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Hey, Comcast: Stop lying about Bostonians switching from Fios to Xfinity
By adamg on Mon, 01/27/2014 - 6:09pm
This afternoon, I heard a Comcast radio ad that featured an alleged Boston couple explaining that they'd switched back to Xfinity from Fios because Xfinity is faster and doesn't give them an embarrassing rash, or something.
Please, Comcast, don't insult our intelligence. No Bostonians are switching from Fios to Xfinity because no Bostonians (save a tiny, tiny number of Dot rats) can get Fios.
You'd think your ad people would have heard about the outcry over those Fios ads that had some Walhberg striking tough-guy poses in Charlestown and the Back Bay and demanding we switch to Fios or he'd come to our house and beat us up or something, and we'd all certainly switch in an instant except that, as noted above, we can't get Fios no matter how many times some random Wahlberg sneers at us.
Feh, it's enough to make this RCN customer appreciate his tiny little Internet/phone/cable provider all the more.
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Comments
Switched from Comcast to Fios
Couldn't wait to do it, have never regretted it.
Nobody in our neighborhood turned our sales guy down. We were getting screwed by regular outages that they blamed on a neighbor who runs a video business ... even when wires were down. Oh, and restart your modem blah blah grunt. They kept choking off the bandwidth randomly, too, and nobody could figure out why the hell they did that.
Lousy service and shitty product and lying to your customers will mean that people will happily tell you to eff off and die when competition appears. Comcast doesn't seem to get that.
slow and or not fast but rock steady
Are you suggesting a nbhr was hogging the comcast bandwidth? I've not observed what you're describing. Our service is pretty rock steady. About the only problem I had was an unexpected change in DNS servers.
While I think Adam is technically correct, somebody from other corners of the country think that anything inside 128 is "Boston". No?
Oh, no doubt
Probably some junior-grade ad exec in NYC made the decision to run those ads here, just like some supermarket's ad agency welcomed Howard University students back with an ad featuring a white woman.
or like CNN's African "Americans" rioting in France
Or some veteran CNN anchor following the politically correct style book and labeling rioting black Frenchmen African "Americans."
What the-
Why does the supermarket named 'Giant' have a girl holding a Stop & Shop card? It's literally the SAME logo as S&S!
Logo
Same parent company, Royal Ahold. Perhaps you've noticed that the Stop & Shop store-brand products no longer have a brand name, just that logo. It's used across all their US supermarkets—saves money when you don't have to print packaging with different store names.
Sister Markets
Because Giant is the exact same supermarket chain.
East of New York or thereabouts, they go by "Stop and Shop." West of NY, they're "Giant." But no matter what you choose to call yours, at the end of the day you're still shopping at a subsidiary of Koninklijke Ahold N.V.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_%26_Shop/Giant-Landover
That was what Comcast claimed
And it was complete BS because the neighbor wasn't using that bandwidth at the times they claimed. He was also getting shut down despite having the commercial service.
Like I said - Comcast will LIE rather than FIX the problems.
>> Like I said - Comcast will
>> Like I said - Comcast will LIE rather than FIX the problems. <<
Long story short, I called Comcast when I was switching to RCN to give them a chance to match their offer. Rather than even TRY to keep me as a customer, the rep spent our entire phone call lying to me about how the 25 mbps internet package I was getting from RCN was actually DSL.
I called him out on it, told him the problem with Comcast is that they would rather argue with me than try to help me, and have never looked back.
It must be where I live but I
It must be where I live but I actually love my Comcast service. A family member had FIOS and I really didn' like it, not as fast as my Comcast. And, when my bundle package runs out, I call and say I want to cancel some premium channels and they rebundle me.
I haven't experience any outages, etc.. nothing that I am reading here.
I swear by my Comcast and wouldn't switch to Verizon after using that at my family members house.
Maybe it's an area thing? Then again I am a happy Bank of America customer after running into issues at my local bank (accounts at both).
I must be that one happy customer each of these guys brag about - I should get a cut!
No issues here, either
It's been years since I had a real complaint about Comcast and that was in regards in service calls, not the service itself. I still find those are pretty inefficient - at least twice I've had to get techs back out because they didn't bring the equipment I requested and/or came before the service window and I wasn't home. But the speed and consistency has never been an issue.
