Lovett – Paid nearly double his 2010 salary for even worse results.

The man hired specifically to improve dismal customer satisfaction ratings for Charter Communications has walked away from the company with more than $20 million in pay in 2011 after just over two years at the helm, even as the company’s ratings grew worse.

Michael Lovett assumed the CEO position at Charter after the company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November, 2009. Lovett was charged with cleaning up the company’s lousy reputation for customer service, service quality, and pricing.

He resigned this past February leaving Charter with an even poorer customer satisfaction rating. Now a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission discloses he walked away with $1.3 million in salary and $19.24 million in bonuses, golden parachutes, stock awards, and other resignation-related benefits — almost double the pay he received in 2010.

Charter is legendary for billing errors, disinterested customer service representatives, Internet Overcharging schemes that limit broadband consumption, poor quality repair and installation work, and inadequate infrastructure.

In July, 2011 Atlantic magazine named Charter the 5th most-hated company in America, and only received a satisfaction rating of 59/100 in the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

This year, the “don’t care bears” of cable did even worse — achieving the rank of 3rd most-hated company in America, stiffing customers with bait and switch promotions customers never received, even shoddier customer service and dodgy billing practices.

“I’d rather have AT&T, and that should tell you something,” shares Thom, a Charter customer in St. Louis. “You can’t believe how bad a cable company can be until you’ve dealt with Charter. You have a better chance of being dealt with fairly in a mob-run casino.”

“Shareholders must be among the dumbest people in America to watch this company flush more than $30 million down Lovett’s bank account for two years and accomplishing the amazing task of actually making things worse,” Thom writes. “He’s proof that throwing money at a problem does not work, no matter how many press releases Charter puts out.”

Charter is now being run by an ex-executive from Cablevision Industries, who has spent his tenure luring other Cablevision mid and high level executives to join him at Charter. President and CEO Tom Rutledge, chief operating officer John Bickham, and chief marketing officer Jonathan Hargis — former Cablevision executives now show up for work at a New York office Charter opened specifically for them.

“Nothing ever changes at Charter,” says Thom. “Instead of spending money actually improving service, they’re opening new executive suites in expensive New York just so the top brass need not slum it here in St. Louis. It’s good to know they have their priorities straight.”

The Better Business Bureau has processed more than 5,000 customer complaints against Charter in the past three years, most eventually resolved through Charter’s executive escalation office in Simpsonville, S.C.

Charter Communications reported a net loss of $94 million in the first quarter ended March 31.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart expressed his views about the ongoing dispute between DirecTV and Viacom into his first show back from vacation. He was not charitable to his ultimate boss Viacom, asking company executives, “What are you, China?” Viacom quietly restored streaming access to its programming earlier today. (Clip viewable only within the United States) (5 minutes)

McAdam

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam wants you to spend more with the phone company, and if his vision of Verizon’s future comes true, you will.

The company’s newest CEO spoke on a wide-ranging number of topics for the benefit of Wall Street investors at the Guggenheim Securities Symposium. A transcript of the event delivers several newsworthy revelations on the company’s future plans.

McAdam rose through the ranks of Verizon Communications with a specialty in the company’s immensely profitable wireless business. His predecessor, Ivan Seidenberg, spent his career at Verizon Communications working with the company’s legacy wireline (landline) network. While Seidenberg envisioned a new future for Verizon’s landline business with an upgraded fiber optic network called FiOS, McAdam maintained a different vision having run Verizon Wireless as a profit-making machine since 2006. McAdam believes Verizon’s future earnings and focus should be primarily on the wireless side of the business, because that is where there is serious money to be made.

“The first thing I did when Ivan sort of named me as the Chief Operating Officer was we had a very well-defined credo in the wireless side,” McAdam said. “We created it when we first came together in ’99 because we had seven different companies and we knew we had seven different cultures and we needed to tell people what it was we were really looking for. So we created that document. We spent a lot of time on it. We do a lot of reward and recognition as a result of it and that culture really took root in wireless.”

