Y'all probably remember my lengthy Comcast saga last month (posts here , here , here , here , here , here and here ). The whole thing was extremely frustrating and took way too long to resolve -- and might never have been resolved at all, if not for corporate intervention which was due solely to the fact that I'm a blogger. Yet despite all the angst, Comcast managed to keep my business -- even after the revelation that they were stealing my cable -- by fixing the problem and giving me a refund .

Here's the thing. Some time ago, in a development unrelated to our high-speed Internet woes, Becky and I decided to cancel our cable TV service during the summer. We'd been looking for ways to trim our budget, and we concluded that we really don't need cable during the interregnum between college-basketball season and college-football season. The only real thing I'd miss would be watching The Weather Channel in the event of a landfalling hurricane, but those are more likely to happen in late August and September anyway, by which point we'll have reactivated our service for football season. And anyway, the mere, slim possibility of missing Jim Cantore get all bug-eyed about a July hurricane probably isn't worth a summer's worth of $49.95/month bills.

I dawdled a bit about actually canceling our service (partly because I didn't want to miss Wolf's calls of the April and May primaries), but finally, earlier this month, we bought an antenna from Best Buy for like $15, and I then called Comcast to cancel our cable service... whereupon I was told that we'd have to return our cable box first, or else pay $29 for them to come pick it up. This is slightly annoying, since there's a Comcast truck at our apartment complex every damn day, but whatever; so Becky drove down to the local office and returned the box. She then instructed them to cancel our cable TV service -- to which the customer service lady replied that such a cancellation would cause our Internet bill to increase "from $42.95 to $57.95." This was new information, so Becky held off on canceling anything, in order that she and I could consult about what to do.

The purported $15 increase was news to me, for two reasons. One, I was unaware that our Internet rate was any kind of a promotion related to our cable TV service. As far as I knew, we had been paying a fixed, non-promotional rate for high-speed Internet service that was unrelated to anything else. Secondly, the lady's comment was odd because we don't pay $42.95 per month for high-speed Internet -- we pay $52.95. Where, I wondered, did she get the $42.95 figure from?

So I went to Comcast's website and checked their current rates, and as it turns out, $42.95 is now the base rate -- not the promotional rate, but the basic, long-term, fixed rate -- for high-speed Internet customers who also have cable TV. If you sign up as a new Internet customer, you get six months at $19.95/month, after which your bill increases to $42.95/month.

By contrast, when we signed up, back in the long-ago dark ages known as May 2007, $42.95 was our promotional rate; it then increased to $52.95, which is what it's been ever since.

Now, I understand the purpose of promotional rates -- they gotta attract new customers -- and so I'm not going to get too high-horsey about the $19.95 rate and the "how dare you fail to reward my customer loyalty" concept. Although, that said, I must admit, it is somewhat galling to think that new customers are, during their promotional period, paying more than 2 1/2 times less than what I've been paying; that seems a bit excessive. But that's not my real issue.

My real issue is this: if the basic, non-promotional rate for new customers has decreased to $42.95, then my rate should have decreased too. Promotional rates are one thing, but it's absolutely unconscionable for Comcast to continue charging me $52.95/month indefinitely, when new customers will be getting a flat $42.95/month rate, after their promotion expires, which will continue indefinitely. When telecommunications companies raise their rates, everybody's bill goes up; well, when they lower their rates, everybody's bill should go down. That's just common sense.

To illustrate this point, suppose I had kept my service for another five years. In 2013, I would still be paying $52.95 per month, while a customer who signs up today would be paying $42.95. So, over the course of the 54 months after the expiration of the new customer's six-month promotional period, Comcast would have collected $540 more from me than from him, for the same service, during the same time period. Why? Because I'm a more loyal, long-term customer! How on earth does that make any sense?

Needless to say, when I realized this, I was pissed off. And then, on top of it, now Comcast was saying they wanted to increase my Internet rate by $5, from $52.95/month to $57.95/month, because I was canceling my cable TV service. So now I'd be paying $15 more -- for the same service -- than what the new customer (with cable TV service) pays long-term, and $38 more than his promotional rate. Are you freaking kidding me?? You can afford to provide this service to other people for $19.95 temporarily, and $42.95 indefinitely, and yet you want to charge me not just $52.95, but $57.95 for it?? For the same damn service??

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that $5 was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was the one final indignity, heaped on top of a pile of Comcast-related indignities, that I wasn't willing to accept. First you send out an incompetent tech who says I have an "Indiana modem"; then you make me drive to your office repeatedly to fix problems that you caused; then you schedule a visit and don't show up for it; then it takes you four visits to diagnose and fix a technical problem that you caused; then you try to charge me for one of the unsuccessful visits to fix that problem; then I find out you've been overcharging me by $10/month; and now you want to charge me $5 more, just so I can have the privilege of canceling an unrelated service that I happen to also buy from your company? I think not. F*** no.

So, last week, I called AT&T and ordered DSL. It's substantially slower than Comcast cable Internet, but it's also substantially cheaper -- $19.95/month -- and I figured the slowness won't matter that much for regular web browsing and the like. I set it up over the weekend, and so far, I've been correct; the connection seems plenty fast for our needs. I then called Comcast on Monday and told them to disconnect my service entirely, both cable TV and high-speed Internet. Buh-bye.

When it comes time to put away the rabbit ears in late August, I don't know for sure where we'll be living, but if we're still in Comcast-only territory, I'll definitely give DirecTV and Dish Network a very close look. For all the sincere efforts of good, friendly, competent corporate and local-office employees to fix my problems (and thus prevent further bad P.R. from my blog), the bad still definitely outweighs the good here. Comcast has earned my scorn.

Interestingly, the Comcast phone representative I spoke with yesterday was unfazed by the news that I was canceling my service. In contrast to the TiVo rep I spoke with the previous day, who offered me four months of free service in order to entice me not to cancel, the Comcast rep perfunctorily asked me why I was canceling, seemed uninterested in my answer, and then matter-of-factly informed me that my service will be disconnected next Tuesday, April 27. (I was assured I won't be charged for the eight days of service in the interim. Based on past experience with erroneous billing charges, I strongly suspect that I will be charged, and I'll have to raise bloody murder to get a refund for that ~$30. I will, of course, do so.)

I guess it makes sense for Comcast reps to be unfazed by customers canceling their service. If this is how Comcast treats its customers -- and the terrible satisfaction ratings indicate that it is; indeed, I've gotten much better service than most, because of my blog -- they must get a lot of cancellations.