I must be an easy customer all around because I've had Bank of America for years, too, and never had an issue (that wasn't my fault).
Read twice, post once.
Read again. She's saying that Comcast blamed their outage on the neighbor, even when this was transparently a lie.
The Suckage that is COMCAST knows no bounds....
Horrid, blood suckers. They can't even provide reliable DNS--every device in my house goes to google public DNS, because those clowns are, clowns.
If I wanted to get elected to the Cambridge City Council, I would run a one-issue campaign: end the Stalinzation that is Cable in our city.
?
Where in Dorchester is fios? for that matter where is RCN? I have lived all over Boston and I haven't had access to either.
RCN is in....
....Roslindale and West Roxbury at least.
And Roxbury, near NEU
And Roxbury, near NEU
and in
Have it in Hyde park, I know they are in at least part of Arlington as well.
Milton
If you live near Ashmont ALMOST in Milton (and/or your old copper POTS line was run out of the Milton Central Office) or COULD until the city has put an end to it (because technically FiOS is not offered in the city of Boston).
I have a friend who lives near Cedar Grove T station and has FIOS..
RCN
RCN is avaliable in select complexes around the city. The apartment complex can elect to have both providers come in (providing they have equipment space).. I know a few large apartment buildings in the SoEnd and BackBay have RCN AND Comcast.
I know RCN is also avaliable in Brighton. (more likely if you're hooked to the Watertown cable network where RCN is avaliable town wide)
RCN is scattered around all over
I had them when I lived in a condo in Southie from 2000-2003, and I have them now at my office in Allston. I live in JP now, and am stuck with Comcast at home. Comcast sucks - it's so painfully obvious that they're still throttling high bandwidth services like Netflix, yet they totally deny it. At my office I get flawless HD streaming with RCN. At home, we're lucky if it goes 5 straight minutes in crappy standard def before it starts to hiccup. My parents have Comcast in Vermont, and they rarely get more than 5-7Mbps. They pay for 20. Comcast denies all of this, of course.
RCN tends to install service in Boston in new developments or large buildings where it makes sense to wire up lots of potential customers in a densely populated area. It's too expensive to run cabling to most of the city so it's only worth the investment if they know there will be a cluster of customers. They told me if I want it at home, I'd have to spend several thousand dollars to pay them to wire up this area.
I swear if I win the powerball one of the first things I'm doing is giving RCN a call just so I can completely eliminate Comcast from my life.
I had
the same problem with Comcast in my place in Allston. It would take 2 minutes for this site, or Gmail, to load. We did a speedtest/packet loss test that was showing less than half the bandwith we were paying for, and 80-90% packet loss. The tech came and refused to listen to us, said that he couldn't see anything wrong using his little program, but that we probably needed to buy a new computer. Because my husband's beast of a gaming desktop was insufficient for loading Google. And we'd had the problem on all of our devices and any visitor's devices.
It was so bad, we basically couldn't use the Internet at home. I'd have to do my banking and online purchasing of things at work so the connection wouldn't time out. For 9 months. My husband needed to work from home, but usually couldn't get a connection going over our awful internet. They said "nothing's wrong, it's your fault." And sadly, that apartment building didn't even offer DSL, where I'd gotten faster connection speeds. We just started counting down the days until we moved out.
VPN
Not that you should have to pay for another service on top of Comcast but if you are really desperate for non-throttled bandwidth trying using a VPN service for about $33 a year (I suggest Earth VPN or WiTopia). Comcast will just see one data solid stream and they will not throttle it. It's also useful for private browsing and setting your IP address to other countries (to access region Olympic feeds and such). I use mine for playing on Japanese game servers that require a Japan IP.
Parts of Brighton as well - I
Parts of Brighton as well - I've had RCN at 2 of my Brighton apts.
Comcast-Verizon-Antennas
"Today, a new 1,200 mile fiber-optic network serves to connect every community to high-speed Internet." said the Governor in last night's speech. Where? NOT in the city of BOSTON!
As some on this board stated, I use an antenna for OTA TV (Netflix/Hulu/Apple TV) very clear digital broadcast but when it comes to high speed internet, I have none.
