Well DishDave, maybe tomorrow if I get in the mood I will give them a call. To me, if you are promised a price for a 2 year contract, it should be honored.
Xfinity (Comcast) rate/lineup changes
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- Nov 29, 2003
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My guess it is for Broadcast, Sports or Box/Equipment fees.
Those always are exempt and will cause the bill to go up without your actual package going up if under contract.
All providers do this, not just Comcast.
These are some of the reasons I am quite happy just paying for Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ and getting my locals via my Antenna and the Tablo.
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Yeah, theBruce, but when you are quoted a price for 2 years, it should be honored no matter what. There has to be a way to prevent companies from doing these things and crapping all over us. 
The quotes of which you speak are usually the programming package prices and typically don't include taxes and fees. If this is an atypical situation and the bottom line was indeed quoted, then it is worth pursuing but that's not typically how it goes down. There's some similar issues with what you can get credits for when you cancel.
There are many classes of customer costs: programming (typically refundable), sports season packages and PPV (usually not refundable), non-programming fees (usually not refundable) and taxes (not refundable).
Fees may include service change costs (to add or remove programming or a feature), hardware rental/lease, insurance plans, PPV, charges to talk to a human and the ever-popular early termination fee to get out of an "agreement". DIRECTV explicitly exempts regional sports costs from their price guarantees.
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When I went to the Xfinity Store earlier this year I flirted with getting their TV Service, not once did they ever quote me a price that included the fees ( broadcast, sports, taxes) which at that time would have added roughly $24 to my bill.
By the way with all their fees going up, Broadcast to $14.95, Local sports to $8.75 and taxes and fees roughly $8, that is over $30 a month in fees alone ( and does not include box or DVR fees which will push it higher), no wonder people are leaving live TV service.
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Bruce, several points of interest.. What happened locally in the SE TN and N GA market (at minimum) if you'll recall the old cheaper packages didn't include any sports keeping out that pesky sports fee. Now, even their revamped what would've been Digital Economy they add FS1, which when I asked specifically why add that ONE channel which is of course much cheaper per sub than ESPN the rep said pretty much any sports channel like that added (excluding Golf or Tennis Channel) they "must" tack on that sports fee.. Reading between the lines, all packages must include locals, (add fee,) then by adding FS1, (add sports fee.)
By not disclosing actual taxes and fees in a quote they 'worm' around it by saying "Taxes, franchise fees, local tax vary so hard to give a quote." It's legal (I guess) but deceptive. Personally I know they used to say to me *price* of package "and taxes and fees..." This may be a question for the other cord cutters forum, but I wonder especially services like YTTV who carry the most locals are losing money since nationwide price is currently $49.99 with locals? (No sales tax YET in GA..) eventually always raising prices stating in vague terms "increase in programming costs and innovation.."
At one time I had their home phone service. In looking closely at the bill in the breakdown, some charges listed said "cost recovery fee" that wasn't imposed by any regulatory agency yet Comcast stated plainly it didn't have to pass that cost to the customer but did anyway, others were mandatory to cover their costs.
Charlie Ergen was correct. A year or so ago he and CEO of Philo stated they could envision local broadcast fees being upwards of
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I agree . I own my own router/modem and it’s already paid for itself. The fees keep going up and what’s worse is if you don’t subscribe to their tv as well then you don’t get access to their higher internet speeds. It’s total garbage.
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The problem is with having your own modem is you don’t qualify for XFi Advantage, which includes the modem and no data caps at $15 a month.
I much prefer having my own modem but not at $50 more for no data caps.
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Are you sure? I don't subscribe to TV, phone or security but I am given a choice of six different speed levels topping out at "up to" 1000Mbps.
Well it might be either for new subscribers or is in the works to be changed soon. When I click on internet only for my area, no choices pop up except when I do tv and internet or all 3 services.
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When I tried an address on Romeo Plank Road, it said Flex was available but didn't specifically mention Xfinity Stream as an option. Flex perhaps isn't worth much by itself but it does appear to be a way to get free access to Peacock Premium.
It did appear to offer the address 1Gbps service without TV, phone, security or wireless services.
Does Comcast allow customers to opt out of local channels and not pay the broadcast TV fee, or is this a mandatory fee for everyone?
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Required. That's what happens when you avoid disputes and just accept the prices and conditions of the channel owners. Skyrocketing rates and no choice.
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I wish, have no need for sports ( extra fee) or locals ( have a Tablo), if I could get away from those channels and their fees I probably would use them for just the cable channels.
- Nov 29, 2003
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'
My year was up so time for a new deal, called up the secret phone number so I connect directly to a American Agent, ready to fight, it could not go any easier, gave me the same price I paid under the last contract, gig speed with no data cap-$95.
Funny thing about it, I brought up TV service to see if they could give me a deal I could not pass up, the CSR actually said I could get a better price from one of the online services like You Tube TV, surprised me.
Translation: "We're not going to destroy the profit margins on our TV service by trying to compete with YouTube TV on price. If Google wants to lose money selling you TV service (that's delivered over our broadband connection), that's fine with us."
Or, in the case of Comcast, you can go with their streaming service that has the added benefit of counting against your broadband usage as well.
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Except I did not bring up YouTube TV, all I said to them was I do not have a paid TV service and if they have any deals to add to my broadband, that was when the CSR said I would get a better price from a online TV service.
I did price it out on my own, it would be a total of $168 a month with the fees ( locals, sports, dvr), if i added YTTV to my Broadband $145, so I guess the CSR was correct.
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Yeah. I'm just saying that Comcast knows what the score is in terms of what it costs their customers to add YTTV to their broadband versus bundle their own TV and broadband together. And so apparently when customers call up asking for a great deal on TV, rather than give them one, they just let them switch to YTTV (or Hulu Live or whatever else). Because Comcast apparently is no longer interested in chasing after TV customers that are barely profitable for them.
I will say, though, that I was surprised by your post. The fact that a Comcast CSR would mention YTTV as an option, unprompted, reveals how little they care about propping up their TV subscriber numbers now.
- Nov 29, 2003
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For the last 2 weeks Comcast has been calling me twice a week trying to get me to subscribe to their TV service, usually I just say no thanks and hang up.
Today was a little different, this time I told the lady I have You Tube TV so with the $95 I pay to Comcast, my Total was $145 a month ( I actually pay less, bought some Google Play Gift Cards at 50% off from ebay), I then explained to her with that I get all the main cable channels and my locals and sports and a unlimited DVR, she then said that she will beat that price by a substantial amount and I would not lose any channels.
After being on hold for 3 minutes, she came back with a price of, wait for it, $186 a month, I asked her what happened to the savings and she said that was their best price because it includes the Broadcast/Sports/ DVR Fees, I said why would I spend $41 more for the same thing and she said for the Full Comcast Experience, I said no thanks and she hung up.
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Today was a little different, this time I told the lady I have You Tube TV so with the $95 I pay to Comcast, my Total was $145 a month ( I actually pay less, bought some Google Play Gift Cards at 50% off from ebay), I then explained to her with that I get all the main cable channels and my locals and sports and a unlimited DVR, she then said that she will beat that price by a substantial amount and I would not lose any channels.
After being on hold for 3 minutes, she came back with a price of, wait for it, $186 a month, I asked her what happened to the savings and she said that was their best price because it includes the Broadcast/Sports/ DVR Fees, I said why would I spend $41 more for the same thing and she said for the Full Comcast Experience, I said no thanks and she hung up.
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