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Americans Hate TV and Internet Providers More Than Other Industries
An anonymous reader writes "According to a new report by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, subscription TV providers and ISPs were the industries Americans disliked the most over the past year. 'Over-the-top video services, like Netflix and Hulu, threaten subscription TV providers and also put pressure on ISP network infrastructure. Customers question the value proposition of both, as consumers pay for more than they need in terms of subscription TV and get less than they want in terms of Internet speeds and reliability.' Unsurprisingly, Time Warner Cable and Comcast are the companies with the most dissatisfied customers. The ACSI said, '[I]t's a concern whenever two poor-performing service providers combine operations. ACSI data consistently show that mergers in service industries usually result in lower customer satisfaction, at least in the short term. It's hard to see how combining two negatives will be a positive for consumers.'"
The industry I hate the most is the fossil fuels industry
Not just because of global warming, but mostly because they control the politicians and stop anything being done about it.
It's a joke when Comcast uses the claim that TWC covers separate parts of the country as justification for their merger when this should just make it obvious that they were never competing in the first place.
Hateful industries include lawyers, politicians, washing machine repairmen, insurance companies, heating engineers, telemarketers, car salesmen...
Surely they come before ISPs and TV providers.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I would put the telecom second and the media distribution mafia first.
It is pathetic, true, how the telecom providers have been selling a commodity service on mass scale for 20+ years, yet the pricing and service quality are on "novelty" levels or worse. Your cable bill has no good reason to be higher than that (local) phone bill 30 years ago. One of the reasons for the pathetic prices are the unreasonably high media licensing fees and unbreakable channel bundles. The cable companies then cut costs on everything else, which gives you multiple week waiting times to connect, half-hour wait times on support lines, and clueless staff.
And the media mafia also criminalizes everyone for downloading a few songs on P2P and threatens with lawsuits.
We have so much bullshit in our gentrified business community, how could any of us pick just one area we think is the worst?
And it's cable companies that coercively bundle unrelated services together to maximize their return. I have verizon FiOS and only really want their fast internet, but it's priced so that I might as well swallow their tv and landline phone service as well. Other industries aren't as successful in selling us something we don't really want in order to get what we really really want.
I can't open my own ISP. If I do (let's say I want to run a fiber-based ISP), I will face many legal hurdles simply because that's the nature of the business; one may need to rent space on towers or get right-of-way permits from the town and the whole mess will be overseen by the public utilities commissioner of the state I'm in.
That's all normal ISP business stuff, but the giants have so much power that they are guaranteed to put me out of business through lawsuits. They shroud anything that they don't like in a giant neon sheet of "UNFAIR COMPETITION" and bury the little guy in legal red tape and paperwork. Little guys cannot win the battles of attrition in our legal system against gigantic corporations as it is, but these bastards have managed to lobby so hard that the law is heavily on their side as well. If I get financial assistance from a local government to build my ISP, I'll get shut down because of "unfair competition" since there are laws in many states now making municipal broadband de facto illegal to run and the funding could be construed as attempting to skirt those laws.
There is no competition in broadband services today because the largest companies have slanted the laws so hard in their favor that all competition is legally shut out.
Your main point aside, Comcast's most recent quarterly profit margin was 10.75% and Apple's was 22.40%. Why would you bother guessing at things when they're so easily researched?
It's more along the lines of:
"I started paying for cable back in the late 70s to early 80s, with the intention that my monthly bill was a replacement for having to watch all those stupid advertisements-- exactly as advertised-- with the perk that I would have more reliable and higher quality of service."
which is being replaced with:
"Today, I pay over 100$/month for 200+ channels, of which I only watch 15 on average, STILL have to watch advertisements, and have inferior video quality to over the air broadcasts-- which come in for free. I have better quality of service, advertisement free, and with more flexible control over what I can watch with the streaming services, which if I were to subscribe to the top 3 (Netflix, Amazon prime, Hulu Plus) is still only 1/3 the price of cable-- If I combine all three, with a competitively priced ISP, I pay about the same as I pay for just cable- Have internet, have all the shows and movies I actually want, none of the shit I dont want (including adverts in most cases), and have better quality video. Yet, these cable giants keep lobbying to keep abusing me, and to try to remove these options from me using a combination of Media Provider + Media transport mergers (Comcast + Time warner, et al) coupled with erosions on fundamental practices that preserve competition (net neutrality, et al). Fuck them!"
It isn't "I hate them because I pay them money." It *IS* "I hate them because they conspire to fuck me over, and to prevent competition from superior offerings, and dont give a fuck about me other than how much money they can suck from my wallet."
