Frustrated Comcast customer sets up bot to tweet complaints every time internet speed drops

A Reddit user became so frustrated with paying Comcast for 150 mbps internet but not receiving the prescribed speed, so set up a bot using a Raspberry Pi to tweets complaints at the ISP.

The bot constantly performs speed tests to check if the internet is up to scratch, and if it drops below 50mbps an automatic tweet to Comcast with the speeds is generated.

Reddit user AlekseyP created the bot and even open-sourced the code so that others can use it, when they had issues getting more than 30mbps on a connection that promised 150mbps speeds.

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Every time their bot has tweeted Comcast, the company has replied asking for more details but AlekseyP says that they “have chosen not to provide them my account because I do not want to be singled out as a customer.”

Hey @Comcast why is my internet speed 29down8up when I pay for 150down10up in Washington DC? @ComcastCares @xfinity #comcast #speedtest

— AComcast User (@A_Comcast_User) January 29, 2016

The problem with consumer-grade internet connections is that advertised speeds are almost always sold as ‘up to’ a certain speed, with almost no guarantee of a minimum, particularly because speed fluctuation is normal on some types of connections.

Comcast and other ISPs aren’t explicitly doing anything wrong, but being on an unstable connection is frustrating and often requires you to fight to get it looked at.

An anonymous Comcast engineer in the Reddit comments offered to help and gave ideas for what might be causing such fluctuation in speeds, citing cable issues, older modems and other issues.

Hey @Comcast why is my internet speed 10down8up when I pay for 150down10up in Washington DC? @ComcastCares @xfinity #comcast #speedtest

— AComcast User (@A_Comcast_User) December 19, 2015

Still, the auto-tweeting bot is incredibly useful for those that have an ISP that refuses to look into speed issues — it provides hard evidence of issues so you can fight to get a technician sent out.

➤I set up my Raspberry Pi to automatically tweet at Comcast Xfinity whenever my internet speeds drop significantly below what I pay for [Reddit]