Verizon says "your too far away from our switching station". I only get 1-3 megs, anything over that it disconnects me. I refuse to use Comcast who is in bed with the City (prior admin) they even have an office in City Hall and they lie and raise prices constantly! As far as other broadband services, like RCN, they are only available in multi unit buildings. Netblazer sounded great but no antenna in the area they say unless I can get our local business to sign up for them.
Comcast has a monopoly on the City of Boston and should be put to bed and go away. They have wires hanging all over our residential areas, on the houses, over the houses, coming out of the houses and they tried to refuse to come out and get rid of this ugly sight even when people in these buildings no longer use that service. Their contractors just don't care how they connect up! I had to call City Hall to force them to clean up this disgusting site of wires all over our neighborhood.
So, we need more options. I need more speed.I hope our new Mayor addresses this issue.
Where? NOT in the city of
Of course there's fiber in Boston, connecting the community to the Internet. There's tons of it. Many private and public buildings are served by fiber, including large numbers of (maybe all?) City of Boston schools.
The fact that you can't get Fios from Verizon doesn't mean we don't have high-speed optical access to the Internet here.
Verizon announced years ago
Verizon announced years ago they were coming to Boston finally but it proved to be unfeasible. There's been some scuttlebutt that part of it was Menino having a favorable relationship with Comcast so he didn't make it easy for Verizon, but who knows what the actual reason is. If our new mayor has any power to get us some more competition here, let's hope he does something.
Comcast offered trinkets
In Medford, they give money to the "Mayor's Discretionary Fund".
The version of the story that I've heard
is that Menino said that Verizon could not cherry-pick the rich neighborhoods: that if they wanted approval to offer it in Boston they needed to meaningfully offer it to the entire city.
was wondering when.
The TV version has been airing for weeks. I caught it a week back or so and just had to figure the level of stupidity is consistent with the comcraptastic service we all don't enjoy. Meanwhile the Verizon CO down the st has vans in its lot adorned with "get FIOS" . The tease!
Comcast and its #@%& bundle
Why should anyone have to purchase all the bullshit just to see the Celtics or the Red Sox? When you go into Stop and Shop do you have to buy bread just to get a gallon of milk? What makes matters worse is that Comcast is a public utility and uses our streets and air space. So it ought to behave better and not be allowed to rip us off. Plus their movies suck unless you waste even more money on their HBO package.
Screw all of them
Screw all the cable providers. I have a $10 digital antenna on top of my tv for all of the networks and I otherwise use Apple TV. I still pay my 50 a month for the internet but I have never missed not having cable.
Seriously, screw all the
Seriously, screw all the cable providers.
Also, skip the $10 antenna in the future. I've got a 3' run of Coax cable with the shielding stripped off about half of it, exposing the copper wire in the center. This picks up all the OTA channels perfectly.
You'll like this one then..
The family on that commercial live In Wilmington. A limo friend drove them to that commercial shoot, which strangely enough was filmed at a private residence in Belmont!
And they can take the FIOS from my cold dead hands. In the seven years I've had it, my internet has never gone down once.Fuck Comcast.
It's very, very expensive to
It's very, very expensive to lay fiber plant in the city. Verizon is not going to make the capital investment when in much of the city there are already two alternatives (Comcast and RCN).
I am no Comcast apologist, but there is very little technical difference between fiber to the home (FiOS) and hybrid fiber-coax (Comcast, RCN) in terms of the services provided to typical consumers, advertising about actual differences on both sides is largely bullshit.
Boston city limits.
Everything inside of 128 to those from out of town (not from massachusetts). Oh, and Needham.
Got rid of cable altogether a
Got rid of cable altogether a few years ago and never regretted it. It's all a racket.
Never leaving FIOS
Had Adelphia, whose ungrounded wiring fried my South Shore house and all the electronics in it. My luck that it happened a few weeks before the family that managed the company were found to be embezzling, they declared bankruptcy and I became an unsecured creditor. Cost me thousands. Then Adelphia customers got acquainted with Comcast, whose customer service was even worse. After my eleventh outage with hours spent on hold, I gave up. I now have an even better reason to boycott NBC. Anyone who has Comcast is not just a victim, they are an enabler.