McAdam’s leadership also aggressively challenged the long-standing telephone company philosophy of earning a stable, predictable profit as Verizon did when it was a regulated monopoly. Instead, McAdam shifted the work culture towards an obsession with shareholder value.

“We took the top 2000 leaders through what we call ‘Leading for Shareholder Value’ and that was really a cultural shift for us because, if you think about it, the wireline side of the business has come out of the defined rate of return culture and we left that competitively a while ago. I am not sure we left it culturally,” McAdam said. “So we have been far more pushing why do you make that investment, what is the return on it, what is the priority of that investment versus another investment.”

Verizon’s Plans to Abandon Rural Landline Customers – Sign Up for Our Expensive LTE 4G Wireless Broadband With a 10GB Usage Cap Instead

Some of the most revealing commentary from McAdam came in response to questions about what Verizon plans to do with its enormous landline phone network, dominant in the northeastern United States.

In comments sure to alarm rural Verizon customers from Massachusetts to Virginia, McAdam clearly signaled the company is laying the groundwork to abandon its rural phone network (and DSL broadband) as soon as regulators allow. Dave Burstein at DSL Prime estimates that could impact as many as 18 million Verizon customers across the country.

“In […] areas that are more rural and more sparsely populated, we have got [a wireless 4G] LTE built that will handle all of those services and so we are going to cut the copper off there,” McAdam said. “We are going to do it over wireless. So I am going to be really shrinking the amount of copper we have out there and then I can focus the investment on that to improve the performance of it.”

Elsewhere, in more urban and suburban areas, McAdam also wants Verizon to purge its network of copper.

“The vision that I have is we are going into the copper plant areas and every place we have FiOS, we are going to kill the copper,” McAdam said. “We are going to just take it out of service and we are going to move those services onto FiOS. We have got parallel networks in way too many places now, so that is a pot of gold in my view.”

In other words, McAdam would shift money spent maintaining and upgrading rural landline service into the company’s wireless network in rural America and its FiOS network in more urban environments, both of which will improve profits. FiOS allows Verizon to pitch television, broadband, and phone service in one profitable triple-play package, while also discontinuing standalone DSL service. Rural customers pushed to wireless LTE for broadband will face onerous usage limits and more expensive service for phone calls and broadband. Using Verizon’s LTE network for video would be prohibitively expensive.

McAdam hints the company has used its lobbyist force to make preparations to abandon rural customers first in Florida, Virginia, and Texas where state regulators approved legislation that eliminates the requirement Verizon serve as “the carrier of last resort.” That law required Verizon to deliver landline phone service to any customer in its service area on request. With that provision stricken in those three states, Verizon can abandon any landline customer it chooses after serving written notice.

McAdam said he intends to continue lobbying other states to adopt similar deregulation, and chided legislatures in both New York and New Jersey for “being backward” because they have repeatedly refused to allow Verizon to walk away from its rural customer obligations.

Burstein thinks the changes in progress at Verizon will be a disaster for affordable rural broadband.

“This makes a mockery of ‘affordable broadband,’ especially when Verizon and AT&T are boycotting the plan for discounts for poor schoolchildren,” Burstein says. “The detente between telcos and cable companies means the prices of modest Internet speeds (3-15 megabits down) are typically going up from $30-45 to $55-70.”

Burstein also notes the change spells disaster for competitors who sell DSL service over existing phone networks.

“Nationwide, alternatives to the telco/cablecos have less than 5% of the residential market but in some areas they remain important,” Burstein says. “The most interesting, Sonic.net in California, offers unlimited calls and Internet up to 20 meg for $50/month, 20-50% cheaper than AT&T.”

“High prices, unacceptable service choices and further rural depopulation are bad policy,” he adds.

Verizon still earns enormous revenue from its remaining landline customers, revenue McAdam hopes will be replaced by selling business-focused services instead.

