How Comcast Rips off your Parents

Edward Casabian
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

I’m home with my parents for a few weeks and their Internet stopped working. Since I defacto serve as our family’s IT department, I dutifully found the modem and router, saw that they were really old and called Comcast for help.

Comcast informed me the modem was, in fact, “really old.” I wanted to know just how old and it turns out it is from 2006. Comcast hasn’t replaced the modem, but still charges $10/month for the rental.

Some quick math means my parents have paid $1,320 for a piece of equipment that you can buy on Ebay for $10.

So maybe it’s my parents’ fault that they fell for Comcast’s predatory rental fee pricing, but maybe not. Revenue from rental fees on modems isn’t public information, but could be $275MM to $300MM per quarter. It’s also likely that 90% of Comcast’s customer base are just like my parents — they rent their cable modem.

If you want to purchase a brand new modem that also functions as a router, you can get any host of options on Amazon in the $50 to $150 range. I bought one of the cable modems approved for use with Comcast Xfinity. Set up was a breeze until I had to call Comcast. Three calls and two hours later, including one call that clocked 1 hour and 30 minutes on the phone; my new cable modem router was activated.

Please do yourself (and your parents) a favor and switch out your rental box for a purchased box, even if it takes a couple of hours. The modem pays for itself in ~6 months and you won’t have to support a company that relies on extorting their customers because they can no longer innovate.

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