This didn't work last time I called Comcast. I told them I wasn't happy that my Internet bill went up again by $15 and that if they can't reduce it back to what it was, I wanted them to cancel it. They placed me on hold while I sat there grinning about my awesome negotiation skills. Expected to get sent on to customer retention where I could get a better deal. Then the rep came back on and said "As requested, your internet service is terminated as of (next business day). Is there anything else I can help you with?"
This is an interesting challenge. The first problem is for many consumers there aren't able to access more than one actual high speed provider. This drastically reduces your position in any pricing negotiation. If someone were smart they could personalize their offer based on whether your personal house had options although I'm not aware of anyone actually going to that length yet.
The next challenge is that even in the face of competition simple economics can break down in the face of uncoordinated cooperation even without collusion . It may be superior for major providers to collectively increase the price even without literal coordination simply by a small number of providers acting legitimately on shared interests.
In theory someone with more than one option could ping pong between providers during sales that offer free installation but this is for obvious reasons undesirable insofar as internet is a vital service and switching can incur unacceptable costs and the more people actually do this the bigger the incentive to find a way to resolve this. For instance limiting such promotions to those who haven't had them before.
As a buyer I want this to resolve down to a simpler pricing model like T-Mobile even if its not as advantageous as initial pricing offered because I would like a predictable and sane price and for providers to compete on price/value but its likely that the current opaque and complicated pricing model will continue because its more advantageous for it to be complicated.
The biggest threat to this model is probably municipal broadband.
Despite reservations, I've been looking at AT & T's fibre plan because 2 gigabit symmetrical service pre-tax is about what Comcast charges post-tax, which has slowly been drifting up every month. The truly irritating thing about AT & T's disclaimers is they say it could take a few billings cycles before your new customer discount pricing is applied. Yet I am quite certain your discount pricing will end precisely on time. So really the discount is whatever it may be averaged across some arbitrary range of time.
Still, it's tempting except AT & T also doesn't let you bring your own device. The best you can hope for is to put their device into bridge mode, rather than terminating the PON into one you own. Something you could used to do, but apparently they've made it much harder recently to extract the certificates needed to authenticate with your own hardware. IMHO, if someone is sophisticated enough to deal with injecting their own certs, they are arguable sophisticated enough to deal with a little troubleshooting.
Hopefully Comcast get off their butts and start rolling out DOCSIS 4.0, which will bring their service closer to parity with AT & T's.
Comcast also no longer lets you bring your own equipment, you have to use their horribly terrible modem-router combo which overheats constantly and needs to be physically unplugged from power to cool off (at least a couple times a week, in a well ventilated cool location).
Sure, Comcast is legally required to let you use your own equipment. How do they square that circle? You can bring your own equipment for a very crappy, lower speed, insanely low data-capped, highly restricted service. If you want actual Internet service that is reasonable, you have to get the special upgraded plan which requires you to use their modem-router combo. that upgrade cost extra money, although you get the extra fee waived for the first year or two depending on the current promotion. So the net effect is it’s a technicality forcing you to use their hardware (with the explicit threat of higher prices in the future). Technically complying with the letter of the law, while completely screwing over their users. A very Comcastic thing to do.
(for reference, I am in San Francisco, but in a part of town that has no other options than to use Comcast or slow DSL. Comcast policies and trickery very widely across the country.)
Sorry to hear that! Here, you can still BYOD for Comcast's highest speed cable-modem offering. I doubt you may for their fibre-based offering, so at least they're on parity with AT & T there, but not in a good way. LOL. I'm sure it varies by area and competition.
They often have special offers for new customers, in which case you could call back the next day and claim to be a person who just moved in to the address of the person who canceled yesterday.
