Comcast locks value customers out of Sochi streams | Hacker News Reader

Comcast locks value customers out of Sochi streams

gigaom.com

55 pointsdoctorshady43 comments

Here's how my interaction with Comcast went when someone called and got me to sign up for the deal:

Comcast: You can have double your current internet speed plus HBO Go and some other junk for only $4 more per month.

Me: <after a while> ok, but I don't need a cable box because I don't have a TV. I'll just watch online. I can do that right?

C: Yes, but we need to ship you a cable box anyway.

Me: why?

C: because

Me: ok but I'm not at home much and packages left on my stoop get stolen. Could you ship it to my office?

C: <after a while> oh all right we'll ship it to your office.

(Ships to my home anyway and the box gets stolen)

C: Sir, please check to see if your doorman accepted the package before we charge you for the cable box.

Me: I don't have a doorman and I told you not to ship the box to my home. The cable box that I didn't want was stolen like I said it would be.

C: We can only ship it to your home. We will ship you another one.

Me: I don't want another one, I just don't want to pay for the one that was stolen.

C: Ok, we'll cancel your new package then.

Me: Can't I just pay for it and not have the cable box? I don't have a TV.

C: No. I will cancel your new package. Is there anything else I can help you with?

It was like talking to a robot. I dearly hate monopolies.

Please do not insult robots by comparing them to Comcast customer support.

Strong agree. Most robots are programed for contingencies and edge cases. Comcast drones are most decidedly not.

You were talking to a low level employee, who doesn't know a great deal about the company he works for, and is just following a script with a specific set of rules.

I get confused when people try to reason with these guys, they can only do what they are allowed to do. They aren't going to make an executive decision and break the rules for you. You need to feel around what they can do, and don't expect miracles.

The one time I got angry at customer service was when I cancelled a mobile broadband contract and then several months later noticed I was still being charged. Apparently there was no record of the cancellation or indeed my original call at all (despite the original operator confirming that the cancellation had went through on their system). All the latter operator would do was simultaneously assert that their system was infallible and that, no, they didn't believe I was lying or otherwise confused. An unstoppable force was meeting an immovable object, both of the operator's own construction, and they refused to acknowledge that. The frustrating conclusion was that it was strictly impossible to refund me the money. Of course, they couldn't even keep that straight: some time later and out of the blue, a full refund showed up in the mail with no explanation attached.

Not cancelling service and quietly billing you until collection departments are harassing you months later seems to be standard procedure at all carriers/ISPs.

Did you deal with Megapath (formerly Speakeasy) too? I will never get internet from the scumbags who bought out that once great service again.

They won't cancel you over the phone, only via the internet. And their internet thing didn't work any of the three times I tried it until (miraculously) it worked while I was telling the lady on the phone that I wasn't about to give them my new credit card number because I had not authorized the previous charges and their own cancellation page had "failed" on multiple occasions. Yet, when on the phone yelling at a supervisor, I got a confirmation that I had cancelled immediately.

I do have one possible explanation--after cancelling, it claimed that I would receive a call. They never even attempted to call (per my phone logs), but I have to think that some customer retention person somewhere had a quota that was easier to fake if you simply didn't call the customer and claimed that they had changed their mind about cancelling. I bet someone could figure out the truth by examining how many people miraculously change their mind regularly before finally cancelling....

It's been several years and I'm still mad at them. If you ever do have to cancel that service, make sure you log the exact dates and times that you cancel and document it.

It was a European outfit I was dealing with. You reminded me of another frustrating aspect of it: I could give them the date and time down to the minute of the original call that their infallible system was unaware of.

Towards the end, I asked if it was really worth losing all my potential future custom over $SMALLISH_SUM and apparently the answer was yes. Complete cretins, all!

I thought everyone knew these days that you have to talk to a manger to get anything that's not in the script?

I've had plenty of fine experiences when trying to get something unusual out of first-line support. They can't handle everything, but they should be capable of understanding that and handing you off to the right people when necessary. Plenty of other companies do fine with this, so why can't Comcast?

There is no excuse for making me deal with some gigantic company's internal structure. You hide that from the outside world, you don't force people to navigate it.

