What I disapprove is is the sense that if you don't want the new stuff, tough.
I think you've misunderstood the point: The issue is that the new stuff is what will be offered -- and good reasons were provided for you with regard to why. It is indeed tough for those who would prefer that things did not change. This is not a matter of saying "tough" back, but rather a matter of acknowledging and accepting that it is indeed tough. More importantly is the point that
even though it is tough, that doesn't mean anyone is doing anything wrong, or the folks who are encountering the tough experience are in any way entitled to anything else. In a nutshell, you have a choice: Accept how things are, prove entitlement for something else, or just acknowledge that you're just complaining for the sake of complaining.
... Comcast continues to change around the packages, shifting things to higher levels where it's unviewable at the basics.
I had Comcast for ten years, and they moved channels down to lower levels, or added new channels, as much as they moved channels up to higher levels. I think people inclined towards criticism tend to remember just the bad and forget the good.
Also remember that movement of channels between levels is good for some customers. The best example of this is when sports channels are moved to a sports tier, thereby removing the upward pressure on the price of the tier they were removed from, shifting the burden of paying for these very expensive channels onto just those customers who care about sports. I can imagine how much money my family has
saved over the years by our service provider moving sports channels to a higher tier.
Again, a lot of folks just remember the bad and forget, ignore, or refuse to acknowledge the good.
The world doesn't all want or can afford HD.
No one said "all". That's a Straw Man Fallacy and therefore has no merit. The assertion is that the number of HD channels drives market share movement. Denying that is like denying that Barack Obama is President of the United States. I remember reading an article highlighting how many people
without HDTVs were still choosing their service provider, at least in part, on the basis of how many HD channels it offered.
Also, this statement also ignores fundamentals. In business, people vote with
dollars. If three people want something that provides $100 return and eight people want something oppositional that provides $3 return, the desires of the three people prevail. This is real life, not a game.
Because I've highlighted how much that you wrote was wrong, I thought it was important to be sure to highlight what you've written that was correct. This assertion of yours is correct. The cost of cable boxes is (often) included in package prices; they are not "free". There is no such thing as "free" in business. "Free" is a myth.
Comcast is serving one part of the population while telling the rest of us to go hang.
This is a myopic opinion. Comcast serves the "rest of us"
far better than all of its competitors. Comcast is
the best, with regard to the criteria that you're applying, yet you still criticize Comcast. That belies the rationality of your criticisms.
Comcast is
beginning to more often serve the more profitable portion of the population that all of its competitors have been service, almost exclusively, since their inceptions. As long as the low-end customer was plentiful enough to warrant a low-end supplier, one was provided by the open market. Low-end customers are no longer a lucrative enough force in the marketplace, and so they shall, rightfully, be served less so than when they were a more worth of the marketplace's attention.
That's their right; it's their business.
When you forget to include the line quoted above, you're essentially implying that your favored "part of the population" deserves something other than what they're getting. There is no such entitlement. That part of the population doesn't deserve deference, or abasement. It doesn't have a right to expect any service provider, much less only one of the service providers, to neglect its overriding obligation to its owners, for their benefit. You are effectively advocating socialism; this is a capitalist country.
But by the same token, we're aloud to make it known that we don't approve or like being regarded as non-consumers, and that's what they are doing.
You're also entitled to have such perspective refuted as baseless and myopic -- to have it effectively rebutted and its lack of merit highlighted.
