Complaining to the FCC May Lower Your Broadband Bill Complaining to the FCC could save you money on your broadband bill. Ever since the agency passed new net neutrality rules, we've seen numerous customers say that ISPs have been more responsive to pricing complaints. While the net neutrality rules don't specifically cover pricing, the transparency part of the rules do require that ISPs meet advertised rates and connection performance promises, and avoid "unjust" or "unreasonable" behavior on these fronts.

As a result, some Comcast customers have been able to use the FCC's neutrality and broadband complaint portal to see a reduction in their bills Stop The Cap points out that Windstream customers have also been having luck getting $10 reduction in their bills after complaining to the FCC about the company's poor network performance. More specifically, complaining that the company isn't accurately advertising real world performance may be able to prompt the ISP to action. Responses can take 4-6 weeks, but you won't know if you don't try: quote: Complaints sent to the FCC are forwarded to Windstream’s executive relations team of customer service representatives, who have tried to placate customers with a monthly $10 discount off poor-performing DSL. Although your complaint will not get Windstream to pry open its safe and make immediate investments to correct your situation, it will keep the phone company’s fingers out of your wallet, collecting money it doesn’t deserve for a level of service it refuses to provide. FCC data shows Windstream is one of the worst ISPs in the country at Responses can take 4-6 weeks, but you won't know if you don't try:FCC data shows Windstream is one of the worst ISPs in the country at actually delivering advertised speeds . Last year the company also had to pay $600,000 to Georgia's AG for failing to deliver advertised speeds. If you haven't tried complaining to the FCC yet (especially if you're a captive customer with no additional choices), it may be worth a try if you're interested in lowering your monthly broadband bill.







News Jump Comcast Shuts Off Internet for Subs Who Were Sold Service Illegally; AT&T, Verizon Team To Stop T-Mobile 5G; + more news California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news Verizon To Buy Reseller TracFone For $7B; 5G Not The Competitive Threat To Cable Many Thought It Would Be; + more news MS.Wants Records From AT&T On $300M Project; Google Fiber Outages In Austin, Houston, Other Texan Cities; + more news States With The Biggest Decreases In Speed; AT&T Hopes You'll Forget Its Fight Against Accurate Maps; + more news AT&T's CEO Has A Familiar $olution To US Broadband Woes; EarthLink Files Suit Against Charter; + more news 5G Doesn't Live Up To Hype, AT&T's 5G Slower Than Its 4G; Cord-Cutting Now In 37% of Broadband Households; + more news FCC Cited False Broadband Data Despite Warnings; ZTE, Huawei Replacement Cost Is $1.87B, But Only $1B Allocated; + more ---------------------- this week last week most discussed view:

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gatorkram

Need for Speed

Premium Member

join:2002-07-22

Winterville, NC -2 recommendations gatorkram Premium Member My complaint to the FCC



Part of the issue I have, is how low the cap is in the first place, and then how expensive the overages are. $10 for 50 gigs has no basis in reality at all for justification, except to say this is the price other providers charge.



You can find my topic here: » I have a running topic over in the Suddenlink forums regarding a complaint I filed with the FCC.Part of the issue I have, is how low the cap is in the first place, and then how expensive the overages are. $10 for 50 gigs has no basis in reality at all for justification, except to say this is the price other providers charge.You can find my topic here: » My complaint to the FCC wkm001

join:2009-12-14 -3 recommendations wkm001 Member Re: My complaint to the FCC I'm not going to read through your entire thread to get the pertinent details. How low is the cap? Lets say you pay $50 for 250 gigabytes, that is also $10 per 50 gigabytes. Which makes your "overages" sound very reasonable.



Like it or not Internet is a commodity. Speed and caps are the two primary ways ISPs differentiate tiers and from each another. Luckily Net Neutrality is keeping them from doing all sorts of other nasty things.



It sounds like your beef is with the lack of competition not Suddenlink. You have an agreement with Suddenlink, you pay them money for a certain amount of service. If you use more than Suddenlink's defined allotment you pay extra. Your choices are to adjust your usage habits, pay the overages, or bitch about it. Have you asked about buying a business connection from Suddenlink? Does it have a cap?



When cell phone plans had minutes did you adjust your talk time to avoid going over? This isn't a lot different.

gatorkram

Need for Speed

Premium Member

join:2002-07-22

Winterville, NC 1 recommendation gatorkram Premium Member Re: My complaint to the FCC You find very few people on this site, and elsewhere that support any isp having caps. You are hard pressed to find anyone saying "I'm so happy my isp has caps now"



When you do see it, you have to ask yourself why....



