At least compared to Fiber and Satellite:
Shockingly, Cable TV and Broadband Customer Satisfaction Is Still The Worst In America
Shockingly, Cable TV and Broadband Customer Satisfaction Is Still The Worst In America
Cable still struggles to satisfy customers
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Maybe if they didn't outsource everything to India
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More specifically, maybe if they didn't outsource everything to the lowest-bidding off-shore vendor. There are plenty of really good outsourcing vendors in India, but they cost almost as much as just maintaining your own staff in the US. The big outsourcing companies have multiple tiers of service, and the high end folks are expensive, just like here. You get what you pay for.
Cable, dating back to when it was CATV, has been about providing the least possible service for the highest possible price. When sats broke the monopoly power they had, particularly over rural Americans, they doubled down on the cheapassed service. It can never change. Cable is banditry. Always has been, always will be.
Only if you can understand them...dealing with someone in a chat is much different than a phone call...mostly its a failure to communicate
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Yet my cable TV with internet bill is substantially less than sat + internet would be.
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The top tier folks speak perfect English. You think you're talking to someone in the UK aside from some idiom they use. Nortel used to have a call center in Pune which was excellent. They eventually replaced it with a sub-par one in South America (to save money I assume).
While that is true in a lot of places, perhaps even the majority of places, it isn't true everywhere, and it isn't likely to stay true as Cableco execs have stated that retention offers will be going away. They really only want people who are willing to pay their rate card rates once the initial pricing is over. At least cable typically has no contracts.
True...but like I said.....you get what u pay for
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Mediacom offers contract and no contract deals. I think when I originally signed up the difference in deal wasn’t huge but good enough to make me take the contract deal. Basically both deals were a startup price and then a guaranteed $10/service add at the anniversary. For me that meant $20 increase each year.
Current is $149 + fees (about $27). At retail that would end up as $209 + same fees. The way mine was structured was a 4 year deal, 1st two years came with a $10/ETF for a max of $240, after the 2nd year cancellation doesn’t incur an ETF but rate goes up $20/yr for those last two years if you stay. In the past Mediacom wasn’t much on retention deals so I’m not expecting much from them when it comes time to try for one.
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Current is $149 + fees (about $27). At retail that would end up as $209 + same fees. The way mine was structured was a 4 year deal, 1st two years came with a $10/ETF for a max of $240, after the 2nd year cancellation doesn’t incur an ETF but rate goes up $20/yr for those last two years if you stay. In the past Mediacom wasn’t much on retention deals so I’m not expecting much from them when it comes time to try for one.
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Alas, Mediacom doesn't offer their services to very many consumers (they currently trail DIRECTV Now and Frontier at #10 in market share at .76% -- just over half the share of DIRECTV Now). For the rest of us, the deals and the diligence required to maintain those deals is typically much higher.
Yeah, with Spectrum, I'd be paying slightly more than I am currently paying for Dish and AT&T Fiber.
Which satellite provider or telco can give me every English channel and every premium channel for $170 or less, retail rate, not promo? I know DirecTV can’t. What I pay $168 for, DirecTV charges $208 for nearly the exact same thing.
Which satellite company can give me 1 Gbps internet? What telco or other company wants to run fiber in my rural town? Which cellular phone company will come in not to provide 5G NR, but LTE or any service at all?
I can only speak for Charter but they have call center operations for billing and tech support in Rochester, NY. The upstairs of the building is billing, the downstairs is tech support. In Buffalo, they have support of Spectrum Business and Enterprise services. Twice I’ve been routed to agents who don’t live that far from me
I think the kind of lock in/monopoly position you describe is part of the reason people aren't happier with their cable TV and broadband service. They feel they don't have a choice, the cable companies know which customers don't have a choice, and they treat them differently as a result.
