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FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Says Switching ISPs Is Too Hard
Jason Koebler writes Did you hear about those Comcast service calls from hell that have been cropping up over the last couple months? So did FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who said today that switching internet service providers is too damn hard, in part because ISPs have grown used to having a monopoly on broadband services. "Once consumers choose a broadband provider, they face high switching costs that include early-termination fees and equipment rental fees," Wheeler said in a speech today. Wheeler didn't specifically say what the FCC will do (if anything) to change that, but said the answer is to help facilitate more true competition: "If those disincentives to competition weren't enough, the media is full of stories of consumers' struggles to get ISPs to allow them to drop service."
How can you call it switching when there is no one else to switch to in most places?
I wonder if this is just a cynical attempt to appear "tough on monopolies" -- right before Tom Wheeler guts Net Neutrality forever.
Reminder: next Wednesday is a "Day of Action" to publicize the need to maintain Net Neutrality.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9...
Selling your house or breaking your lease, truck rental and fuel to haul all your shit halfway across the continent, being unemployed for however long it takes to find a job within commuting distance of your new home, etc.
0 1 - just my two bits
Too damn hard? I don't even know how to begin to reply to that.
My wife doesn't want to switch our ISP because her main e-mail address uses that at the domain name, and maybe a thousand friends, business contacts, and acquaintances have it as her contact info.
Yes, she could change to a gmail account, and after a while the people who need to contact her would change the address in their address books. Eventually. Most of them.
* (She's a freelancer. In general, when they fail to get in contact with a freelancer, customers usually just go to a different one rather than bother to spend the time to look up the new address.)
How about the FCC does this: If you are an ISP and have taken billions of federal dollars to build out infrastructure, you actually have to do it and offer service to people?
So Wheeler googled "ISP outrage", clicked the "News" tab, and had an intern write a feel-good do-nothing speech about the Comcast outrage?
If it were anyone we could at least momentarily pretend that this was an opening salvo in some course of action that would increase incentives to switch by doing something to promote competition to act against the disincentives Comcast forces on the consumer.
No, no, this is all about draining the political pressure that news story like the Comcast outrage foment. Its about constituents having the illusion of progress and/or representatives being able to tell their constituents that Chairman Wheeler, notable industry shill, is on the case.
FCC guy seems to think there is enough competition in enough of the US to make switching a thing that might actually happen.
This is why if you're a freelancer, you should have your own domain.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Too damn hard? I don't even know how to begin to reply to that.
My wife doesn't want to switch our ISP because her main e-mail address uses that at the domain name, and maybe a thousand friends, business contacts, and acquaintances have it as her contact info.
Yes, she could change to a gmail account, and after a while the people who need to contact her would change the address in their address books. Eventually. Most of them.
* (She's a freelancer. In general, when they fail to get in contact with a freelancer, customers usually just go to a different one rather than bother to spend the time to look up the new address.)
I work for an ISP. That's intentional. In fact, it's the only reason ISPs sitll offer email. It's a nightmare to maintain and has no other benefit to the ISP other than to make customers "sticky"
Email.
Yes, Email. They used the Email address they got from their provider for ... well, everything. Mostly because it's the only Email address they ever had. Now their Amazon, their Facebook, their Twitter, their Steam, and a billion other accounts are all tied to that one email address. Most of these could be redirected. But what if you forget one? How are you going to convince a company that doesn't give half a shit about you in the first place that you're not someone trying to gain access to an account that isn't yours?
You can easily and legally forward your physical mail. But there ain't no law that forces providers to offer that service. And why the hell should they, after all it ties you to them!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not just freelancers, but any business use whatsoever. It's amazing the number of businesses that use ISP email addresses or email addresses from some free service (hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc.) as their primary contact on business correspondence.
