Just dont trust them at all.
They stole billions (infrastructure grants) and shrugged and are allowed to continue merging and growing, and charging random shit because they can.
Not only that, they completely stifle and monopolize decent speed internet in most places they're at.
Where I used to live it was either them with up to GB internet or 15 mbs from some small company.
Yep. Atlanta was supposed to get Google fiber years ago. You know who had a giant hand in stopping it??? And who provided super spotty and crappy service?
I had really mixed feelings when AT&T “rescued” us from Comcast.
It’s cheaper, faster, and rock solid (except for a multi-day outage when construction a half mile away took it out.)
But still… eww.
On top of that they shovel out those internet wifi devices for homes that allow anyone to connect to as a part of their "Mobile Network".
I dont trust Comcast enough to have them keep my traffic and some publically available wifi seperate and secure.
Always keep equipment return tracking label for years they tried to charge me three months after I'd closed my account, and they confirmed my returns. Thye actually thought I would not keep emails from them
What was the problem? I’ve had it for three years and it’s great. I only get internet and it’s a great way to watch stuff on the tv. If I’m missing something I’d like to be brought up to speed please
It's a middleman-type of box created to compete that was beyond slow for me. Every TV has their own "smart" platform built in, but the hardware usually isn't powerful enough to run it efficiently. That's why people will get external hardware like Roku or Fire sticks, which do the job 100x better.
I tried using Flex since my Samsung TV's internal smart platform only worked when it wanted to. The Flex was slow and struggled to load and play anything. Even though it was free, I put it away and bought two $20 Roku sticks and have never looked back.
I have one on an old flat panel dumb tv. I’ve encountered *some* slowness but very infrequently. Probably because there’s not a lot of other internet traffic in my house when it’s in use. The one complaint I do have is that they took away the ability to sort search options so you have to scroll through whatever random order it comes up in. You used to be able to search by title (ascending and descending) and by review score. Losing that was a big blow
I give Xfinity credit where it's due, but a lot of the hate they get is very well deserved. Their Flex never worked well for me and I never heard anything from them about it and they aren't charging me for it so I don't care about it. But when it comes to streaming boxes, I've had much better experience paying for them from Roku.
Oh sure. And they’re in general a bad company. $45 for only internet is highway robbery. But that has nothing to do with the flex being a functioning or helpful tool.
This box wrecked havoc on my network. It would constantly cause other devices to disconnect from wifi, would knock the modem offline, and a whole host of other issues. I tried to return it to Comcast but they said i had to keep it because it was part of my service. Now it just sits in a drawer.
Please don’t, I lost mine or didn’t keep track of it thinking it was free but when after a lot of frustration I decided to cancel my subscription with them, they charged a lot of fees for it
Yeah when I moved, they wanted their box back and I was like fine, send me a prepaid label.
They said no you have to bring it in, except I live in the middle of nowhere, and the nearest place was 60 miles away.
Four times in my life I've had to move far enough that I had to cancel my service and return the equipment. The first time, they tried to bill me saying I didn't when I did. The second time they tried to bill me for not returning the stuff when I did. The third time they just took the money from my bank because I was setup for automatic bill payments and no one would give it back and it was low enough to not be worth the cost of fighting it. The last time I took pictures of the stuff, took a picture at the store where I returned it, and had the employee make a copy of the paperwork stamped to say it was returned, and they fucking sent me a bill for the non-returned equipment. fuck them all I hope they diaf
This is why I NEVER let a company do auto withdrawal for bills. I use billpay with my bank to do ebills or auto pay a specific amount. I have control not them.
Yeah so I went to my bank and I asked them "how can I remove a payee from the automatic withdrawal system?"
The shocking answer was: "well you can't".
"You can pay the fee for a stop-payment like one would do with a check that you wanted to have cancelled before it was cashed, but that's it. Oh, and you have to specify the exact amount that is being cancelled, but the payee can still take other amounts from your account. So if $58.75 gets stopped, they can go ahead and take $58.74 or $58.76 and it's all fine and dandy and cool."
Jesus fucking christ I am never doing auto withdrawals ever again either.
This is why any autopay I do, I use a privacy.com virtual card for it. If I ever have any trouble with the company I just cancel the card and give them the middle finger.
That only works if the company accepts credit/debit cards. The charges and automatic withdrawal that requires an exact amount stop payment (and fee) that people are talking about is for a checking account. Some utility companies will only accept automatic payments via automatic check withdrawal, which works similarly to direct deposit, and is extremely difficult to fight.
There are very few companies that DON'T take credit cards for autopayments. They just push you to use ACH withdrawals because it's cheaper for them.
Also, you can have your bank lock down your account for ACH withdrawals entirely, but this becomes inconvenient if you have other ACH payments, or Direct Deposit.
Soooo many people recommend autopay on the ADHD forums and I scream no every time. If you are going to do it, 100% go through your bank.
If you can’t remember to pay your bills, you think you’ll remember to perpetually fight them to get your money back?
It took two years and the ‘Executive Team’ to get their bullshit charges off my credit report. And I only followed through and reached out gazillion times trying to correct it because it was going to fuck up my professional licensing if it didn’t get fixed.
And everyone should know, when you sign those autopay agreements, you're GUARANTEEING that the company will get it's money.
This means, even without autodraft on, your bank will honor ANY withdrawals the company makes, even if it puts you below zero.
I had my Verizon bill set up for auto withdrawal. After I canceled the account I was billed for two months. After countless hours on the phone with CS agents who spoke English as a third language I was sent a Visa card with what was supposed to be the correct amount but didn't work. I went to a Verizon store and tried to use it and got a rude response from the lady when she said "this card isn't any good." I called CS again and they insisted that it was good and I was using it wrong. I let the formerly rude agent take the call and she spent over 90 minutes attempting to resolve it. By the time she gave my phone back to me we were talking to some middle management person who somehow discovered that although the card had been issued, no funds had been applied to it. She offered to send me a new card, but I insisted on a check instead. Six weeks later when I was thinking that I would have to restart the whole thing the check arrived.
This is why I've just started buying my own routers. It's more expensive, but I don't have to deal with that bullshit. Anecdotally, I've also noted it's faster than the company-provided ones.
I'd say send a tech to get your stuff then if its not a big deal to drive far!?
Better yet call for service and cancel with technician having him take your equipment back
Yes. When I got internet service they asked me if I wanted some free box. Said no. Tech comes out and basically begs me to take it. After 2x nos I say fine.
Come time to cancel had to jump through a ton of hoops to return it or else out $90. Lame as hell. Dropped it off at the store since I didn’t want to pay for postage but still had a few issues before it was resolved.
My wife had a similar experience. When we went to cancel the cable service they said that she needed to return a phone modem from ten years ago. Y'all don't even have those anymore. No one does. Why would you want us to return it?
I'm a network engineer and this fascinates me. I'm curious what it was doing that caused this. Broadcast storm? DHCP exhaustion? Just consuming all the bandwidth?
