I've been with Comcast since moving into this house in March 2009.
Starting in 2010, around the time they did the Xfinity upgrade, I've been having issues with my on demand. No worries, they send techs. The techs make it work. It stops working again and I get credits.
Sometime last fall, a tech told me the problem was the cable in my attic. I told him go ahead and run new cable. "Oh I can't do that" he tells me. "But Comcast will send someone out to do it for $90/hr 2 hour minimum." It's one cable so I ran it myself. That fixed it for 6 months.
Anyway, because of the on demand issue, I've swapped my stb about a dozen times. I've only ever swapped the modem once early on because of signal issues though.
Imagine my surprise when the monthly rental fee went from $5 to $7 a month. No explanation. No warning. It just happened. I know it seems like a small thing but I've long since reimbursed Comcast for this modem and I have the triple play so I don't have the option of providing my own.
No one at Comcast is willing to tell me WHY I have to rent a modem into perpetuity. It seems to me that if they can't make third party modems work on their network, the fee should be included in the price of the service.
Other providers don't make you rent modems.
I've even offered to buy the modem from them but they refuse that too. I asked why not and was told they don't sell modems. I asked if it was because they could bleed more money from me through rental fees and the rep said no but wouldn't give me a good answer as to why I couldn't just buy the stupid thing.,
So if any Comcast reps are reading this, why does Comcast seem to want to lose a good customer (I pay on time every time) over $7 a month for a modem?
