Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the telephone operator.

The Federal Communications Commission has mildly beefed up its largely toothless cable complaint hotline with a brand new consumer online complaint center that guarantees to forward submitted angergrams back to your telephone or cable company within one business day.

As Congress largely deregulated cable and competing local telephone exchange carriers and put them out of reach of most federal and state oversight, the FCC has largely been left acting as a concierge – managing and forwarding consumer complaints received on its 1-888-CALL-FCC hotline. Now it has an online complaint center to keep the toll-free number company.

The new FCC website is a one-stop place to file complaints about cable, phone, and other telecom companies and has been simplified to make it easier to understand – a welcome change from the nearly impenetrable Electronic Comment Filing System that dates back to the Clinton Administration.

But in reality, there isn’t much the FCC can actually do to enforce any action in your favor. So if your complaint deals with any of these issues, it is technically outside of the FCC’s jurisdiction:

• Burial of telephone or cable wires
• No dial tone to local phone service
• Stand-alone satellite TV billing, rates and programming
• Installation of non-bundled service
• Stand-alone cable TV service, rates and programming (not including basic tier)
• Internet services, rates, and billing

Despite the limitations, most cable and telephone companies assign executive-level customer service agents and supervisors to manage complaints forwarded from state or federal regulators that could give them headaches later on. That will get you a more empowered representative that can make things happen that “Miss Raisin” in the provider’s Philippines-based call center cannot.

The FCC also gets to track and monitor both the complaints received from consumers and the response from your provider. That can help the FCC identify hot-button issues that need more attention and uncover bad actors that might need special scrutiny, especially if those companies later seek approval for their merger deal or have other business before the FCC.

So far, the largest number of complaints received are about relentless telemarketing robocalls. Since telemarketers have discovered the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Call Registry and accompanying enforcement is more “bark” than actual “bite,” an increasing number are ignoring the law with little or no consequences.

The FCC’s disclaimer on such matters does not exactly leave providers quaking in their boots:

We do not resolve individual complaints on these issues. However, the collective data we receive helps us keep a pulse on what consumers are experiencing, may lead to investigations and serves as a deterrent to the companies we regulate.