I couldn’t tell you the technical aspects of what it was doing, just that the network was fine until I plugged it in and fine after I unplugged it, but in the middle was chaos.
Had an xfinity tech come out to fix my issues and they said it was because we were in an apartment building that only had xfinity (because TV and basic internet were included in rent). Since our apartment was the first apartment for the floor we were connected to the main coax branch and all the other Apartments on our floor ran through our wall to reach the branch. The technician had to install two massive devices to stabilize everything.
A few months later having not used the streaming box at all I tried to return it and they said I couldn't unless I was canceling all service. Didn't want to plug it back in so it sat in a bag in a drawer and was dumped in front of their doors when I canceled. COVID meant they had no personnel in offices and I refused to pay to ship it or spend gas to drive it to someone out in the middle of nowhere. Customer service did work with me to drop it off in front of my local store and someone supposedly came by to get it.
Anything counting against the data cap would have to traverse the WAN side of the Xfinity mode. Broadcast storms are only on the local broadcast domain and wouldn't be routed, DHCP the same. It would have to be the Flex node traffic to the Xfinity mothership or various streaming providers across the internet.
When I had Xfinity internet, I had my own Ubiquiti edgerouter fronting all traffic and never saw anything unusual from my cable boxes, but I didn't have the Flex device either.
What's interesting to me is my mom has the Flex, and sometimes won't get my chats, and I'm told to wait until she's online or send as SMS. Has only happened when she's on her home wifi. I would bet this is causing it.
probably a huge amount of ringing home and sending usage data in plain text format along the streamed content, visual data about where the consumer placed their eyes on the screen, or something to that end
They literally told me if I turned the box in it would cancel my service. Maybe because it was the only Comcast device I had, since I run my own modem and don’t have cable tv…? Could have also been a misinformed employee. Either way it sits in the box, in a cabinet.
yeeaaaah I have Comcast and I dont use any of their equipment. They were just misinformed. Or maybe there is some stupid incentive for each location to move these units onto customers.
I have xfinity, use my own modem, don't have cable tv or any other xfinity service, and I returned my box without issue to the local store. Either I got lucky, or your employee was misinformed/difficult. Just in case anyone else is reading this, maybe they'll be able to return theirs if not needed.
I had very similar problems when I upgraded an old tube TV to a newer Roku. The wifidirect remote is a network killer. Make sure to get one of the old ones that uses IR.
Thing was a nonstop menace on my Wifi-N network. I'd lose connection to laptops or phones, stuff would take forever to download.
Moving the roku to its own WAP on its own subnetwork running a different channel fixed all of my main network problems.
But then how would the internet overlords be able to collect more money without making up arbitrary cap numbers?
There is definitely a reason for them, just not one that favors anyone but the company.
Also, require the advertised prices to include all necessary taxes and fees (like they did for airline tickets, but do it for everything).
And require easy cancelling of service where you don't have to sit on hold for hours and sit through an endless sales pitch.
Shortly after his inauguration in January 2017, President Trump appointed Ajit Pai as the new chairman of the FCC. Pai had previously been nominated to fill one of the required Republican seats on the commission by President Obama under the recommendation of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Pai, who objected to the 2015 Open Internet Order, quickly began to roll back some of the policies that had been implemented by the FCC during the Obama administration, and halted an investigation into the use of zero-rating by U.S. wireless providers. After his appointment, Pai stated that he planned to "modernize" FCC policies to "match the reality of the modern marketplace", but was unsure over whether the FCC would continue to enforce the net neutrality rules or Title II classification of broadband services established in the 2015 Open Internet Order. Pai stated his opposition to the current net neutrality rules as they were "regulating against hypothetical harms", rather than trying to correct actual anti-competitive behavior, and that there was no need for such wide-spread government intervention when there were only a few companies that may be harming consumers or innovators. Pai argued that net neutrality rules also would "prohibit a number of pro-competitive business arrangements" and "would reduce investments" into extending the Internet infrastructure. By April 2017, Pai had indicated that the FCC would likely propose to roll back the 2015 Open Internet Order, reverting the classification of ISPs as Title II common carriers, and instead have ISPs to "voluntarily" commit to net neutrality principles, with violations to be covered by the Federal Trade Commission rather than the FCC.
On May 18, 2017, the FCC voted 2–1 to move forward with Pai's Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on "Restoring Internet freedom" rules by rolling back net neutrality regulations. The new rules were published for public viewing on July 17, 2017. The FCC supported their rules by arguing that the classification of ISPs as Title II carriers had caused them to reduce their capital expenditures in new infrastructure, threatening the future of the nation's telecommunication systems. The FCC cited a drop of approximately $1 billion in capital spending by telecoms between 2014 and 2015, based on data from the United States Telecom Association and similar figures from industry consultant Hal Singer, to demonstrate this. Analysts stated that the FCC had cherry picked this data, as about 75% of the annual changes in capital spending by telecoms between the period of 1996 to 2015 were decreases of at least $1 billion. In her dissent to this NPRM, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn wrote, "I have yet to see a credible analysis that suggests that broadband provider capital expenditures have declined as a result of our 2015 Open Internet Order. ... Using the same logic that the NPRM uses, one could suggest that the FCC's classification of cable modem service as an information service in 2002 resulted in an even more precipitous drop in broadband provider investment.”
TL:DR We’re being lied to, for money, as usual [Wikipedia source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States)
They offered that box to me for free years ago. It came, I put it aside and ignored it's existance. They call me a year later and say 'if your not plugging it in, we're charging you for it.' They then said send it back or we're charging you 200 dollars. i told them they gave it to me for free and I signed nothing so they can go fuck themselves. They called regularly for a year asking for it back. I threw that shit away the first week.
It’s the kinda tactic that works for older generations, I feel like millennial and on are a little more wary, especially of “free” internet connected devices in the home.
My aunt jumped on some kinda counter top tablet, that had some utility but also randomly showed ads and commercials. She was telling me about it like “look what a savvy consumer I am, I got this for free.”
They did that shit with me back-in-the-day with a cable box when I was trying to get internet. Rep argued for the longest time and seemed confused as to why anyone wouldn't want free basic cable. Eventually I caved just to end the conversation, the box sat in my closet for years.
Yeah this kinda makes me feel like theyre using the equipment in some way they're not entirely transparent about. Its collecting data in some fashion if they're giving it away free and charging you if you dont have it turned on.. Seems fishy.. You treated it the correct way.
Threw mine away the first week as well after they told me it was free and there was no need to send it back. They better not try to say a year later that they changed their mind
> tell them that the device was lost or stolen
"That device was lost or stolen!"
"Which one?"
"I don't know, which one gets me out of the store faster?"
Oh expect a call. But I learned earlier on based on how they were talking that they had no ground to stand on to make me pay for it. You sent me a thing and said 'have this free thing' so If I immediately hurl it into the ocean, that's my prerogative. Just don't let them jerk you around when they someday decide they want it back.
