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Jeffrey Tambor and Jill Soloway delivered Amazon.com Inc. its first major Emmy awards for the show “Transparent,” as the online retailer went toe-to-toe with Time Warner Inc.’s HBO, highlighting the growing competition between video streaming services vs. traditional cable television. Berenberg Senior Media Analyst Sarah Simon discusses with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua on “The Pulse.” (4:26)

Despite endless promises better customer service is right around the corner, the Federal Communications Commission’s e-mail box is overflowing from angry consumers fed up with Comcast.

A Freedom of Information Act request by CityExplainer brought a massive document dump in response, containing more than 2,200 customer complaints received over three months (April, May and June 2015) regarding Comcast’s broadband service — about 25 a day. The complaints rolled in despite little or no publicity the FCC is open to hearing from consumers about shoddy service. The top five cities for complaints — Atlanta, Ga.; Chicago, Ill.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Houston, Tex.; and Jacksonville, Fla.

“The types of complaints CityExplainer reviewed included customer issues with Comcast Internet service availability, billing conflicts, and speeds,” the blog reports. “You’ll see senior citizens and others complaining about unrelenting billing errors, people complaining about alleged data throttling and data caps, and residents’ sad tales of dealing with technicians who come — or don’t come — to their homes to fix problems.”

Comcast complaint hotspots (Image: CityExplainer)

One customer in Mobile, Ala. told the FCC he is livid about Comcast’s usage cap trial affecting his community, and accused the cable company of lying about the length and nature of the trial:

Since October 1, 2013, Comcast has been charging consumers in Mobile, Alabama additional money for every 50GB of traffic over an artificially mandated 300GB traffic limit. They have been conducting this “test market” of tiered pricing in other areas as well. (See https://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/internet/data-usage-Where-will-these-plans-be-launched). Complainant argues that Comcast should treat all of its customers across the nation equally. Whereas in other markets, no traffic limitation is currently being applied, Complainant and all others in the “test markets” have been charged additional money for internet traffic above and beyond an artificially set limit of 300GB, as if the data were a tangible utility such as water that were going to run out. Comcast has provided no rationale for the 300GB/month limitation other than congestion, and has provided consumers no evidence that such congestion actually exists.

While the FCC likely sees only the most persistent complainers fed up and fueled by anger to reach out to the FCC, the company’s Facebook page is a Niagara Falls of Nihilism — stories from weary customers waiting six hours for a technician that never showed, gotcha surprise fees, or “tell them anything” sales agents who promise customers the world and rarely deliver. One thing that isn’t rare at Comcast customer service is being disconnected in the middle of your call.

Cindi Satoria’s story is just today’s example:

I moved last week. A technician was at my home over 6 hours. Smoked most of the day. Rummaged through all of my closet doors and when he left, my telephone still has not worked in a week. I called customer service and waited all day Saturday for a no show appointment. Then, customer service argues that we never had an appointment. I am so fed up. I want to cancel everything. I have been with Comcast for years. The service is unbearable. I am not satisfied. I asked to file a complaint with the technical group and I was hung up on.

The FCC passes along the complaints it receives to Comcast for follow-up. In many cases, a complaint to the FCC will win the customer service credits (especially on overlimit charges), free upgrades or other complimentary services to placate the customer. Stop the Cap! readers have used the FCC complaint form for months to get extra charges for Internet overlimit fees removed from their bill and credited back. Others have been offered new equipment, a better class of service, or lower rates.

(All 2,200+ complaints are available for free download here [in spreadsheet format]; and in the original PDF format released by the FCC, available here, courtesy of CityExplainer.)

Image from Meet New Charter television ad (Image courtesy: Charter Communications)

Charter Communications has begun advocating for its merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in advertisements that note Netflix is a merger supporter.

“Netflix says our upcoming merger with Time Warner Cable is a good thing for you,” said the advertisement, which also promoted an Associated Press story that stated Netflix supports Charter’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

The 30-second spots, now run by Time Warner in heavy rotation during local ad inserts on cable networks, promotes Charter’s 60Mbps entry-level broadband tier, 200 HD channels, no contracts or hidden fees, and the company’s claim it offers unlimited broadband access. It does not mention Charter executives have included a three-year expiration date on their commitments, after which the company can do almost anything it pleases.

Charter is hoping to enlist Time Warner Cable and Bright House customers to advocate for their merger’s approval with regulators and has launched a new website called Meet New Charter to promote the deal.

As of early September, the sparse website includes four testimonials — one from Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix who supports the transaction because Charter promises to voluntarily abide by Net Neutrality policies, won’t attempt to extract fees from Netflix to improve the reach of its service for TWC/Bright House customers, and won’t have usage caps — all deterrents to subscribers using online video.

The other three testimonials come from cable and broadcast programming networks depending on carriage deals with Charter to increase their audience reach.

Meet New Charter wrote of these commitments for Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks customers:

Faster speeds. Charter’s slowest broadband tier is 60Mbps, which enhances the ability of several people in the same house to watch streaming high-definition video at the same time.

Affordable, faster broadband at lower prices. New Charter will price its new 60Mbps entry level speeds based on Charter’s current model, which is less expensive than TWC and BHN’s comparable offerings.   Charter’s pricing model offers nationally uniform pricing with no data caps, no usage-based pricing, no modem fees and no early termination fees.

Committed to Net Neutrality. Charter has long practiced network neutrality and consistently invested in interconnection capacity to avoid network congestion.

