Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Customer Satisfaction Drops 6% After TV Price Hikes, ACSI Says (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comcast's customer satisfaction score for subscription TV service fell 6 percent in a new survey, putting the company near the bottom of rankings published by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Comcast's score fell from 62 to 58 on ACSI's 100-point scale, a drop of more than 6 percent between 2016 and 2017. The ACSI's 2017 report on telecommunications released this week attributed the decrease to "price hikes for Xfinity (Comcast) subscriptions." Satisfaction with pay-TV providers dropped industry-wide, tying the segment with Internet service (a product offered by the same companies) for last place in the ACSI's rankings. The ACSI summarized the trend as follows: "Customer satisfaction with subscription television service slips 1.5 percent to 64, tied with Internet service providers for last place among 43 industries tracked by the ACSI. Many of the same large companies offer service for Internet, television, and voice via bundling. The threat of competition from streaming services has done little to spur improvement for pay TV. Customer service remains poor, and cord-cutting continues to accelerate. More than half a million subscribers defected from cable and satellite TV providers during the first quarter of 2017 -- the largest loss in the history of the industry. Customers still prefer fiber optic and satellite to cable, putting FiOS (Verizon Communications) in first place with a 1 percent uptick to 71. AT&T takes the next two spots with its fiber optic and satellite services."
Me like to play jokes and download TV programs for free.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
They, unfortunately for them, are the customer-facing side of the content creators who are really behind the endless rate hikes and so bear the brunt of consumer's wrath. In reality this is just a pass-through and their value is actually in the worth of their network and the ability to move massive quantities of bits around very, very quickly.
Money money monahhhh
That's all cable providers hear or care about.
You unhappy but still buying? You like a heroin addict bitching about your health as your buying from me.
I'm already paying them so I can watch commercials almost half the time. That's just stupid. Program to commercial ratio seems to be about 60:40 these days, but I really should use a timer to verify. It feels more like 50:50, I'm trying to be objective.
My wife won't agree to cut the cord because of local news and sports - two things I can get from the 'net or don't care about. There's got to be a good counter argument for that, between Roku, Netflix, Hulu, etc.. I've got killer Internet bandwidth right now at 200mb download speeds. (about 20mb up).
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Comcast's score fell from 62 to 58 on ACSI's 100-point scale
That's a drop of 4%. Yes, I know that a drop of 4 is 6% of 62 but when you are already using a percentage scale i.e. a 100-point scale the difference measures the percentage drop of the scale it is extremely confusing and rather disingenuous to call it a percentage drop: it's a percentage of a percentage drop in satisfaction NOT a percentage drop in satisfaction. Yes, it makes the number look bigger but even in Canada, we've heard you screaming how bad Comcast is so you really do not need to work any harder to make them look bad.
I think the big news here is that some people actually like Comcast. Who knew?
and have already had two surprise charges. I was charged $89.99 for a tech visit even though one did not come to me. Simply plugging in my modem and entering my account info worked. I was also charged $14.99 for them to ship a couple of cables and a splitter that i did not ask for.
That's not even considering the costs extra for TV that they didn't quote when I ordered. I knew adding basic TV would cost more than the $10 they claimed. There's also a $10 HD Technology Fee per month and around $25 more in taxes and fess than they quoted. I playing about $768 per year more just to get basic cable over what Internet access would cost by itself.
How can it drop below zero?
Wow, what a fascinating story. Please, tell me more about how a company's customer base becomes less happy when prices are raised.
sig: sauer
If you have a static IP from Comcast, at least on their Business Class service, you're required to rent one of their shitty routers. Your options are as follows, with my subjective observations on each:
:
Cisco DPC3941
++ Wireless performance seemed to be quite good.
++ IPv6 works
++ Fairly decent configurability for business purposes +- Occupies the last IP on your subnet for reasons I couldn't easily ascertain.
