Oh Comcast, really?

http://www.twitter.com/macmixing Dom Esposito

Let’s all give Comcast a good old one-finger salute.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=20500620 Joseph Blake

Every time one of these stories comes up, it makes me cringe. Can these companies find a better way to handle it? Sure. But, this is why you have insurance. That box cost money, you signed an agreement that if it were damaged in your use you would pay for it. They send these notices so that you can turn them over to your insurance company and get reimbursed. This is called the way things work.

http://twitter.com/hrpanjwani Hardik Panjwani

@blake: absolutely agreed. your insurance is going to come through, pay the cable company for their lost property which was in your care. they are not saying they want the money this minute, they are letting you know that you have a contractual obligation to fulfill.

@seth clifford: dont whine about how they hurt your feelings like an adolescent, think about people besides yourself. lets say comcast writes off this loss now because its good PR in the aftermath of your article. they are going to find some way of getting the money back, mostly tax breaks. so the loss is the government’s and guess who gets hurt because of that? the homeless guys, the people who need welfare, the kids who go to public schools.

Yes, I understand that you have faced losses and you have my sympathies. But your parents had two houses which were insured and they should be fine financially in some time. Have you given any thought to those who did not have houses and whose lives are in complete turmoil because of the hurricane?

@jim: usually your reporting is fantastic, but I feel on this one you have not even scratched the surface.

http://www.thegraphicmac.com/ JimD

I feel bad that I have to agree with Joseph, below. This is a tragic situation, but it’s not Comcast’s fault. And as he stated, this is why we have insurance.

That being said, Comcast could have easily waived the fee for 3 to 6 months or SOMETHING to offer a helping-hand in this situation. I’m sympathetic to Comcast in that they’ll likely have hundreds, if not thousands, of these phone calls in the next week or so; but they really should have formulated some sort of proper and well thought-out response/plan since they knew this was going to be a problem by Monday afternoon.

http://www.thediceguys.com Dean Lewis

Doesn’t Comcast have insurance? How about THEY take the hit this time due to extraordinary circumstances instead of making the customer’s insurance take care of it?

Making the “we’re all going to pay” argument works several ways. If Comcast eats it, we might pay in a roundabout way due to Comcast’s tax breaks due to loss. (I find this a stretch, though.) If the customer pays and makes an insurance claim, we all pay in higher insurance premiums (“we” being customers of that insurance company). Comcast could take an insurance hit, and other companies using that insurance get to pay. All in all, the “we all pay” argument is a bit specious.

http://twitter.com/hrpanjwani Hardik Panjwani

But its not “we are all going to pay” is it? when the government loses money, its the people who make less than $50k a year who pay the most. The ones who go to $50k dinner fundraisers never pay.

And if insurance companies are overcharging, you should complain about it ferociously and make yourself heard. Cable is not crucial to life but insurance is. Its a social contract that says ‘shit happens but we have got your back for $x a year’, they cannot change x in the aftermath of a disaster. Cable is like “pay us $x a year and have fun”, if you cant pay x you can always find other means of entertainment.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=20500620 Joseph Blake

Because I doubt they have insured their cable boxes, and it’s the customer’s responsibility. I’m a Democrat, but sometimes this “well let’s just let everyone off the hook” all the time gets a little annoying. The customer should have insurance to cover their losses. They signed a contract that made them responsible. Should Comcast come collecting right now? No. They should wait an appropriate amount of time, but if my house burned down individually, I’d be expected to reimburse Charter for their equipment that I have. Just because it happened in a mass disaster doesn’t change the legal ramifications of decisions made by these people.

Player_16

Home & contents insurance. Anyway, Comcast is just making it legal (on record) that they made an effort to contact so now they must wait for a response. Joseph Blake, I couldn’t have said it better.