'Unlimited Usage' Doesn't Mean 'Unlimited Usage'

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You would think that by now we would all know that any time you hear a company say “unlimited” there is some sort of catch.

Matt received a brochure from Comcast touting their high-speed Internet service with "Unlimited usage for a flat, monthly rate." But only one month after upgrading to Comcast's "Ultra Tier," he found out that, well... "unlimited" actually means "limited."
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Of course not if it's Comcast. Dumped them years ago and have never been happier with my current FIOS connection!
 
Evil_SPanKY said:
Of course not if it's Comcast. Dumped them years ago and have never been happier with my current FIOS connection!
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Doesn't all provider have limits?

I've never hit the Comcast limit, so I'm not complaining. I like my 15/3 connection just fine. It's very stable and hardly ever goes offline. I guess it also depends on how efficient your local cable technicians are.
 
That's ok here we in the UK we have an advertisement from an ISP that says

"TRULY UNLIMITED BROADBAND"


* 60GB/mo
 
Azhar said:
Doesn't all provider have limits?
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Nope, just the shitty ones.

I download about 400-600 GBs a month through usenet alone and have never hit a cap with my ISP. That doesn't even include what I download through steam, itunes, netflix, hulu, youtube, etc. Between myself and other people in my home I'm sure we're hitting 1+ TB a month in usage.
 
Evil_SPanKY said:
Of course not if it's Comcast. Dumped them years ago and have never been happier with my current FIOS connection!
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Lucky you. My part of Houston will probably never get FIOS, all we have is Comcast and ATT DSL/U-Verse. I'm not going to go with Comcast and their stupid 250gb cap. :mad:
 
I love this line from the Simpsons:

Lawyer: Does this look like a man who has had ALL he can eat?
 
I get nervous being on the border between Brighthouse and Comcast. When you've got the whole family on the internet watching online TV, Steam with game downloads/updates, and whatever else it's EASY to go over 250GB.

Looked in my router history.... (Incoming: 350068 MB / Outgoing: 22539 MB) <--On vacation 10 days out of that month....
 
Marlfox said:
Though anything is better than AT&T :eek:
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Eh, Comcast used to go down constantly in my area, but my AT&T DSL has been pretty reliability. Sure, everything you do is being sent off without a warrant to the government, but at least the connection is stable and uncapped.
 
Ualdayan said:
Eh, Comcast used to go down constantly in my area, but my AT&T DSL has been pretty reliability. Sure, everything you do is being sent off without a warrant to the government, but at least the connection is stable and uncapped.
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correction: pretty reliable. Wish we could edit our posts here.
 
Hamish Campbell said:
Nope, just the shitty ones.

I download about 400-600 GBs a month through usenet alone and have never hit a cap with my ISP. That doesn't even include what I download through steam, itunes, netflix, hulu, youtube, etc. Between myself and other people in my home I'm sure we're hitting 1+ TB a month in usage.
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hmm.. I'm not even going to ask what the hell you're downloading each month to get to 400-600gb.
 
I did the same thing as this guy 3 years ago.. I had been a customer for 5 years before that...never a problem... They offered me "Comcast Extreme" internet service one month with 12M down and 3M up for $15 extra per month..So I sign up

The very next month i get a call from "Comcast internet security".. sir you are using too much bandwidth.. how much is too much I ask? I'm a "Comcast Extreme" customer and I pay $15 extra a month.. his reply, I don't care, you need to get down to the 99th percentile of user.. I'm like WTF is 99th percentile of user and how does that help me? and why am I paying $15 extra a month if i can't use it, what kind of fraud is that?!? All he keeps repeating is 99th percentile...99th percentile...99th percentile... I thought this was all a joke..

next month service is shut off.. and I'm banned for a year.

All I'm waiting for now is the class action lawsuit where I get $5 and a coupon for 3 months of discounted internet service.. :-/ and lawyers get $13B or something..

--mike
 
arrrrgggg this crap comes up every few months...

I cannot believe that use of or strong inference of "unlimited" isn't smacked down by FCC or Ad regulators of some sort.

Virtually all "unlimited" service is limited. Netflix, internet are just two. It amazes me that fine print on this is allowed.

If legal action was taken, it would actually be a boon for ISPs, they could have a numbers war without hardly ANY ramification. If 90% of users use under 250GB, then what do they loose by offering 500GB, 750GB, 1TB plans or advertising?
 
When I see the commercials on TV, it always annoys me that they never mention the caps. When they say unlimited access, they mean unfiltered internet (which is bull if you notice that they tried to filter bittorrent protocols). I hate being with comcast, but there are no other providers where I live.
 
I just wonder how long it'll be until I start getting over the limit threats with Comcast.. My surfing habits have changed from mainly surfing and low res YouTube stuff, to watching HD streamed content and buying games over the internet that are anywhere from 7-12GB.. Either I live in an area that doesn't have the limits, or I've just been lucky to get very close without going over.. Especially the month Direct2Drive ran their $5 deals.. I had to have downloaded around 200GB worth of gameage.

This shit's just stupid with how much more bandwidth-intense the internet becomes, especially on 16mbps+ connections.
 
Ouch. With all the game releases in the last month or so my STEAM DLs are probably over most limits. That is not counting everything else I have watched/Dled. I have TimeWarner 15/2 service. No limits. YET.
 
no limits here (czech republic - central europe) - my normal traffic is little over 1TB per month but my record is well over 2TB without any problem :) Even better is that it cost only 12€ per month.
 
BloodyIron said:
Can't you sue for false advertising?
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Not Comcast. They have disclaimers stating that there are actually limits in fine prints.

I'd imagine you could convince a lawyer to take up a case to stop them from being misleading those who don't read the fine prints. Hell, I don't. lol
 
Json23 said:
Ouch. With all the game releases in the last month or so my STEAM DLs are probably over most limits. That is not counting everything else I have watched/Dled. I have TimeWarner 15/2 service. No limits. YET.
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I know a lot of people who if they did a reformat and reinstalled steam from scratch with all their games they would easily break 250GB. At 10GB per new game these days, it's only 25 games or at 5GB per game it is still only 50 games.
 
A good place to keep tabs on this is http://stopthecap.com

iphone_parental_controls.jpg
 
Back when people had 56k modem connections, it was truly unlimited.

But only because even if you downloaded 24/7 all month at top speed, you'd still only download like 15 gb tops.

With today's speeds, you could download 15'000 gigabytes at 50 mbps in just one month. That's why they need limits.
 
shurcooL said:
Back when people had 56k modem connections, it was truly unlimited.

But only because even if you downloaded 24/7 all month at top speed, you'd still only download like 15 gb tops.

With today's speeds, you could download 15'000 gigabytes at 50 mbps in just one month. That's why they need limits.
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Why? Why don't think just upgrade their equipement to support everyone that they sale the service too? That is what you are paying for.
 
Exavior said:
Why? Why don't think just upgrade their equipement to support everyone that they sale the service too? That is what you are paying for.
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Because then they couldn't make ridiculous profits! Duh!

:rolleyes: ;)
 
Azhar said:
Not Comcast. They have disclaimers stating that there are actually limits in fine prints.

I'd imagine you could convince a lawyer to take up a case to stop them from being misleading those who don't read the fine prints. Hell, I don't. lol
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You can't say one thing and disclaimer a COMPLETELY different thing. You can add additional details with fine print, but you aren't allowed to completely change what you just said.

'UNLIMITED *Note: Limited' doesn't fly, and there's a reason you won't find 'Unlimited' anywhere on Comcast.com itself - that local office of Comcast messed up on their advertisement and used a word they're not suppose to.
 
I do get truly unlimited :D

or, atleast, I've never "gone over" an invisible/unmentioned cap.

guess that's a good thing about local ISP, instead of nationwide provider?
 
Ualdayan said:
You can't say one thing and disclaimer a COMPLETELY different thing. You can add additional details with fine print, but you aren't allowed to completely change what you just said.

