A Comcast User Was So Sick Of Complaining About His Service, He Automated It

Where Comcast is available, most people don’t have a choice but to sign up for it. That can mean that Comcast views the speed you pay for as more of a suggestion than a standard, and one D.C.-based Comcast user was so sick of it, he started automating his complaints.

The anonymous complainer set up a cheap computer called a Raspberry Pi and configured it to do two things: Test his internet speed, and tweet out a complaint whenever that speed drops below a certain threshold. You can find the tweets here, and the results are pretty awful. Suffice to say, this guy isn’t getting what he pays for. Comcast has offered to help, which he’s refused, arguing that Comcast should be fixing its service for everybody, not just him. Also, this is the company that got a customer fired that one time and calls its customers names when they complain, so this could be seen as protecting yourself from retribution and harassment.

It’s also a moot point, as the problem likely has nothing to do with this user’s setup. He notes that it usually happens when the entire house is asleep or everyone is away from work. That sounds a lot like Comcast has signed too many customers in that market and is now gambling they won’t all get on the Internet at once, a phenomenon known as “oversubscription” in the ISP world. Even if they wanted to, Comcast probably couldn’t consistently deliver the speed this customer is paying for.

Of course, Comcast could solve this problem by spending some of their massive profits on infrastructure instead of fancy cable box operating systems. But we guess that doesn’t offer nearly as many opportunities to make ads about how impressive their mall kiosks are.

(Via PC World)

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