[captain1202]

Worked for a bucket shop selling Comcast Digital Phone and cable up north for a short while. The name of the game was to get the contract signed. No matter what price you wrote on the contract it was subject to "correction" by Comcast. For example, a favorite trick was to put down the advertised price of $14.95/mo for digital phone service but this did not include various surcharges which ultimately brought the monthly cost to about $30 bucks. Of course the unsuspecting customer didn't catch on until a couple of billing cycles went through and by then they were locked in to the 1 year contract. I must add that COmcast frowned on this practice but continued to give the re-seller (my boss) area contracts to open. I know the same goes on with DISH and DIRECT. It's an ugly business.

Similar deal with cel-phone service. The money is in the long-term contracts. I had a phone with Sprint for 7 years and decided to cancel the service. They told me I had a contract and had to cancel ON the renewal date 1 1/2 yrs hence. I explained that I had long exceeded my original 2 year contract and they said that the "contract" was automatically rolled over for another 2 years whenever you changed service in any way. I cancelled anyway and they tried to collect $275 cancellation but I resisted and they finally gave up after I threatened to report them to FTC.