Comcast Gives Lawmakers Something Customers NEVER Get

"One of the biggest mysteries in life is why a company that’s as universally hated as Comcast seems to get whatever it wants when it comes to merger approvals. Two new reports — one from Bloomberg and one from Washingtonian — give us some good insight into the bag of sneaky tricks that Comcast uses to get influential lawmakers, journalists and nonprofit organizations to stand by its side.

As Bloomberg documents, one of Comcast’s go-to tactics for persuading lawmakers to support its merger proposals is pledging to expand its Internet Essentials program, which is designed to get more low-income people in the United States connected to the Internet."* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

*Read more here:

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[kurtilein]

in Germany there is no monopoly on the internet, so i can choose from something like 15 providers. internet is cheap, lightning fast, and ultra reliable, and if it is not.... you just switch. internet in the USA is pathetic.

[harbinger]

this is why you need to support WOLF PAC

[smaakjeks]

Dude. Americans, get your shit together. I'm rooting for you, and I don't even live there.

[LadyhawksLairDotCom]

I've only had Comcast broadband for a couple of years, but I've had nothing but problems with them. Once they put a filter on my entire building, cutting off my Internet for several days. They said they'd make it right by giving me faster Internet and TV for free. My bill went up instead. This is but one incident. I've been tempted to simply go off the grid, but in these times that's hard to do.

[tdrewman]

I use to work for Comcast Internet Support, we were an Outsource company, because of high tech training, comcast use to send all the call to us because they .... SUCKED!! We could never get a hold of the people in charge or should say, in charge of repair, they put a block on our number, we would always get voice mail, then I told the supervisor to use his cell number, we got a hold of someone, thats when we figure out that they really  didn't care about the customers, the support was good for a while, till they pulled the plug on our contract, they didn't want to pay the money, and then their service went back to shit. I remember yelling at a onsite tech to stop calling us and call his supervisor and request a signal truck to check the line that we at tech support couldn't do anything, thats why we sent you!! When I think of how many times Comcast discounted my house by mistake (3 times in one year), I am so glad I got ATT, yeah, they are not as fast, but I have had same day repair 2 times and they came over and replaced my gateway in 1 biz day, cant say that for comcast..

[lowpricedpaint]

We must have that special service card, it only took them about a month and a half to come and switch over our service. When they got here, they had the 3 top guys from the service tech division, all over the house making sure we were happy before they left. I asked them about their built in virus that we experienced the last time we had comcast service, and they acted like they didn't know what I was talking about. When we had comcast before, everyone in the house had the redirect virus. The very moment we switched to Astound service, it was gone. So it wasn't actually in our computers, but it was in comcast's service, the modem. If you have this redirect issue with comcast, call them and tell them you want a new modem. Make sure you show them what it's doing first, then try the new modem. If it resolves your problem, you tell them that you want free service that equals the time you had used the infected modem, or you are going to switch to another service. DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO CHARGE YOU FOR THE SERVICE CALL OR THE NEW MODEM.

[Roxor]

And when you do get that amendment, make it say "Corporations are not people. They have no rights, privileges or power of any kind. They are utterly forbidden under all circumstances from giving money to politicians, directly or indirectly. Any corporation who gives money to a politician, or has ever given money to a politician, will be nationalised with no compensation to the previous owners."

[Morrakiu]

>2014
>having cable
>not pirating everything

[blueman]

This is actually pretty standard in Washington. My favorite was the loan specialist that gave congressman preferential interest rates on mortgages.

[AllenSchlung]

I'm a Comcast employee and I say:

Get rid of your TV.
Go outside and do something instead.

[BashMonkeyRC]

So basically the "We'll make it right" card is actually a "we'll give you the service we promise everyone yet we'll actually deliver that service to you" card

[fuchusen]

I don't see wolf PAC giving us any real solution to the problem but at least they identify the problem. The reality is in order to make actual change we have to break up monopolies, break up concentrations of capital and land and get rid of the 85 richest people in the world (by taking their money/assets and making them no longer rich). The problem with capitalism, the game we play to distribute labor and resources, is not the losers, it is the winners. Once somebody wins the market, it is no longer free market capitalism but closed market feudalism. We need to continually break up wealth as new winners emerge to keep the system from becoming the dysfunctional mess it is now.

[fwsauerteig]

One of the rarre instances I agree with Cenk.  Thumbs up.

[lapizazulli]

Nationalize the LAN companies and phone companies for public benefit not for corporate bums. PERIOD!!!

[HeatsFan]

Comcast and Verizon are the biggest in my area and it sucks. Comcast internet is complete shit and they charge a lot for some good cable channels. Verizon cable is shit but there internet is fast.

[Lavos]

i have comcast for internet and ive had it for 6 years...and i have not had ONE serious incident yet...ive had very rare service outages but they affected my whole area...and sometimes its cus a storm ripped up town and screwed up some shit

i know comcast gets alot of crap from people...but here where i live..verizon totally sucks and i have many friends that have to put up with it...and comcast in this town has pretty darn good service, high speeds, minimal but unavoidable outages and just the usual stuff

[pmyou]

Cent, if you can find out the Priority Code for Comcast service, please announce it on the next vid so everyone can use it. That will make a splash!

[RawbeardX]

I wonder how well Wolf-Pac will work out when Comcast starts blocking all communication concerning that issue.

[AndresB]

Okay, I hate Comcast as much as the next guy. I used to work there. They don't treat their employees any better than they do their customers. But those *"We'll make it right"* cards are standard. They give them out to all the employees to hand out to whomever they wish.

[Etheoma]

tbh no if your earning a decent amount and you want exlent internet connection you can just get a fibre optic cable put in by a company that does that kind of stuff for businesses and if you want to you can even recoup the costs by selling limited access to that connection.

Really though you don't need more than 50Mb so you could sell it off to quite a few of your neighbour considering you going to be getting a 1000Mb connection or something along those lines, It does cost like quite a lot to get it put in in the first place but the maintenance costs are next to 0.

But considering Comcast in some places only delivers 8Mb with a 30GB per month limit you could charge your neighbours 50% more fore access to your connection and they would be jumping for joy and within like 1 - 2 years you would have made your money back.