ATTN COMCAST/ATT BROADBAND FOLKS: Need some help to track down a (possible) thief

[orty]

Here's my situation. From what I can tell, a renter stole the cable modem from one of the homes the company I work for rents (we do vacation homes, so they're nightly rentals). The guy, when we first called after our inspectors noticed it missing, said his son knew where it was, but then suddenly said "Oh, wait, we know nothing about it." Basically, he was covering up for something, in my opinion but we weren't in the mood for a fight. We all know there's only a couple things you can do with a cable modem: pawn it off on someone, or hook it up on your cable system. I know if it's the later, So what am I going to do? Get the MAC address of the missing modem from our cable company (they're digging it up right now), and then call the renter's cable company, just to see if they have that MAC address on their network.

After a bit of research, I found out that the cable company in the area that those renters live is ATT/comcast/whatever they're called now. I know if it was a small cable company, it'd be easy to call them and work my way through to the right people, but I have a feeling dealing with Comcast might be a trick.

Does anybody have any tricks with dealing with them, or have a contact they can put me in touch with? The person lives in the Bay Area, south of San Francisco, if anybody has a contact (e-mail or phone) there for the local office. I'm not trying to burn the guy or anything, I'm just trying to get our modem back.

Thanks,
Jake

 

[orty]

Anybody?

 

[AthlonXP]

Go over to there home with a baseball bat, and beat the living crap out of everyone.



Justice at its finest.

 

[Adul]

call the local police yet?

 

[Zombie]

hmm, Cable Modem is what $50 - $60 bucks ?

If he was renting a room from the company then just charge him for it end of story. If you can't there probably isn't much you can do about it. I doubt Comcast is gonna give away MAC address just like that. Its privacy issue. I would be pissed if they give it away to just anybody. If they bendover for RIAA or FBI or something that is a different story.

 

[AthlonXP]

You can still beat him dead with a baseball bat. Thats always a good option thats STILL available!

 

[orty]

Originally posted by: AthlonXP
You can still beat him dead with a baseball bat. Thats always a good option thats STILL available!

OK, remind me to not get on AthlonXP's bad side

Update on this: The local cable company gave me the MAC address for the modem. Yes, I'm sure getting Comcast to check for that MAC address would be a chore, and yes, modems can be found easily in the $70-80 range, but it's more of a reputation thing for our company: They don't want people to think they can get away with taking our stuff, and the owner of the home wants to make sure he doesn't have to worry about his stuff getting taken by renters.

So yes, this partly a business decision, as well as me trying to convince the higher-ups that high-speed 'net access in some of our rentals is something folks actually will want (and we can do securly) but we would still like the modem back as we have several homes on our program that have cable modems.

-jake

 

[Zombie]

but wouldn't you automatically charge the person for missing or damaged items? Isn't this how most hotels and rental places operate? Send them a bill or fark-up their credit which usually works

 

[orty]

We would if we were 100% positive it was them, we would just charge them. We, unfortunately, don't work like hotels. If we start charging willy-nilly, we get in trouble. That, and our inspector didn't even notice it until a week after the fact (don't even get me started about that). These folks are return renters, and we don't want to take the money without knowing for sure.