How Comcast is profiting off the pandemic — at our expense

About a week ago, I got a notification on my phone that I was nearing a “data cap” of 1.2 terabytes imposed on my Comcast Xfinity account. This was all news to me. I hadn’t been informed of any cap, and had never received such a message in the two-plus years I’d been using the company’s services. To my knowledge, there was no cap.

But now, suddenly, I was being told that I’d be charged $10 for every 50 gigabytes I exceeded the limit, up to $100 a month(!)

Naturally, I was concerned, so I called Xfinity’s customer service line. The news I received was a relief: There was nothing to worry about, the representative said, because I was on an “unlimited plan.” The notices, he said, had been mistakenly “populated” (this was the word he used) to everyone in the Xfinity billing system.

I asked him three times if he was sure about this, and he repeatedly assured me that he was. I hung up, feeling reassured... but I kept receiving these messages.

After a few days, I received a notice that I’d gone over my limit and called Xfinity again. This time, I was told that there hadn’t been a mistake and that I had, indeed, gone over the limit that had never existed before and that I hadn’t known was in place. (I was told that a notice had gone out in a bill, but since I make all my payments online, I hadn’t received a bill.)

I told the rep what I thought of this, and she promptly patched me through to someone “who could help me” — since apparently, she couldn’t — which precipitated a 25-minute wait on hold. Eventually, another rep came on the line and explained it like this:

• I was, in fact, on an unlimited plan.

• This meant that I should, in fact, be exempt from the data cap.

• However, I was on an old unlimited plan that was not exempt from the cap.

The only difference between these two plans, she told me, was the name. They offered the same services for the same price. All I had to do was switch from the old plan I’d signed up for to the new one. Seeing no alternative, I did so. But, having received three different explanations from three different reps, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the time being.

“Fairness” redefined

Like many people affected by the COVID-19 crisis, I work from home, which means I— like millions of others — need more access to my internet than I did when I had an office job.

So, I started asking myself: Is it a coincidence that Comcast’s data caps suddenly appeared during in the midst of this pandemic, when workers are more dependent than ever on the internet? Are they just sticking it to remote workers and others isolated during the crisis, or is there some other motivation?

First of all, it’s not about clogging the system. In a memo to staffers that was leaked on Reddit, the company instructed its reps not to say, “The program is about congestion management,” but to say it’s about “fairness and providing more flexibility to our customers.”

Let’s parse this out, shall we?

The company is saying there aren’t any technical or logistical issues involved here. It’s hardly “fair” to institute a new policy on existing accounts — unilaterally — that imposes new limits where there weren’t any before. And it’s the company that’s getting more flexibility... to charge a premium for the same service it once provided for less.

Comcast contends that 95% of its customers won’t be affected by the 1.2-terabyte limit, as if to suggest you shouldn’t worry.

“This is so much data that about 95 percent of our customers won’t use it all,” spokesperson Adriana Arvizo told a Fresno TV station.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Follow the money

But if the company is being so generous, and change is so insignificant, it raises the question: Why do it? Unless the new policy is neither generous (how can raising prices be seen as generous?) nor insignificant at all.

Just follow the money.  

Comcast provides two main products: cable television access and internet service. But the company lost nearly 500,000 cable customers in the second quarter of 2020, leading to a 12% drop in revenue. Broadband business, however, was a bright spot. People were cutting back on cable for a couple of reasons: They were turning more to streaming services, and they had less money to spend on luxuries like cable when COVID put the economy in the toilet.

Internet, unlike cable, was essential. With more people than ever working from home during quarantines, they needed it to stay in touch via email and messaging, to promote their businesses on social media, and to work on projects they used to complete at work — where their employers paid for internet access and probably got a business discount to boot.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the company’s motivation. In an attempt compensate for losses on the cable side, it only made sense to boost revenues on the internet side, and data caps were a no-brainer.

Cash cow

That 5% that’s likely to exceed the 1.2-terabyte limit is far from a drop in the bucket, as Comcast would have you think. Again, all you’ve got to do is do the math.

As of July, Comcast had 27.2 million residential customers.

Five percent of that is 1.36 million.

Multiply that by the minimum overage charge of $10 a month, and you get more than $13 million. Multiply it by the maximum of $100, and you’ve got $136 million. Presumably, the actual number would fall somewhere in the middle, but would grow as the company continues to add more broadband users: It added 323,000 just in the second quarter of last year.

How many of these folks singed on as a result of the pandemic? It’s impossible to say, but it’s a safe bet that a lot of them did.

A few months later, Comcast springs its data caps on them.

This gives remote workers no choice but to upgrade to an unlimited package, find another provider in a limited pool, or sweat up a storm while trying to stay under the cap. The latter may be impossible for some remote workers, and it’s impossible to monitor in real time: You have to wait for Xfinity to send you a notice that you’re nearing your limit, by which time it’s probably too late to do anything.

So you’re pretty much flying blind, which is how they like it, so they can ambush you with those fees.   

But let’s give Comcast the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it isn’t exploiting the pandemic to line its pockets. Even if that’s the case, it’s impossible to imagine a more tone-deaf, heartless move to make in the midst of a pandemic, when so many people are working from home.

Come to think of it, it’s not just tone-deaf, it’s unconscionable.