Slashdot Mirror
Why Americans Loathe Cable Companies
HughPickens.com writes: Vikas Bajaj writes in the NYT that the results are in and the American Customer Satisfaction Index shows that customer satisfaction with cable TV, Internet and phone service providers have declined to a seven-year low. Of the 43 industries on which the survey solicits opinions, TV and Internet companies tied for last place in customer satisfaction. "Internet and TV have always been among the lowest scoring," says David VanAmburg, director of the Index. "But this year they're at the very bottom." The study, which is based on more than 14,000 consumer surveys, gives companies a rating from 0 to 100. The ACSI reports huge drops in customer satisfaction for Comcast and Time Warner Cable, following their failed merger. Already one of the lowest-scoring companies in the ACSI, Comcast sheds 10 percent to a customer satisfaction score of 54. Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable earns the distinction as least-satisfying company in the Index after falling 9 percent to 51. Joining Time Warner Cable in the basement is ACSI newcomer Mediacom Communications (51), which serves smaller markets in the Midwest and South. "Customer service in these industries has long been bad," says VanAmburg of Internet and TV providers. "They don't have a good business model for handling inquiries with efficiency and respect. It goes back a decade plus."
Even though those complaints are longstanding, customer frustration has risen along with the ever-rising prices. "You compound all that with the prices customers are paying, and that's the final straw," says VanAmburg. "They're opening bills each month and saying 'I'm paying how much?'" In an age of over-the-top viewing options like Hulu and Netflix, customer dissatisfaction may increasingly translate to companies' bottom lines. "There was a time when pay TV could get away with discontented users without being penalized by revenue losses from defecting customers," says Claes Fornell, chairman and founder of the Index. "But those days are over."
Even though those complaints are longstanding, customer frustration has risen along with the ever-rising prices. "You compound all that with the prices customers are paying, and that's the final straw," says VanAmburg. "They're opening bills each month and saying 'I'm paying how much?'" In an age of over-the-top viewing options like Hulu and Netflix, customer dissatisfaction may increasingly translate to companies' bottom lines. "There was a time when pay TV could get away with discontented users without being penalized by revenue losses from defecting customers," says Claes Fornell, chairman and founder of the Index. "But those days are over."
If only google fiber rolled out across the country, then these "providers" would shit their pants as they became irrelevant and insolvent.
For a service that I used only a handful of times a week, the straw the brolemthe camel's back for me was the automatic rate increase every year until you call to complain. That's just abusive and degrading. I don't want to haggle for my service. Offer me a price that is fair to both of us and make it the same for all customers with the same service. Allowing me to haggle just means you don't value my time.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
I just moved to a new city. In my old city, I had Charter. I was paying ~$60/month for 30 meg service but my speed tests would show I could sometimes get 50 meg service. Unfortunately it one occasions, it would drop to 0.01 meg service.
In my new city, I have to use Comcast. Where there closest to the same price as my old service is only 6megs. Speed tests show the actual is 7 megs and pretty consistent. I get the Xfinity cable modem to find to my dismay that it's got a useless router build in. Ok I go into the setup to see if I can turn off the wifi etc... Nope there is no way to turn of all the useless router. So I bought my own modem so I can set it up the way I want and not need to pay their rental fee. Install it once they provisioned it works fine. So I return the modem to Comcast and they give me a receipt. Next month, there is still a charge for modem rental fee on my bill. Call them to have it removed. They can find no record of me returning the equipment. So now I need to fax the receipt to them because they have never heard of this thing called email.
And you know there is nothing you can do about it because, they bought the whores in your city and state government ?
I say this as I am about to start talking to comcast about why I have been billed for three modems I never had and where the credit is for my interrupted service.
