Leave It To Comcast To Charge a Company $60,000 For Internet They Never Even Set Up
ARS - Nearly a year ago, a Silicon Valley startup called SmartCar signed up for Comcast Internet service. SmartCar founder and CEO Sahas Katta was moving the company into new office space in Mountain View, California, and there was seemingly no reason to think Comcast might not be able to offer him Internet access. But Comcast never fulfilled its promise to hook up the business, blaming the delay on construction and permitting problems. Katta discovered that neighboring businesses were making do with painfully slow and unreliable DSL Internet from AT&T, and ultimately SmartCar reluctantly signed up for AT&T as well.
After hearing Comcast excuses for months, Katta finally got fed up and decided that he would find a new office building once his 12-month lease expires on April 20 of this year. Katta told Comcast he wanted to “cancel” his nonexistent service and get a refund for a $2,100 deposit he had paid. Instead, Comcast told him he’d have to pay more than $60,000 to get out of his contract with the company. Comcast eventually waived the fee—but only after being contacted by Ars about the case. As for Katta, he can’t believe it’s “this difficult for startups in Silicon Valley to get Internet.”
The Comcast reps, according to Katta, offered him a specific deal—$189.90 a month for TV and Internet, with speeds of 100Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream. On April 20, Katta signed a two-year “Business Service Order Agreement” to get this exact package at that price. (Katta provided Ars a copy of the order, other documents, and e-mails between himself and Comcast.) With the lease expiring and Comcast service nowhere in sight, SmartCar sent a letter to Comcast on January 21 saying the company wished to terminate its contract. As noted earlier, Comcast then informed SmartCar that in order to cancel, it would have to pay $60,900.45 to cover construction costs. Smartcar pleaded its case with Comcast throughout all of February and part of March without any success. That finally changed after Ars got in touch with Comcast’s public relations team. On March 9, a Comcast rep sent Katta an e-mail apologizing while waiving the $60,900.45 in fees. The letter promised a refund of the $2,100 deposit.
This is actually one of the more beautiful cases of Comcast of all time. It’s just so perfect, so Comcast, so “fuck you, pay me” that I actually respect their hustle in this one. Sure it’s scumbag, exploitation, blood-boiling, and all around awful, but a little piece of me smirked when I read the scheme they were trying to pull off. Making a company sign a contract for $60,000 and then never giving them internet or television is revolutionary shit. Only Comcast can pull something like that off. Only Comcast can say they are available in an area, sign a big deal with a company, then try to charge them for breaking the contract. That truly is remarkable. Meanwhile the company was using AT&T DSL, which apparently is a thing that exists but was so slow they couldn’t even do most of their work in the office. And now the icing on the perfect cake here is Smartcar begged and pleaded with Comcast for months to not charge them $60,000 for a service they were never provided. And Comcast never relented, never wavered, never backed down until this big tech website ARS got involved. Then Comcast was like fuckkkkk, ok, fine, no $60,000 fee for us not giving you internet. Motherfucking Comcast, man.
If you’d like to read more about Comcast, please enjoy these links:
Let’s Check In On Comcast Real Quick
CEO says they won’t raise prices, then raises the prices
Comcast won’t cancel service of guy whose house burned down
Woman tried to cancel her service, they sent her a bill to “Asshole Brown”
Comcast told a guy they wouldn’t charge him for their fuck up and then did anyway
Woman pulled a gun on Comcast after they said fixing it would be free and then charged her
The time Comcast literally won the “worst company in America award”