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Americans Hate TV and Internet Providers More Than Other Industries

Posted by Soulskill on from the show-of-hands-who's-surprised? dept.

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.'"

18 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Not me by rossdee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Not me by cryptolemur · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If we started to assume that business is not supposed to behave the most sosiopathic and misantropist way possible, the world might become a better place.

      In other words, the bottom line is no excuse for anything. Not even in business. A creepy bastard is a creepy bastard, even if it's for profit.

    2. Re:Not me by FudRucker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      RE:" A creepy bastard is a creepy bastard"

      that is the truth, and especially when they do it for profit, no wonder the rest of the world hates the USA, the politicans and corpirates have raped and murdered across the globe for profits http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

      --
      Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    3. Re:Not me by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't blame them for doing what a business is supposed to do as much as I blame the politicians.

      In other words, the bottom line is no excuse for anything. Not even in business.

      I absolutely agree. But I also think the GP makes an important point -- businesses shouldn't behave like jerks, but politicians deserve even more of the blame. Why? Because they have the power effectively to set the legal standards for "right" and "wrong."

      A rapist can harm one person, but he can be punished according to law. A corporation can harm thousands of people, but it can be punished according to law. A politician can harm millions of people and write his own "get of out jail free card" into law, as well as enabling thousands of bad acts perpetrated by rapists or corporations or whatever evil buddies he has.

      Periodically, there's a debate around here about the death penalty and when (if ever) it should be applied. As far as I'm concerned, the debate shouldn't begin with murderers or rapists or cop-killers, because they have nothing compared to corrupt politicians in terms of the potential harm they can do to society. An inefficient or useless politician should be voted out of office. But one who deliberately lies to the public resulting in serious harm or acts against the public's interest in an egregious fashion deserves whatever the maximum penalty is that our justice system hands out.

      Otherwise, we're effectively handing them license to legally redefine "right" and "wrong" in their favor, and that often has the potential to inflict much greater harm than any single corporation on its own.

    4. Re:Not me by macpacheco · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As if the fossil fuels industry is the only power block with politicians in their backpockets.
      Don't forget about the military industrial complex, the auto industry.
      If the Comcrap and Time Warner didn't have a boatload of politicians in their back pockets they wouldn't dream about this deal.

    5. Re:Not me by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You need to assume that a business will first and foremost look after its own interests, which is to make money.

      Isn't any corporation composed on individual humans? Don't those individual humans have any responsibility or culpability for wrong-doing?

      If I get mad and kill somebody, I go to jail. But if I band together with a lynch mob and go out and kill people as a group, am I absolved because the mob was "looking after its own interests, which is to" kill people?

      Perhaps you think I'm being inflammatory. But "make money" is not a morally neutral goal -- it can easily result in serious harm and even deaths to people.

      it is not their role to be nice to society, unless we make them.

      Why isn't that part of their role? Or -- well, I agree their role may not necessarily be to "be nice to society," but surely part of their role should be not to significantly harm society, no? After all, they only exist as legal fictions created by a government that is enabled by the collective social contract of civilization. If they aren't contributing a net positive impact to society, they aren't serving a purpose for the collective good -- and therefore they should be dissolved.

      Why do you wish to absolve collections of people from ethical behavior? As a civilized society, if we would not tolerate that behavior from an individual, it should not be tolerated from a corporation. Otherwise, there is no reason to allow their existence.

    6. Re:Not me by itsenrique · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You sound like a pretty fearful person, who never lived in a big city.

    7. Re:Not me by nblender · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have a self-righteous friend who walks/cycles everywhere he needs to go. Doesn't own a car/truck.. Happily puts down those who do, etc ... You know the type. It's all fine and dandy until he needs to move a couch, or pickup some lumber, or get to the airport, then his vehicle-owning friends must come to his aid... When we all decide to get together for a beer or a meal, it needs to be near his part of town so he can walk; or if it's somewhere else, he'll arrange for someone to come pick him up.. If no one is able (or willing) to pick him up, he doesn't join in... He misses out (by choice)...

      Another point, just because someone drives a big SUV to work, doesn't mean it's a status symbol or what have you. Maybe they have 4 kids and don't want to (or can afford to) have a small car just for commuting. Or maybe they need the vehicle for work because they regularly carry large bulky items for sale or install... I've more and more tried to turn off my generalization engine...

    8. Re:Not me by ehiris · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Do you have any idea how incredibly inefficient walking is in terms of energy consumption?

      Factoring in how inefficient food production is, you are only getting about 40 mpg when walking.

      https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-th...

  2. Noncompetition by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. RIAA/MPAA should top the list by Katatsumuri · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:RIAA/MPAA should top the list by Shoten · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, heads up there...because TV/cable providers are major media producers AND distributors. NBC? Universal Studios? Comcast owns them...they're Comcast. Time Warner Cable? Just take off the "Cable" and you'll have a clue. And when you're talking about the MPAA, you're talking about an association of...movie production houses (like Universal and Time Warner). Granted, they aren't in the music industry, but I don't blame them...the music industry is still trying to figure out which end is up from the combination of iTunes/Amazon's upending of their distribution channel and the after effects of them deciding to sue their own customers like a bunch of idiots.

      Since 1948, there's been a ruling by the Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Paramount Pictures that concerned whether or not Paramount's vertical integration (movie production, movie distribution, movie theaters...with exclusive rights down the pipe) constituted a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Indeed, it turned out that it was, and as a result there has been a long-standing prohibition on that degree of integration from that day forward. Now, it's easy to just point and say, "Hey! If Comcast makes movies and shows movies on their own channels, that's a violation!" It isn't, the way the ruling exists, because Comcast also shows movies from other sources as well. But the needle has been moving in that direction, obviously. But in a way, this isn't a new problem either, and there's hope that it can be addressed.

      --

      For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
  4. Competition is effectively illegal by nctritech · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Competition is effectively illegal by Rich0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You know nothing of the industry. There are hundreds of ISPs for sale in the United States RIGHT NOW. Go buy one. It'll cost you a few million for a small one.

      We're talking about residential broadband. I doubt that more than 0.1% of the population is served by anybody other than one of the major phone or cable companies.

      If you're talking about businesses buying dedicated lines then that is a different story. In such volumes the last mile problem isn't so much of a problem - you can just run a single line to them and bill them $10k for it, and the business doesn't care because they're paying that much every month. If you try to offer residential broadband with a $10k start-up fee you'll never get a single customer, and it isn't any cheaper to run a cable to a residence than to a skyscraper.

      Oh, and I'm sure there are resellers out there who offer some kind of value-add on top of one of the big phone/cable companies, and they just pay the phone/cable company to use their existing infrastructure.

      why aren't the big ISPs like Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T buying up all these ISPs?

      Because they aren't in the same business. The ISPs you talk of are probably in actual competition. If my employer got a call that the ISP wanted to raise rates by 10% at the next contract renewal, they'd get to go through the usual procurement dog and pony show all over again. At significant volumes the up-front costs to switch are fairly low. The professional negotiators would also ensure the contracts are neutral at worst, but most likely slanted towards my employer. Big corporations don't sign contracts of adhesion.

      The big telecoms do get into that business as well, but the rates are fairly competitive. When the data volumes are significant they don't really have any last-mile advantages either - even the local phone company will probably need to run a dedicated line as there is unlikely to be sufficient capacity already on the poles. At best they only have advantages of scale.

  5. Re:so? americans always hate some company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. 2 Garbage Trucks Colliding... by ameline · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  7. Great timing by wjcofkc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  8. Microsoft NEVER owned Comcast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    MS invested in Comcast years ago and then they sold their stake - years ago.