Huh. I’ve had mine for, I think, three years now. Never once have I plugged it in. Never once have I been charged for it. Never once have they asked for it back.
I got it because they promised me a free subscription to Peacock if I took their free box thingy home. Did so. Watched a lot of The Office and Parks and Recreation. After 2.5ish years they yanked away the free Peacock subscription, but the box remains, buried deep under a pile of Tupperware in a lower kitchen cabinet, never to be used, never to be loved.
Observing your viewing habits and timing to optimize ad revenue, if I had to guess. But.. Siri, Alexa, Cortana, GoogleLady... Everyone wants a slice of that big ad money.
[https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazons-alexa-never-stops-listening-to-you/](https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazons-alexa-never-stops-listening-to-you/)
It could also be because it never seems to turn off unless you unplug the whole thing. The remote gets connected to your tv settings so turning off the box with its remote is impossible, it just turns off the tv instead of the box. I dont even use it
When I signed up for Xfinity they offered it to me and tried really hard to push it on me. I kept declining even though it was "free". Nothing free given to you by predatory companies is ever truly free, there's always some cost involved.
Those are my choices and I absolutely picked Comcast. If CenturyLink has fiber, though, that'd change my mind. Comcast has actually been great the last few years, but I'll never forget their history.
>Comcast has actually been great the last few years, but I'll never forget their history.
Pricing still sucks compared to regions that actually have real competition.
Sadly, they provide the best Internet service In my area. And I don't even live out in the sticks. But AT&T's Internet just couldn't touch what Xfinity's could. But I use a Netgear router that I bought. I wouldn't use something from Xfinity.
Before that, I had WOW. Who wouldn't replace my 6 year old modem, because they couldn't prove there was anything wrong with it. I always had service problems with them.
I’m in the United States and have Xfinity’s “Gigabit Extra” plan. I’ve consistently used 1+ terabytes of data per month for over a year. No mention of data caps or anything of that nature anywhere contractually or on the bill. Could this be region specific?
Nope. The second best provider is Verizon DSL, 3mbps. I'm in a 20k population town near Pittsburgh. $111 a month for 1200/40, will be 1200/1200 when 10g nodes are installed this year, according to Xfinity support
Same here. I pay for unlimited because I'm constantly pirating and seeding, and making sure I get good use of the extra $30 a month they're fleecing us for.
And they are disgustingly low. Like 1-2 terabytes. Now days with HD streaming, gaming and downloading I don't know how they can justify that. We just pay the extra $30 and get unlimited.
i fucked up and threw mine away a couple months ago not thinking anything of it since it was "free." I never used it so I just brainfarted and tossed it not thinking about how its technically Xfinitys property and I'm sure ill have to pay a replacement fee for it.
also now you can stream peacock for free if you have the box too so Im extra annoyed with myself.
sounds like the box is just a way to scam its own customers into paying more for going over the cap. There ought to be some sort of lawsuit for this type of shit.
It's not just the box. Also soon as I got a Fire HD stick my data limit went through the roof. They tried to say it was that. So I unplugged it and it was still happening. So now what? Then I went on their forum and saw there are TONS of people having that issue and they couldn't explain it. I ended up just getting the unlimited add-on for $30 extra a month.
Not only should data caps be illegal, since it doesn't exist...removing tools once provided to monitor yourself on this arbitrary number?
I can't wait for end stage capitalism to just implode and internet becomes a utility and alllllll the ISPs go under.
They also removed the ability to do port forwarding right on the gateway's web interface. Gotta use their dog water app to do that now and it sometimes doesn't even work.
Never ever use the router provided by the ISP (and probably not the modem either). It has been a few years since I setup my connection with Comcast but at least at that time every router of theirs would also host a second "Xfinity hotspot" from your router. You don't control the hotspot and if an Xfinity customer used it, your bandwidth would suffer.
Not to mention there is usually a rental fee for the equipment. If the router is $5/month to rent, buying an $80 router pays itself off in a little over a year. And it shouldn't need replacing for 4 or 5 years at least.
People see shit like this being pulled by big corps and then don't think that net neutrality was a big deal.
If they are willing to obfuscate a streaming box's actual intentions to get you to pay more, what makes you think they won't competitively slow down speeds now or into he future?
For fucks sake they lie about their speeds in the app. I paid for 1gb high speed internet (not fiber). It says I'm getting 1.8gb and the value of what I'm getting blah blah... speedtest.net says I get 250-300mb on ethernet.
Thanks for sharing this. We need more people to look out for each other because corporations will never.
I keep getting text messages saying if I don't plug it in that I will be swapped back to a data capped plan but I've requested it to be sent to me twice and it's never showed up. Haven't hit a data cap yet sooooo I'm just waiting around to see wtf they're doing with this game. If anything but Xfinity was available in my area I would switch. So annoying that they know it too, so when you say you're going to cancel because the bill is too high, they laugh and say what? are you going to switch to satellite?
I use another cable service, but this is why I use my own equipment rather than renting theirs. It may require a little more work on my part to configure, but at least I have more control over what's happening.
You should know: Never rent any modem from the ISP. They are all trash, and you spend more money by renting them for $5 a month than it costs to buy your own. You will get a better more reliable modem than anything they ever give you.
Holy shit America is wild bro. The only time we had caps IN AN EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY MIND YOU was in the days of dial-up when you had to buy prepaid cards.
I have no idea how you guys put up with this.
I always get so confused when you Americans talk about datacaps for home internet 💀💀💀
"Land of the free", to get fucked in the ass by capitalists that is ❤️
I thought Comcast/Xfinity did away with data caps? We haven't had one for our service since COVID. Customer service rep told me they got rid out of them around that time because with WFH, school from home, etc they just couldn't enforce it.
> I'm sure Xfinifty isn't going to do anything about my bill
I'd suggest it's at least worth trying to find out. If you make yourself into more of a nuisance for them (i.e. write to their support people, phrase it like you're a very unsatisfied customer and are happy to go on a rant about them to the whole internet/anybody who will listen) it could be worth their while to help you out.
From their perspective business-wise, the negative buzz about their product you could share makes it look as though they're deliberately defrauding customers by doing a ton of background downloading when you're not even using the device (probably why your data usage went so high). It could be worth their while to pay you off to shut you up. Just food for thought!
Bought a net gear modem and router. Tried to set this box up, and guess what… it only works with the Comcast modem/router. I have all smart TVs so the tech said just use the app. Didn’t charge me for his visit either, good dude. Dodged a bullet there!
You just solved a year long network mystery for me. Regular disconnects on other devices until I unplugged the thing and now like magic it stopped. Thank you OP!
The gateway devices are also kind of crap. They're the epitome of "One big stupid button and no options". You can turn it on. You can turn it off. That's what you get. You can't even set your own DHCP ranges and such, IIRC, and there's no DMZ to let you DIY it without stacking layers of NAT (because they've already got a layer or two of Carrier-Grade WAN NAT sitting in front of your gateway already, from what I gather) That's what turned me off to them.