That makes no sense to me. Verizon does not offer DSL on my street, others in the general area can get super fast 1.5 Mbps DSL via remote terminal, so it goes without saying they do not offer fiber either. If I was going to not be happy with Verizon or Charter, why would I not be happy with Charter? They provide me with fast reliable service and they provide me with service period. Verizon chooses to ignore me and think my money isn't green enough. I fail to comprehend being mad at a company that actually took the financial risk to provide you with a service, versus a company that thinks you don't count. If one is mad and upset at their cableco, they should be more upset with their ILEC for poor or nonexistent service.
The majority of areas in the US have the ability for two competing wired ISPs, one cable and one telco. If only one of those companies serves you, your anger should be directed at the one that doesn't. My lack of choice of ISPs is not a result of Charter being a so called monopoly, it's a result of Verizon not wanting to invest in my area. Charter is doing their part with gigabit cable, now it's time for Verizon to step up and offer gigabit fiber ***crickets***
I am sure if you asked Charter customers how much they liked the Verizon Fiber service they cannot get, the number would be even lower than Charter's score. If you look at what incumbent ISPs, including Charter, did to try to keep Google Fiber, AT&T Fiber, Ting and others out of their markets, I don't know how you can call that anything but monopolistic. They try to limit choice so they can charge you whatever the heck they want to. Other monopolistic practices include providing ancient set top boxes with buggy software, like the SA8300HDC running Navigator they apparently were still handing out as of a year or so ago in some markets, crappy customer service, piling fees on top of fees. Charter certainly isn't the worst, especially as an ISP, but clearly they aren't keeping their customers particularly happy on average according to this measurement.
It was nice to see NY go after Charter for not meeting the terms of the merger approval. I wish they'd do the same to Verizon, Frontier, and the other companies that took state and federal money to expand their broadband coverage and then haven't. In Otsego county, Frontier service is apparently out more than it is on in many, many cases. My parents switched to Spectrum after months of outages due to "cut fiber lines." It was just ridiculous. They are certainly happy Charter offers service where they are (and I know my brother would love to have their service where he is) but that doesn't mean they are happy with how they are treated when they call for assistance or go to the retail location.
In my own neighborhood a friend switched back from AT&T Fiber to Charter to save money. He was happy enough until he started having trouble. It took three truck rolls over two weeks to determine the problem was the line feeding his house had degraded to the point that it needed replacing. They fixed it in the end, but it was a frustrating experience for him and his wife, who works from home, and the tech support was subpar based on what he told me. I have a friend in Miami who loves his Comcast X1, but he hates dealing with Comcast. It is a common complaint, and it is reflected in the ratings. I don't know why they cannot improve the customer service experience except that they probably don't want to spend the money to do so.
The point is that YMMV (wildly) with cable and that isn't likely something that is going to change. Getting away from TV service is only going to make it harder for the cable companies to compete as they may no longer be able to maintain their franchises (unless they spin what their franchise service is based on) and that's probably something they're deeply concerned about. Fortunately for cable TV, they've been around for a while and have used their high fees to install a lot of fiber to everyone where the new guys are building out as necessary and may serve only a part of the population for a while.
To say that cable service (either TV or Internet) is one way or the other service-wise, price-wise or performance-wise based on incidental evidence is utterly useless in the grand scheme other than to illustrate that their may be localities bucking the corporate trend. Further, anything surrounding companies that are still operating under some manner of gubmint-mandated merger halo haven't begun to show their nasty habits yet.
To say that cable service (either TV or Internet) is one way or the other service-wise, price-wise or performance-wise based on incidental evidence is utterly useless in the grand scheme other than to illustrate that their may be localities bucking the corporate trend. Further, anything surrounding companies that are still operating under some manner of gubmint-mandated merger halo haven't begun to show their nasty habits yet.
I think all TV providers are having trouble keeping people satisfied. Once the introductory rates go away the bills go way up. It's the same story with Cable and Satellite. Name me any provider that will give me 200 channels for less than $150 with internet after the grace period is over.
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