Voter initiatives to install municipal infrastructure (fiber, cable, etc) and outlaw monopoly franchise agreements. This way you don't have to wait for corrupt politicians to do it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I think the biggest issue is that you're locked into a provider by area. What makes people (including myself) angrier than having terrible customer service is having terrible customer service and no real alternatives to choose from. For TV you pretty much have one cable provider, maybe verizon/AT&T as an alternative, and the various satellite providers - which isn't the worst. However for internet, the satellite providers are slow - so only useful if you can't get DSL or cable. So you have one cable provider and maybe one DSL. Both have jacked up prices and terrible service; then you just accept it, pick the cheapest one(which isn't that cheap), and grumble on reviews. Oh and if you live in one of the few places that have google fibre or similar then you naturally take that. What it comes down to is that the monopolized system has hurt the customers (surprise, surprise).
suck it cable companies, we dont need you anymore, we just need internet access and-DAMMIT. well played cable companies, well played.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
To date, I've not had a bad experience w/ cable companies. Not Comcast, when I had it 10 years ago, not TWC (which I got due to moving) and now, not Charter. Although in Charter's case, the basic internet package starts at 60Mbps, which surprised me when I moved to an area that doesn't have TWC, since I had gone w/ a TWC package of 15Mbps.
If one is talking cable TV here, I don't care: I hate most of the programming and so haven't bothered buying a TV. I watch YouTube stuff on my tablets.
At least they don't inject ad-ware in open source software or try to re-skin slashdot every quarter!
[Dice Holdings rage intensifies]
And this is why it now costs $70/mo for internet service through Comcast, and only $30 extra for cable TV, instead of the other way around. I was at $40/month for just internet for the first few years, and now they (for me) won't even negotiate a lower price when I attempt to cancel. The cable companies are simply changing their pricing to match subscriber trends.
If Google was going to do that, they'd have done it already.
Google is hunting for new business opportunities with the Tapioca method: throw it at the wall and see what sticks.
The other method is copy someone else and tweak it a bit like Microsoft - which happens to be a less risky method.
The more interesting question is "Why do American cable companies loathe Americans?"
People have always complained by all PUC industries, sewage, water, electricity, landlines, streetcar/tramway/trolley companies ... But most of the other industries, the quality of service is tangibly defined, unfair bundling not possible or easy to spot. So the only complaint about them is the cost. The cable companies get to play fast and loose with their quality of service, game the system by confusing choices and bundling, there is lots of money involved. So it naturally attracts worst of the worst PHBs.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I wanted reception cable, about $10 a month. So I signed up online. I get a call that there was a "billing error" signing me up for this, but that I could get basic cable if I signed up for a Triple Play bundle. It was only $40/month more than I was paying now. I told them not to upsell me and cancel my order. I got an antenna and now watch TV for free. Fuck those guys. They treat every interaction with the customer as a sales opportunity and are terrible at actually solving problems.
The major source of frustration is tied to the lack of compatition. Most areas I know have little option to leave their cable contract because the industry has made sure there are no competing services that would spur their customer service into actually playing nice to retain their customers. They know that they don't need to care because all other options have reduced quality. I for one have no options other than pulling the plug to go with multiple antennas for terestrial broadcasts from 40 miles away, or satellite. No real internet options. The 'last mile' predicament leaves me wondering how much Comcast actually pays to keep the compatition out of my community. Any mergers will only make their position stronger so they can afford to raise prices even more as they reduce what channels I get on my plan. I currentlt have less than half tha channels that I had with Adelphia before that merger, and what I have left is mostly junk other than PBS where there is actually more selection through terestrial.
They are just becoming another cable company. Rapidly.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
i grew up before we had cable and the extra channels were awesome at first. but with so much crap now in the basic tier including ESPN which a lot of sports fans don't even watch the prices too high. and lately everyone is adding a sports news channel or some other me too channel to the basic tier and asking for more money.
they have the extra streaming add ons for a lot of channels but they limit the episodes to a few at a time and it's a crazy system where you have to have the right TV provider.
Because Americans would rather piss and moan then to take action and get what they really want.
We've become a nation of cry babies who won't dare part with out toys to stand up for what we claim we believe in.