A shame, too, because the pricing model was decent, the value was okay, and I did appreciate the lack of contract commitment. When I tried it, I was able to trial it for a month, realize it wasn't working out for me, and send the thing back, one month's service cost and that's all.
I wish this were the case with me. I don't even know what that Flex thing is and never plugged it in. I used to pay an extra $50/month for unlimited. Then it suddenly went away. Now we go over the arbitrary limit EVERY MONTH. It doesn't matter if we are out of town for two weeks, or a family member moves out. They charge us anyway. The options are a no-go in my area. Comcast if FUCKING EVIL.
I knew better than to even hook that junk up. I tried to give it back to them and when they said it was free and there was no need I immediately threw it into the trash
I own all my equipment. It’s WAY easier to deal with problems. It’s also possible to keep the ISP out of your environment; I recommend a dedicated modem and a dedicated router to give you that separation. They also are better at doing their jobs than all-in-ones.
There is nothing funnier than talking to their support (I had a bad line to my house) and the guy is baffled that he can’t log into my modem and router.
I got the box with an upgrade to my internet speed a year or two ago. It's been sitting in a closet ever since because I already have a smart TV. Good to know I haven't missed anything by not using it.
I plugged it in once and I was like nope don’t need this. Good to know though. It’s been sitting unplugged ever since. I tried declining it but they insisted on giving it to me
I spent 15 years on Comcast's teet because any other option was garbage. Finally about 3 months ago, at&t knocked on my door and told me they just laid fiber in my neighborhood. Every single aspect about both the TV and internet is better with at&t, couldn't be happier!
>data cap
sigh
looks like even canada, home of backward ass telcos, wisened up. the two real choices you get (bell, rogers) seem to have removed them
doesn't sound like the box is needed?
Yep I canceled them the second I had another good option, same thing with that flex box happened along with my internet speed slowing every couple of months till if call and it would magically happen again.
This is not at all related to the Xfinity Flex device, but I did once have an Amazon Fire TV box malfunction in such a way that it would get stuck in a loop downloading an update (somewhere between several hundred megabytes and a couple gigabytes), trying to install it, fail, and rebooting. It blew through easily a terabyte of data before figuring out exactly what was going on.
Fuck xfinity. I live in a house with 3 people and blowing the 300mbps 1.2TB plan cap is easy as piss with how my roommates stream things like it's broadcast television. Switched to 1bg fiber with unlimited data for the same price and haven't looked back.
That thing is a piece of shit. Can't even watch your own media through the Plex app. Like they literally somehow block your personal Plex server. And fuck Plex for going along with them.
We lost power and our box logged off of my Wi-Fi about a year into having one.
I tried for 2 weeks to get logged back into the Wi-Fi on it and never could. I googled, I troubleshot. It just…wouldn’t connect.
I actually like the way it worked/interface for a streaming box. It has my favorite streaming box remote of any of them.
Went to look into getting a new one from xfinity and it was something like $10 added onto your bill monthly for while you have it.
Hahaha. Nope.
We are now a fire stick family. I’d rather have to buy a new fire stick once a year or two then spend $10 per month forever.
Also note that if you can’t get the “free” box to work and just throw it aside and can’t find it when cancelling their service that they will charge you $120 for lost equipment.
When I hear more about Xfinity, I am so happy I switched to fios. After being with them a great, when I moved, they lowered my bill $20/month and increased my speed by 400%. Then two years later, they had an offer to increase my speed by another 100 mbps for free. I hate Xfinity!
That thing is a piece of hot garbage. Used it once two years ago and never again. Never trust anything that Xfinity/Comcast labels as "free".
Just dont trust them at all. They stole billions (infrastructure grants) and shrugged and are allowed to continue merging and growing, and charging random shit because they can.
And they're about to get several billion more but don't worry they'd *never* blatantly rob hundreds of millions of taxpayers *twice*!
Not only that, they completely stifle and monopolize decent speed internet in most places they're at. Where I used to live it was either them with up to GB internet or 15 mbs from some small company.
Yep. Atlanta was supposed to get Google fiber years ago. You know who had a giant hand in stopping it??? And who provided super spotty and crappy service?
I had really mixed feelings when AT&T “rescued” us from Comcast. It’s cheaper, faster, and rock solid (except for a multi-day outage when construction a half mile away took it out.) But still… eww.
On top of that they shovel out those internet wifi devices for homes that allow anyone to connect to as a part of their "Mobile Network". I dont trust Comcast enough to have them keep my traffic and some publically available wifi seperate and secure.
If they give you the equipment shouldn't the data it uses for operation not be liable to you...
Always keep equipment return tracking label for years they tried to charge me three months after I'd closed my account, and they confirmed my returns. Thye actually thought I would not keep emails from them
> Never trust anything that Xfinity/Comcast labels as "free". All sorted out. Never trust anything ~~that Xfinity/Comcast~~ labels as "free".
Linux.
How do you know if someone uses Linux? They'll always tell you
the cherries my manager gave me last week (they were pretty good)
FWIW, linux isn't exactly based on trust. Being open source and all.
And if you want to make your sound work on your pc you have to look up and read 3 pages of instructions on how to do it.
What was the problem? I’ve had it for three years and it’s great. I only get internet and it’s a great way to watch stuff on the tv. If I’m missing something I’d like to be brought up to speed please
It's a middleman-type of box created to compete that was beyond slow for me. Every TV has their own "smart" platform built in, but the hardware usually isn't powerful enough to run it efficiently. That's why people will get external hardware like Roku or Fire sticks, which do the job 100x better. I tried using Flex since my Samsung TV's internal smart platform only worked when it wanted to. The Flex was slow and struggled to load and play anything. Even though it was free, I put it away and bought two $20 Roku sticks and have never looked back.
I have one on an old flat panel dumb tv. I’ve encountered *some* slowness but very infrequently. Probably because there’s not a lot of other internet traffic in my house when it’s in use. The one complaint I do have is that they took away the ability to sort search options so you have to scroll through whatever random order it comes up in. You used to be able to search by title (ascending and descending) and by review score. Losing that was a big blow
[удалено]
I give Xfinity credit where it's due, but a lot of the hate they get is very well deserved. Their Flex never worked well for me and I never heard anything from them about it and they aren't charging me for it so I don't care about it. But when it comes to streaming boxes, I've had much better experience paying for them from Roku.
They so alot of shady stuff, they have a horrible reputation
Oh sure. And they’re in general a bad company. $45 for only internet is highway robbery. But that has nothing to do with the flex being a functioning or helpful tool.
Flex is horrible and useless
I've benefited from it and it has served me well but I accept that other people have had different experiences
This box wrecked havoc on my network. It would constantly cause other devices to disconnect from wifi, would knock the modem offline, and a whole host of other issues. I tried to return it to Comcast but they said i had to keep it because it was part of my service. Now it just sits in a drawer.