The base price of a given package, and it's alloted cap has little to nothing to do with what the cost should be for overages.



The only place we have to look at costs for overages is in the commercial sector. For example I have a linode account, it has transfer limits and overages too. The difference being its 2 cents per gig.

swintec

Premium Member

join:2003-12-19

Alfred, ME 3 recommendations swintec Premium Member Re: My complaint to the FCC said by gatorkram: For example I have a linode account, it has transfer limits and overages too. The difference being its 2 cents per gig. It is hard to take your post or FCC argument seriously if this is what you are comparing to. I would hope you can see a difference between your bandwidth in a datacenter versus a cable plant and all of its equipment not to mention employees, trucks, fuel, call centers and benefits which the costs never go down.

gatorkram

Need for Speed

Premium Member

join:2002-07-22

Winterville, NC 2 recommendations gatorkram Premium Member Re: My complaint to the FCC Sure I know they are different, and sure the costs are different. I don't dispute anything you said.



Frankly I doubt the costs to provide me in this case 50 more gigs of transfer is anywhere near the price they ask, which is $10



I think it's simply a way to discourage anyone from using their connection contrary to how the isp wants you to. It must be affective.



Think about this. The cost to implement the meters and support costs to educate not only your staff but the public etc etc must have been so small compared to what they would gain doing it must be huge. Why else bother.



So it's not only a money grab, it's also an attempt to sell you something and stop you from using it. wkm001

join:2009-12-14 wkm001 Member Re: My complaint to the FCC It doesn't matter how much it costs the ISP to serve you an extra 50 gigabytes. If you are willing to stay their customer and pay it, it isn't too much.



Yes, this is exactly what caps are for!!! Every ISP oversells their bandwidth. Heavy users dramatically effect this ratio and the bottom line.



Go spend 30 minutes in any cell phone store in America. You will see at least one irate person come in complaining about going over on their data. The agent will try to explain bits, bytes, megabytes, gigabytes, etc... Of course to no avail.



For your last point all I can say is "worry about yourself." It isn't your job to right the business practices of every ISP in America. Or be mad because you thing everyone is getting ripped off. Find the best ISP you can and roll with their rules. You are jaded because you work in the industry and have an idea what it costs to provide all the bits.

tester125

@comcast.net 1 recommendation tester125 Anon Re: My complaint to the FCC No, I don't agree that's what the caps are for. If they were concerned about over selling the bandwidth then they would institute caps during prime time when users will be scrambling for that limited bandwidth (in your words.) Outside of prime time the users aren't squandering the cable companies precious bandwidth.



The bandwidth caps are all about limiting the damage done to profits via Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime Streaming and all the other sources of video streaming that allow customers to either downgrade service or cut the TV cable cord and still watch the shows that they want to watch. smk11

join:2014-11-12 -4 recommendations smk11 to gatorkram

Member to gatorkram

said by gatorkram: You find very few people on this site, and elsewhere that support any isp having caps. You are hard pressed to find anyone saying "I'm so happy my isp has caps now" I'll gladly accept reasonable caps if digital hoarders suffer for their pirating. Today that's around 500GB-600GB; however, pirates are shouting about oppression dealing with 2TB. No, you don't need to steal every single movie/show in 4k at the highest bitstream to store on your NAS array.

gatorkram

Need for Speed

Premium Member

join:2002-07-22

Winterville, NC 3 recommendations gatorkram Premium Member Re: My complaint to the FCC Nice. Anyone who uses more data than X must be a thief.



I did some simple math, and anyone can see it in my topic. Here is a simple fact.



If you have a 250gig cap, and you view HD video with your connection, using published netflix numbers, that cap would yield you 2.4 hours a day of viewing time.



And most people do more than just watch video with their internet connection.



Is watching 2.4 hours a day of hd programming excessive? smk11

join:2014-11-12 smk11 Member Re: My complaint to the FCC said by gatorkram: Nice. Anyone who uses more data than X must be a thief.



I did some simple math



If you have a 250gig cap Now do some simple reading where I said 500-600GB is reasonable today. Didn't say "anyone." Said the whiny digital hoarders who pirate everything possible. H.265 is about to cut video bandwidth in half so stop with the excuses. There's very few legal things consumers can be doing when even multiple TB's of data is seen as an oppressive cap.

mtnarea

@cox.net 1 recommendation mtnarea Anon Re: My complaint to the FCC You must be some sort of special. I do work with large files (moving VMs around, moving raw video around, etc) which puts me over 600GB a month, in fact across my connection at home and my servers at work I'm well over 10TB this month. Am I a pirate? There must be no other reason why I've used over 1TB this month just at home.



