Years ago I had an issue with my service, so a tech came by and replaced my modem. I stress that it was My modem. I provided it. I canceled the service when I moved halfway across the country and kept the modem. I actually gifted it to my roommate, but that doesn’t really matter.
At no point did I sign up for the rental of a modem, I never agreed to the additional terms of renting a modem. No one at Comcast could provide me with anything regarding my approval of anything as the sole end user of their service. I told them to kick rocks.
A couple months goes by, I get a formal letter issuing me an invoice for a couple hundred bucks in rental and fines for late payments. I call them, tell them the scenario and that I am not going to pay them another penny.
Couple weeks later, another letter. This time informally responded with a written letter, stating all the facts and asking for anything showing my agreement of rental of the modem. Never heard back.
A year goes by, I get a letter from a collections agency. I responded exactly like before, asking for anything proving I owed anyone anything.
Another year, another letter. At this point it’s three years later or so, and they stopped for a while. Until five years later and I get another letter. Fuckers are relentless. At this point I am sure they are just trying to catch anyone dumb enough to pay, but that ain’t me.
Fuck Comcast. And fuck Janet jaurez, who I have been getting collections phonecalls for since I got my current cell phone number in 2005.
In my experience, Comcast shit never shows up on your credit report. I have had this exact same experience and got no where arguing with them so I just ignored it forever and nothing happened. This was over 7 years ago.
If it does hit your credit, you can dispute it and there’s a decent chance you’ll win. I’ve had that issue with direct TV where they claimed I never returned equipment I had returned. But these companies get in to this situation because they are terrible at record keeping.
Also, any time your speed dips below advertised, file a complaint with the FCC. They won’t get in trouble but it will annoy them enough you’ll get fast tracked customer service. I used to have some VPs phone number and I tried for like 40 minutes to get her to just admit to being evil. She wouldn’t. But they changed the phone number because I posted it everywhere after I stopped having to have Comcast or I would give it to you.
I don’t think it ever hit my report. And if it did, it definitely hasn’t affected it in any significant manner because I have excellent credit currently.
Controversial opinion: The world’s problem is too many humans. We should impose a global 1 child policy for 2-3 generations to give us time to figure out a sustainable way to expand as a race.
It's not that. We can already feed everyone in the world, it's just not profitable to do so.
And the above comic doesn't show overpopulation. It shows a terrible urbanization and surburbanization scheme. There's a lot of things we could mandate to make it better.
Underground telephone and power lines. Also prevents outages during storms. Gets rid of a lot of the upper noise.
Better lights. Prevents light pollution by having most light go downward.
Structure cities and town centers around walking. This means fewer roads and parking lots and more restaurants and stores.
Increase public transport. #3 means everyone will drive TO the city then walk. This will prevent the driving to.
More green spaces. Within cities and towns there should be a lot more vegetation. Corner green spaces, rooftop gardens, parks, etc.
Denser housing in cities. This means people can go up instead of out. Prevents urban sprawl and keeps city neighborhoods walkable.
There's probably a lot more but a big problem with American design is that it was almost all co-opted by the automobile industry 100-150 years ago. We used to have public transport within and to cities. But their lobbying created mostly sprawling suburban hellscapes like you see above. And all the rich people live in beautifully manicured neighborhoods so they care nothing for how it looks.
T-Mobile was “paying” for a rarely-used account on my family plan. Parents used it in another state. I occasionally used it. My brother logged in once in awhile. On any given week, it might see like 4 hours of collective viewership.
Turns out TMobile’s contribution only covered the first $8. I have been paying another $10/mo. out of my own pocket and wasn’t batting an eye.
Netflix was getting $18 a month for doing almost nothing! And that could have continued for many more years without my even questioning it.
BUT… One day I couldn’t sign onto my own Netflix account that I pay for. Evidently, I’m not in my own household? That led to my discovery of the gargantuan amount I was paying for a service I barely use anymore.
So now, thanks to their greed, Netflix gets $0 from me. And not a single family member has phoned to ask why Netflix no longer works.
Some executives in Los Gatos may soon learn Econ 101’s supply-and-demand curve.
Some executives in Los Gatos may soon learn Econ 101’s supply-and-demand curve.
