Getty Images | Jeff Fusco
Low-income people can get free internet through Comcast and a government program, but signing up is sometimes more difficult than it should be due to confusion within Comcast’s customer service department.
Massachusetts resident Tonia Williams qualified for the U.S. government’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which offers $30 monthly rebates, and for Comcast’s Internet Essentials Plus, a $30 monthly service for low-income people who are essentially is free in combination with the ACP discount. But when she tried to use the ACP discount with Comcast’s low-income service, Comcast falsely told her she wasn’t eligible because she was already a Comcast customer.
Williams, a certified nursing assistant who was not working when she spoke to Ars, ended up getting free internet service for her family. But she faced several issues and said she would have given up if it weren’t for David Isenberg, a Falmouth resident who helps low-income people in his town navigate the process. Isenberg knew Williams because she was formerly a home care worker who took care of Isenberg’s wife’s uncle.
“I would have given up if David hadn’t pushed me,” Williams told Ars in a telephone interview in November. “It’s such a cumbersome process and you have to stay on hold. A lot of people don’t have time to sit on the phone for that long and then be told, ‘Well, you don’t qualify.’ If you didn’t really know what the service is or how to get it, I would have just believed them, that I didn’t qualify.”
Three applicants were initially wrongly rejected
Isenberg contacted Ars in late October after helping Williams and two other people get the discount. All three were incorrectly told they were ineligible when they first tried to enroll, Isenberg said.
The confusion is related to a Comcast rule that makes customers ineligible for the low-income Internet Essentials service if they have been a Comcast subscriber in the past 90 days. That rule and another regarding unpaid bills should not apply to people who also qualify for the federal ACP program.
“If a customer qualifies and enrolls in ACP with Comcast, the 90-day and outstanding debt restrictions will not apply for the duration of ACP,” says a Comcast FAQ.
But with the first three people Isenberg helped, “Commcast initially told these existing customers that existing customers aren’t eligible,” he said.
Not every applicant has the same problem, as Isenberg later helped enroll a man who was not wrongfully rejected. He also heard of another applicant who got into the program without any problems.
Comcast agents “not trained at all”
But the confusion among some Comcast customer service representatives suggests the company hasn’t fully trained employees on the rules of its low-income programs.
“They’re not trained at all,” Isenberg said. He also said that the enrollment process is difficult even if no major mistakes have been made.
“This problem is pretty much invisible. You can’t see it if you’re not really hands-on and helping people,” Isenberg said. “There’s a very serious class and/or privilege issue here that really keeps this under the radar… if you don’t sit with someone who is poor and apply to them, you don’t know.”
With one of the applicants initially wrongly rejected, Isenberg told Ars that the application process “took about three hours over three days, which is a huge burden when you’re a poor person working two jobs and trying to raise a family. “
When Ars reached out, a Comcast spokesperson said that what Isenberg and Williams described is not the “typical experience” for Comcast customers who qualify for the ACP discount. But the spokesperson said Comcast “doubles down” on training to avoid unfairly rejecting other people.
“Connecting consumers to ACP is a top priority for us,” Comcast told Ars in a statement. “We continue to raise awareness of the benefits, train our employees on the program, and fine-tune our processes to make signing up easy. It’s a constantly improving process and we’re committed to getting it right. We’re sorry for any issues this customers have experienced and will strive to prevent this from happening again.”
Comcast has been offering low-income deals since 2011
While the government-funded monthly rebate didn’t begin until the pandemic, Comcast has been providing low-cost service to eligible low-income households through Internet Essentials since 2011. The program was originally required in the merger terms imposed on Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal, and Comcast continues to offer Internet Essentials, although the merger term expired in 2014. Comcast says the program has “connected a total of more than 10 million Americans since 2011.”
While the ACP discount can be applied to any level of Comcast Internet service, it makes sense for eligible users to opt for the relatively new Internet Essentials Plus plan. The Plus tier “includes 100 Mbps download speeds, a cable modem and Wi-Fi router, and is free after the government’s ACP credit is applied,” Comcast said when it announced the new tier in March. The subscription has upload speeds of 20 Mbps.
Comcast also still sells the basic level of Internet Essentials with download speeds of 50 Mbps and upload speeds of 10 Mbps for $10 per month. Comcast’s data caps are not imposed on Internet Essentials users.
Comcast was one of 20 ISPs that agreed to make $30 plans available to Americans eligible for ACS earlier this year.
Comedy of errors
Williams previously qualified for the federal ACP rebate and used it on a Comcast subscription that cost $75, so her monthly bill was about $45 with the rebate applied. Once she learned she could cut her bill to zero by using the ACP instead with $30 Internet Essentials Plus, she called Comcast to switch to that plan in mid-October.
Williams put the call on speakerphone so Isenberg could listen. The Comcast customer representative who told Williams she was not eligible for Internet Essentials Plus “said I would have to cancel my Internet account for 90 days, after which I could sign up again for Internet Essentials Plus,” she said.
Isenberg recalled getting Williams to tell the Comcast agent “that the official Comcast policy is that existing customers are eligible. And she told them and the woman said, ‘Oh, let me look at something. ‘ And she put us on hold, came back and said, ‘Yeah, I think there’s a way you might qualify.'”
But that call was cut off, “so we called back and got someone else, and there was no record of the transaction between me and this other person,” Williams said. After an hour-long phone call, “Finally someone said, ‘OK, well, I see you have ACP,'” Williams said.
