Check your bills

I've been told enough times that I should know better, but I learned the hard way the check your bills, and double check the line items. In my neck of the woods you have your choice of network providers Comcast, or Qwest (aka usworst). Comcast has its own issues, and Qwest would have had my business if they weren't the worst company on the planet. I'll save that rant for another time, because the source of my misfortune is Comcast.

The other night I woke up in the middle of the night and was totally unable to get back to sleep. No problem I tell myself there is always the internet, that's pretty handy for passing the time. I get downstairs, log into Xbox Live and join a match. I play literally 5 minutes and I get disconnected from XBL. I assume (like a normal person) that my xbox is trying to go tits up on me and work through about 20 minutes of chasing my network bits around, rebooting the xbox, and generally troubleshooting everything to figure out my dlink cable modem (keep this in mind my dlink, not Comcast's cause I paid cash to not rent that from those f*ckers). I get Comcast on the horn at 3 in the morning to let them know that I was very disappointed about the state of my internet and come to find out that they where charging me for my cable modem. I tell them politely to stop gouging me for shit I own and the rep just gives me a partial credit for that month. Fast forward to the next months bill and the charge is still on there. I check back as far as their online billing department decided they want to limit their liabilities to (1 year) and figure out they may well have been charging me an equipment rental fee all along. For the last 5 years factored at $84 a year mean I'm feeling short about $400. I did what any sane person would do I called their 800# and tried to see how much free shit I could get out of this.

All told I got $70, got the charge removed from my bill going forward, and got my internet speed boosted to 12mb/s for the next 6 months. I'm not sure that we are done with this matter or not, but it is an excellent reminder for you all.

Check your bills, it can save you some cash in the long run.