Business doesn't work that way. You make hay when the sun shines.
And there are cases when you can't charge. Because of things your competitors are doing.
In a restaurant they don't charge you for napkins and water although they could. (Actually they do charge for premium water but that's a fairly recent invention).
The idea of business is to make money.
It's not up to anyone to decide how much profit is "enough" for comcast to make. If they could simply charge more per month without games they would.
Sometimes it's easy sometimes it's hard.
Take airlines. They would like to charge you more for a ticket but if they do you might not book the ticket. Better to be able to advertise a cheap price plus extras than an all inclusive price without extras. Why? Because people are not rational buyers (generally) who can figure in all the things and the "total cost of ownership" as they say with cars.
"doesn't that seem a little bit like they might be playing on peoples lac of knowledge of the systems involved?"
Well of course they are. But so what?
There are many times when companies take features out of a product just so they can make different tiers and charge premiums.
Take web hosting. Take companies who sell people extra disk space that they will never use and don't know they don't even need at all. There are many examples of this in business.
Shrink-wrapped software, for instance, has no value proposition from the original proprietor. Photoshop? Why should I trade with Adobe for a few hundred dollars when I can get the same from another user for no charge from him?
Someone like you opened my eyes to the false dichotomy. Businesses and consumers are not different. Each wants something that the other has. They want my money. I want their product. If they can get more money without changing the product, they will. If I can get more product without changing the money spent, I will.
The idea of a "fair deal" IS part of business, if customers decide it's part of business. Once you factor in our basic sense of ethics and fair dealing, it's clear that Comcast has none.
The problem here isn't that ethics aren't part of business, but rather, there is no competition. Customers have no choice, therefor, there's no reason for Comcast to behave in a way that better serves their customers.
Aren't you a domain squatter? That would explain a lot about your way of thinking.
Yes they do. They don't itemise the charge, but they charge for [ie taking account of the cost of] these items too.
If I went to a restaurant and they said "your meal is extra because you wore a brown shirt" then I'd know they were ripping me off and I'd declare it; of course they are within their right to do that if they notify the customer sufficiently of the charges. That wouldn't change the fact they're ripping people off.
I am not a fan of Comcast for many reasons. This fee isn't very consumer-friendly and it should be described more honestly as an "upgrade fee" or similar. But no, there's no reason it has to have anything to do with the "work" required to do the upgrade.
Is Adobe obligated to make the price of Photoshop commensurate to the cost of burning a DVD or downloading a file?
Of course people who have never run a business and don't understand the total cost of running a business will always relate "cost" to one thing what you pay for a particular item which when factoring a host of other things is either not relevant or not easily determined.
I just read where Tesla (an HN favorite) gets tax credits of something like $35k (tradeable to other mfgs) for each car they sell. Forgetting whether that number is right or not (maybe it's less/more who knows) does that mean that they should somehow in ratio reduce the price of their car? Of course not (unless they want to). Even though one could make an argument that it isn't fair that they don't. To me all this is nonsense. But fully understandable if someone has never operated a working business.
To be fair, how you run your business depends greatly on this. Other companies would distribute the profit from this tax credit to shareholders or executives; Tesla is using it to continue with R&D and to fund expansion.
Can you please stop with the flamebait? It's not conducive to productive discussion.
To address your point, not everything should (ethical judgment) be priced based on value. Do you not see the difference between a Tesla and internet service? What about electricity - should PG&E charge based on how much value they provide? Have you ever tried living without power? Because it's certainly worth more than the $50 a month I currently pay. What about medical treatment? What if the ER charged 10% of your lifetime future income for lifesaving treatment? That seems commensurate with the value provided, doesn't it?
Point taken. I guess things like this piss me off so I flew off the handle in that way. So I apologize.
"Do you not see the difference between a Tesla and internet service?"
Ok well with respect to that we are not talking about Internet service but a faster type of Internet service that is by no means essential in any way (such as your other examples electricity and medical treatment). You don't need 100meg service and for that matter you really don't even need to stream video. Essential internet (wouldn't you agree) is really basic things and the bandwidth to support email, going to the government website, shopping for a car, etc. I don't consider enough bandwidth so several members of one family can all stream Netflix at one time essential. And that is what I had in my mind as I was making my comment.
In that respect the faster internet service might be more like elective surgery (say plastic surgery but not reconstructive surgery) which is not the same as medical treatment in an ER.
Now of course you can charge what you like and price differentiation doesn't have to relate to actual costs at all, but lying to deceive the customer that the charge is paying for some direct action of employees necessary to enact the alteration is simply fraud.
Now there are of course costs, upstream bandwidth, data handling at intermediate routers and such. That's why it's entirely reasonable for them to charge more for a faster/broader data plan - http://www.comcast.com/internet-service.html it's already charged at more than twice the rate of the 50 Mbps plan (whilst I imagine the real _additional_ cost is probably maybe a few dollars); but that's fine as they're not pretending it costs more because they have to pay for faster electricity or something daft.
If we both agree you can charge whatever you want and price differences don't have to relate to actual costs then what's the problem?
You are upset solely that they called it an "installation fee" rather than an "upgrade fee"? I see your point... but like I said, hardly the crime of the century.