And they really loathe creating alternatives. Eh, why take a chance?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
When the services are working, these companies provide arguably the greatest benefit of anything that comes into your house. In particular, Comcast's service (again, when it's working 100%) is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
What's uniformly terrible across ALL of these companies is that when you call them, they seem to be working AGAINST you instead of for you. Ryan Block called Comcast to cancel his service and they fought with him for an hour over the phone. I tried to get my U-Verse sub changed from 3 services to 2 (no phone) and they couldn't do that without bumping my install date out a month. THESE are the things that just make you shake your head and go WHY can't you guys figure this out?
But the services themselves are pretty much the cat's pajamas.
In the many places thanks to the move to digital you can get all the networks for free but many people don't bother which I think is dumb. In many other locations the cable companies have changed the way TV stations work. I can get about 12 channels on my TV with a simple antenna. Only two are networks! The cost of entry is low but the major networks do not want to be in this OTA market because the cable companies have to pay to carry them now.
I think that the law should change so that cable companies only have to pay for the broadcast channels that customers can get with an antenna. TV used to be free and we need to go back to that. It is insane to pay for a TV with ads!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I was amused recently to hear an interview on the radio with the chief exec of Talk Talk (a UK telecoms company whose USP is "we're cheap!"), where she said how pleased she was because for the first time ever they hadn't come bottom in a customer support satisfaction survey.
Having experienced their customer service (my father has broadband from them - because they're cheap), I'm surprised they managed to move off the bottom slot, but then they do have fierce competition from BT.
Cable did it to themselves.
They figured out they could jack up prices with impunity. Then their content providers figured out all the cash they were bringing in, and jacked up their money (and carriage) demands, too. Cable largely didn't care because they knew they could just pass on these costs to their customers.
Now that they've bled the pig, it's squealing and getting its feed elsewhere.
American (including US and Canada) internet and cable TV is very expensive compared to elsewhere. It is in the region of 500% more in my experience, for less content and crappier service.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.StackOverflowError
Cable started with the promise "Watch whatever you want with no commercials -- because you are paying." That didn't last long. In general people are willing to pay (and quite well) to get what they want. It's when you include junk they don't want (for additional charge, in the form of time for commercials) that they get mad.
How about stopping the advertisements in every commercial break and use that money to give us a lower bill. ALL and I mean ALL services are so similar that what will make me stay with one company is a lower bill !!!
I prefer free-markets where I can get them, but the last mile is anything but a free-market.
It's time to declare the last mile a public utility - just like roads, sewer, and power. Build and maintain fiber networks just like we build and maintain roads, sewers and the power grid.
Any number of companies could compete to offer data, voice, and video over that publicly maintained infrastructure.
This way maximizes competition where possible and minimizes monopolistic control over things that are "natural" monopolies.
As someone who has a choice of one cable provider (Brighthouse) or one telecom company (AT&T) I've been following fiber deployments fairly closely. There are a few companies deploying Google Fiber style networks in my state but they are moving slowly and not hitting my area any time soon. As such I contacted Google to ask if there was anything on the net to help interested communities build out their own networks. Within a few hours they got back to me with this: http://www.ftthcouncil.org/ While Cable and Telecom companies continually try to stamp out such efforts there are a number that have gone through. If we can get more communities on this bandwagon it would help make them harder to stop. Head to the page, share the information, and start evangelizing in your area.
Coffee: The lifeblood of intelligence in civilization.
"IF" they can be kept from consolidating control over the nationwide internet infrastructure their days are numbered. Netflix, HBO, Showtime, Hulu, etc have gained a lot of traction and being non contract services increases the competition and thus the quality of service. There is no doubt that the cable companies would love to nip this in the bud via "common sense" regulation allowing them to throttle the competition into oblivion. Hopefully the switch to Title II has prevented this but only time will tell.
Yet, they spend millions in advertising telling us why we should love them. Hey, Cable Companies, here's an idea. Instead of spending the millions/billions you'd spend on TV commericials, use that money instead to hire REAL LIVE HUMANS WHO SPEAK ENGLISH to answer the phone, and actually provide CUSTOMER SERVICE.
