I found that after a month of working fine, my packet loss jumped up to 50%. Support recommended upgrading my plan.

It seems like they must massively oversubscribe their network then just drop packets based on your tier, with a honeymoon period for new customers so they don't immediately cancel.

Personally I haven't had this problem. In fact, every few months they actually increase my plan's advertised max download speed. I wouldn't say the actual download speed is as close as what they say but pretty close.

Of course the upload continues to be terrible

I use my own modem and router now but this was the case when I "rented" from them as well.

Comcast’s behavior often depends on whether there is broadband competition in a local market. That would explain your experience and the other guy’s.

Comcast is pretty much the only provider where I live.

And I was able to switch to a different ISP.

This! 2 weeks ago my internet started dropping for 1-2 minutes at a time, 3-5 times per day. The modem status page tells the tale, millions of uncorrectable errors, SNR below spec on several channels, and the event log shows all the disconnects. Neither their chatbot, nor the first level human support however will entertain any possibility except it being an issue with "the website you are using" or "your TV" or "your computer". Took maybe 30 minutes of BS until they offer to send a tech, but I have to pay if the tech concludes the issue is on my end. I eventually lost my temper and just told them AT&T is going round my neighborhood right now running fiber offering to buy everyone out of their Comcast contracts and that they have 2 choices, either they come out to fix the issue or they come out to disconnect and clean up my cable drop - their call. Suddenly a tech was available, the next day, guaranteed free of charge. The tech arrives, plugs in his test modem, says "yeah...that's not related to your equipment" after 5 seconds, shows me a huge signal drop in several frequency ranges and is actually surprised that the internet is even usable at all. Unfortunately the issue is further upstream than "our" utility pole, but he ran a new cable drop just in case and cleaned up on the pole before filing that ticket.

It makes you wonder how many people are limping along with half-broken internet just because they don't know how to debug this and force their way through Comcast's support wall and there not being a competitor they can threaten to switch to.

At this point, whether I’m speaking to my ISP or Amazon, I tend to demand a supervisor immediately, and in many cases, a supervisor’s supervisor. I refuse to speak to someone whose entire job is to _prevent_ me from receiving effective support.

Thankfully and not surprisingly the new nationwide competition from both t-mobile and Verizon 5G Home Internet services are hurting comcrap (xFinity) and charter (spectrum) broadband numbers. With T-Mobile and Verizon continuing to expand their 5G home offerings comcrap wil be less and less the only game in town.

I'm not a gamer but stream YouTube and other streamers 6 to 8 hours day. T-Mobile's 5G home internet worked great for me.

Amazing how many companies in all industries try to do the tactic of "our product/service isn't meeting basic standards? Give us more money to fix it".

I'm frankly only ever willing to be upsold when I'm very satisfied with something and would like even more satisfaction in my life.

I moved into an apartment and kept the plan the previous resident had. They also sold us the non-xfinity router they had st a discount.

My roommate and I had spotty internet at various times of day. We measured it and it was way below what our plan claimed. The previous tenants had no such issue. Comcast refused to believe the problem was on their end and claimed my router was too old. This went on until I bought a new router just to prove a point (new router did nothing).

They finally send a repair guy out. He’s there for 5 minutes before diagnosing the problem: the cables were water logged to hell and back. He fixed it in 20 minutes and was gone.