Comcast posts

The next cable bill that comes in your mail could contain a belated bad start to 2010 in the form of higher prices.

Not only are new offerings, like 3-D programming, on the way later this year but networks in general want more money for their programming. Fox, for example, threatened to pull its stations from Time Warner unless it was paid more per subscriber, with an undisclosed last minute deal being the only thing that kept New Year's Day college bowl games on the air in many homes.

I've been watching the recent cable wars with a bemused detachment.

The Time Warner threat to leave fans without their Jack Bauer and "American Idol" sent chills down some spines, but the power of the Fox brand was too strong and the cable company caved. It turned out that Time Warner needed Fox more than Fox needed Time Warner.

E-mail addresses can tell people a lot about you.

Your username, or what's in front of the @ symbol can tell potential employers, dates and associates about your political affiliations, year of birth, what school you went to and even your affinity for elf culture.

Did you know that what comes after the @ sign can be more revealing than your cleverly chosen username?


A new trend report published by Credit Karma ranks e-mail domains by the average credit score of Credit Karma users. The data shows that BellSouth and Comcast users have the highest ratings, perhaps because they come with a paid Internet service.

Gmail comes in third, leading the pack of free e-mail services with an average credit score of 681, which is close to the average credit score for 45-54-year-olds and the average credit score for California, Oregon and Washington state.

Last week it was announced that Comcast plans to increase the cost of renting a cable modem from $3 to $5 a month -- an increase of 66% or $24 a year. Comcast points to the cost of new technology for the increase, telling Multichannel news that it reflects a cost increase to Comcast of 167%.

Sure, $2 a month isn't going to break your budget. But it's actually very easy to buy your cable modem and cut the whole rental fee off your bill, which could save you $60 a year in fees. Getting your own cable modem is simple,and pretty much anyone paying rental fees for a modem can buy their own and save in the long run.

Lockergnome.com points to two popular Motorola cable modems for sale at Amazon.com that are compatible with Comcast and will be paid for in just over a year's time. The Motorola SB6120 Surfboard is compatible with the newest technology which will give you higher speeds when the tech rolls out at Comcast, and the Motorola SB5101, which costs less than you'd pay for a year's worth of rental and still provides great speeds. There are also other deals to be found be searching for sales and looking on eBay.

If you don't have Comcast or your modem isn't one of those listed above, just look at the bottom of your modem to find out what its model number is. Searching for it or taking it into your local electronics store should provide you with some prices and alternatives.

If buying your own modem doesn't sound like your way to beat the fee increase, you could always call up your cable company and ask for a discount. It's surprisingly easy, and if you don't do it at least once a year you're probably paying too much or paying for channels you don't watch. If you call for a discount, don't mention any competitors by name because this will just give the representative the opportunity to list the bad things about the competitor. All you have to do is ask for a break on pricing and cite "other offers." Since it's costly to get a new customer, the odds are good that you'll get a discount.

It happens all the time. One Comcast customer was dumped for using too much web service on a plan he purchased because it was "unlimited." The company told him the word referred to the fact he could be on his computer as much as he wanted, not that he could view as many pages and videos as he wanted. And then Comcast tried selling him a more expensive plan. Infuriated, he fought back, launching a fiery blog and a cutting YouTube protest to tell the world he'd been ripped off. And a consumer advocate was born.

In July, Sprint put a cap on its previously "unlimited" data card usage, following Verizon and AT&T. Now, 5 gigabytes is all you get unless you want corporate monkeys to shut off your supply. Americans aren't the only ones to suffer the bait-and-switch defended by dense legalese and bent logic in the Terms of Service contract: U.K.'s Vodafone puts similar caps on its "unlimited" mobile phone plan, as does Canada's TELUS.