“Cloud [service] is continuing to pick up for us. Security is I think going to be an even more important play for us as we go forward,” McAdam noted. “I think these large enterprise accounts, offering them kind of a global service with those up the stack […and…] applications on top of it drive it as well. So there is a number of pieces in the portfolio that I think will take us up and more than compensate for some of the falling off of copper-based services like DSL and voice and that sort of thing.”

Verizon’s Unionized Employees Are Wrong-Headed Defending Verizon’s Landline Network

McAdam also blamed the company’s unionized employees for remaining loyal to the company’s traditional role in the landline business.  Unions like the Communications Workers of America continue to push Verizon to expand its FiOS fiber optic network in more places, but the company has left its FiOS expansion on hold, diverting investment into its wireless business. Both McAdam and the union agree the days of copper wire networks are numbered, but McAdam hints that union concessions (and fewer unionized employees) are required before the company will again expand FiOS.

“Our employees see that it is not sustainable to keep having copper plant out there. You really can’t invest in it; it is difficult to maintain it; and they want to see us improve on FiOS,” McAdam said. “And when I am out in the field, the techs and the reps will be the first to point out kind of some of the dumb policies I call them that we have around the business. Well, a lot of those are based on rules that were negotiated with the union back in the ’60s and ’70s.”

“So we have to get the union leadership to understand that if the company is able to be more flexible in meeting customer needs then we can grow things like FiOS, which will provide good long-term jobs,” McAdam added. “Will it be the same number as what we had in the past? No.”

Verizon’s Enormous Offshore Bank Accounts: Waiting for a ‘Business-Friendly’ Administration to Let Them Bring the Money Back, Tax-Free

McAdam also signaled investors that the phone company’s profits massed in overseas bank accounts are going to remain in place until they know who wins the next election. Verizon wants to repatriate some of that offshore money, but they want to do it tax-free.

“Everybody is kind of waiting to see who controls the Senate and who controls the White House and they are waiting to make those — you have got to understand what the tax situation is going to look like, so we are all waiting to make those investments,” McAdam said.

‘Share Everything’ Lays the Foundation to Monetize Your Data Usage… Forever

McAdam is a big supporter of the company’s new Share Everything wireless plan, which charges smartphone owners $90 a month for unlimited voice calling, texting, and a small 1GB bucket of data that he is convinced customers will be prepared to spend more to enlarge.

“If I know that I have an intelligent home that I can get to any number of ways. If I know that I can do everything I want in my car that I can do in front of my TV set or my PC or on my tablet, I think it just takes away a lot of the restraints,” McAdam said. “Is it going to cost them more money? Yes, but it will probably shift their wallet spend from other things that they do individually into this sort of a bucket of gigabytes. And so I think it will be a significant [revenue] stream for us.”

FitchRatings, a credit ratings agency, agrees in a new report.

“The new pricing structure taken by the industry leader is a disciplined pricing action that could create more cash flow stability longer term within the wireless industry,” the credit ratings agency said last week.

Fitch notes data services are increasingly becoming a larger source of revenue for wireless phone companies. In the first quarter alone, data revenues at Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile USA — all carriers that abandoned flat rate wireless data plans, grew 19% year over to year to $14.2 billion. That represents 41 percent of the companies’ service revenues.

Despite assertions from Verizon that the new plans deliver convenience and better value for subscribers, Fitch found they actually represent a substantial price increase for many customers.

“These increases are sometimes material, depending on whether the legacy rate plans have low recurring charges for text messaging or calling minutes. As a result, prices have generally increased for new subscribers,” Fitch reports.

Fitch warns investors Verizon is likely to lose customers over its new pricing strategy, and experience a slowdown in new customer growth as well, at least until competing carriers realign their pricing and plans to be similar (or match) those Verizon introduced last month.

The Days of Your Subsidized Android/iPhone May Be Numbered

McAdam’s vision also includes a re-examination of device subsidies as customers increasingly depend on wireless devices. McAdam previously indicated the wireless device subsidy was designed to get customers to adopt and embrace new technologies, and as adoption rates have soared, the need to keep discounting technology that customers depend on diminishes.

