In which a letter is received from Comcast

A generically addressed (aside from the envelope) letter arrived from Comcast today.

Dear Valued Comcast Customer,

Thank you for choosing XFINITY^® from Comcast. We hope you have been enjoying the features and benefits of your XFINITY services.

During a recent review of your account, we found that you are not being billed for your monthly modem rental.

No shit. That’s because we own our cable modem. Maybe if you had “reviewed” a little deeper, you’d have noticed that the order for XFINITY internet didn’t include any hardware.

Effective with your next bill, your rate for the monthly modem rental will be $7.00.

As a Comcast customer, we know you expect a great customer experience and for your bill to be a certain amount each month. We understand that this change will cause an unexpected increase in your monthly bill. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this causes.

We value our customers and look forward to continuing to serve you. If you believe you have received this letter in error or have any questions regarding your XFINITY services, please call us any time at 1-800-XFINITY.

Thank you for being a Comcast customer.

Sincerely,
Comcast

Obviously just because we have XFINITY internet service, we must be renting Comcast equipment (which by the way is pretty stupid anyway, considering a cable modem can be purchased for less than $80). So after calling and providing info to the automated response system so it can pull up my account info, I reach a customer service rep and proceed to provide info (again) so she can pull up my account info.

After spending a few minutes on the phone, it turns out all the customer service rep can do is remove the rental charge from the bill. The problem of us owning the cable modem needs to be escalated to have someone start an investigation into whether the cable modem is actually ours or not. The rep says I should expect to hear back from someone by Dec 24.

Why oh why must Comcast induce so much shakefist and facepalm.