Today I’m ranting. I try not to rant here too much. My friends and family get enough of that, but sometimes, I need to say it to a wider public.

 

Stupid Regulations

Rant one is againstKingCounty, where I live. They have laws/regulations in place that restrict who can offer cable TV in the different areas of the county. Where I live, the only authorized cable provider is Comcast. (These regulations were passed in order to protect a local provider who is the exclusive provider for parts of downtownSeattle.)

And when it was just TV, it probably didn’t seem like a big deal because you still have satellite options. But in my case, it’s not about the TV. It’s about the internet.

You see, I am a gamer. I am married to a gamer. Our roommate is a gamer. High speed internet is pretty much a requirement for us. Cable internet speeds are advertized at 21mbps, and independent tests put our speed at 15mbps.

If I want high speed internet that isn’t cable, my option is DSL. Want to know DSL speeds? 1.5mbps is the max in our neighborhood. Supposedly Century Link can offer higher speed DSL elsewhere, but not in our neighborhood and no one knows when that might change.

And trust me, internet speeds that are 1/10 of what we have now is just not acceptable.

 

Terrible Customer Service

Rant two, the more common rant, is against Comcast. You see, six months ago, when we decided to drop television and just go with internet, I was told- oh, it’s cheaper to have limited basic cable and internet bundled than it is to just have cable. That is what I was told. I was NOT told that that was a special offer that would end in 6 months. I know this because I very clearly remember asking the gentleman I talked to about why it was cheaper to have both than just the one, and he did not say it was an introductory offer, he said it was just cheaper.

So imagine my surprise when my Comcast bill was $20 more this month than it had been. And when I called to ask why, I was told that it would go up another $20 next month- that we had been on a 6 month special offer that was now going away and our prices would be going up $40/month. Considering I’d been paying just under $50/month, that’s a pretty hefty increase. Especially when you consider that before we changed, we’d been paying $150/month for one of their premium packages. I now get 13 channels, and you want to charge me $90/month for that?

Oh, and my favorite part of the call was that they tried to tell me I wasn’t authorized to make changes to the account. I know C is set up as the primary account holder because I am a traditional girl in some ways and always fill his information out first, but I am the one that fills out the information. Please don’t try and tell me I didn’t give myself permission to make changes to the account.

And besides, I was the one to call 6 months ago and make changes. Oh, your records say C was the one to call? Well, your records lie. Go listen to your recordings. I never pretend to be my husband. Or go look at the signature on the forms that returned the HD DVR. Mine, not his.

I would so love to ditch Comcast. I like having the Discovery channel, but I could live without the TV. What I need, though, is an equivalent internet service provider, and there just isn’t one. And for that, I blameKingCounty.

Interesting note: businesses can get cable internet through local companies as long as they aren’t getting cable TV, but residences are not given that option. There are lots of local competition options for DSL service, but the lines in our neighborhood are not able to support higher speed DSL, so no one can offers us decent service through that route.