinda wonder if there was more to this story.
 
/usr/sbin said:
All of this should be paid for directly by Comcast as well.
Click to expand...

Excuse me whilst I fall on my ass laughing.

Any costs "paid directly by Comcast" get passed on to customers as higher bills.
 
less than 95% (1 in 20 error) accuracy and affecting the entire nation, and Comcast plans to introduce billing on Caps? So we're gonna have some form of billing roulette game soon? And this is legal?

Even 99% would be unacceptable, I'd like to see it applied to some company's payroll system without having sparks fly, call it the random salary generator.
 
Chas said:
Excuse me whilst I fall on my ass laughing.

Any costs "paid directly by Comcast" get passed on to customers as higher bills.
Click to expand...

Yeah, good suggestion, but business will pass the increased costs onto consumers.
 
Spidey329 said:
That's a common practice. It's the same system. Little known fact, you can take your home cable modem and plug it into your business - it'll work just fine (assuming it's not physically disconnected and same ISP). They use the "oh, you get better support" argument but it's really just about squeezing more profit out of it because of the lack of competition.
Click to expand...

Its an internet connection, you can use a whole host of modems etc, that doesn't mean it is the same.

Business lines have network priority. Meaning if you live in a congested area someone with a 150/25 connection might end up with a 3.5/1.5 connection at givens times of day, something a business often times can't deal with, and the cost of that is FAR higher than paying a bit more for that speed. Also support is MASSIVE in business, down time can cost allot, and being able to call and get a TECH and have him out in under an hour can mean allot.

I had an issue, called in, which goes straight to a person, no prompts at all, they said the tech would be there after lunch (it was 10:30am), went to put on my shoes to run and get something to eat, my phone rings, it was the tech, he was already parked outside asking if I was home. After talking with him he gave me his cell number and said if I had any problems to just call him as it's his area and I don't even need to call the ticket desk.

To a normal user, this might not mean allot, but to a business, the costs are nothing.
 
Same exact thing happened to me. They charged me overage fees every month for almost a year until i finally had to cancel my service and switch to comcast business since their network is totally separate in my area. I could even see the other user's modem listed on my account when I checked data use but the asshats that work there couldn't remove it after 30+ calls and countless hours on the phone. They basically told me I had to cancel my service to stop getting billed for a guy who was using 800GB a month.
Well done Comcast, worst public utility in the USA.
 
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