'UNLIMITED *Note: Limited' doesn't fly, and there's a reason you won't find 'Unlimited' anywhere on Comcast.com itself - that local office of Comcast messed up on their advertisement and used a word they're not suppose to.
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I do agree with you. The 2 lines are inconsistent to each other. Which is it? Limited or unlimited? Makes you say "well since you have both on there, I get to pick which one I want" and the customer would not be violating their contract because it DID say unlimited after all.

I'm just saying Comcast themselves think themselves untouchable because of the disclaimer. But I didn't notice they don't say that on their web site. Thanks for the heads up.
 
shurcooL said:
Back when people had 56k modem connections, it was truly unlimited.

But only because even if you downloaded 24/7 all month at top speed, you'd still only download like 15 gb tops.

With today's speeds, you could download 15'000 gigabytes at 50 mbps in just one month. That's why they need limits.
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uhh no.. They don't need limits. They use it as an excuse to not upgrade their backbone and milk customers for money. Especially since bills keeps going up and the limit still stays the same. You'd think when prices goes up, more service is provided so customers don't lose out? Not so. They know they're better than the alternative in the areas where provided. Qwest for example is the same. In my hometown, there's either Qwest or Comcast. Both have excessive usage policies (250GB limit) and are billed the same. Hence the option still fucking sucks.

Qwest and Comcast can go fucking die for all I care.
 
Azhar said:
Doesn't all provider have limits?

I've never hit the Comcast limit, so I'm not complaining. I like my 15/3 connection just fine. It's very stable and hardly ever goes offline. I guess it also depends on how efficient your local cable technicians are.
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I had them in 2 seperate counties in MD, and BOTH were so heavily over-subscribed their border routers were dropping large amounts of packets constantly. It got so bad after a while, I could not use it at all on a Friday night.

Then I switched to FIOS (fortunately, they came at a perfect time IMO) and have never looked back again.
 
vengence said:
I know a lot of people who if they did a reformat and reinstalled steam from scratch with all their games they would easily break 250GB. At 10GB per new game these days, it's only 25 games or at 5GB per game it is still only 50 games.
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This would be me, albeit barely. Last count, my Steam folder was a shy over 300GB in size...:p
 
i see the bandwidth limitations as nothing more than a scam, seriously look up what it really costs them for the overages. something like half a cent per GB as of a few years ago i think.

i'm up in canada and i've gone one of the few true unlimited services there is. they use bell's service, but a 3rd party provider. so...how is it they charge less and have no limitations? bell are such tools.

only 'drawback' is that its a 5mbit connection...personally i find that plenty.
 
UrielDagda said:
I just wonder how long it'll be until I start getting over the limit threats with Comcast.. My surfing habits have changed from mainly surfing and low res YouTube stuff, to watching HD streamed content and buying games over the internet that are anywhere from 7-12GB.. Either I live in an area that doesn't have the limits, or I've just been lucky to get very close without going over.. Especially the month Direct2Drive ran their $5 deals.. I had to have downloaded around 200GB worth of gameage.

This shit's just stupid with how much more bandwidth-intense the internet becomes, especially on 16mbps+ connections.
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this is EXACTLY what they are afraid of, losing tv viewers/subscribers, they are trying to keep people from using the internet as entertainment
 
Evil_SPanKY said:
I had them in 2 seperate counties in MD, and BOTH were so heavily over-subscribed their border routers were dropping large amounts of packets constantly. It got so bad after a while, I could not use it at all on a Friday night.

Then I switched to FIOS (fortunately, they came at a perfect time IMO) and have never looked back again.
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Ah. It could be that my town (Chesterton, Indiana) is too small to feel the impact that some others have with Comcast. We only have a population of 10-11k and I'd imagine a percentage of that have cable internet.
 
Fafeifa said:
The answer is NO, an add is not a contract
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What does false advertising have to due with the contract? Seems like it wouldn't be legal to have one thing printed in advertising and another buried in a contract that most consumers don't even realize exists, but then again I'm not a lawyer :confused::(
 
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