How the Comcast Stole Cyber Monday?

If you have Comcast as your Internet Service Provider, you either can’t read this, or this post is already outdated. Customers from Boston to Washington, DC suffered from an Internet outage Sunday night, and some customers are still feeling the effects this morning… Cyber Monday.

If you’re a Comcast customer, you’re probably downright pissed. If you’re a merchant… I’m sure you’re also downright pissed.

According to a survey conducted for Shop.org by BIGresearch, 106.9 million Americans plan to shop on Cyber Monday this year, up significantly from the estimated 96.5 million who shopped on Cyber Monday last year. A survey released last week found that nearly nine in ten (88.2%) retailers will have a special promotion for Cyber Monday, growing each year since 2007, when 72.2% planned promotions.

This we know: Cyber Monday used to be a huge phenomenon, as well as one of the least-productive work days, because consumers took advantage of their faster T-1 lines for a better shopping experience. But the days of dial-up access are over, and merchants have banked on stay-at-home and work-from-home consumers to boost their sales figures.

So the question is, how will merchants react? Will they extend their Cyber Monday deals for one more day to help out a minority of Internet users? It doesn’t seem like a bad idea, since it could also help merchants with their Novemebr sales figures.

Then again, how many merchants have already extended Cyber Monday and are having Cyber Week specials?