He echoed that sentiment at the Guggenheim Securities Symposium, noting that Verizon this month abandoned subsidies on tablet devices. For McAdam, discounting wireless technology serves one purpose: to quickly establish a new business relationship with a customer that probably would not buy their first device at full price.

But McAdam recognizes changing the company’s subsidy that customers expect to receive must happen gradually. It has already started, first by eliminating early upgrade discounts, then by dropping the company’s loyalty discount “New Every Two” plan. Now, the company will only allow grandfathered unlimited data plan customers to keep those plans if they agree to forego any subsidy on their next smartphone.

“If you look at the telematics industry today [services like OnStar], the car companies subsidize a device that goes into the car. So I think that we have a tendency over the years to sort of look and say, oh, something is going to happen very quickly,” McAdam said. “Things have a tendency to evolve over a long period of time, so I think you will have some devices, like the tablet today, that [are] not subsidized and you’ll probably still have certain devices that are because you want to establish that relationship with a customer and that is the easiest way to get there.”

Verizon Wants You to Use the Cable Industry’s Growing Wi-Fi Network

McAdam’s vision also offloads as much of Verizon’s 3G and 4G traffic to other networks as possible. Ironically, one of the biggest networks he hopes customers will use instead of his are the growing number of Wi-Fi services offered by his competitors in the cable industry.

“It is interesting that a lot of people have said, well, I can’t believe you’re going to partner with [cable companies],” McAdam said. “You are not going to use their Wi-Fi are you? Well, of course, we are. I mean we want to shift as much onto FiOS or onto the fixed network where we can and then provide — use that capacity to provide those higher demand services like video.”

McAdam added he does not want customers sitting in their homes watching video over his LTE 4G network. He also wants that traffic shifted to Wi-Fi.

“So our thinking going forward as we talk about kind of the ‘One Verizon’ approach is we want to use every network asset we have and if that means jumping onto FiOS or using the cloud services for mobile as well as fixed line, using security across all of our different access technologies, we want that network to be seamless and that is what our CTO, Tony Melone, is driving hard on in the business right now,” McAdam said.

One preview of that thinking at work can be found on Verizon Wireless’ hottest new device — the Samsung Galaxy S3. Verizon’s version of the phone browbeats customers with prominent menus that encourage Wi-Fi use wherever possible. The phone’s persistent reminder has become a pest according to many of the phone’s owners, who consider both the message and the difficulty keeping Wi-Fi shut off obtrusive.

Verizon’s partnership with large cable companies including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, and Bright House Networks originally involved the acquisition of excess wireless spectrum cable companies originally intended to use to compete with the mobile phone industry. With the cable industry abandoning those plans, the proposed collaboration involving Verizon Wireless grew to include cross-marketing each other’s products and services, and now apparently includes sharing the cable companies’ growing Wi-Fi networks.

Verizon Believes The Future of Telecommunications Needs to Be In the Hands of Two Companies — Verizon and AT&T

A point of shared belief between market leaders Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is that excessive competition just does not make sense. Both believe federal regulators have it all wrong when they push to maintain the level of competition that still exists in the telecommunications business. When the Department of Justice effectively pulled the plug on a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, Stephenson was outraged and, in one investor conference call, launched a tirade against regulators and suggested that AT&T would throw in the towel on expanding rural broadband in a retaliatory move.

McAdam and Stephenson both believe that competition in telecommunications represents wasted investment, inefficiency, and value destruction.

“I think the fundamental problem here, and it is sort of like fighting gravity I think, is that it is so expensive to build these networks that you are not going to support seven or eight carriers,” McAdam told investors. “I don’t — frankly, I think you’ll be lucky if you can support three in a healthy environment.”

But McAdam recognizes that if it achieves a wireless duopoly with AT&T, it must be a benevolent one, or else the marketplace abuses the wireless industry has a track record engaging in will invite regulatory scrutiny.

“We have a tendency to create a great club and hand it to our detractors and say please beat me with this because we do some dumb things like fighting some of the number portability and trying to push a direct wireless directory,” McAdam said. “I mean there are things that have really upset customers and that invites regulation. So I think the industry has the responsibility to act in the best interests of the customer as part of the mix with a shareholder, but I think there is always going to be the battle with regulation.”