>>C: [...] Is there anything else I can help you with?

A: Yes, I'd like to speak to your manager, please. Thank you.

You should attempt to escalate at least once by asking for a manager. If you're bothered enough to initially call in and spend the time anyway with the first level support person, the marginal cost in time to ask for a manager is probably worth it.

My conversation spanned several calls with different people who claimed they were escalating my problem to "specialists" who could help me, and me waiting on hold for hours. The last call, starting with the offer to send me another box, came from a an escalation to a "Customer Retention Specialist". At that point I no longer cared to pursue the issue.

I'm one of these customers, and it's a minor pain in the ass.

Also, a small correction for anyone considering their "HBO Go" deal - you don't actually get access to HBO Go, only to HBO Go content through Xfinity streaming. That sounds like an academic distinction, but their Xfinity streaming page doesn't integrate with Chromecast, so if that's how you planned to watch the HBO Go content, you can't.

That's not what I've experienced. I have the same deal and get proper HBO Go access (including Chromecast).

I have a similar package, but with HBO Go. Which is good for them, since Xfinity recently stopped working on Ubuntu, but HBO Go still works.

I'm seriously looking at dropping TV again regardless since I can't use Xfinity with my HTPC anymore.

We've been streaming the BBC's coverage via a VPN. It's been great. The iMac is close enough proximity to the TV that a Thunderbolt to HDMI cable reaches. With a full screen mode Chrome, the quality is great.

I've had a VPN for some time just for security reasons, but I suddenly get even more value for my $40/year.

I've found unblock-us to be a superior solution. It doesn't actually tunnel the traffic, instead, it proxies the original request to the content site (BBC, Netflix in another region etc.) via an appropriate IP to authenticate. After that, the content flows directly from the origin to your device. All you need on the client side is to use their (unblock-us's) DNS. This allows you to use any device (and not just a computer capable of running some VPN client) to access the remote content while pretending to be in another region.

And yes, I'd just as happily pay directly for bbc content if they'd let me. BBC, why can't you let me pay your annual TV license fee and let me watch your internet content from anywhere.

I've been wondering how those work. I can understand how using a different DNS server can trick a streaming server which does the user distinction purely by DNS (in other words, only users from a certain region get the right IP address for the server).

But I am unsure how the mechanism you describe works in detail (tricking the server to see a domestic IP, but having it send data to a foreign one).

Living in the US: I've been using tunnelbear (https://www.tunnelbear.com/) to proxy through the UK to watch the BBC streams.

NBC is worse than horrible, their commentators rarely understand the sport they are covering, they don't show events they want to cover in 'prime time' and they cut massively short the events they do cover in prime time, often times in order to substitute political bullshit.

I would love to pay the BBC to access their content, but there isn't a way to do that. Please BBC, fix this, I'll happily pay you a premium to consume your content, just let me.

Where does the BBC keep this streaming content? I can't find it anywhere on their sporting site.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/2014 Need UK IP of course, get hola.org plugin

Canadian stream is also live after midnight here: http://olympics.cbc.ca/index.html it will have an option for live streaming whenever it's back on.

Which VPN provider?

You can also just spin up a Linode in their UK zone and then use an SSH tunnel through that. When the Olympics are over spin down the vm and you're done.

vpn.sh's UK locations are overloaded right now, StrongVPN seems to work if you can get a slot in the UK (use the ping tests to get one that's under 400ms from your location) and I've had a second hand recommendation for whatsonthebox.net.

http://PrivateInternetAccess.com

vpnuk.info has worked well for me.

The BBC's coverage is pretty good, and you can watch full events for every sport.

Its definitely worth the one-month cost to get access.

I'f you can get a vpn into Canada it's even better, CBC has every event on demand as well as highlights, etcetera for free. As a Canadian, it's wonderful and reduced my productivity by 90% the past few days.

This feels like a big step in the wrong direction but here's the problem...If content providers can't limit the consumption of their content (at all), they essentially become "public good" providers. Their work is non-excludable (anyone can access it) and non-rivalrous (my consumption doesn't affect your consumption).

