Why does Comcast impose data caps on its customers?

According to one spectacularly ill-informed customer service representative, the company does this because it's "mandated by the law."

A Comcast customer who is in one of the trial areas where Comcast charges overage fees when customers exceed data allotments called to cancel his service and received the bizarre explanation. In a reddit post, the now former Comcast customer wrote that he had been charged $120 in overage fees.

"If you don't mind me asking, what is the reason why you would want to disconnect your service?" the agent asked during the call, which the customer uploaded to SoundCloud.



"Your outrageous data usage plan that is completely archaic and unnecessary," he answered. "I am apparently in a trial market for it, it's not everyrwhere, and I've been getting charged for going over my data cap and I'm going to find somewhere where that's not going to happen to me."

"I understand," the customer service agent answered. "But every Internet service provider has [a] data cap. It is mandated by the law."

The customer laughed at this point and said, "No it is not. Believe you me, I've already talked to other Internet companies. They don't have data caps where I live and that's why I'm switching to them. My bill has gone from $50 to $187, and I have already verified with other Internet companies that it would not be the case there."

After being contacted by Ars, Comcast said the customer service representative needs training.

“This representative is wrong," a Comcast statement said. "There is no law requiring ISPs ‘to have data caps’ and Comcast discontinued having a cap in May 2012. We are currently conducting trials of a more flexible data usage plan in a small number of markets, and this representative’s statements are not consistent with the training and messaging we provide. We will work to retrain this representative and will reach out to the customer to clarify this information.”

Comcast in 2012 ended a policy in which it would cut people's service off after they use 250GB in a month, replacing it with plans that charge customers extra when they go over the limit. Although this is what most people think of as a "data cap," Comcast says it's not a cap, because customers can use as much as they want if they don't mind paying more.

In any case, this is another example of a Comcast customer service representative speaking off the cuff without understanding the issues at hand. Last year, one confused Comcast customer service rep told a subscriber suffering Internet connection problems that Steam, the widely used gaming software, is "probably a virus" or "too heavy." But at least neither one of these agents changed the customer's billing account name to "Asshole."