Guy Autotweets Comcast Whenever His Service Stinks

It's happened 16 times in 3 months
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 3, 2016 5:55 AM CST
Guy Autotweets Comcast Whenever His Service Stinks
A Redditor is speaking out for the "common man" against Comcast.   (Jeff Fusco/AP Images for Comcast)

Many people have famously poor luck when trying to shout, however publicly, at Comcast customer service. So one user is taking what Geek.com describes as a "passive aggressive" approach by programming his Raspberry Pi to automatically tweet every time his Internet service falls below an unacceptable speed (it's happened 16 times in three months). Writing on Reddit, the semi-anonymous user who goes by AlekseyP (or, on Twitter, by @A_Comcast_User) notes that he's not a "fancy" programmer and doesn't want to be pestered for his subpar Python code job, which he's made public on Pastebin for those who might care to follow suit. He simply wants to represent the common man who should receive the services being sold.

"I pay for 150Mbps down and 10Mbps up," AlekseyP writes. "The Raspberry Pi runs a series of speed tests every hour and stores the data. Whenever the down[load] speed is below 50Mbps the Pi uses a Twitter API to send an automatic tweet to Comcast listing the speeds. I know some people might say I should not be complaining about 50Mbps down, but when they advertise 150 and I get 10-30 I am unsatisfied." Ars Technica reports that only 16 failed hourly speed tests in three months amounts to a 99% success rate, while the FCC has found that Comcast delivers 94.6% of its advertised speed during peak hours for its 105Mbps crowd. Comcast's VP of internet services has taken to Reddit to poke holes at AlekseyP's testing methodology, while AlekseyP, who refuses to identify himself—"all their customers deserve the speeds they advertise, not just the ones who are able to call them out on their BS"—has commented that his service has recently improved. (Many top providers are cheating us on the speeds we pay for.)

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