Comcast/Xfinity Customer Problem Solved and My Advice to You

The following post was originally submitted to an online forum dedicated to customers seeking assistance with Comcast/Xfinity. It was removed within 3 hours because the moderator claimed it violated a rule against “ranting, venting, trolling, or clickbait titles.” I do not believe that it contains any ranting, venting, trolling, or clickbaiting, but was removed, as I see it, because they did not want other Xfinity/Comcast customers to read it. I post it here instead since it may help someone else. Since the author is someone very close to me and because I know the facts of matter relevant to the post, I am sharing it here to give a platform to something that needs to be shared.

I recently became a Comcast/Xfinity customer for the first time, but I'm[sic] been using high speed internet for years and have a good idea of how much data I should be using. First couple of months with Xfinity, the numbers seemed a little high, but I thought I'd roll with it since we were setting up our networks and streaming content and could've, maybe, used as much as they said, though I had my doubts. Third month, usage meter went through the roof. By the end of the month, we were rapidly approaching our 1 Tb data cap. I had to physically remove the internet from the equation by shutting down my own privately owned modem/router.

I went oogling about the web looking for similar problems since I suspected something was wrong, either a network hack or something off about the data usage meter for our new ISP. Our old ISP never had problems like this, but I'm not making this post about them. Suffice it to say, I'm a little disturbed at a trend I noticed. I found plenty of people like myself who were experiencing extremely high data usage with Xfinity. Interestingly, the ones I took note of who actually posted the amounts along with their data caps seemed to fit a particular pattern. I could be wrong, but it seemed that if the person had a data cap of 500 Gb, their usage by the end of the month was close to or over the 500 Gb limit. If the cap was 1 Tb, their usage for the end of the month was at or above the 1 Tb limit. Seemed a striking coincidence, and then I took note of the fact that in each of these cases, the Xfinity representative told the customer to consider upgrading to a business account without data cap as the goto solution. Something seemed off/fishy to me about the whole affair.

So I installed data tracking software on all the devices on the network that did not already have them. I changed all the passwords to over 32 character strings. It was the end of the month and I was ready. I turned the router on and watched the official Xfinity data meter. First day, no streaming, no downloads, Xfinity showed I used 30 Gb of data. Data tracking showed maybe 3 Gb. Tried calling Xfinity already, and their support basically was no help, as others have complained before. I could of course get a business account and not have to worry about those dreaded data caps. I'd seen enough. I filed a complaint with the FCC.

Within a couple of days, the data usage for the previous month was gone from my data tracking on Xfinity account. They tried calling repeatedly, which I'm sure was for the purpose of trying to get me to admit to this or that, which they might then use in their defense, so I refused all phone calls. I'd already given them a chance to speak about it. I was done speaking with them about it. Within a couple weeks, I received a letter from Xfinity/Comcast to both myself and the FCC explaining that they found an error in their data usage meter that affected "a few" households and that mine was one of the affected households.

So, take the steps to protect yourself. Try to work with Xfinity. If you have problems similar to mine, file a complaint with the FCC telling them exactly what you did to correct the issue, and how exactly you know the system is wrong.

So that’s good advice. Try to work with the provider first, as you are paying for a service they are providing. Trust, but verify as they say. Do your homework, install whatever data tracking you need to install, and if your ISP will not take reasonable steps to address the issue, or if you feel they are doing something questionable in order to upsell services, or if you’re certain you’re being charged for services not provided, you might consider filing a complaint with the FCC. Many offices in the government are more bark than bite, but this one is not. Comcast was fined $2.3 million by the FCC in 2016 for charging customers for equipment or services they never ordered. I’m pretty sure they would not like to go back and pay more money anytime soon.

Maybe there’s good reason USA Today, Forbes, PC Mag, and other well-recognized news outlets cite Comcast as America’s most hated company, but the above post doesn’t read like a rant, vent, troll, or clickbait to me. I was greatly disturbed by the Reddit moderator’s decision to remove it from view, thereby preventing others from gaining insight into how they, too, might handle issues with Comcast/Xfinity data usage meters.