Thanks for playing.
blame disney, viacom, discovery
they tell cable companies to sell you the bundles. and even then you still have to pay for the cost of the wiring which cost a lot of money to lay down. so buying one service won't be very much cheaper
that's the point of cable, lots of niche channels where you only watch a few that you like
of course it has been bastardized to where you get a channel with one good show and all crap reruns or reality shows for almost every subject or sports. as it is now cable is mostly for sports fans since netflix/hulu has enough content for a lot of people to watch
and even then netflix fucked you over more than comcast ever did since they license content to netflix as well. dozens of streaming services work fine, except netflix
When I read of mergers like this, I imagine two large garbage trucks colliding at speed -- the result is inevitably twisted smoking debris strewn wide, and oh God, the smell.
I find, as a metaphor for large mergers, I have yet to find a more accurate one.
Ian Ameline
Number one for me is the insurance industry. Health insurance, especially; although auto and life insurance aren't much better. They are all giant legalized Ponzi schemes, IMHO. In 2010 the health insurance industry demonstrated how much power they have over the federal government when they managed to make us all obligate customers as an alleged mechanism of "reform". I could go on about how an insurance company that I had about a decade ago tried to drive me bankrupt with practices that are far beyond immoral.
Number two for me (literally and figuratively) are private impound lots. There are some cities (I happen to work in one) where auto theft is essentially legal if you happen to be a private impound lot. The amount of power those animals have over regular people is disgusting, they basically have an unlimited income stream that they can open and close at will.
I don't care for my cable company, but I love them in comparison to either of those.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I have Time Warner and about an hour ago I woke up to an outage. Needless to say it has been cleared up, but outages are routine and expected with their "service". I learned a long time ago that calling their customer service\tech support is futile. Also, I barely break five-megabits down. Unfortunately there has been no alternative and I have been stuck with them for fifteen-years. I guess you can suck that bad and not care if you are a monopoly. Two-days ago I received an email from Google letting me know that Google Fiber will be available to me pretty soon. Yesterday large spools of fiber optic cables showed up on my street. There is one right next to my house. Despite my misgivings about letting Google provide me with internet access, I am absolutely going with them. Time Warner has been flipping out since the roll out started in my city last year, yet no aspect of their service has improved. I am convinced that they have been a monopoly for so long that they literally don't know how to compete. Good riddance to them.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
My only experience is with charter. Their service itself is usually pretty good, but I hate their website. You can't find straightforward information on what individual services cost, and even finding a channel listing is difficult. On more than one occasion I've searched for services available at my house--where they make me enter my exact address--and their website tells me that they do not service my area.
It really frustrates me that the companies that run the internet don't care enough or aren't required to make basic information about their services available.
that's the point of cable, lots of niche channels where you only watch a few that you like
From a customer standpoint, the point of cable is that I want to watch the History channel, and it isn't available OTA.
Maybe if you're a cable exec the point of cable is to find ways to charge people for services they don't want. That is more the point of the guy who runs up to your car and washes your window while you're stopped at a light.
The only way cable companies can get away with it is that there is no competition. If the local Walmart forced everybody to buy at least 24 different products every time they walked in the door they'd go out of business. Amazon sells like gangbusters by giving people honest reviews, decent prices, a catalog that includes just about everything that is sold anywhere, and a few options for paying for the shipping. Real businesses have to strip out the non-value-adds to stay in business. Utilities that are allowed to run like conventional businesses become scam operations.
I hate my local cable provider, and Amazon.com comes in a close second, god damn amazon prime made it unpissable to opt out of amazon prime, i went through the motions and jumped through the hoops and they still charged my credit card 70 bucks, i wrote amazon.com a nasty email and they replaced my 70 bucks, one of these days i will cancel my cable TV/internet provider with joy, i will call them up and tell them i am NOT paying them for services anymore and canceling so they can pull the plug any time they want
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
clearly true that people love to whine, but I wonder where you get your margin figures. any citations?
Level3 is without peer, now what to do?
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
or other for no other reason than they have to pay them. ...........
I think its a matter of having a choice for things you don't need, versus have little or no choice for things you need. Along with choice comes the benefits of competitiion, where sellers strive to make you happy.
I need food, I have plenty of choices where to buy it. I can save money and buy generic, or pay more and buy brand name gourmet items.
I need a car. I can buy a low cost used car, or a new expensive luxury car.
I need electricity. I am forced to buy it from Company A at Price B.
I need ISP. I am forced to buy it from Company A. I have little choice in the ways it can be delivered. I pay more for it that others pay elsewhere for better service.
Interestingly, I am willing to pay more just to have a choice. I have TWC and pay for Vonage VOIP. I could use TWC VOIP and save a bit, but then I'd feel even more stuck.
First, oppose laws and homeowners associations and landlords and zoning that don't provide the ability to put up a TV antenna, and I mean a big one so's you can get TV signals from different cities. Then, put one up. No monthly charges ever again, and you can fix anything that goes wrong with it all by yourself. Get your movies over the innernetz and by mail via Netflix, and no, you don't NEED to watch Game of Thrones live as soon as it is aired. You can get the internet via a new satellite company called Excede, the only drawback to that being that it isn't responsive enough to do gaming over the internet. But you can download a whale of a lot of info. Problem solved - no more cable.