-- Imparts seemingly rhythmic, but generally erratic, latency (1-100 msec) on packets that traverse it. (This is why we binned it; we went through two of them.)
-- Slowest web interface I had ever seen on a router until I had the misfortune of getting AT&T's branded PACE 5268AC router at home for 1gbit fiber
-- Random reboots, some of which were Comcast pushing updates in the middle of the day
-- Takes almost 5 minutes to come back after a restart.
-- No support for truly useful things on a corporate network like SNMP, LACP, or VLAN
SMC D3G:
++ Small
++ Seems highly reliable, for most purposes
+- No wireless. (not a problem)
+- Doesn't support higher (150mbit/s+) speed classes
-- Hopelessly broken IPv6 support
-- Web interface cocks up after about a week, and can't be fixed without restarting
-- Very little useful configurability in a business environment, e.g. reserved IP leases based on MAC
-- No support for truly useful things on a corporate network like SNMP, LACP, or VLAN
Some outdated Netgear turd (CG3000DCR, i think):
++ Never had to use one myself.
++ They replaced it with a Netgear router that seems to suck less
+- They replaced it with a Netgear router
-- Had to support one "back in the day"
-- It ever existed
Some newer Netgear turd ("N300", actually WNR2000)
++ Never had to use one.
Boot note:
Also had these fuckwits do a mass change of 'cusadmin' passwords to something that the router's web interface would not allow you to enter in the 'old password' field to change it. Congratulations, idiots, on forcing all of your business customers (who don't know you can get around this by JavaScript fiddlings) to use the same widely distributed password. Basically, stop screwing with your customer's stuff; also, get some real user-configurable routers.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
FiOS is great I'm sure, you know, for the small fraction of the population that actually live in their service footprint. And there are millions of people who can only get satellite, so of course they're happy with what they have. I seem to be the only happy cable customer I know...
THere is simply no way this is going in the right direction for consumers. Without competition, there is no chance for innovation, and no disruption, The same old Handshake Monopoly is the norm now. How can we get politicians to recognize this as an issue for constituents. I have contacted my mayor to be sure he knows we are watching, and paying more and more for less and less. When we buy 100 Mbps service from an ISP, are we supposed to pity that ISP when I use that Bandwidth to stream the superbowl or some movies from Netflix? so the fix: 1) Get at least 3 ISPs that can get Metropolitan WIfi to your home (skip the Physical layer - the basis for that monopoly) 2) Drop the triple play crap, and pay the TV producers (HBO, ESPN and News-source-of-choice, and .. oh yeah... Netflix) 3) keep the net neutral. First one ensures some competition, second skips the ISP as Content provider, and third keeps the the ISP as an ISP and not a content purveyor. COmments ???
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
try an antenna to pick up the local station. It works many places though not everywhere.
>>The ACSI summarized the trend as follows: "Customer satisfaction with subscription television service slips 1.5 percent to 64, tied with Internet service providers for last place among 43 industries tracked by the ACSI
>> Customers still prefer fiber optic and satellite to cable, putting FiOS (Verizon Communications) in first place with a 1 percent uptick to 71. AT&T takes the next two spots with its fiber optic and satellite services."
After the ASIC was repaired, Verizon was no longer in first place, but was displaced by ATT&T for only one spot as it should be. Sometimes Verilog is a bitch.
No surprise. /. had a story Yesterday (5/25/17) about "Cord-Cutters Are Ditching Their Cable Packages At the Fastest Rate Ever." When real G5 becomes ubiquitous, Comcast's 'screw the customer' policies will come back to bite/byte them on their butt.
I cut directv 6+ months ago. Got roamio (lifetime) + OTA + Netflix + amaz prime ('free' as we're already prime).
Initially a little negative WAF but Netflix content and the commercial skip thingy from roamio made it ok. Can search across all those sources from one ux.
Had to upgrade my lame ass "broadband" here in the boonies to 6, which streams pretty well.