Comcast Complaint

I’m not by nature a particularly secretive person. In fact, I probably talk too much. I’ve got nothing to hide; no skeletons in the closet,  but I do like to decide what I tell people about myself, and what I don’t.

The same goes with my contact information.

Personally I’ve never seen much of a need for residential telephone subscriber books. If I want you to have my telephone number you’ll have it. I will have given it to you. (Not that I use the phone much these days in any case; I prefer to text or email, but that’s another story for another day).

I’ve not had a landline for some years.

I’ve got a cellphone, with loads of daytime minutes, and I get free domestic calls from 7pm to 7am and all weekend. I have Skype too, and also Google Voice, so why would I want to pay a shedload of money each month for a landline?

The begging AT&T junk mail goes from mail box to trash where it belongs. Comcast kept calling to sell me digital voice for only $39.99 a month. I told them Skype was way cheaper – I can call 36 countries around the world for $9.95 a month, and use my cellphone to do that as well. I’ve done the math.

Still, Comcast offered their triple HD package, which is only a couple of bucks more than what we already had. Except it had HD TV, and more channels (a couple of which I might actually watch from time to time),  and the Digital Voice package is thrown in.

We have a cordless phone system in a box gathering dust, so we said OK.

Now, I’ve now complaints about the phone service. It works as advertised.

But to get to the point of this story…

I looked at the online account page. It says the number is published. I call Comcast. They tell me it will cost a few bucks to have it changed to un-published. Not very happy about that, as I didn’t ask for it to be published in the first place. Then the stinger. It will cost up to $4.95 a month to keep it unpublished!

So, I have to pay almost $5 a month to stop the pond scum telemarketers calling? I’ve never ever had them call me before, as I’ve never been listed anywhere. My cellphone number was never listed, and Skype nor Google Voice is (and I can block incoming idiots on Google Voice in any case).

Now, I could perhaps see the logic of getting charged for an entry in a phone book, but to be charged each month to NOT appear is nothing short of a scam.

Moreover, Comcast, like many other companies like to trumpet their privacy policy, yet they don’t seem to care much about the privacy of their customers.

No, I don’t trust the ‘Do Not Call’ registry either. Quite simply, this should be an opt-in option, not a chargeable opt-out. Comcast, this sucks.

If I had known this at the beginning, I’d have told the sales guy where to put their Triple Play!

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