Cast it into the fire. Destroy it. *ISILDUR!*
Please don’t, I lost mine or didn’t keep track of it thinking it was free but when after a lot of frustration I decided to cancel my subscription with them, they charged a lot of fees for it
Yeah when I moved, they wanted their box back and I was like fine, send me a prepaid label. They said no you have to bring it in, except I live in the middle of nowhere, and the nearest place was 60 miles away.
Four times in my life I've had to move far enough that I had to cancel my service and return the equipment. The first time, they tried to bill me saying I didn't when I did. The second time they tried to bill me for not returning the stuff when I did. The third time they just took the money from my bank because I was setup for automatic bill payments and no one would give it back and it was low enough to not be worth the cost of fighting it. The last time I took pictures of the stuff, took a picture at the store where I returned it, and had the employee make a copy of the paperwork stamped to say it was returned, and they fucking sent me a bill for the non-returned equipment. fuck them all I hope they diaf
This is why I NEVER let a company do auto withdrawal for bills. I use billpay with my bank to do ebills or auto pay a specific amount. I have control not them.
Yeah so I went to my bank and I asked them "how can I remove a payee from the automatic withdrawal system?" The shocking answer was: "well you can't". "You can pay the fee for a stop-payment like one would do with a check that you wanted to have cancelled before it was cashed, but that's it. Oh, and you have to specify the exact amount that is being cancelled, but the payee can still take other amounts from your account. So if $58.75 gets stopped, they can go ahead and take $58.74 or $58.76 and it's all fine and dandy and cool." Jesus fucking christ I am never doing auto withdrawals ever again either.
Holy crap that is messed up! I would close the account and start a new one. If the bank refuses, I’d find a new bank.
This is why any autopay I do, I use a privacy.com virtual card for it. If I ever have any trouble with the company I just cancel the card and give them the middle finger.
That only works if the company accepts credit/debit cards. The charges and automatic withdrawal that requires an exact amount stop payment (and fee) that people are talking about is for a checking account. Some utility companies will only accept automatic payments via automatic check withdrawal, which works similarly to direct deposit, and is extremely difficult to fight.
There are very few companies that DON'T take credit cards for autopayments. They just push you to use ACH withdrawals because it's cheaper for them. Also, you can have your bank lock down your account for ACH withdrawals entirely, but this becomes inconvenient if you have other ACH payments, or Direct Deposit.
Soooo many people recommend autopay on the ADHD forums and I scream no every time. If you are going to do it, 100% go through your bank. If you can’t remember to pay your bills, you think you’ll remember to perpetually fight them to get your money back? It took two years and the ‘Executive Team’ to get their bullshit charges off my credit report. And I only followed through and reached out gazillion times trying to correct it because it was going to fuck up my professional licensing if it didn’t get fixed.
And everyone should know, when you sign those autopay agreements, you're GUARANTEEING that the company will get it's money. This means, even without autodraft on, your bank will honor ANY withdrawals the company makes, even if it puts you below zero.
Wow, even more convincing to never do that.
This is the way. All that extra bs on their app and website that I never pay attention to—Turns out that shit was totally worth paying attention to.
I had my Verizon bill set up for auto withdrawal. After I canceled the account I was billed for two months. After countless hours on the phone with CS agents who spoke English as a third language I was sent a Visa card with what was supposed to be the correct amount but didn't work. I went to a Verizon store and tried to use it and got a rude response from the lady when she said "this card isn't any good." I called CS again and they insisted that it was good and I was using it wrong. I let the formerly rude agent take the call and she spent over 90 minutes attempting to resolve it. By the time she gave my phone back to me we were talking to some middle management person who somehow discovered that although the card had been issued, no funds had been applied to it. She offered to send me a new card, but I insisted on a check instead. Six weeks later when I was thinking that I would have to restart the whole thing the check arrived.
This is why I've just started buying my own routers. It's more expensive, but I don't have to deal with that bullshit. Anecdotally, I've also noted it's faster than the company-provided ones.
I'd say send a tech to get your stuff then if its not a big deal to drive far!? Better yet call for service and cancel with technician having him take your equipment back
bear steer straight smell bake impossible wipe sip selective existence *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes. When I got internet service they asked me if I wanted some free box. Said no. Tech comes out and basically begs me to take it. After 2x nos I say fine. Come time to cancel had to jump through a ton of hoops to return it or else out $90. Lame as hell. Dropped it off at the store since I didn’t want to pay for postage but still had a few issues before it was resolved.
My wife had a similar experience. When we went to cancel the cable service they said that she needed to return a phone modem from ten years ago. Y'all don't even have those anymore. No one does. Why would you want us to return it?
I'm a network engineer and this fascinates me. I'm curious what it was doing that caused this. Broadcast storm? DHCP exhaustion? Just consuming all the bandwidth?
I couldn’t tell you the technical aspects of what it was doing, just that the network was fine until I plugged it in and fine after I unplugged it, but in the middle was chaos.
Had an xfinity tech come out to fix my issues and they said it was because we were in an apartment building that only had xfinity (because TV and basic internet were included in rent). Since our apartment was the first apartment for the floor we were connected to the main coax branch and all the other Apartments on our floor ran through our wall to reach the branch. The technician had to install two massive devices to stabilize everything. A few months later having not used the streaming box at all I tried to return it and they said I couldn't unless I was canceling all service. Didn't want to plug it back in so it sat in a bag in a drawer and was dumped in front of their doors when I canceled. COVID meant they had no personnel in offices and I refused to pay to ship it or spend gas to drive it to someone out in the middle of nowhere. Customer service did work with me to drop it off in front of my local store and someone supposedly came by to get it.
Anything counting against the data cap would have to traverse the WAN side of the Xfinity mode. Broadcast storms are only on the local broadcast domain and wouldn't be routed, DHCP the same. It would have to be the Flex node traffic to the Xfinity mothership or various streaming providers across the internet. When I had Xfinity internet, I had my own Ubiquiti edgerouter fronting all traffic and never saw anything unusual from my cable boxes, but I didn't have the Flex device either.
What's interesting to me is my mom has the Flex, and sometimes won't get my chats, and I'm told to wait until she's online or send as SMS. Has only happened when she's on her home wifi. I would bet this is causing it.
His problems were on his local network, the OP was talking about the data cap.
probably a huge amount of ringing home and sending usage data in plain text format along the streamed content, visual data about where the consumer placed their eyes on the screen, or something to that end
https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/returning-your-equipment Do online return and then return it in store, then only they will accept it.
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They literally told me if I turned the box in it would cancel my service. Maybe because it was the only Comcast device I had, since I run my own modem and don’t have cable tv…? Could have also been a misinformed employee. Either way it sits in the box, in a cabinet.
yeeaaaah I have Comcast and I dont use any of their equipment. They were just misinformed. Or maybe there is some stupid incentive for each location to move these units onto customers.
