High-speed internet giant Comcast has struggled with blackouts in the past ten days, but is being tight-fisted with refunding its customers who lost service.
Exactly one week after a massive outage on the East Coast, the cable company lost internet service for five hours Sunday night throughout the Midwest, including more than 1 million customers in Chicago who lost web access.
The blackout was due to a failure of Comcast's Domain Name System (DNS) servers, which translate web addresses into numeric format. It was a failure of the same servers that caused the East Coast outages; that, plus the similar timing, leads some experts to suspect a hacker is behind the problems.
Either way, Comcast isn't exactly brimming with the holiday spirit when it comes to addressing its customers' concerns in the matter.
The Chicago Sun-Times quotes a Comcast spokesperson, Angelynne Amores, saying that the company will not issue refunds to its customers automatically. Instead, Chicago subscribers will have to contact the company's customer service line individually.
After cutting through the help-line red tape, subscribers won't be treated to a lavish refund, either. Since the outage was only one night, Comcast will credit its customers 1/30th of their monthly bill.
For customers with the standard $60-a-month package, this means a refund of a whopping $2.
To get this refund, contact Comcast customer support at 1-800-266-2278, or live-chat with a customer service rep at this link.