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Originally Posted by bicker
That's the great thing about a competitive marketplace like this: You can consider the options you have (including moving to another part of town, so you have more choices), you can eliminate whichever choices you want, you can favor individual choices based on whatever criteria you prefer, and you can even choose to do without.
Great choice. It's cost efficient, for sure. Each of the choices have their strengths and weaknesses.
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It means a lot to know you support my choice of OTA. I agree they all have their strengths and weaknesses. And it would be nice if consumers were allowed to chose not only between different technologies that may or may not suite their needs but also choose between providers of the same technology. Unfortunately that's not allowed for Cable or Fios. It is allowed for Satellite but that's irrelevant if you don't want that technology.
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Please excuse the clarification: You chose to leave them, actually.
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That's correct. I beleive that Comcast could provide a much better product and rather than settle for what they were willing to offer I said no thanks. I don't believe in rewarding bad behavior.
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Again, I hate to insist on preciseness, but what you found frustrating is that you didn't like any of the alternatives.
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Thanks for the help but you have it wrong. What I found frustrating is that I'm not allowed to find another cable service provider even though there are other companies that provide the same service. Comcast has my town locked up in terms of consumer choice. Without real competition at a consumer level Comcast has no incentive to do better.
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Comcast is the single largest provider. It would be pretty shocking if they were not also the single largest source of complaints.
Do keep complaints in perspective though: People complain because of frustrations similar to the one you relayed. They choose to think of it as just Comcast, but the reality is that they made choices similar to those you made: To not move to part of town where you have more choices; to not accept the offers from any of the other competitors either, because you didn't like them, etc. People would prefer to have everything perfect and practically free. However, what matters is what people actually value, and you can tell what people value not by listening to them talk -- talk is cheap and people use talking for venting frustration -- you can tell what people value by watching what they choose to spend their money on.
I'm not sure what your point was, with regard to the people you tell. It sounds to me that they simply made a different value judgment from the one you made. Reasonable people disagree about things, quite often. Right?
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I beleive they are telling me the truth because I dealt with Comcast. Comcast can spin it anyway they like but when I hear the same complaints from different people, and it matches my experience, I tend to think the claims are accurate. I agree with your put up or shut up policy but expecting people to move because they don't like Comcast is the most arrogant thing I've ever read on this message board. No offense but it's something you've mentioned twice and it's the attitude projected by Comcast. I'm starting to think it's a reflection of Comcast's corporate culture. It's very frustrating to deal with a company that has that attitude when you know there's nothing you can do to change it. By the way I get a lot of junk mail from Direct TV, Dish TV, and Comcast. I always throw all my junk mail right into the recylcle bin but I tear the Comcast fliers in half first. I know it's childish behavior but it's cathartic.
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Or one of the others. Again, you made personal choices that eliminated the other options. That doesn't mean that those choices didn't exist. You just decided against them, or made other personal choices that preclude them.
Uh, in a word: No. That's incorrect. The vast majority of mass-market suppliers, both of products and services, operate the same way. That is the nature of the mass-market. You just choose to focus on the impact of it in sectors of the marketplace where the ramifications of it frustrate you.
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There was 1 choice missing from the menu. The ability to choose a cable service provider. I didn't really choose to focus on it. It kind of slapped me in the face.
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We have five suppliers offering subscription television service to folks here in Burlington. Two of them are satellite services; the other three are terrestrial.
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So just to be clear you can choose between 3 cable service providers at your home?