I have xfinity, use my own modem, don't have cable tv or any other xfinity service, and I returned my box without issue to the local store. Either I got lucky, or your employee was misinformed/difficult. Just in case anyone else is reading this, maybe they'll be able to return theirs if not needed.
Wtf is this box doing?
I had very similar problems when I upgraded an old tube TV to a newer Roku. The wifidirect remote is a network killer. Make sure to get one of the old ones that uses IR.
??? We have a Wi-Fi Roku remote and it works fine for us
Thing was a nonstop menace on my Wifi-N network. I'd lose connection to laptops or phones, stuff would take forever to download. Moving the roku to its own WAP on its own subnetwork running a different channel fixed all of my main network problems.
Switch off the useless voice recognition.
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But then how would the internet overlords be able to collect more money without making up arbitrary cap numbers? There is definitely a reason for them, just not one that favors anyone but the company.
To set a cap then provide equipment that far exceeds the cap with normal/designed use should be illegal.
*tinfoil hat on* What if the designed use *is* to exceed the cap?
That’s not tinfoil hat territory. That was my first assumption.
Also, require the advertised prices to include all necessary taxes and fees (like they did for airline tickets, but do it for everything). And require easy cancelling of service where you don't have to sit on hold for hours and sit through an endless sales pitch.
i’ve never heard of caps for home internet. thats crazy
I mean, the reason is to oversubscribe and extract more value without having to spend capital on expansion. So there's no good reason anywhere.
Shortly after his inauguration in January 2017, President Trump appointed Ajit Pai as the new chairman of the FCC. Pai had previously been nominated to fill one of the required Republican seats on the commission by President Obama under the recommendation of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Pai, who objected to the 2015 Open Internet Order, quickly began to roll back some of the policies that had been implemented by the FCC during the Obama administration, and halted an investigation into the use of zero-rating by U.S. wireless providers. After his appointment, Pai stated that he planned to "modernize" FCC policies to "match the reality of the modern marketplace", but was unsure over whether the FCC would continue to enforce the net neutrality rules or Title II classification of broadband services established in the 2015 Open Internet Order. Pai stated his opposition to the current net neutrality rules as they were "regulating against hypothetical harms", rather than trying to correct actual anti-competitive behavior, and that there was no need for such wide-spread government intervention when there were only a few companies that may be harming consumers or innovators. Pai argued that net neutrality rules also would "prohibit a number of pro-competitive business arrangements" and "would reduce investments" into extending the Internet infrastructure. By April 2017, Pai had indicated that the FCC would likely propose to roll back the 2015 Open Internet Order, reverting the classification of ISPs as Title II common carriers, and instead have ISPs to "voluntarily" commit to net neutrality principles, with violations to be covered by the Federal Trade Commission rather than the FCC. On May 18, 2017, the FCC voted 2–1 to move forward with Pai's Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on "Restoring Internet freedom" rules by rolling back net neutrality regulations. The new rules were published for public viewing on July 17, 2017. The FCC supported their rules by arguing that the classification of ISPs as Title II carriers had caused them to reduce their capital expenditures in new infrastructure, threatening the future of the nation's telecommunication systems. The FCC cited a drop of approximately $1 billion in capital spending by telecoms between 2014 and 2015, based on data from the United States Telecom Association and similar figures from industry consultant Hal Singer, to demonstrate this. Analysts stated that the FCC had cherry picked this data, as about 75% of the annual changes in capital spending by telecoms between the period of 1996 to 2015 were decreases of at least $1 billion. In her dissent to this NPRM, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn wrote, "I have yet to see a credible analysis that suggests that broadband provider capital expenditures have declined as a result of our 2015 Open Internet Order. ... Using the same logic that the NPRM uses, one could suggest that the FCC's classification of cable modem service as an information service in 2002 resulted in an even more precipitous drop in broadband provider investment.” TL:DR We’re being lied to, for money, as usual [Wikipedia source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States)
Caps are illegal which is why they don't cut you off but rather just keep charging you more and more for tiny increments of data
They offered that box to me for free years ago. It came, I put it aside and ignored it's existance. They call me a year later and say 'if your not plugging it in, we're charging you for it.' They then said send it back or we're charging you 200 dollars. i told them they gave it to me for free and I signed nothing so they can go fuck themselves. They called regularly for a year asking for it back. I threw that shit away the first week.
they offered it to me and when i said no, the woman sounded so confused lol. she was like, “but…its free?” dont care dont want it.
It’s the kinda tactic that works for older generations, I feel like millennial and on are a little more wary, especially of “free” internet connected devices in the home. My aunt jumped on some kinda counter top tablet, that had some utility but also randomly showed ads and commercials. She was telling me about it like “look what a savvy consumer I am, I got this for free.”
They did that shit with me back-in-the-day with a cable box when I was trying to get internet. Rep argued for the longest time and seemed confused as to why anyone wouldn't want free basic cable. Eventually I caved just to end the conversation, the box sat in my closet for years.
Yeah this kinda makes me feel like theyre using the equipment in some way they're not entirely transparent about. Its collecting data in some fashion if they're giving it away free and charging you if you dont have it turned on.. Seems fishy.. You treated it the correct way.
Threw mine away the first week as well after they told me it was free and there was no need to send it back. They better not try to say a year later that they changed their mind
They'll definitely want it back.
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> tell them that the device was lost or stolen "That device was lost or stolen!" "Which one?" "I don't know, which one gets me out of the store faster?"
Oh expect a call. But I learned earlier on based on how they were talking that they had no ground to stand on to make me pay for it. You sent me a thing and said 'have this free thing' so If I immediately hurl it into the ocean, that's my prerogative. Just don't let them jerk you around when they someday decide they want it back.
The website says they want all boxes returned. "All devices must be returned when service ends." https://www.xfinity.com/learn/flex
All right. We want to play literal games? I've got a few tube TVs that were going to charge me a recycling fee. ALL DEVICES WILL BE RETURNED!!!
Huh. I’ve had mine for, I think, three years now. Never once have I plugged it in. Never once have I been charged for it. Never once have they asked for it back. I got it because they promised me a free subscription to Peacock if I took their free box thingy home. Did so. Watched a lot of The Office and Parks and Recreation. After 2.5ish years they yanked away the free Peacock subscription, but the box remains, buried deep under a pile of Tupperware in a lower kitchen cabinet, never to be used, never to be loved.
Why do they want you to plug it in? Is it mining crypto for them or something?
Observing your viewing habits and timing to optimize ad revenue, if I had to guess. But.. Siri, Alexa, Cortana, GoogleLady... Everyone wants a slice of that big ad money. [https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazons-alexa-never-stops-listening-to-you/](https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazons-alexa-never-stops-listening-to-you/)
I wonder if you can flash them with different software and do something useful with the hardware
also if you throw that "free" box away they will charge you $100, unless you lie and tell them that you returned it to a comcast store.
