Dumping ComCast

ComCast, The Corporate Bottom Feeder (image source)

A Brief History of ComCast and MeanMesa

Years ago, ComCast was "invited" into MeanMesa Galactic Headquarters bundled as an internet provider and a Spartan, 30 channel cable television service.  The monthly bill was around $40 for the internet and another $11 for the basic cable hook up.  Because of the "geriatric situation" which dictated MeanMesa's personal tastes, this television arrangement was fine.

The "geriatric situation" amounted to an appetite to watch television instead of running around town in the dark of night which, predictably, increased with age.  

The old tele could provide FOX, an on-line shopping extravaganza, all the alphabet networks (except MSNBC, of course) six channels of Spanish language melodramas and another half a dozen dirty shirt preachers from Kentucky asking daily for mail-in "faith blessings."

Those were the good old days.

Looking back through the 2010 ComCast billing history, we see a routine monthly billing reflecting this arrangement.

For example,
Apr 2, 2010 = $51.97
Aug 4, 2010 = $54.22

However, in the cold, dark days of December, 2010, a nice ComCast man knocked on my door. offering a "ComCast special" which, for an additional $29.95 per month would increase my cable service from the "basic" level of 30 channels to an "advanced package" of around 150.  After immediately agreeing to this sudden and robust opportunity and "good fortune," the man installed a new box or two, and the old tele "blossumed" into a new state of service and access, one previously almost unimaginable.

Calculating the new monthly bill was simple enough.  Starting with the $55 or so of the old bill and adding the cost of the new "advanced package" -- including New Mexico's 7% sales tax -- the new bill would be around $90 per month.

For example,
Jan 7, 2011 = $92.71

Importantly for this posting, the nice ComCast man explained which new channels would be included in the "advanced package," and, in fact, after installing the new boxes, carefully checked to make sure that these new offerings were, indeed, now on the tele.  There were plenty of "ComCast advanced package dentritus," but there were also a nice collection of science, history, military and science fiction offerings.

The Letter

However, by June, 2011, ComCast was no longer interested in continuing our business relationship.  Bluntly, the Texans in charge of sustaining ComCast profits took a decision to raise rates, more or less, on the "spur of the moment."

The particular mechanism of this "raising rates" process of theirs would begin with a letter to all ComCast subscribers.  The content of this letter follows:

Naturally, MeanMesa called the number in the letter and asked about just what would be required to "keep" all the channels which had been "mistakenly" included in the "advanced package" installed by the nice ComCast man a few months earlier.  Of course, the precise channels which had been "mistakenly" included all this time were exactly the ones which made the "advanced package" desirable in the first place.

The 24/7 colon cleansing channel, along with the endless infomercials for the soap scum removing bath brush, Pastor McGillicutty's Sin Fighting Pentecostals  a relentless offering of cut "gem stones," senior golf and Amish wood stoves would emerge from ComCast's correction of the "mistake" uninjured.

Well, ComCast's remedy to this "mistake" turned out to be quite simple.  For an additional $10 per month or so, everything would be returned to its previously satisfying state with no hurt feelings whatsoever.  Still, spurred by a lingering suspicion that the whole affair amounted to little more than a cheaply disguised "bait and switch" scheme to raise prices just as ComCast was adopting yet another profit enhancing lunge before changing its name, MeanMesa called them back, telling them to just "shut it down."

There would be no blood money extracted by such a sleezy gambit.

ComCast's New Name

From this point forward, the favorite channels began to slowly disappear. 

The Handsome Young Strangers

Although MeanMesa was succumbing to a growing grumpiness from having all these channels deleted, the old stubborn consumer was bearing the travails of the deprivation fairly well.  After all, reception still included the local PBS channel along with Rachel Maddow each evening.

Then, one afternoon while returning from the nearby whole foods grocery with a few veggies for dinner, MeanMesa encountered two nicely dressed young men, resting by the postal boxes. 

"What's brought you two to the apartment complex?" 

"We're here selling DISH network services.  Are you interested?"

Of course, in practically no time at all, MeanMesa had transferred the television cable to DISH, receiving in the bargain, lots of channels and a good reduction from the old ComCast price.  The two salesmen said they would cancel the ComCast cable service and get a refund on the unused time.  MeanMesa suspected at once that ComCast would be acting very much "out of character" to actually do something this ethical and reasonable.

That turned out to be the case -- no refund.  Still, the change was well worth it.  The sensation of leaving ComCast was similar to escaping from East Berlin.

The young DISH salesmen also said that they would replace the old ComCast internest service with Verizon, further reducing the price of the television computer bundle.  This part of the offer has not yet materialized, but, with the prospect of dumping ComCast completely now on the table, it turns out that there are plenty of alternative computer servers.

The Last Roar of the Wounded Boar

The computer problem hasn't been resolved yet, but it will be.  In the meantime, ComCast has sent their latest bill, no doubt still smarting from the loss of a customer.  It is included here for an example reference.  The monthly bill under the new ComCast brand image, Xfinity, has increased from $96 to $142.  The new monthly cost of replacement services will be around $70.

Bye, Bye, ComCast.  Oh, What a Relief It Is!

Finally! An End To All "Bad" News! Wahoo!!!

Here at MeanMesa we have some very old ideas about good news and bad news.  What, oh what, could that mean?  Well, the answer to that lingering lament is not too difficult to explain, not too difficult at all, in fact.

When the "news" is bad, our old idea suggests that something rather negative is happening in our world.  When the "news" isn't bad, it means that things are actually "rolling along" fairly smoothly.  See?  Rocket science.

Now, by the end of this week we will be seeing much less from the "bad news" category.  At first blush, we might assume that such a welcome change is the result of, well, as mentioned before, things "rolling along" fairly smoothly.  Who could possibly ask for anything better than that?

