The Last Mediacom Bill

Dear Mediacom,

At first I thought you sucked because you insisted on abrogating internet standards with a “Website Redirect Service” that you wouldn’t let me shut off. Since you fixed that problem, you’ve decided to place data caps on my previously “unlimited” service. Of course, when I exceed your arbitrarily imposed caps, you charge me more fines on top of on an already obscenely large bill.

What’s obscenely large?

Well, I do not purchase cable TV from you, and I do not use your phone service. And I still pay between $70-$80 (or more) a month to you just for internet service. And in the world of modern broadband, it’s not as if that’s a blazing fast connection either. Download speed is capped at about 15Mbps.

Here’s how it breaks down for one month:

But it’s not enough that you charge outrageous fees for basic service, levy fines and impose arbitrary data caps. You also insist on injecting your business messaging into my web browsing. We previously covered this tactic with the aforementioned “Website Redirect Service“. Now that you’ve imposed your data caps , you feel the need to display this helpful banner on the top of websites:

That you would even consider doing this illustrates how little you respect your users. My browsing sessions are private and not a forum for you to intrude upon with your messaging. What you do is the equivalent of having one of your associates interrupt a telephone call of one of your telephony customers to inform them that they might use up all their minutes if they keep talking.

And of course, if you look at the image above, you’ll see that you inject your messaging not only in the days leading up to the end of the billing cycle, but for numerous days afterwards.

I suspect that it’s only because you operate as a service monopoly in so many markets that you consider this behavior OK. But it’s not.

And because of this, the bill you see above…the one we dutifully paid (as always)…will be the last bill you ever send us.

We have found a local provider who gives us fiber service at half your cost. And they don’t have data caps. I’m now using their service to send you this break up note.

That you offered to reduce our rates when we cancelled your service was a nice gesture…but if you really cared about retaining me as a customer, you would have cared all along and not just at the end.

If you had really cared, you wouldn’t have gleefully charged me such exorbitant rates for so long, you wouldn’t have arbitrarily imposed data caps, and you wouldn’t have resorted to levying “fines” on me for using your service as intended.