I got a call from my 84 year old step-mother today. Seems she got a call about a week ago from Comcast telling her that her TV in the kitchen that has rabbit ears on it would stop working on Monday because "all of the broadcast stations are stopping broadcasting on Monday". They went on to tell her that she would need to get Comcast installed on it if she wanted to see TV after this Monday. Well, she did not tell me about this when it happened and told them to go ahead and install their equipment.
She called me crying about 11:00 this morning as the Comcast guy was there and said he needed someone to move some large furniture out of the way to gain access to the wall behind the TV in her den. She apologized to me for having to call me as she does not like to "bother" anyone.
When I arrived at her house about 10 minutes later, the Comcast guy was just finishing up as he was able to gain access by himself.
He again iterated to me that she would not have been able to receive TV signals after Monday as "the broadcast stations are going off the air". He also told me that the TV stations and particularly channel 11 (WPXI) has been "fined for years" for broadcasting illegally to homes as they are only supposed to broadcast to the cable companies (a technical impossibility). I proceeded to tell him that I have over the air TV at home, I'm a Ham radio operator and told him he did not know what he was talking about. He started to argue with me, told me "you'll be calling Comcast after Monday". I shut up and said "yeah whatever" as he was just escalating the argument. What a buffoon!
He charged her an installation fee and left after he was done. Who knows what her monthly bill will be. They must be running out of working class suckers and are now praying on the elderly to boost their revenue.
I'm just shocked. Shocked, with nothing else to say.
Why does the FCC or other government agencies not crack down on this horrible monopolized company?