Uh-oh.  We have to wait a minute before launching our champagne crazed "good news" -- or, at least, "less bad news" -- celebration.  How could that happen?  Have the "bad guys" finally figured out how to change "bad news" into either "less bad news" or, heaven forbid, even "good news?" 

Let's try to take a look through the Fox farts, the carefully packed hearings on the FCC's hearings on the ComCast/NBC "merger," the utter inaction of the Justice Department which is simply "too busy" to "unleash" the old, cold fired anti-trust division and the eerie silence of the legions of mumbling "gag orders" staggering around the old, atmospheric NBC corporate headquarters.  Of course, that hopeful, ambitious "look" mentioned above will probably turn out to not be much of a look at all.  

A "marriage made in free market heaven" or, at least, at a high altitude (image Politico)

In fact, soon enough we will find ourselves once again "flying blind."  No one here on the "outside" will have any idea of what has gone on, what is happening now or what the likely outcome is going to be.  

Good job, all you reactionaries.  Things should get a great deal simpler for your "fact bending" operation once we're saturated with all this "good news" which can finally fill up the air waves whether or not there is actually anything good happening in the real world.  Hey, not only do hill billies and bigots prefer "good news" to anything which might reflect negatively on their highly manicured self images, that same "good news" can buffer all the bitching and belching at the nearest American Legion bar just as effectively!

Golly!  It's gonna' be the best day ever!

Now, MeanMesa, desperately trapped in all the normal geriatric confusion concerning such technical matters, must quietly assign all the "geeky" part of this story of "wide bands," "net neutrality," "content sources" and the like to those more capable of discussing such intricate details.  

Happily, those competent voices have not forsaken us -- every tiny nuance of the matter has been exhaustively and repeatedly posted by this time.  And,  by not so much as even "dirtying our hands" with such pedestrian clap-trap, this leaves the noble, freely roaming MeanMesa completely free to plunge headlong into its speciality, that is,  into absolutely expressed, subjectively derived, outrageously arbitrary opinion.  Again.

What follows is, of course, our "big"control issues." picture" view of just what's gone on.

We can begin with "control issues."  In fact, we can found the entire matter on the pressing and relentless appetite of our domestic billionaires to control what we "lesser folk" think.  Naturally, that ambition of theirs quickly spreads to controlling what we know, and, right behind that effort, what "news" we shall be allowed to consume.

Some time ago, temporarily confounded by the new technology of the internet, these very same American billionaires foolishly concluded that it would be quite safe for them to allow the system to be a free one.  Either from an instantaneous moment of weakness or simple oversight, these plutocrats decided that "nothing too unfortunate" could ever possibly emerge from what could never amount to any more than an electronic gizmo.

Not too long after that initial mistake, in fact, at just about the same time that progressives were discovering that they could easily communicate all sorts of insurgent ideas on the "gizmo," the same billionaires, tempted by a tiny market  share not currently being reached with their advertising campaigns of the day, decided that it would, again, be "quite safe" to allow one or two "insurgent voices" to be revealed on a tiny little side network which not many people would ever listen to anyway.

At the final, gasping end of perhaps the longest sentence in Western history, MSNBC was born.  Unhappily for the billionaires with such a checkered sense of self-protection, the network was actually designed from the outset to be "out of control."

Very clearly, the material threat of both of the billionaires' decisions quickly grew far too great to be conveniently managed in the same manner as the remainder of the "news" networks were managed.  The billionaire version of a "social contract" dealt specifically with such possibilities.  For example, embracing a "liberal agenda" amounted to "bad behavior," and being totally stupefied by the likes of FOX amounted to "slightly better behavior."

In the eyes of our American billionaires both experiments had come to a miserable end, indeed.  The "discipline of the lower classes" had suffered to the drastic state where some of them had begun to get "uppity," that is, the troublesome progressives among the "great, unwashed masses" "bad, liberal behavior" was creeping "out of control."

And, while the zipping and zinging electrons of the Internet were happily invisible, the quite material NBC Universal Network was not.

NBC Universal's Galactic Headquarters (courtesy staho.com)

And, not only was the troublesome, "out of control" insurgency of the ever-so-slightly progressive MSNBC resident in a highly visible, material sky scraper, its "soft underbelly" remained pornographically exposed on the "sacred stock exchange."  You know, the "stock exchange" where such "out of control" results of too much reactionary laxity could be "reined in" and terminated.

It was Absolutely Nothing Less than a "free market media correction!"

Further, when one begins with the highly successful model of the Chinese Internet Firewall, the painless migration to this soothing new definition becomes quite manageable. Even "manageable" for our adorable clutches of billionaires who are, quite reasonably, quite "gun shy" of too much "out of control" new thinking running loose on the horizon.  After all, their servants had relayed the "news" of what was happening in Tunis.

None of this was particularly revelatory to the old master of MSNBC, GE.  Because the majority of its manufacturing and marketing were now resident in the Peoples Republic, a $30 Bn check from ComCast and an opportunity to "wash its hands" of this entire unpleasantry was just too tempting to corporately pass.

So there you have it.  "Goodbye Keith Obermann.  Save a chair for the rest of the refugees from the failed MSNBC/free Internet experiment -- Rachel and Ed."  All the trouble that bunch has been making will be over in no time.  Maybe your move will be so effective that even the small but irritating voice of little old MeanMesa will be silenced. 

All that's left after this stroke of genius will be another quick reminder that, if the population of the country didn't prefer Glenn Beck, Rush, Sean and the others, they wouldn't be on such a vast majority of "market driven" radio and television stations.  Yeah.  That "news" will be "good news, indeed."  Finally, all the voices of the country will once again agree that the entire US population is extremely right wing!