It's one thing to pay the highest rates in the world for TV and internet service, but it's another to know that I'm paying so much, and you're simply pocketing the money while your call center is in India and it takes 30 to 45 minutes to get an "agent" on the phone!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I'm inclined to not like them because my cable internet service (Time Warner -> Comcast) is more expensive and slower than when deployed here 16 years ago. Of course I have the option to spend more than $40/mo on packaged garbage or higher tiered internet, but the idea that the internet has scaled up 1000x during this time and I have the same janky service is hilarious.
To be fair, I discount inflation and it would be the same price if I was also a cable TV subscriber. Comcast brought that requirement when they did the monopoly swap with Time Warner that gave them my service area.
I find the key factors to dissatisfaction of cable companies are (in no particular order):
- Lack of competition - Without an option for dissatisfied customers to change to without at least a severe reduction in services (or at all), there is no push to make customers happy. Add in the fact that many smaller companies aren't recognized as service providers, so many web services that allow you to watch shows aren't available ( USA, Disney Junior, etc.) since you don't have a cable company they recognize.
-High prices - As a consumer, you end up paying a lot, and most of the content that is delivered isn't really wanted. Most of the time I find myself wanting about 5 channels from basic cable, maybe 5 from extended cable of various bundles offered, and one or two premium channels, but to get that, I end up having to get hundreds of channels at extreme prices considering what I'm already paying.
-Bundles - I don't like paying for services I'm not going to use. I don't like paying for channels I'm never going to watch (and I don't like supporting channels that I don't care about). I don't like my prices going up after my special introductory offer is over (or yearly).
-Outsourcing support - Like most companies, when you call for support you mostly end up going to a call center and speaking to someone that is following a script and actually has little to no technical knowledge on what you're actually trying to ask about. The script normally starts off like you're an idiot (Yes, my TV is plugged in, and it is on the correct input), and ends up with them putting in a call to have a technician come out after you've wasted 30 minutes of your life. Then you get a 4 hours window where the technician may show up if they aren't late, while you get to wait and do nothing productive during that time.
It's no wonder people are dissatisfied with cable companies. But it's not like you've got a choice, since at least you'll end up paying them for internet most of the time so you can stream your shows.
While I have many issues with ISPs that have been covered fairly well by other responses here, one issue that few have talked about is reliability of the service, and the ability to get it fixed when it breaks.
At least around here, it seems almost 1 out of every 2 people has some significant reliability problems with their Internet connectivity, and isn't sure how to fix them. When they call the ISP (whether it's cable, DSL, fiber, LTE, ..) the first thing they ask them is to reboot their modem and/or router and/or computer. When that doesn't fix it, the tech doesn't know what else to do. They often send out a guy to take a look, who'll say that your cable modem is shot, and have you get a replacement. If it's under warranty or owned by the cable company, sometimes that might be free; if you own the equipment and it's out of warranty, you have to put up for a new one.
But 8 times out of 10, replacing your modem / routers does not fix the problem. Nor does going from WiFi to ethernet -- another common "fix". Sure, WiFi has problems, but if your issue is actually with some part of the cable, especially if it's a part that's buried underground, it can be nearly impossible to convince the company that the problem is there, and moreover, to get them to dig it up and replace it.
I'm on a grandfathered unlimited LTE data plan as my primary Internet connection, now. Cellular towers are pretty reliable due to their centralized infrastructure and the number of users it would affect if they were having a problem. I've had a few persistent issues with my LTE connection that lasted for weeks, but each time, it magically went away after very little effort on my part, likely after they received hundreds of calls from other customers about the same problem, and had to send someone up the tower to fix it.
Those with landlines to the premises are in a much more difficult situation. The company is likely to pin the problem on hardware that is owned by you, or wiring that is installed within the walls of your house. They will not be willing to admit that the problem may lie with the line buried underground. Acknowledging that problem would effectively cause them to have to outlay a significant cost to a contractor to dig up and replace the cable, so instead, they treat each individual support call as a new incident, and forget all the history of your problem where you've diligently worked by process of elimination to determine that it must be something in the line.
I remember years ago when we used deduction to determine that our DSL problem must lie with the phone line beyond the premises of our house. We replaced all our devices, hooked up to ethernet instead of WiFi, and even completely replaced all the DSL filters and phone line wiring in our house. The problem persisted. But the tech support guys kept experiencing a case of amnesia; every time we called, despite trying to ask them to refer to previous tickets and things we'd already tried, they just wanted us to reboot our modem, over and over and over and over again, as if that would help. This would happen even if we got the same tech support person on multiple calls.
At work, a lot of people come to me for advice on problems they're having with tech at home. I don't know why they do it; they just do. I get my fair share of laptop problems; Windows won't boot; they have a virus; whatever. But the #1 most frequent problem I get is that their Internet is unreliable and drops out all the time. Occasionally I'll find that replacing their cable modem fixes the problem, but in many more cases, we narrow it down to the landline, or at least to an ONT or something exterior to their dwelling that isn't owned by the resident -- at which point, you're basically at a dead-end.
The willingness to address problems, and to refer to case history to eliminate potential sources of problems, is seemingly absent from nearly all ISP support employees. And you wonder why their ACSI score is low...
Before I switched to ATT Uverse Gigapower (whose csutomer service is no better, after 3 months the bill is still not correct) I had TWC.
Every time a promotion expired I had to call and negotiate a new rate. If I wasn't getting a good deal I just said nevermind, then called back to get a different rep and a different deal.
Sometimes it took 3 or 4 calls but I always negotiated a lower rate than I had. It all depended on who I talked to and what they had in their offering.
I never understood it.
Why should I have to be paid to be spied on? Internet access should be free.
Aside from scheduling repairs at a time convenient only for the repair guy, the last "technician" they sent out had obvious gang tattoos and seemed more interested in casing my house than repairing my cable, which he was unable to do (I ended up fixing the cable break in the attic later that day. Damn squirrels).
So, I turned off the cable. Still have U-Verse for Netflix, which is similarly awful (They tend to not tell you anything), but at least they've never sent anyone who I or my family might have to be scared of.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You don't have to be good.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
... JUST to kick them in the shins. And I'd think hard about whether to kick their puppy too!
This is ancient. Look at SNL skits from the 70s "One-Ringy-Dingy". The phone companies charged a fortune, pissed in their customers faces, and basically did everything possible to screw the average joe.
This is the industry that the cable companies learned from, and they learned well.
Honestly, if I had the power, I'd Nationalize the entire industry without reimbursement -- screw them AND their stockholders (they've screwed us for long enough), and make communication free.
And that's pretty extreme considering I mostly agree with Andrew Ryan's Great Chain philosophy...
Oh Comcast, your greed and overreaching could almost be comical. A few years ago I had basic cable, which ran straight into my TV, and all was well. I was able to watch HD versions of my local stations. Then, Comcast insists I adopt their new set-top box. Okay, so now I have an extra remote and another appliance I need to fit under the TV. Hey, but the good news I can't watch the HD channels I was already getting without paying another $120 a year. Flash-forward, and the only reason I still have a Comcast box is because it will save me no money at all to return it, because TV is bundled with Internet and Phone. But I still cord cut because I can watch everything I want in HD through Roku. Really, the only thing I don't watch is the local stations I had the cable for in the first place. Hey local TV stations... Comcast is fucking up your business by downgrading your signal quality. Hows that working out for you?
Compared to disasters such as the Piper Alpha. Let's discuss stuff that matters.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
> "There was a time when pay TV could get away with discontented users without being penalized by revenue losses from defecting customers," says Claes Fornell, chairman and founder of the Index. "But those days are over."
Right. In the past, you had to suck it up because there was generally no place to go. Now there is.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is my actual experience just switching apartments with Comcast "You have the new X1 box so you have to pay for someone to come out install it at your new location" Me: "That's ok I can just plug it in myself", Comcast: "No you have to have someone come out to install it with these boxes." I just plug it it and it works.. they come out anyways and charge me $70.
While you work on that, I'll work on mesh networks for last-mile connectivity.
..the thing is, lots of people loathe and hate what they're dependent on. They hate "the system" that keeps them safe because they can't or aren't allowed to do it themselves. Addicts hate the "poison" which they cannot stop taking. Or the "plutocrat corporations" who only make money because the same people pay for it.
People loathe cable because they are ADDICTED and cannot give it up. They scream from their lofty First World position about how "necessary" it is to get high definition commericals and the latest Kardashian/Jenner information (which they also claim to "hate" but are drawn to like flies to shite).
the simplest solution to cable "problems" is to give it up. But no one will ever ever do that. They'll rationalize the hell out of the "necessity" like an alcoholic in denial, with the same fervor as a greedy televangelist caught with his hand in the cookie jar saying "God told him to take the money".
So they make big political issues out of their tiniest habits because like most addictions, the thing becomes very important when there's a chance it can get cut off.
People will loathe the cable companies for as long as they are unable to resist the siren song. Otherwise they simply would turn off the service, the cable companies would starve, or improve. No one wastes emotional energy like "hate" or "loathing" on something that's not seriously important to them.
I've dealt with cable companies, who are generally epically incompetent. I also had the misfortune of dealing with an impound lot, where every employee top-to-bottom was simply evil. I'd prefer a week in the offices of the cable company over a minute in the front room of an impound lot.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The Comcast commercials inform me that their customer service is better than ever? Are they trying to deceive me?
People generally dont like it when companies -break the law- to squeeze more money out of them.
Even moreso when they constantly get away with it.
Money doesnt just talk... it votes.
Increasing their quality ans customer satisfaction is not trocket science. Everybody will know how to do it, The question is why would they do it.
I once worked at a company where they told us they were customer driven and they were. They realy acted upon their (perceived) quality of the customer. If customers were not satisfied, they changed it. The target was 85% satisfaction and we were at 90 or 95% all the time.
Qlaity at the time was 65%, where the industry standard was 85%
One day they asked us to do an analyss on how to improve service. So I did just that. Calculated how much more FTE it would be. How much more it would cost. The works to get it to 85%. So the presentation was done and everybody aplauded (OK, they didn't) and said well done. Then I asked why we would do it.
"Becaus ethe industry standard is 85% and we deliver 65%"
"Yes, but we are a customer driven company. And the customers are happy with the 65%. All that we would invest in would be in not needed quality."
"Point well take. Scrap it."
So I am sure somebody else asked a similar question. Only their motive is not customer satisfaction, it is cost and/or profit.
Somebody will have done the calcuation how much it would cost to increase cuastomer satisfaction and how much they would gain.
The thing is that there are two ways to do business. You sell a lot with crappy quality at a low price or a lot with great quality and a high price (Yes, there will be exceptions). And as people want to pay the least for their whatever, people go to the lowest price most of the time (even if it is more expensive in the long run)
It is the well know run to the bottom and others will notice that this works and will follow.
What is needed to break this? A governement that stands up for the little man against companies and demands (not requests) certain amounts of service. In Belgium things are far from perfect, but number portability is extremely easy. Canceling your subscription is easy and they can not bind you for ever (there is a period that they can demand a fee.) Increase in price means automagicallyan anouncement of end of contract and you can bail for free or join.
Price raises are possible but must be reasonable, depending on the service that is offerned.
e.g. the cable company I was with went from Analog to Digital for 2 chanels I watched. I said I did not want that and canceld. It was a change in the contract and they could not do anything about it, even though I had still some months to go. Oh, and they had to write me about the change in contract and how I could cancel.
The downside is (besides all the holidays and free helthcare) that we live in a socialist country.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
doesnt mean that the big corps dont do it all the freaking time.
Charter recently responded very quickly and surprisingly competently to an outage I had. They NEVER did until AT&T started laying new cables and offering upgraded services in my neighborhood. Competition is an amazing thing.
That's what I am noticing. While the prices go up, the quality goes down. More and more "reality" junk. More and more insipid and inane programs. And what seems like hundreds of "crap" channels on the cable (shopping, infomercial) that serve no purpose other than to artificially inflate the channel count that the cable company provides.
My wife is a sports nut, and right now you can't get that online. That and a handful of news programs is about all we regularly watch, and you can't get that online either. I would dearly love to pull the plug on the whole business and go without and form of TV.
Notice how fast they marked the parent post as a troll. Anything negative about Comcast posted here gets buried.
if they didn't have to call them so often!
Seriously, I would still probably be a Comcast customer if both their cable TV and internet service didn't suck so bad.
I switched from Comcast to CenturyLink for internet service and ditched pay TV altogether and am much more satisfied.
Don't get me wrong, CenturyLinks customer service sucks major ass too but I almost NEVER have to call them because my service works ALMOST all the time. I call them at most once a year while Comcast had constant problems.
Their DSL is also cheaper and faster than Comcast internet.
* I know, your experience with how well they work may vary but the bad customer service IME does not.
What irritates me is that (way back when cable TV was new) we were promised no commercials. And look what we have now...more cpmmercial than show per hour, poor quality programming, and all kinds of crap channels that NO ONE WANTS bundled in! And prices that increased past reasonable about 12 years and just keep going up beyond all reason!
And now where cable TV and internet are from the same provider, capped Internet usage that used to be (and still should be) unlimited! The caps are a punitive measure to try to stop people from dropping cable TV, and just having Internet and streaming video services.
We loath them because they are greedy fucking assholes with bad signals, bad service, bad billing gimmicks, and bad telemarketers; and we can't switch because the competitors are few in numbers and also suck. I live in a relatively well-populated area and there is STILL shit competition here. Dare I say it, they make Microsoft look good.
Table-ized A.I.
i've had it with bandwidth limits. this is the biggest problem with ISPs. i pay a flat rate for a service, but i'm really only paying for a fixed amount of bandwidth. cox will add surcharge fees to the bill if i actually decide to use all that data i paid for. it's an awful practice and we can do nothing but complain as it will probably never go away.
it's like they expect every customer to utilize less than a percent of their data plan. of course this is what they want, it costs them the least money and they make a ridiculous profit off of it.
Verizon quotes a price online, confirms said price in an email...and the charges more citing a 'computer glitch'. I pointed out that glitch to them. Instead of thanking me and honoring the quoted price they give me the runaround and a measly 15$ discount, which in the end still does not come anywhere near the quoted price. The only other option Verizon offered was to cancel services and go away. Which I would gladly do if the alternative around here would not be TWC, which is another utterly inept bunch of morons. I switched from TWC after they repeatedly failed to fix TV service blaming it on my in house wiring (which works perfectly fine with FiOS!), even after hooking up a TV straight to the line coming in from the street and demonstrating that half of the analog channels have snow, noise, and distortion in them. Since the digital channels are in the same spectrum it is obvious why digital TV barely worked. They just didn't get it and instead jacked up the rate by 80$ per month at the end of the term. Oh, and with either VOD just does not work. It either never starts claiming some error or it cuts out right in the middle. That would be only mildly annoying if there were an option to fast forward....which there isn't. The big problem is that it is even a luxury to have the option of two service providers, many places only have the cable company because the phone company does not do fibre to their neighbourhood. There is absolutely no competition. It would be much better when there are at least half a dozen providers trying to woo me. In my case neither one needs to excel at anything because the other one is not any better. So how did splitting up Bell and opening markets do us any good? Service is craptastic and ridiculously expensive!
Competition inevitably benefits consumers. It's not to say Google is a saint. Their primary revenue model is knowing as much about 'you' as they can so that they can 'advertise' to you more efficiently. I personally don't trust Google, but we have already seen Verizon add their super cookie to web browsing on their mobile network so I think it is fair game to assume many companies actively do/want to capture metrics about the consumer for fun and profit. What we really need is more end-to-end encryption so that those in the middle can't snoop as effectively.
Add Cox to the list. They raised my fees 20% and I chose to remove services rather than add $30 +. And I can expect 20% next year as well. I'm going satellite as soon as possible and then I'll alternate promos every 2 years.
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...