McAdam admits he is uncomfortable with the fact the Obama Administration has allowed the regulation pendulum to swing more towards enforced competition and checking the power of dominant carriers in the marketplace. He prefers the Bush Administration’s “hands-off” approach that allowed both Verizon and AT&T to snap up smaller competitors with scant regulatory review.

McAdam believes the Obama Administration’s FCC and Justice Department is slowing down wireless investment, innovation, and the industry’s ability to earn profits at a time when unemployment in sky high and increased investment will help drive the economy forward.

Customers sitting down to watch the local news in Louisville, Ky. on Time Warner Cable (formerly Insight) now get to see stories about ongoing bankruptcy woes at Eastman Kodak, house fires in Irondequoit, road work in Greece, and Scott Hetsko’s local forecast… for Rochester, N.Y.

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WLKY in Louisville is no longer seen on former Insight cable systems (now owned by Time Warner Cable). In its place, Louisville viewers are watching WROC-TV in Rochester, N.Y.  Here is why. (3 minutes)

No, it is not some weird sunspot reception and nobody transported you from Kentucky to western New York while you were sleeping. It’s simply another epic battle waged in:

RETRANSMISSION CARRIAGE CONSENT WARS: 2012

“Not getting the channels you are paying for does not necessarily entitle you to a refund, but does require you to pay more when a deal is eventually struck.”

WESH-TV in Daytona Beach/Orlando, Fla. is one of the Hearst-owned stations affected in the dispute with Insight/Time Warner Cable/Bright House Networks.

These skirmishes used to be commonplace around the end of the year, when carriage agreements between cable, satellite, and telephone companies with cable networks and local stations came up for renewal. When the programmer passed a figure written on a folded up piece of paper across the table to your pay television provider, the shock and awe of that number, occasionally 100-300 percent more than the year before, was the opening shot in a battle that now increasingly leads to favorite local stations or cable channels being stripped from your lineup.

In Louisville, that is precisely what happened to WLKY-TV, one of 15 stations owned by Hearst Television, taken off the lineup when Time Warner Cable/Insight/Bright House Networks could not successfully negotiate a renewal agreement. Time Warner complained Hearst wanted 300% more for each of the affected stations, an increase sure to be passed along to cable customers already long weary of endless annual rate increases. That was the same story told in other cities affected by what is now a week-long blackout. In Greensboro/Winston-Salem, N.C., Time Warner customers are doing without WXII-TV. Kansas City customers lost two local stations owned by Hearst — KMBC and KCWE. Two stations are also missing from Bright House’s lineup in Orlando: WESH and WKCF.

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Hearst Television’s general manager and president of WLKY has stopped referring to those watching the station simply as “viewers.” Glenn Haygood now calls them “subscribers.” Haygood talks with WHAS Radio about the dispute and what he thinks about Insight/Time Warner Cable. (10 minutes)

Insight/Time Warner Cable customers in Louisville, Ky. are now watching CBS shows on WROC-TV from Rochester, N.Y.

But why are Louisville viewers now watching the boating forecast for Lake Ontario, several hundred miles away? Because Time Warner Cable thinks it has a signed contract with Nexstar Broadcasting Group that lets them turn several Nexstar-owned stations into “superstations,” importing them in cities where contract disputes have knocked the local station off the cable lineup. In Louisville, WLKY, a CBS affiliate, has been replaced by WROC, the CBS affiliate in Rochester. In Greensboro and several other cities, WXII, an NBC affiliate, has been replaced with WBRE in Wilkes Barre, Penn. Some other Time Warner customers are instead watching WTWO out of Terre Haute, Ind., for NBC shows.

It represents a half-measure that Time Warner Cable’s Jeff Simmermon tells Stop the Cap! is “making the best of a tough situation.”

Viewers are naturally outraged.

