I don’t even have a problem with them asking “exorbitant” rates! It’s the market that’s supposed to determine the *appropriate* costs for things. I have no problem with ISP’s offering such a service. There are many people who can’t “roll their own” backup. For a non-mechanical 75-year-old retiree who depends on his phone service – quite likely. Is it “worth it”? That’s something that each consumer should decide for himself! For the typical reader of this list, who can probably fix most problems himself, certainly not. Why? Because it’s simple, convenient, looks trustworthy – and when there’s a problem with the phone, it’s nice to know that you only need to call the phone company and they’ll fix it you don’t have to go search for a local fix-it guy. Of course, in many cases you can fix it yourself – or hire some local guy to do the same work for much less. If you haven’t, they’ll charge you a very high per-hour rate. I’m done with Comcast as of Feb 21….Hello DSL, Hello rooftop antenna… Bye bye Comcast and your outrageous prices! Reply View in chronologyįor years, telco’s have sold a “value added service” where they charge you a “small fee” for “inside wire insurance” – they’ll fix problems with your inside wiring “for free” if you bought the insurance. that’s when she wanted to talk turkey….my mind is made up, I have had enough of these ISP’s teaser rates, having to call every year to get a new promo rate. I was notified on my last Comcast bill that my promo rate for the year was ending, So I called them to find out what the new rate was going to be….Your Kiddng Me I said.so can you offer me another promo rate I asked, then they told me they could only offer me a promo rate that lasted only six months and they couldn’t really offer me anything or setup anything until Feb 21….to which I replied…will you have a better promo then….they replied they didn’t think so…so I replied well then, guess I will be going DSL or even back to dial up and putting a antenna on my house, getting two DTV boxes with the government coupons and say goodbye to you Comcast….to which she replied, that was my right, they couldn’t discuss or do anything until Feb 21 anyway….to which I replied I won’t be calling you back…but will be on your doorstep with my two digital boxes and cable modems in a box to return them Feb 21st….
If you want to get people to use them, they should actually add value.Ĭompanies: carbonite, comcast, jungledisk, mozy, verizon These ISPs seem to be missing the point of these value added services.
And, as noted, with Comcast, using the service counts against their new broadband caps, so there isn’t even a benefit there. It’s not a bad service to offer - and, surely, Verizon and Comcast see these as ways to lock in consumers, since it now has possession of their backup data - but it seems quite odd that these companies would offer “value added services” where the prices are more expensive than rolling your own, which doesn’t come with the lock-in. Now comes the news that Comcast is also launching its own backup service, with a few different price points, but starting at $5/month for only 10GB and going up from there. That seemed fairly ridiculous, given that you could get an unlimited backup service from Carbonite or Mozy for $5/month, or using JungleDisk with Amazon’s S3 for exceptionally low prices as well (depending on how much you use - but 50GB comes in at way less than $31). Tue, Jan 27th 2009 07:13pm - Mike MasnickĪt the beginning of January, I thought it was amusing that Verizon was launching its own backup service for a stunning $31/month (with a limit of 50GB of backup storage).