I have observed that you also are very enthusiastic about your hatred of your phone companies.
If half the stories I hear are true, it is totally horrendous!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I think you have a point...but in this case I think the hate is well-founded.
I'm not the sort to jump onto the "Hate Google...they're evil!" bandwagon. I don't think that oil companies are inherently evil for doing what they do...we'd be screwed without their product, after all, and we're the ones demanding their production. And I happen to think that Netflix is really, really cool. But I've had phone, Internet, cable service through both cable providers and more traditional telecom providers, and also seen how things went with satellite TV for a family member. And to me, when I see commercials for those three verticals (cable, telecom, satellite tv) it looks like three pedophiles arguing over who would make the best kindergarten teacher.
When you look at the state of these industries in our nation and compare them to the rest of the developed Western world, we are behind, seriously so. And when pressed for how they would address this, the leaders of those industries came up with a plan that would bring us to 2008-level parity...in 2045. Yes, they said it would take nearly four decades for them to reach the point where Europe was, 6 years ago.
I wish there was a way to "home school" my TV and Internet access...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
MS invested in Comcast years ago and then they sold their stake - years ago.
It's sad that the state of affairs in this country has us discussing the MERGER of two hated monopolies, rather than busting them up into overlapping pieces like they should.
I went through this with a cable ISP many moons ago. I lived in central NJ and my connection would drop all the way down to 50KB or less.
The way I've solved it was to upgrade to business service. By contract, they had to come out and fix the outage within.. 24 hours I think it was. They came out, fixed something on the pole about 100 yards down the road, and that's all it took. Not sure if I got a better technician (or magician) or just better quality service. Needless to say I've reverted back to residential shortly after. The connection has been stable until I've moved out.
YMMV
I worked for Time Warner for about six months. It was probably the worst job I've ever had. The amount of frustration we dealt with for a solid 8 hours a day was unreal. Just in our area we lost 5000 customers a day and gained 5000. The attitude from our managers toward the customers and any issues was "we don't care."
I received death threats pretty much daily which explained why the building had various stringent security measures. These guys take over an area and once they do they give up on even trying to provide a decent service and raise rates continuously. There is no competition.
We need some regulation and some trust busting and we need it yesterday.
go look at their financial releases
comcast is $2.5 billion profits on revenue of $65 billion
the company that owns The History Channel also runs a lot of other channels and tells the cable companies they have to license all of them or none
Then move to a sensible country.
How do you recommend that a U.S.-born U.S. citizen currently residing in the U.S. qualify for a work visa in what you call "a sensible country"?
and how do you plan to get your free movies over the "innernetz" without doing business with the same monopolies? Who cares about cable TV. Its cable internet that doesn't have an alternative in most places. TV's easy to replace, the internet is getting close (not the same, but slowly creeping up) to being as important as electricity.
Obama's a Muslim, foreign, atheist, commie he should just nationalize all of them under the National Security Act.
And think, that would actually be hope and change!
Well, I don't know about killing the railroads.
Seems like "big oil" is trying to blow up the railroads lately (Lac-Megantic, Lynchburg, Lasalle CO). Which would indicate that they're sending the railroads lots of business of late, with shipping oil from the Canadian tar sands and all.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I guess you missed it above. I said "Excede", which is a satellite internet provider that has the speed of cable and ain't cable and _is_ available even when the cable is not.
http://www.exede-sales.com/
Now, it _isn't_ cheap, for that you might have to go to your hated cable or maybe phone company, but it is available and its only major drawback is latency that would keep you from playing FPS games, but not something like poker or chess. But you can do movies for sure. You'd have to be in some remote parts of Alaska where the Excede satellite does not shine in order to not have this available, barring the local quirks like apartments and homeowner's associations hating your antenna, but you can move, and its your own fault for moving into one of those Nazi-run places in the 1st place.
We're receiving a faint transmission in an ancient Earth encoding...
Intriguing, the message indicates it's from a time before CVS.
You can get the internet via a new satellite company called Excede, the only drawback to that being that it isn't responsive enough to do gaming over the internet. But you can download a whale of a lot of info.
Not without running up against your monthly cap. Satellite caps are just slightly less oppressive than cellular caps.
Not when the phone company hasn't built their fiber network into your area.
You could choose another area in which to live.
Take a little time to check a few music sites like reverbnation or unsigned and you'll find that the bands range from crap to I can't believe they are not already signed. You may just find your next favorite band is a bar band that paid for pro studio time.
