Biller Question - Comcast

Flopbot

I have two recurring bills for Comcast. I also have recurring bills for Indiana Michigan Power (AEP), NIPSCO, & Verizon. For these last three, I've already set up the billers and they work just fine.

Comcast is listed as a biller…

However, I can't get Comcast to work for some reason. It shows that it's connected to the biller, but the actual amount of the Nov. 24th bill was $84.18, not $61.00.

This is what a biller that's properly updated itself looks like…

Has anyone been able to successfully connect Comcast?

SRC54

They use Comcast in the city but we have Spectrum in the county. Always found setting up billers hit or miss. I had Spectrum set up for a while but now it is automatically paid, so I just use a recurring reminder.

Coach Kristina

Hello @Flopbot,

When I check on our end, I can see Comcast and Comcast Business are showing as degraded. Degraded status means that the connection currently is not working for most people and is being worked on, although we do not have an ETA.

I'm sorry I can't give you better news!

SRC54

While we're on the subject, these franchises that governments give to utility companies seem so 20th century. When I moved to my neighborhood, we just had AT&T DSL Internet. We all had the dish for TV. Then came Spectrum and dug holes all through our yards. Shortly after came AT&T Fiber and more holes and they cut my Spectrum service one day. We had a cable running down the road for what seemed like a year.

But it's funny, we don't have Comcast because it's city and Spectrum is county and never the twain shall meet!

I stuck with Spectrum despite the spate of outages over the last few months because I know it will happen to AT&T the moment I were to switch. I dumped the dish and now stream TV when I watch it, which is rare. Mostly NCAA football. Well, I do live in Tuscaloosa.

RobWilk

@SRC54 We've only had fiber at our house for less than a year, though it may have been available longer. When they first announced it a number of years back, they told us fiber was only in certain areas or "for new customers only". This year, we called and asked (because the old service was really struggling to handle about 10 security cameras + zoom meetings + more), and we were finally able to "upgrade". I put "upgrade" in quotes, because so far even though we upgraded our speed from 100→300→500Mbps this year, our bill with all the same services otherwise is actually smaller than it was before we switched to fiber. Also, our old cable only had about 35Mbps upload speed, so getting 500Mbps (or around 590 really), is a huge upgrade with all the cameras and stuff. They support up to 8000Mbps (8Gbps) but we haven't seen a need for that yet.

SRC54

Spectrum has upped us from 300 to 500 to 600. We've gone about a month without an outage. We'll see. I feel the same about 1000; haven't seen the need for it. Perhaps in a larger family. My wife streams much more than I.

RobWilk

@SRC54 I believe a 4K stream only uses about 25Mbps. Maybe a VR stream (which can be 8k-9k, or 4k per eye, plus it streams more than you see in the eye because you can look around in the video) would use more than that. Like I said, for us, the big issue was security cameras used about 5Mbps each [1080p HD video] (or 50Mbps total?) for 10 cameras (with 35Mbps max upload speed, they would periodically bring our network to a stop during other streaming/zoom). When we upgraded from 300Mbps→500Mbps (cost us $8 more/month, $20 for service upgrade but they gave us equipment at no charge $12 credit), the one who uses the cameras the most noticed a huge speed increase when scrolling through recorded videos in the Ring app, so seeing as they pay the bill [and at this minute they're scrolling through the ring app, just described someone peeing on the [edit] sidewalk on the side of our house overnight] I don't think they'd downgrade.

[EDIT: To Note: I'm getting way off topic; I have a habit of going off on tangents and need to stop that. @Flopbot feel free to click the "Off Topic" button below because i sidetracked your topic.]

DannyB

@Flopbot I've been a Comcast/Xfinity customer for a long time and every year I threaten to quit them. Right now, they have jacked up my monthly bill significantly and now I'm trying to get in touch with them to "negotiate" a new price. For a "communications" company they are just about as hard to communicate with as any company I have ever interacted with. I'm not at all surprised what @Coach Kristina posted above.

Since this is a "static" bill for me, I don't bother with trying to use bill connect for Comcast/Xfinity.

SRC54

@DannyB Threatening to quit these Internet/TV providers is like playing Whack-a-Mole. It never solves anything. The last time Charter/Spectrum went up, I tried to haggle with them. The representative made it clear that it was fine with them if I switched. They are busy going after AT&T customers while AT&T customers go after theirs. The poor slobs who are already customers? Meh!

DannyB

🤣I don't really "threaten" I just call or drop by their store and have a chat and they lower my monthly charges for the next 12 months. We have more choices these days as far as ISPs then we have had with speeds and bandwidth on a parity with each other and thus there is a little bit of competition and "price wars" at least for a 12 - 24-month price guarantee. We live in an area where I could put up an antenna for the local broadcast stations which would cover most of our viewing needs and drop the cable TV portion of our service. This is just one of those things' grumpy old guys, or at least this grumpy old guy, likes to grouse about from time to time and Comcast/Xfinity has dominated the areas I have lived in for the past 30 years so they are my scapegoat for all things TV and internet. 😎

RobWilk

@DannyB Agree, for us we've gotten better deals so far by walking into our cable company's store, it's only a ten minute drive away and beats waiting on hold to talk to someone overseas (who doesn't speak english natively) about the bill. I believe the call center for us is in Singapore or somewhere like that.

SRC54

@DannyB @RobWilk Well, thanks for the tip; the person online had no sympathy. I've usually been able to haggle a little. We used to have a Charter Store up the hill from here, but they moved it to Birmingham. I'd rather pay more than drive to Birmingham! LOL