so my housemate, new (i just moved in 10 days ago), tells me the first bill came in, bill for the internet. i owe $21.50, which includes the basic high speed internet, plus part of the $5 extra comcast is charging for wireless…. excuse me? i had to ask her to repeat that, sure i wasn’t hearing right. but i was.

comcast is charging her 1) for the internet and 2) to use the internet on top of it? i tried to get more info from her, but she’s not much of a tech person, pretty much just told comcast what she wanted (phone, cable tv, internet) and they set up the appointment, picked the plan, set the prices. so i think when i get home tonight i’m going to have to go thru her receipts, the account records, see what was done. as i told her:

i don’t think you should be paying extra for wireless. the only thing you need to pay comcast for is the internet. basically means there’s a cable line running to the cottage, and they 1) turn it on at the headquarters and 2) send somebody out to make sure the end is coming out fine, connect the coaxial cable. they will provide a cable modem, which is a box that connects to their services, and you plug all the stuff you need connected into that cable modem in order to receive those services (internet, phone, cable, etc)

what really bothers me about this is that what they are charging you for is the fact that there’s an extra computer in the house, using that internet, it seems. or are they charging you for rental of the router? that’s a bullsh*t charge, to be honest, because you’re already paying for the internet connection. all you need to do is tell them that there’s only 1 computer in the house, then use your own router and set up your own network. from what i hear, comcast deliberately keeps their legal-ese vague, but $5 extra for wireless is a money-grubbing, totally pointless charge, and if they aren’t more upfront with their customers about this, they’ve got a class action lawsuit coming their way.

by the way, remember when i was telling the guy it wasn’t necessary for him to come up to my room, that he could just give me the network name and password, and i’d be good to go? and he insisted it was more esoteric? [the guy had argued with me for 5 minutes, telling me i had to go up in my room, unpack my computer from beneath a mountain of stuff, and set up my computer so he could connect me to the network, and i kept telling him that if he gave me the name of the network and the password, i could do it, no problem. he kept telling me it was a lot more complicated than that, stuff i wouldn't be able to do on my own.] it wasn’t. all he did was find the network (easy) and type in the password. [ed. note: then he proceeded to point the mouse at my airport icon in the upper right corner of my monitor, and tell me what the number of bars in the symbol meant, that all bars meant great signal strength, one bar was the lowest. i just watched him do this, not saying anything.] annoyed me, especially given i was wondering if he would’ve dumbed it down so much if we were guys. i can’t tell you how many guys have spoken to me about computers and internet technology like i’m an absolute idiot.

to be honest, i’ve had that happen more times than i can count. it always astounds me each time it happens, it feels each time like i’ve been put squarely back in the stone ages.

then i realized… $45 a month? for internet? i don’t have facts to back up this supposition, but it seems that if she got a basic phone line, then hooked up with sonic.net via dsl install, she could get phone, internet and cable for probably half what she’s paying now. $45 a month for internet? no. no. no. not in this day and age. cost of internet should be going down, not up.

not happy with comcast, currently. and neither are many other people.