Sadly, I’m confident they have a very good understanding of micro and macro economics and understand this action WILL cost them customers, but they’ve also calculated that they’ll make MORE money by removing the features and abilities that existed in the product before the change.
They made this decision to earn them more money, and they’re probably right.
What these economists always fail to capture is that people prefer using services they are happy with. They figured they could lose a certain amount of users because the remaining users will remain and pay more per person. What they fail to take into account is that the people left are going to be way less happy with the service, and actively looking for replacements.
It's the same story all over. And unlike Reddit and Twitter, Netflix was actually making a profit.
What they fail to take into account is that the people left are going to be way less happy with the service, and actively looking for replacements.
That’s built right into the Elasticity of Demand. The economic term phrase is search for substitution.
"When you examine the relationship between the demand schedules of substitute products, if the price of a product goes up the demand for a substitute will tend to increase. This is because people will prefer to lower-cost substitute to the higher cost one. If, for example, the price of coffee increases, the demand for tea may also increase as consumers switch from coffee to tea to maintain their budgets. "
What this means is they can actively calculate the number of subscribers they will lose when they increase the price of the product. They can also calculate the amount of more money they’ll get with higher subscriber fees. They compare the two numbers and choose the one that makes them the most money.
They can (and indeed do) calculate the direct effects by the price increase, and the initial loss of users is expected.
What I think they lack good models for is customer loyalty in a deeper sense. Sure, a lot of people are going to stick around in the short the short term, but Netflix is completely eradicating the competitive advantage it had a few years ago. These decisions might very well maximise profits in the short term, but in the long term I think they're undermining the very things that made Netflix such a success in the first place.
lead actress in the Terminator movies - Linda Hamilton
right:
Fran Drescher, lead actress in “The Nanny” from the 90s. www.imdb.com/name/nm0000376/ as well as other things, of course. but this is what i remember her from.
I didn’t either until this thread. Fran Drescher is the current president of the screen actors guild and I assume this has something to do with the writers strike. I guess AI content like images and stories, plus their own likeness and brands, is an issue in the strike.
I’m not paying any attention to the writers strike because I haven’t really consumed any new hollywood movies or tv shows in quite a while. Hollywood just isn’t relevant anymore and they know it, there’s just too much content online and other things to keep busy for me to care about their garbage.
Fran is quite well known for her role in The Nanny, and a pertinent scene is one where she fights not to cross a picket (strike) line, and her employer forces her across.
So a lot of us who remember this scene are all having a little extra giggle about the whole deal.
Thats where I know her from (getting old), but I know nothing of her during the strike (in fact, I know little about the strike, only that there is a on going strike).
I always think of this article about how her surviving a home invasion and assault and then having a violent stalker while she was doing the Nanny led to the creation of the role of professional laughers for live studio audiences:
The main problem I see is that news outlets, people, and link aggregators like Lemmy/Kbin, mainly focus on the negative side instead of the positive said.
For example, focusing on the negative side would be "Climate change is here and we are doomed". Focusing on the positve side would be "These are the things you can do to alleviate climate change". Climate change is the main topic in both information sources, but changing the focus means better discussions, less ragebait and doombait, and a healthier environment for all of us.
Linking to news outlets won't change that, because we all know how they work. But I agree with OP, ragebait doesn't benefit anyone and only harms our mental health.
Unsubscribing or blocking communities/magazines is something that we can do, but that also prevents us to read other kind of news that are posted on those communities/magazines.
"These are the things you can do to alleviate climate change" That's still negative. It's blaming climate change on people instead of corporations and governments, a trend started by bp
My feed is mainly memes and porn. Maybe you should browse with different options.
It also seems you're confusing news you don't like with 'doombait', 'ragebait' and 'corporation bad'. Really, this post is the most distressing one i've seen on lemmy or kbin recently.
I've been here a month and have to agree. This feels like the most troll post I've seen, but is closely followed by similar ones asking the Fediverse to be more palatable to "normies."
They do not forget! I had Comcast/Xfinity from 2005-2022. They wanted to charge me for an old cable box from 2005 that I didn’t have when I cancelled service. Turns out it was in the back of my garage and super rusty but they accepted it. They also said that while they would charge me if I didn’t have it, they are going to throw it out as it’s no longer supported and corroded.
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