Your basis for that thought has no logical reasoning other than if it's over a certain amount you must be pirating. With video quality increasing (1440p on YouTube, 4K on Netflix) and average website size increasing, on top of other forms of entertainment on the internet (video games, etc) these caps are pointless. You cannot continue to defend something as archaic and backwards as caps. Network prioritization at peak hours is something I can see, however an outright cap is ridiculous.



My experience with this is personal. I've worked for numerous ISPs and I know that they aren't lacking in backhaul in their nodes, DSLAMs, etc in 99% of these cases. I continue to work in this field and have yet to find a legitimate reasoning for these caps. Where I work now we build off the premise of unlimited, and we're not hurting on finances or bandwidth even with these increases of use or "pirates" (customers using over 600GB a month). Stop being an idiot. smk11

join:2014-11-12 smk11 Member Re: My complaint to the FCC said by mtnarea : You must be some sort of special. I do work with large files (moving VMs around, moving raw video around, etc) which puts me over 600GB a month, in fact across my connection at home and my servers at work I'm well over 10TB this month. Am I a pirate? There must be no other reason why I've used over 1TB this month just at home.



Your basis for that thought has no logical reasoning other than if it's over a certain amount you must be pirating. With video quality increasing (1440p on YouTube, 4K on Netflix) and average website size increasing, on top of other forms of entertainment on the internet (video games, etc) these caps are pointless. You cannot continue to defend something as archaic and backwards as caps. Network prioritization at peak hours is something I can see, however an outright cap is ridiculous.



The increase in video quality has just been negated by h.265 as video bandwidth has been cut in half. 4K? Regular consumers are happy with 720p. Fair and sane caps are okay. Your job should be paying for a business internet connection.The increase in video quality has just been negated by h.265 as video bandwidth has been cut in half. 4K? Regular consumers are happy with 720p. Fair and sane caps are okay.

gatorkram

Need for Speed

Premium Member

join:2002-07-22

Winterville, NC gatorkram to smk11

Premium Member to smk11

I apologize.



If I had a 1tb cap I don't think I'd be saying much of anything about it.



I have a gigabit speed connection, and the cap is 550gb smk11

join:2014-11-12 -1 recommendation smk11 Member Re: My complaint to the FCC said by gatorkram: I apologize.



If I had a 1tb cap I don't think I'd be saying much of anything about it.



I have a gigabit speed connection, and the cap is 550gb



$X gigabit with 2-3TB cap, then overages

vs

$Y gigabit with 2-3TB cap, then 50-100Mbps throttled after. With your speeds, that cap is not reasonable or sane. 2-3TB cap for gigabit is fine; I'd even say that gigabit connections shouldn't even have hard caps.$X gigabit with 2-3TB cap, then overagesvs$Y gigabit with 2-3TB cap, then 50-100Mbps throttled after.

swintec

Premium Member

join:2003-12-19

Alfred, ME swintec Premium Member Re: My complaint to the FCC What sort of stupid reasoning is that? You just told us that anyone over a terabyte is probavly a pirate. Having agigabit line is okay to go over a terabyte and doesn't make them a pirate? The video codecs will be the same. Faster speeds doesn't mean you will download anymore than you were with 100 mbits. smk11

join:2014-11-12 -1 recommendation smk11 Member Re: My complaint to the FCC said by swintec: What sort of stupid reasoning is that? You just told us that anyone over a terabyte is probavly a pirate. Having agigabit line is okay to go over a terabyte and doesn't make them a pirate? The video codecs will be the same. Faster speeds doesn't mean you will download anymore than you were with 100 mbits.



h.264 is the same as h.265?



"Usenet Block Accounts | Unlimited Accounts" I get the feeling I am not misjudging pirates. Early adopters who want to pay more and have actual legit reasons can get whatever speeds they want. Reasonable caps would increase over time so gigabit connections and multi TB caps will be needed eventually.h.264 is the same as h.265?"Usenet Block Accounts | Unlimited Accounts" I get the feeling I am not misjudging pirates.

swintec

Premium Member

join:2003-12-19

Alfred, ME swintec Premium Member Re: My complaint to the FCC said by smk11: h.264 is the same as h.265?