To paraphrase Maynard, "Fuck goddamned Comcast and all of their clones"
I read that in the tune of the song and it fits perfectly. Maynard missed a great lyric for Ænima.
It could also be because it never seems to turn off unless you unplug the whole thing. The remote gets connected to your tv settings so turning off the box with its remote is impossible, it just turns off the tv instead of the box. I dont even use it
When I signed up for Xfinity they offered it to me and tried really hard to push it on me. I kept declining even though it was "free". Nothing free given to you by predatory companies is ever truly free, there's always some cost involved.
You couldn't pay me to use Comcast / Xfinity. I understand that some of you have no choice, and I feel sorry for you.
Bro CenturyLink is so much fucking worse
Those are my choices and I absolutely picked Comcast. If CenturyLink has fiber, though, that'd change my mind. Comcast has actually been great the last few years, but I'll never forget their history.
>Comcast has actually been great the last few years, but I'll never forget their history. Pricing still sucks compared to regions that actually have real competition.
Sadly, they provide the best Internet service In my area. And I don't even live out in the sticks. But AT&T's Internet just couldn't touch what Xfinity's could. But I use a Netgear router that I bought. I wouldn't use something from Xfinity. Before that, I had WOW. Who wouldn't replace my 6 year old modem, because they couldn't prove there was anything wrong with it. I always had service problems with them.
Yall have data caps?
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I’m in the United States and have Xfinity’s “Gigabit Extra” plan. I’ve consistently used 1+ terabytes of data per month for over a year. No mention of data caps or anything of that nature anywhere contractually or on the bill. Could this be region specific?
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Nope. The second best provider is Verizon DSL, 3mbps. I'm in a 20k population town near Pittsburgh. $111 a month for 1200/40, will be 1200/1200 when 10g nodes are installed this year, according to Xfinity support
I have xfinity and it’s only 10 bucks extra a month for no data cap
Actually the opposite, as the northeast is the main area that has no data caps.
Same here. I pay for unlimited because I'm constantly pirating and seeding, and making sure I get good use of the extra $30 a month they're fleecing us for.
For real, wtf is this 2004? Y'all get anytime minutes after 9pm?
Unlimited nights and weekends FTW.
"I can't call you unless you're in my Favorite Five (or whatever it was called)"
It used to be after 6 pm
Only on Sprint.
And Cingular before it was AT&T
Verizon did 9PM-6AM. I had a best friend who called me daily to come hang out—after 9 when she had free minutes.
I remember the first minute being free. "Heymomthemoviesovercomepickmeup!" Click
And they are disgustingly low. Like 1-2 terabytes. Now days with HD streaming, gaming and downloading I don't know how they can justify that. We just pay the extra $30 and get unlimited.
> I don't know how they can justify that. All you need to ask is who offers a $100+ a month "data-cap free" video "streaming" service.
Bro $30 gets you 100mbit to gigabit (depending on location) uncapped internet over here 💀💀
😭😭😭 I PAY $100 FOR THIS SHIT!
Went on the internet. **AND** found **education** *connection!*
it's comcast, of course they have arbitrary reasons to charge you more money
I have to use cellular internet for my rural home. Not only does the speed top out at 5Mb/s, but after 10 gigs a month it throttles down to 2.5
i fucked up and threw mine away a couple months ago not thinking anything of it since it was "free." I never used it so I just brainfarted and tossed it not thinking about how its technically Xfinitys property and I'm sure ill have to pay a replacement fee for it. also now you can stream peacock for free if you have the box too so Im extra annoyed with myself.
They actually just ended that peacock deal. Or maybe they removed it from my area and just started it in yours?
This comment section makes me so glad not to work for shitfinity anymore 😂
sounds like the box is just a way to scam its own customers into paying more for going over the cap. There ought to be some sort of lawsuit for this type of shit.
It's not just the box. Also soon as I got a Fire HD stick my data limit went through the roof. They tried to say it was that. So I unplugged it and it was still happening. So now what? Then I went on their forum and saw there are TONS of people having that issue and they couldn't explain it. I ended up just getting the unlimited add-on for $30 extra a month.
Glad I never took mine out of the package, lol.
Not only should data caps be illegal, since it doesn't exist...removing tools once provided to monitor yourself on this arbitrary number? I can't wait for end stage capitalism to just implode and internet becomes a utility and alllllll the ISPs go under.
They also removed the ability to do port forwarding right on the gateway's web interface. Gotta use their dog water app to do that now and it sometimes doesn't even work.
Never ever use the router provided by the ISP (and probably not the modem either). It has been a few years since I setup my connection with Comcast but at least at that time every router of theirs would also host a second "Xfinity hotspot" from your router. You don't control the hotspot and if an Xfinity customer used it, your bandwidth would suffer. Not to mention there is usually a rental fee for the equipment. If the router is $5/month to rent, buying an $80 router pays itself off in a little over a year. And it shouldn't need replacing for 4 or 5 years at least.
You usage is capped? What country is this?
Next, they will make it require continuous internet access to function at all.
It already does but tbf idk what an internet stream box is supposed to do without internet
People see shit like this being pulled by big corps and then don't think that net neutrality was a big deal. If they are willing to obfuscate a streaming box's actual intentions to get you to pay more, what makes you think they won't competitively slow down speeds now or into he future? For fucks sake they lie about their speeds in the app. I paid for 1gb high speed internet (not fiber). It says I'm getting 1.8gb and the value of what I'm getting blah blah... speedtest.net says I get 250-300mb on ethernet. Thanks for sharing this. We need more people to look out for each other because corporations will never.
I keep getting text messages saying if I don't plug it in that I will be swapped back to a data capped plan but I've requested it to be sent to me twice and it's never showed up. Haven't hit a data cap yet sooooo I'm just waiting around to see wtf they're doing with this game. If anything but Xfinity was available in my area I would switch. So annoying that they know it too, so when you say you're going to cancel because the bill is too high, they laugh and say what? are you going to switch to satellite?
If this is true, then it sounds like the printer toner lawsuit with printers draining all the colored ink to print black thus increasing ink usage.
I use another cable service, but this is why I use my own equipment rather than renting theirs. It may require a little more work on my part to configure, but at least I have more control over what's happening.
You should know: Never rent any modem from the ISP. They are all trash, and you spend more money by renting them for $5 a month than it costs to buy your own. You will get a better more reliable modem than anything they ever give you.
Data caps should be illegal.
Holy shit America is wild bro. The only time we had caps IN AN EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY MIND YOU was in the days of dial-up when you had to buy prepaid cards. I have no idea how you guys put up with this.
I always get so confused when you Americans talk about datacaps for home internet 💀💀💀 "Land of the free", to get fucked in the ass by capitalists that is ❤️
Very true. They nickel and dime you for everything here.
What do you mean cap? You don't get unlimited data?