Since we're Comcast venting …
Since we're Comcast venting …
This past summer I went to re-up my Comcast account (Cambridge, we have no choice; in Boston, you choose Comcast; in Soviet Cambridge, Comcast choose you!) and I was prompted to log in to "see offers especially for you." I did so and selected the Premium internet package for $24.99 per month. I selected this and it was shown with my current account and with my current balance. I proceeded to check out and instead of receiving a confirmation I was transferred to a chat where I was told that this was unavailable.
I experienced this several times and took screen captures and sent them to Comcast, Tweeted them at Comcast, and copied the Mass. AG's office. Their response was "those offers aren't for you." Then why, oh Comcast, does it not only say "Offers especially for you" but also let me go through the process of selecting and pricing the offer only to throw me to a chat window where I have to wait for an actual human to tell me the price is double what I selected? Their answer: "well, our website is wrong."
My response was something along the lines of "Please let me know when you will be applying this rate to my account or I will be taking this up with the AG's office as it is an obvious bait-and-switch and false advertising."
I got a call from a woman with a name and call-back number in Manchester (603) that afternoon, and was given the $24.99 promotional price as advertised. If I still had the number I'd publish it here. My blood still boils when I think about this, and the fact that I am going to have to go through it again when the promotional price disappears in a month. How hard would it be to just, I don't know, display a list of services and the prices that go with them?
And frankly, Cambridge has two huge connections to the Internet (Harvard and MIT). Their peak usage probably occurs at a different time from residential customers (many of whom are affiliated with Harvard and MIT). They ought to flex their muscle against the Comcastian thievery that goes on in this Socialist Republic.
There is a third option for internet
If you're willing to go without cable, and / or you want a better option for internet other than DSL or Comcast, there is a local ISP called netblazr. I cannot recommend them enough, and you're supporting a local business
Only downtown?
From there web site the Google service map suggests they are only downtown right now.
The price would be competitive with Verizon DSL for certain which is now averaging about $33-$39 for just 3 Mb.
I wonder if the map is wrong or not updated?
I see at least one person in my neighborhood on the very large wait list.
No FiOS in Boston is purportedly based on a tax squabble
Specifically, Menino had been trying to get state law changed so that Verizon would have to pay more to store its network equipment on public property: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/07/boston-a-copper-hole-in-the-f...
Few notes:
Few notes:
1) Many people use Boston as shorthand to mean the Boston area.
2) Verizon is not in any of the biggest cities in Massachusetts. Not Worcester. Not Springfield. Not Cambridge. Not Somerville. It's not unique to Boston. Verizon started in the burbs in Massachusetts where it could start smaller and cheaper.
3) Verizon has since halted all FIOS expansion across the country (except to fill in a few cities where it already has service). So it will not come to Boston.
4) Since the company does have service in dozens of cities and towns around Boston, it will likely continue to advertise here.
I switched to FIOS, went back to Comcastic
I live in Lynn, so FIOS is available. At the time, I was only getting 10/2 service from Comcast in my building. It sucked. A few neighbors in my building banded together to get the building wired for FIOS.
Skip ahead a long time ----
We're ready to go, and a few of us order service. I ordered an extra fast service, too. I forgot what, exactly.
The installer shows up and asks where my phone jack is located. I said, "Oh, I didn't know you needed that."
----
I get vDSL, capped 25/5 or 10 I think. I'm charged for full-on higher tier FIOS. I am mad. My neighbors are mad, and we're stuck in phone support hell as sales tells us one thing, techs tell us another, and we're escalated up the customer support ladder.
---
But, it was still faster than Comcast. I stuck with it, until Comcast improved its speeds. I switched back and I'm getting 105/20 and loving it.
That doesn't mean both companies don't still suck, though.
I ditched comcast over 10
I ditched comcast over 10 years ago for DirecTV. its not perfect but waaay better than the headache that is comcast. that was back in the days of the two cable lines coming into your box and having to switch between A/B channels
How do you get internet access?
Does DirectTV do internet over the dish or provide some form of Verizon DSL as part of the package?