You also told us:



"Now do some simple reading where I said 500-600GB is reasonable today."



but then told us:



"2-3TB cap for gigabit is fine"



So which is it?



Faster speeds does not mean more bandwidth consumed. Someone on a gigabit line is not a pirate because he would download 2-3 TBs but someone on 100 MBit who downloads over 600 GBs IS a pirate?



Your fuzzy math does not add up. No i was referring to your prior reply, " h.265 as video bandwidth has been cut in half."....someone on 100 MBit or 1,000 MBit will be using the same codecs for video.You also told us:"Now do some simple reading where I said 500-600GB is reasonable today."but then told us:"2-3TB cap for gigabit is fine"So which is it?Faster speeds does not mean more bandwidth consumed. Someone on a gigabit line is not a pirate because he would download 2-3 TBs but someone on 100 MBit who downloads over 600 GBs IS a pirate?Your fuzzy math does not add up. smk11

join:2014-11-12 smk11 Member Re: My complaint to the FCC said by swintec: No i was referring to your prior reply, " h.265 as video bandwidth has been cut in half."....someone on 100 MBit or 1,000 MBit will be using the same codecs for video.



You also told us:



"Now do some simple reading where I said 500-600GB is reasonable today."



but then told us:



"2-3TB cap for gigabit is fine"



So which is it?



Faster speeds does not mean more bandwidth consumed. Someone on a gigabit line is not a pirate because he would download 2-3 TBs but someone on 100 MBit who downloads over 600 GBs IS a pirate?



Your fuzzy math does not add up.



99% of average consumers can deal with reasonable caps. 1% i.e. early adopters can get gigabit with higher caps granted they pay. Eventually average consumers will move to gigabit when legal applications take advantage of them. Right now rampant piracy and digital hoarders are the ones subscribing to that service. "500-600GB is not enough nor is 2TB!" h.265 fixes the "cap crises." It almost reminds me of the manufactured exaflood crisis that never came. The greatest legal demand is about to have the bandwidth cut in half. "But everyone will watch 4K netflix!" No, average consumers don't give a shit about 4k.99% of average consumers can deal with reasonable caps. 1% i.e. early adopters can get gigabit with higher caps granted they pay. Eventually average consumers will move to gigabit when legal applications take advantage of them. Right now rampant piracy and digital hoarders are the ones subscribing to that service. smcallah

join:2004-08-05

Home -1 recommendation smcallah to gatorkram

Member to gatorkram

Why would the price of a package and its alloted cap have nothing to do with the cost of overages?



If you're paying $50 for 250GB, then $10 for 50GB should be expected. If it came out less, wouldn't people be questioning why it's $50 for 250GB in the first place?



Your linode example also has nothing to do with the pricing that bandwidth should be. With linode's pricing structure, you have no idea how much you're paying for bandwidth in the first place except for overages. You're paying for a package of bandwidth, RAM, disk space, and CPU. You don't know what other pricing they've built in to that to make up for bandwidth overages.



Also, its commercial and meant to be utilized. They have the volume of people going over all the time to make up for bandwidth costs. Plus the volume of people paying a lot for RAM, CPU, and disk space per month. None of that has anything to do with residential bandwidth pricing.



You'd have a point that $10 for 50GB is too much if their cap was more than 250GB, making the price you pay for overages more than the price you pay for the original allotment. That would be punitive. But they are charging an equal amount for the bandwidth provided.

gatorkram

Need for Speed

Premium Member

join:2002-07-22

Winterville, NC gatorkram Premium Member Re: My complaint to the FCC The funny thing is, before caps, you were paying for the speed of service. The more speed you got, the more it cost. Now you want to say the speed has nothing to do with the cost, it's in how much transfer you get. Which ever is true, I still say the price is to high for overages. wkm001

join:2009-12-14 wkm001 Member Hate the player, not the game I hate calling Comcast every 6-12 months and signing up for a different promotion that expires in another 6-12 months. But it does save me some serious money. Most recently I am saving $30 a month. I consider that a pretty good chunk of change.

hello123454

Premium Member

join:2002-02-02

Wilmington, DE hello123454 Premium Member I received a huge credit... I submitted a complaint and received a call from Comcast corporate within a week. When you try to call the number back they don't answer and you can't leave a voicemail. However, they did give me around $160 in one-time credits as well as $20-30 in ongoing monthly credits. man00

join:2003-07-25

united state man00 Member worth a try I may try the FCC thingy

1 Mbps download / 256 Kbps upload for $39.00

Still no HD channels on the tv side

Thank You Suddenlink your comment..