Investing in customer care. We are focused on improving New Charter’s customer service and improving our relationships with our customers across our footprint.  Over the last three years, Charter has brought back jobs from overseas call centers and hired thousands of people to improve our customer care services. New Charter will also return TWC call center jobs to the United States and will hire and train thousands of new employees for its customer service call centers and field technician operations.

A quicker rollout of advanced technology. We will complete the full digitization of TWC and BHN—freeing up spectrum that will allow for faster broadband speeds and more high-definition channels and On-Demand offerings.

New Charter customers will transition to Charter’s new cloud-based guide. The new guide will offer intuitive search and discovery and will work on old and new set-top boxes, so consumers will get the benefits of the new guide without needing a technician to visit or to pay more for a new box.

To carry out these ambitions, Charter will have to drop analog video channels from the lineup, which means cable television customers will need to lease set-top boxes or other devices for each connected television in their home.

Consumer Reports has also repeatedly rated Charter as one of the country’s worst cable operators (sub req’d.) for customer service, pricing, customer satisfaction, and reliability. In 2015 it rated among the bottom five cable operators nationwide.

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Charter Communications has begun running this advertisement in heavy rotation on Time Warner Cable systems promoting its merger deal. (30 seconds)

The unstated reality of Internet traffic growth usually leaves out what impact streaming pornographic videos can have on network traffic, and for consumers, their broadband usage allowance. We are about to find out with last week’s arrival of Pornhub Premium (noted by DSL Reports), a new on-demand Internet streaming service its owners believe will quickly become the “Netflix of porn.”

Pornhub Premium ($9.99/mo) “offers an all new ad-free experience to its users, complete with faster playback and higher quality streaming on the millions of videos currently on Pornhub as well as the largest collection of exclusive full length HD adult titles available in crisp 1080p resolution.” Customers get a free seven-day trial before the charges begin. They can use it to test what kind of impact HD phim sex video will have on their usage allowance. It could prove considerable for frequent return visitors.

“Simply put, Pornhub Premium, is setting the new standard. Users will benefit from enhanced access to all of the content they already enjoy on Pornhub.com – with improved streaming quality – as well as over 100,000 full-length premium exclusive scenes at the touch of a finger or click of the mouse,” said Corey Price, vice president, Pornhub. “We’re looking to take the crown as the ‘Netflix of porn,’ and with the colossal amount of content we’ll be providing – and adding tons more daily – we’re confident our fan base will totally embrace this product and reinforce our position as the top provider of on-demand adult video.”

Pornhub Premium’s ad campaign has sparked an international incident. Cheese producers in Italy are not pleased.

Or not.

The publicity campaign introducing the adult entertainment service has already caused one international incident. The Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese Consortium is weighing legal action against Pornhub after referring to their aged family friendly Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese in the same sentence as “that vulgar website.”

The European Union and Italian authorities both protect the image of the consortium’s dairy products, so there could be trouble. The cheese group wants Pornhub to immediately stop capitalizing on the fame of Parmigiano-Reggiano to pitch “vile” porn videos.

The dispute threatens to become far worse than the Spaghetti Scandal of 1957, when Italian authorities were on fire after the BBC aired a hoax story suggesting spaghetti was harvested from trees. Adding to the outrage – many in northern Europe believed the report was true.

Then there are the other objections, of course.

“Pornhub Premium is unlimited filth and degradation, a new low,” came an anonymous comment from a Florida resident who claimed he was a pastor.

Nolte: Time to cut the cord and starve left-wing media.

The only solution to stop the “largest swindle big business ever played on the American people” is to cut cable television’s cord and stop paying for channels you do not want or need.

That advice comes from the conservative Breitbart News Service, among the first to make cable television bundling a political issue:

Meanwhile, for around $100 a month pay TV is not only pummeling you with about 20 minutes of ads an hour, but forcing you to pay for a ton of networks you hate. Moreover, many of these networks get a chunk of your cable bill. Even if you don’t watch left-wing CNN and MSNBC, if they are on your package, chances are a part of your bill is going directly to both.

If you want to put CNN, MSNBC, MTV, and all these other low-rated, left-wing networks out of business, not watching them makes absolutely no difference.

You have to cut the cord.

Nearly half of CNN’s revenue comes from this immoral revenue stream. CNN is taking your money to attack you all day every day.

And that is the great con the gigantic left-wing multinationals have pulled off for decades. Something like 100 million homes keep hundreds of networks profitable by forcing those customers into overpriced cable packages. Maybe 15 cable networks could survive solely on ad revenue generated by actual eyeballs. The rest would go poof, and good riddance.

Author John Nolte, editor-at-large for the news service, blames big cable bills on the “Hollywood rich” who he writes just keep getting richer. He thinks a better solution is to sign up with Netflix or Amazon and say goodbye to cable television.

Breitbart News, Nolte writes, “has been way ahead of the curve” predicting the demise of the one-size-fits-all cable television bundle that customers can hardly afford “while Obama’s economy falters and an influx of illegal aliens keep wages depressed.” Nothing stops the rate increases until consumers cancel the service, Nolte believes.

Reader reaction to the piece quickly identifies one shortcoming for conservatives: the loss of Fox News Channel. But many comments expressed the view Fox News has gone “Republican In Name Only” and isn’t worth paying for either. Many conservatives taking anti-corporate political views prefer alternative media like Breitbart News Service and Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, which ironically has tried to land cable carriage agreements for years with only limited success.