“I’ve always wanted to know the weather and news in Rochester, Buffalo, Ontario and Caribou,” Kelly Grether teased. “Louisville did make [WROC’s weather] map believe it or not.”

Others are simply confused and engaged in must-flee TV.

“I saw the news coming on,” Greensboro resident Mona Wright told the News & Record. “It didn’t take me but one minute to figure out that these counties were nowhere around us; I changed the channel.”

Some Louisville viewers are even assuming the sales and discounts being advertised on WROC are good in Kentucky as well (often, they are not).

For now, it is difficult for Kentucky viewers to know what WROC is airing because the local on-screen program guide has not been updated to include listings for the Rochester station. Time Warner is pushing a lot of viewers to WROC’s website for program information.

Viewers hoping to practice their Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune skills during the dinner hour lost that opportunity altogether in some cities, while in the Triad of North Carolina, viewers discovered the two shows on two different channels at the same time.

For now, WROC has completely ignored its new Kentucky audience, but WBRE’s morning anchors now regularly acknowledge and welcome their viewers from several states away.

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WFTV in Orlando reports on Bright House Networks’ customers being shut out of WESH-TV in Daytona Beach after the cable operator failed to meet Hearst Television’s demands for an increase in carriage payments.  (2 minutes)

The dispute has since enlarged to bring in side players who are unimpressed with Time Warner’s creative problem-solving:

• Impacted stations now off Time Warner’s lineup think the “new” stations on the lineup are about as honorable as employing scab workers during a union strike;
• Nexstar, for the second time, declares Time Warner is illegally importing their stations to unauthorized places. They are threatening to complain to the FCC and possibly sue to stop the practice. Nexstar earlier complained about a similar dispute in upstate New York which left viewers in northern New York watching WBRE in Wilkes-Barre. But the carriage dispute was settled quickly enough for WBRE to go back to being  viewable only in Pennsylvania, ending the dispute;
• Syndicated program owners sell shows like Wheel of Fortune on a “market exclusive” basis, which means competing local stations already paying for syndicated shows do not want out of area stations also carrying those shows to local audiences, diluting their audience.
• Advertisers on stations now off the lineup paid ad rates based on tens of thousands of cable viewers who are now probably watching another station. Some are demanding “make goods” or outright refunds to get the value for money they were originally promised.

But nobody is more caught in the middle than consumers, especially those paying for channels they are no longer getting.

“I want my money back,” says Orlando Bright House customer Luis Fernandez. “I have lost two stations on my lineup and my bill should be going down to compensate, but Bright House is refusing to credit me.”

Time Warner Cable does not usually give refunds either, arguing that its customers pay for a package of channels and the technology that delivers those networks to customers. Giving a refund for the loss of one or two stations would be tantamount to the industry’s worst nightmare: getting customers used to the idea of paying individually for every channel.

One customer willing to make himself a major nuisance in Wauwatosa, near Milwaukee, Wis., finally wore Time Warner down and secured a $5 a month discount on his bill for the length of the dispute that knocked Milwaukee’s WISN off his lineup.

“[I called] Time Warner to voice my disgust in them putting me (the paying customer) in the middle of their negotiation failures, and after reaching a ‘supervisor,’ I was able to get a discount on my monthly bill,” the reader told the Journal-Sentinel. “It wasn’t easy, but I did it.”

Hearst is encouraging viewers to drop Time Warner like a hot potato and switch to AT&T U-verse or a satellite provider like DirecTV. Negotiations seem to be continuing on a sporadic basis, but one week later, customers heading for the door have already left or are simply watching the local news on another channel.

Satellite Showdown — DirecTV vs. Viacom: Playing Down and Dirty With Everyone

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Viacom turns the tables on DirecTV’s clever ads to lambaste the satellite provider for cutting off more than two dozen cable channels owned by Viacom.  (1 minute)

If a customer took Hearst’s advice, they might find themselves out of the frying pan and into the fire. Newly arriving DirecTV customers can join the Anger Party 20 million satellite customers are now throwing over a much larger, higher profile dispute between the satellite provider and Viacom. Collateral damage: the loss of networks including Palladia, Centric, Tr3s, CMT, Logo, NickToons, VH1 Classic, TeenNick, Nick Jr., Nick@Nite, Spike, BET, VH1, TV Land, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.

