It is of course possible to deduce that the current resident of an apartment will be leaving if that apartment is listed for rent on various websites, but my name isn’t on those listings. My current landlord and realtor of course know my name and that I’m leaving. My next landlord and realtor know this too, since my address is on the new lease. So one of them could have told Comcast. Or I suppose Comcast could deduce their customers’ behavior by scraping rental sites. Does anyone know exactly how they are doing this?
Also, why would they want to do this?
I can’t shake the suspicion that the primary reason for sending such a letter is not to remind me that they exist and are an ISP option at my new residence, but rather to let me know that they figured out on their own that I will be moving.
I have lived in the USA for a number of years, and have moved many times. In the last three placed I’ve rented, I’ve been able to plug my Comcast router straight in and connect to the internet immediately, without contacting them first. The first time this happened I was perplexed, and when I called to notify them of my change in address, the rep said that the renters before me must’ve forgot to cancel their account with them. This didn’t seem like the truth, so I tried it again when we moved for a second time, and then again when we moved a third time. The last move was to a different state. Each time, the router connected immediately, and each time the Comcast rep told me that this was because the previous tenants had forgotten to cancel or update their account.
But your address is, and you also say this:
> Today I got a letter from my current ISP, Comcast
Which means Comcast has your current address. It is not hard to look up, in their own database, a name when given an address from a rental listing website.
> Also, why would they want to do this?
Their marketing department likely saw it as a "customer retention" activity. By offering to make the transfer of your Comcast account to your new location easy and effortless (they hope) their belief would be that they might retain you as a customer.
It is unlikely they were even aware of the nefarious seeming aspects of the practice.
I figured they were tied into the marketing feed that gets updates when people register for "all in" forwarding.
This does work and organizations pay close attention to it. If you have a retail bank that makes around $1,000 per customer with 6% churn rate and 10 million customers, this adds up to quite a chunk of change.
It could also be a coincidence due to the current trend of people moving around, and sending emails like this to remove one cognitive process from someone who already has many things to sort out.
[1]: https://www.nctatechnicalpapers.com/Paper/2019/2019-what-can...
They are mysterious about why your router works in other locations to discourage you into looking into how cable modems work. It’s pretty easy to steal cable. Google “rooted cable modem”
Most people are auto paid to the end of a billing cycle, idk that comcast gives credit. So moving in before the end of their cycle it should work.
You say you move with your comcast router- if its a rented device, why shouldnt they be able to recognize the MAC address and connect?
Really? Really? Like, seriously?
You may want to look into a lawsuit based on them being a low-key bully....