I would add in personal use as well, but it's hard to convince the generic home user of the benefits of owning their own domain name and email address. The best you can hope for with most of them is to use a dedicated email service like gmail rather than what their ISP gives them. No to mention, having your own domain name comes with its own set of problems. Paying to renew the domain name, as well as paying for a hosting service to handle your email isn't fee. Most home users are far more likely to forget to renew their domain name and have it snatched up by a domain squatter than to have a problem with GMail or a similar service.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Assuming you have an option to switch ISPs (and I realize that many of you don't), it's actually pretty easy to do, even with leaving Comcast. This is really just an order of operations issue. Most people will decide they want to switch, call up their incumbent ISP to cancel their service, and then order their new service. Seems logical, but for best results, flip it around. Once you have decided to switch to the other guy, call the other guy first. The other guy will then set up your account, come to your house and do all of the installation, port your phone number over (if applicable) and then once you have verified that the service is working to your satisfaction, you call up the incumbent and tell them to cancel. This is how I switched from Comcast to Verizon a few years ago. Granted, I still dealt with an extremely defensive (anti)cancellation person on the phone, but it was a much more straightforward conversation. It went something like this...
Me: Hi. I switched to Verizon, cancel my service
Comcast: Why do you want to cancel?
Me: Your service doesn't work, I've had a tech out here 3 times and they didn't fix the issue. Fios has already been ordered and installed and it is working, which is something I could never have said for you.
Comcast: defensive statement...yada yada..Verizon installed a new wire to your house, that's why it's fixed
Me: Yeah, maybe you should have tried that on one of your 3 service calls, but you didn't. Anyway. I 'm not going to argue with you. I'm already receiving Verizon services, Comacast services have been physically disconnected. Cancel my account.
Comcast: Fine. Done.
And that was it. Hell I could have kept it even briefer if I had been prepared for such a defensive attitude, but even still, since you have physically disconnected their service and are already paying for their competitor, you know they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting you to agree to sending another tech over to re-connect Comcast and then go and cancel Verizon.
Now if you are not planning on switching, but want to pay less, or want better service, I use their anti-cancellation policy against them. The first level CSRs have limited power to do anything like offer discounts, upgrade service for free, etc. They can do some, but that is child's play compared to your cancellation people. What you do is if you don't work something out with the first level, tell them you want to cancel. You don't have to actually mean it, you just have to make them think you mean it. Even if there are no good alternatives ("I'll switch to satellite and DSL. I don't really need all of your bandwidth" or "My 4G hotspot works fine for me"). Sounds ridiculous, but you need to commit to the role. They will then transfer you to the cancellation people. Their job on paper is to shut off your service and close your account, but as we have seen in the news recently, their actual job is to do anything they can to prevent you doing that. If you get here, you are golden. Walk right into their trap: "Why do you want to cancel?" "I'm sorry to hear that, you must be very frustrated. What if I were to offer you x y z? Would that change your mind?" Checkmate.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Too damn hard? I don't even know how to begin to reply to that.
My wife doesn't want to switch our ISP because her main e-mail address uses that at the domain name, and maybe a thousand friends, business contacts, and acquaintances have it as her contact info.
Yes, she could change to a gmail account, and after a while the people who need to contact her would change the address in their address books. Eventually. Most of them.
* (She's a freelancer. In general, when they fail to get in contact with a freelancer, customers usually just go to a different one rather than bother to spend the time to look up the new address.)
Easy to fix... .vcf attachment to make it easy to add to contacts
- Set up a new domain and email address for her.
- Configure the old email to forward to the new one.
- Keep the old email for a year or two.
- Have her send out new business cards and an email change notice to all clients, add a vCard
- Use the new email address to send all replies and to remind customers to update their contact lists if they send to the old address.
Eventually all active clients will have the new email address. It takes time, but it does work....
That is the price of having made a bad decision early on. The longer she waits, the more severe the pain will be when she finally does switch.
2.58 million people are still paying AOL for their email address. It sounds like you have a very biased circle. Looking through my contact list, I see several family and friends with optimum, comcast, and verizon email addresses.
Best of luck when they continue to bill you...
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