Friends of mine have consistently heard my complaints about Mediacom’s overcrowded nodes which they neglect to split, the uncoordinated and unreliable customer service, and dangerously ignorant installers (hell, my Mediacom VoIP installer didn’t know what RJ-11 was as I discussed the install with him). However, with the current U.S. duopoly in regards to broadband – I’m forced to stick with it, as the DSL provider in the area is unable to provide more than a 1.5mbit line. I’ve tried to make peace with these existing issues, but this week I found yet another issue with Mediacom to add to my list – which I cannot accept.
I run a local DNS server on my network – and had made the decision to move away from Mediacom’s DNS servers as my forwarders after testing the speed of theirs in relation to the alternatives. I am in NO WAY directing my traffic toward the Mediacom DNS servers. This left me quite confused when I received a Mediacom re-direction page this week after typing a URL incorrectly. I hopped onto DSLReports and got the scoop. I found Mediacom has initiated a campaign to increase advertising revenue by automatically redirecting clients to their ad-based redirection site. The big problem I have with this is – they are completing this by means of deep packet inspection vs. re-directing through their internal DNS servers. This means it takes precendence over my valid DNS response from an alternative DNS server.
DSLReports stated that opt-out is possible – though it’s also been reported to magically re-enable on occasion. Follow this link for the opt-out option.
After 20 minutes on hold with Mediacom support, as is usual, customer support gave the same script about the ‘opt-out page’ and the directions to follow. He stated there is no way for them to verify (as the support offices) who has opted-out, and additionally informed me that it was tracked by the customer’s modem MAC address.
Unfortunately, for us Mediacom subscribers, we are at the mercy of Mediacom to ensure the opt-out is working correctly. This post’s purpose is little more than to rant about my own experience – but I hope that it can at least bring some additional attention to these obnoxious, and shady actions by Mediacom in recent months.