The sort of geeks that inhabit Slashdot might have time for this. Most people don't, I imagine. Plenty of people want to just board the bus (or hop in the car) and play an already-vetted variety of tunes, and many don't want to subscribe to a $400 per year cellular data plan in order to stream to a vehicle. And there are enough people willing to accept whatever FM radio gives them that the record industry retains its political clout.
I an a FIOS customer, and they have 3 plans of issue here: Select HD, Prime HD, and ExtremeHD. Select has every channel I want. Prime adds some channels, but takes away others, namely BBCA. Extreme then is Select+Prime+more. I'd be happy on Prime if it had BBCA, but as a result, I pay a price difference of $340 a year for one channel. I could deal with dropping it and going Amazon and getting the BBC shows that way, but there are severals hows on there that I watch. (And I'm not referring to St:TNG reruns)
Dr Who?
Just to nitpick/be pedantic - Hulu Plus is not ad-free. I signed up for it back over the winter, and promptly canceled a few days into the free trial after seeing that the commercials were the same as watching OTA, if not worse.
And to make it even more bothersome, they couldn't be bothered to use a feed that just streamed the show with ads inserted after the fact, they more or less just straight rebroadcasted a station about 2 hours away and included their local ads.
I'm sure there's some sort of technical or monetary reason for that, but it annoyed the hell out of me.
The first question. The question that must never be answered. Hidden in plain sight! The question you've been running from all your life!
And TopGear.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Why the down-mod?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Many of us grew up in an era in which everyone got the same TV shows and that was it. Then things started to diverge. A few people got color TVs which seemed to work poorly and wear out way to fast but these folks got to see things that most others did not due to color. Then came cable TV. All of a sudden content was locked to the size of your wallet. Then we had premium channels as well as pay per view. Also some cable companies started to offer higher speed services for more money. Now we also have HD channels which require a more expensive TV. Denial of equal content is so dangerous to a nation that I should not have to define the issue. But it is all too real. By the way in my two there is zero TV without cable or satellite service and I am between two large metropolitan areas but both point their broadcast antennas away from our town as they fear interfering with each other.
the company that owns The History Channel also runs a lot of other channels and tells the cable companies they have to license all of them or none
Yup, but that isn't the "point of cable." Since there are many stakeholders with conflicting interests I don't know how you can say there is any one "point of cable." The point of the cable companies is to make money, and providing service seems to be a byproduct of what they do. The point of consumers is to watch the shows they like, and getting channels they don't like is a side effect, and an undesirable one insofar as it costs them more.
"I started paying for cable back in the late 70s to early 80s, with the intention that my monthly bill was a replacement for having to watch all those stupid advertisements-- exactly as advertised-- with the perk that I would have more reliable and higher quality of service."
This is getting sad. I see this posted somewhere in the comments of every article about cable television on Slashdot. Aren't people on Slashdot supposed to be smart enough to not accept facts without question simply because they support whatever argument they'd like to make?
It does seem some people on the internet are smart enough to question the story: link and link.
Others seem far too blinded by their desire to believe the story to realize just how likely it is that it is complete bullshit, like this guy who even put "fairy tale" in the title of his story. At first I thought maybe he was presenting it as a fairy tale, but with no argument against the story being presented, I can only conclude that he believes that commercial-free cable television did exist at one time, but has now become a "fairy tale" as it no longer exists.
So don't overload the mini van
Not overloading a minivan would require making two trips. If an SUV uses 25% more gas but requires half the trips on average, the SUV saves money.
1) public transit? At least buses?
Buses in Fort Wayne, Indiana, stop running at about 8:45 PM. They also routinely have 60-hour planned outages because they don't run on Saturday evenings, Sundays, or major holidays. For example, they will stop running at 6 PM on Saturday, May 24, and not run again until Tuesday, May 27. The buses to more remote parts of the city have even longer outages because they don't run at all on Saturdays. They stop running on Friday evening, don't run on Saturday, don't run on Sunday, and don't run on Memorial Day. (Source: fwcitilink.com) Besides, I don't see how one can use a bus or taxi to "move a couch, or pickup some lumber".
2) taxis?
I was under the impression that taxi fare was cost prohibitive for regular use. The fare for a trip to and from my previous place of employment, for example, would exceed how much I would earn in one day after federal and state income tax.
4) Zipcar or other car rental services?
To what extent is car rental available to people who have no car insurance because they own no car?
I found a few more issues to discuss. First, earning "good qualifications" to get a foreign employer in another anglophone country interested in sponsoring someone can take years. The excuse becomes "I have to suffer with poor Internet for the next several years until I finish retraining for a skilled career for which another country has a shortage and then finish building verifiable domestic work experience so that I can qualify to leave the country." Second, shortages change. By the time one retrains for a skilled career for which another anglophone country has a shortage, the other country may no longer have a shortage in that position. Third and finally, if tens of millions of Americans go through immigration to escape abusive home ISPs, how easily will other anglophone countries be able to process all this paperwork?