There are plenty of solutions* and limiting streaming via an internet provider may actually be the right one. Big (expensive) streaming content like the Olympics is paid for in the same way we pay for TV channels. Which is good, if the alternative is that content not being provided at all.

Unfortunately, this is ultimately in everyone's worst interest because Comcast can (and will) force Netflix/Hulu/NBC/ABC/CBS/YouTube/Vimeo/ComedyCentral/etc to pay to be "carried" on their network. And they won't have a lot of leverage.

We need pay for high-quality content. It's just a matter of how.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Possible_solutions

I don't think anybody[0] is arguing that this stuff should be free. Rather, people generally argue that they should be allowed to pay for it without it being bundled with a bunch of other stuff. Why should I need a cable TV subscription in order to stream certain kinds of video over the internet? Just figure out how much money it should cost and then let me[1] pay it if I want it.

[0] OK, I'm sure there are some people out there saying it should be free. Just not that many, and not here.

[1] This is a hypothetical "me", as I don't personally care about these particular streams at all. But I totally understand where people are coming from when they want to watch something and don't want it to be tied to their cable TV subscription which should be completely irrelevant.

Capitalism ruins everything eventually. The Olympics used to be this shared patriotic experience. But now that it's being packaged up and segmented for maximum gain it will become less relevant to big parts of society. Which is probably a good thing considering how patriotic fervor becomes increasingly merged with giant corporations and the military.

I must be missing something here. Why would you expect the "Internet plus HBO" package would also give you the Olympics? The Olympics aren't broadcast on HBO, are they?

because it says it includes nbc, which is broadcasting the olympics

http://gigaom.com/2013/10/24/did-comcast-just-take-a-first-s...

IIRC, the deal was something like Blast Internet + Digital Economy + HBO, at least that was the one they called me trying to up sell. I can see how some people might think they would have gotten access.

Heh - that's nothing; at least they have the option of paying for access. Charter customers on the east coast get access, but those of us on the west coast do not (as per Charter's customer service reps, confirmed by our inability to use our data to log into the Olympic coverage online).

Bug exploit to watch past 30 min. preview limit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/hacking/comments/1xjx5f/watch_the_ol...

get a CactusVPN account for $5 and stream the olympics from the UK. Works great.

And as an added bonus you don't have to listen to the constant commentary about how Russia sucks, and how this Olympics is failing.

Literally the first words out of the mouth of the commentator before the opening ceremonies on NBC were about the cost, "terrorism fears" (which ironically are self-perpetuating, due to the American media both creating them and then reporting on it), gay rights, weather, and some of the last minute building issues.

The whole thing feels childish. Like the US media is going out of its way to drag the Russian games through the mud for anything they can cling onto. I mean how many times have they shown the faulty ring in the opening ceremonies? I have seen it at least a dozen.

The US media certainly didn't treat the London summer games with such obvious contempt and disrespect.

Maybe because London doesn't lock up women's rights advocates and people who suggest homosexuality might be OK. Russia gets hate because it doesn't bother to try endearing itself to people. It's sort of like America only minus all the stuff America puts out that people like.

I just use a cheap cinfu bitcoin paid VPS to stream BBC but you can also use https://hola.org/ (free) which people have claimed is good enough for streaming BBC or CBC in Canada to watch events. I haven't tried it.

Due to over the top DRM this year CBC can't stream any Linux compatible streams because of fears somebody might actually record it. Never mind that competent pirates already pvr and encode entire Sochi events and have them up on torrents everywhere we must make your streaming as annoying and difficult as possible.

Yep, we got hit by this as well. I still have hope that one day Comcast will start to realize what the customer wants. Of course, it's not really necessary for a monopoly to fulfill their customers wishes, so fat chance that will ever happen. Cable franchising with municipal regulation is crazy.

Another thing to note with this "plus HBO" deal is that it's not just an extra $5, you also have to pay an extra $6 or $7 for various "cable fees". As soon as you add cable TV the hidden fees start appearing.

Find a friend with an Aereo account and VPN into their account.

Aereo's not widely available, but if it is in your area it's well worth the 8 bucks!

Recently, two failures to follow up with promised service appointments / reschedules.

Looking forward to the day I can tell them to shove it.

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