Why aren't the big banks doing this? I guess because they can't tack on all kinds of horrendous fees and still get people to use it, and PayPal's business model isn't profitable enough for them.
I have a different guess. My guess is that big banks are banks and have to obey the banking regulations and so they can't afford to compete with companies like Paypal which doesn't have to obey the banking regulations even though they act as a bank.
Yeah, Comcast is incompetent, but there's more to the story than meets the summary. I took a look at his website, and found his resume, and a couple of things leapt out at me...
- All of his previous employment was in Southern California. To residents here on the Peninsula that's almost always a huge warning sign with flashing red letters. We've all seen too many folk move here from big cities who don't grasp that despite the apparent nearness of Seattle and Tacoma, Kitsap County is still pretty much country/rural. Not so much as it was when the Navy brought me out here nearly thirty years ago, but it's still not a city. It's not even close.
- His address turns out to be out in the boonies, in the kind of place big city folk like to buy houses and then complain that it's not like living in the cheek-by-jowl suburbs. Sorry dude, but when you live at the end of a quarter mile long shared driveway off of a back country road, it should be pretty obvious that you don't live in Palo Alto or Mountain View anymore.
You are exactly right. However, if someone tells you multiple times that they can provide you a service and then reneges, they are responsible for damages, whether it is in downtown L.A., Kitsap County, or Timbuktu Michigan.
The contingency would not survive closing. In other words, he would have had to get the service installed before he owned the house for that to work.
Yes, and since he didn't own the home, he would not be able to instantiate the service. Catch 22.
If wired broadband internet is a critical feature of any house you buy, verify before you buy.
What verification steps can you possibly take beyond what he did? Hack into their computers to determine if there really had been service at that address?
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken
