The Cable TV Industry Is Getting Even Less Popular (fortune.com)

Aaron Pressman, writing for Fortune: It seems nobody loves their cable TV or home Internet provider. Wireless carriers, however, are on the upswing.That's the news from the huge annual survey of 43 industries from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. In 2017, cable operators and ISP tied for last place, with an average customer satisfaction rating of just 64 percent. The wireless industry was still near the bottom of the rankings, in 38th place, just below the U.S. postal system. But its 73 percent score was up almost three percentage points from last year. Many of the same companies, like Comcast and Verizon, dominate both fields, ACSI noted. And neither industry offer much choice to consumers, with most localities having only one or two cable and Internet providers. The cable industry's rating slipped 1.5 percentage points from last year, while the rating for ISPs was unchanged.

Comments

Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I never have any problems with lost mail, it arrives dependably and at the same time every day, and even with the frequent stamp price increases it still seems like a bargain to send something coast-to-coast in a couple of days for less than a buck.

The only bad thing I might have to say would involve standing in line at the post office, but even that is not really necessary very often anymore with online postage and pickup. I think the US Postal Service should get very high marks. Maybe I just don't use it enough.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[H3lldr0p]

It's another disinformation campaign that's been going on for some time. There are a few congressional members who have been aiming to rid us of the Post Office and sell off pieces of it to their buddies. They've been making sure that the PO's budget can't balance through making them pre-pay pensions for a very unreasonable amount of time as well as shrinking the amount they can charge for stamps.

That doesn't even get into the political battle over letting the PO act as a bank for low income people. Which it did at one time but was removed in the late sixties and completely shut down by 1984.

Re:Wonder why the postal system is ranked so low?

[Insightfill]

It's another disinformation campaign that's been going on for some time. There are a few congressional members who have been aiming to rid us of the Post Office and sell off pieces of it to their buddies. They've been making sure that the PO's budget can't balance through making them pre-pay pensions for a very unreasonable amount of time as well as shrinking the amount they can charge for stamps.

That doesn't even get into the political battle over letting the PO act as a bank for low income people. Which it did at one time but was removed in the late sixties and completely shut down by 1984.

The US postal system is also one of the largest single union employers in the country. Yet another reason that many are trying to "drowned it in a bathtub."

The Post Office is additionally hamstrung by Congress micro-managing it. Want to get rid of Saturday delivery? No. Want to raise the price of a stamp? No. It's really quite tragic. Like that story about the boy who keeps commanding a grasshopper to jump and pulling off legs each time it fails, then loudly proclaiming that it must be deaf.

Re:Actions

[Sperbels]

The half a million who switched to streaming services are the ones who are actually dissatisfied.* The ones who keep paying a monthly bill for cable TV are satisfied enough.

Actually, no, I'm not dissatisfied streaming. What I was dissatisfied with was having 200 channels of mostly unwatchable garbage, paying $100 a month for commercial ridden shows that I didn't really want to watch.

Re:Actions

[drinkypoo]

The half a million who switched to streaming services are the ones who are actually dissatisfied.*
[...]
* excepting the very small minority who can get cable TV but not cable Internet

What about the very sizable group that can get high-speed internet access only from a cable company which offers them a discount cable, internet, and phone service bundled which makes it actually cheaper to have cable? Those people can be cable subscribers, and yet dissatisfied with cable, and also be rational consumers.

Re:The NHL doesn't want you to watch it's games

[mentil]

If you are steaming, you should probably get that looked at. Or else leave the sauna, the steam is likely to harm your electronic device.