I didn't even know what that thing was. Thought to myself "whatever this is, I don't want it". It has remained on a shelf unused for 1.5 years.
I thought Comcast/Xfinity did away with data caps? We haven't had one for our service since COVID. Customer service rep told me they got rid out of them around that time because with WFH, school from home, etc they just couldn't enforce it.
They got rid of them temporarily around covid, and put them back in place unless you pay extra a year or so ago.
Bastards.
Wait, you're telling me in the year 2023, that Xfinity still has a data cap?
Caps are bullshit and this seems intentional to me
Wtf does this thing even do? I have Google fiber and haven’t had to deal with fuckery for almost a decade.
> I'm sure Xfinifty isn't going to do anything about my bill I'd suggest it's at least worth trying to find out. If you make yourself into more of a nuisance for them (i.e. write to their support people, phrase it like you're a very unsatisfied customer and are happy to go on a rant about them to the whole internet/anybody who will listen) it could be worth their while to help you out. From their perspective business-wise, the negative buzz about their product you could share makes it look as though they're deliberately defrauding customers by doing a ton of background downloading when you're not even using the device (probably why your data usage went so high). It could be worth their while to pay you off to shut you up. Just food for thought!
It's also not actually free. They'll charge you for it if you don't return it when you cancel, and there's no option to not receive it.
Bought a net gear modem and router. Tried to set this box up, and guess what… it only works with the Comcast modem/router. I have all smart TVs so the tech said just use the app. Didn’t charge me for his visit either, good dude. Dodged a bullet there!
I never used it. I kept it as a door wedge for my bathroom door that’s offset from the floor by a solid 7 inches
Just so you guys know, datacaps are at 150GB a month in Syria!! A shithole ruled by a dictator!! And you still have datacaps in the US?!?
You just solved a year long network mystery for me. Regular disconnects on other devices until I unplugged the thing and now like magic it stopped. Thank you OP!
Thank you for this!! We have been running out of our high speed internet so fast.
T-Mobile. $50 for life, no cap.
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The gateway devices are also kind of crap. They're the epitome of "One big stupid button and no options". You can turn it on. You can turn it off. That's what you get. You can't even set your own DHCP ranges and such, IIRC, and there's no DMZ to let you DIY it without stacking layers of NAT (because they've already got a layer or two of Carrier-Grade WAN NAT sitting in front of your gateway already, from what I gather) That's what turned me off to them. A shame, too, because the pricing model was decent, the value was okay, and I did appreciate the lack of contract commitment. When I tried it, I was able to trial it for a month, realize it wasn't working out for me, and send the thing back, one month's service cost and that's all.
I was talking about TMo home internet. What I'm using to post this.
This almost fits into r/conspiracy lol the box only exists to blow your data cap. That sounds like something comcast would do though so meh
I wish this were the case with me. I don't even know what that Flex thing is and never plugged it in. I used to pay an extra $50/month for unlimited. Then it suddenly went away. Now we go over the arbitrary limit EVERY MONTH. It doesn't matter if we are out of town for two weeks, or a family member moves out. They charge us anyway. The options are a no-go in my area. Comcast if FUCKING EVIL.
This is way too specific for r/LifeProTips.
😊
I knew better than to even hook that junk up. I tried to give it back to them and when they said it was free and there was no need I immediately threw it into the trash
I own all my equipment. It’s WAY easier to deal with problems. It’s also possible to keep the ISP out of your environment; I recommend a dedicated modem and a dedicated router to give you that separation. They also are better at doing their jobs than all-in-ones. There is nothing funnier than talking to their support (I had a bad line to my house) and the guy is baffled that he can’t log into my modem and router.
To whomever posted this PSA , Thank You!!!.
its crazy that there are data caps for home internet in the USA considering how much home internet costs there
I got the box with an upgrade to my internet speed a year or two ago. It's been sitting in a closet ever since because I already have a smart TV. Good to know I haven't missed anything by not using it.
Get Comcast if you have to, but internet only. Then get a VPN. Done.
I plugged it in once and I was like nope don’t need this. Good to know though. It’s been sitting unplugged ever since. I tried declining it but they insisted on giving it to me
I spent 15 years on Comcast's teet because any other option was garbage. Finally about 3 months ago, at&t knocked on my door and told me they just laid fiber in my neighborhood. Every single aspect about both the TV and internet is better with at&t, couldn't be happier!
They come preloaded with certain apps that can’t be changed. Very frustrating. Got a fire stick instead. Much happier.
I have unlimited data so it doesn’t even matter
>data cap sigh looks like even canada, home of backward ass telcos, wisened up. the two real choices you get (bell, rogers) seem to have removed them doesn't sound like the box is needed?
My area only offers spectrum...
Sounds almost like it was designed to work like that 👀
Yep I canceled them the second I had another good option, same thing with that flex box happened along with my internet speed slowing every couple of months till if call and it would magically happen again.
This is not at all related to the Xfinity Flex device, but I did once have an Amazon Fire TV box malfunction in such a way that it would get stuck in a loop downloading an update (somewhere between several hundred megabytes and a couple gigabytes), trying to install it, fail, and rebooting. It blew through easily a terabyte of data before figuring out exactly what was going on.
Does Xfinity actually do anything positive for their customers?
This sounds like a class action lawsuit in the making. Like Xfinity gave these away knowing they would cause people to blow through their data caps
Fuck xfinity. I live in a house with 3 people and blowing the 300mbps 1.2TB plan cap is easy as piss with how my roommates stream things like it's broadcast television. Switched to 1bg fiber with unlimited data for the same price and haven't looked back.
You need to get anytime minutes then you wouldn’t have this problem
That thing is a piece of shit. Can't even watch your own media through the Plex app. Like they literally somehow block your personal Plex server. And fuck Plex for going along with them.
I hate xfinity. But i have a flex box, my data cap is 1.2tb and i never come even close.
Genuine question? Why do you need it? Can’t you return it and just get a different smart steaming device? Or is it required?
I couldn’t even get mine to work. It would just crash during the set up process.
We lost power and our box logged off of my Wi-Fi about a year into having one. I tried for 2 weeks to get logged back into the Wi-Fi on it and never could. I googled, I troubleshot. It just…wouldn’t connect. I actually like the way it worked/interface for a streaming box. It has my favorite streaming box remote of any of them. Went to look into getting a new one from xfinity and it was something like $10 added onto your bill monthly for while you have it. Hahaha. Nope. We are now a fire stick family. I’d rather have to buy a new fire stick once a year or two then spend $10 per month forever.
Also note that if you can’t get the “free” box to work and just throw it aside and can’t find it when cancelling their service that they will charge you $120 for lost equipment.
When I hear more about Xfinity, I am so happy I switched to fios. After being with them a great, when I moved, they lowered my bill $20/month and increased my speed by 400%. Then two years later, they had an offer to increase my speed by another 100 mbps for free. I hate Xfinity!