Some financial analysts are calling the dispute the mother-of-all-program-fee-battles, and as they watch both sides dig in, some warn it could mean DirecTV customers won’t be watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart until August.

DirecTV says Viacom wants a 30% rate increase to renew its contract to carry the company’s networks. That is comparatively cheap contrasted with the prices Hearst wants Time Warner Cable to now pay. Analysts expect DirecTV and Viacom will eventually settle their dispute by agreeing to a 27% rate increase, but nobody knows how long the two will battle it out before an inevitable agreement is reached.

Regardless of the timing, customers will likely pay the price. Nomura analyst Michael Nathanson informed his Wall Street clients DirecTV will end up paying Viacom $2.85 per subscriber — about 60 cents more per month than it pays today. That’s tough for DirecTV to swallow, and probably even harder to pass along to customers. Satellite TV providers have some of the country’s most-frugal pay television customers who are especially resistant to rate increases.

The dispute is so high profile, both companies are bringing out high-powered executives and show talent to argue their respective cases.

Millions of dollars are at stake, and both Viacom and DirecTV are willing to fight to the death, even leaving customers on the battlefield.

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Not so fast, says DirecTV CEO Michael White, seen here presenting DirecTV’s position in the Viacom dispute for the benefit of concerned customers.  (1 minute)

“All we are trying to get is a fair deal for our customers and I’m sorry our customers are being forced into the middle of this,” DirecTV’s Michael White said. “We just think we pay a half a billion dollars a year and a billion dollar increase over five years, over 30 percent, is not justified by the marketplace or fair relative to our largest competitors or by their ratings.”

Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman counters, “In the last seven years since we did the last DirecTV deal, we have successfully and peacefully concluded affiliate agreements with every major distributor in the U.S. We are prepared to move forward. It’s unfortunate consumers for the first time are not able to enjoy our channels,” said Dauman, adding, “I don’t want to negotiate in public.”

DirecTV was telling its customers it can watch many of the missing shows for free online, until Viacom reportedly began removing that direct viewing option last week. That hardball tactic could impact everyone trying to stream Viacom’s shows — DirecTV customer or not.

“We’ve temporarily slimmed down our offerings, as DirecTV markets them as an alternative to having our networks,” a Viacom spokesman told CNNMoney. “The online content is intended to serve as a complimentary marketing tool for our partners.”

“At least they were honest about the reasons why they pulled this,” said Stop the Cap! reader Dick Armlo, a DirecTV customer in Idaho. “But fortunately, you can still find a lot of the shows on Amazon’s video on demand and Hulu.”

Customers threatening to switch providers often discover the new neighborhood they move to is just as bad as the one they left.

Dish Network customers are currently enduring a long-standing dispute with Cablevision-owned AMC Networks. The result is no AMC, IFC, Sundance Channel and WeTV on Dish. AMC is telling Dish customers to turn their dish into a birdbath and head elsewhere… perhaps to AT&T U-verse which just recently averted its own blackout with AMC over the same channels. AT&T customers can expect part of their next rate increase to cover the negotiated rate hike AMC won for itself — the one AT&T agreed to on your behalf. After all, it’s your money at stake, not theirs.

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CNBC talks with Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman to get his views about the dispute with one of his best customers — DirecTV.  (2 minutes)

You gotta love Verizon’s $30 upgrade fee to provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect. I’d rather deal with “no credit, no refunds, no checks” CricKet.

Verizon Wireless customers pay a $30 “upgrade fee” when purchasing new equipment with a new two-year contract, ostensibly to “provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect.”

After losing more than an hour of my life yesterday afternoon inside a Verizon Wireless store, I am here to tell you it isn’t worth it.

For the second time in seven months, Verizon Wireless has taught me they specialize in keeping customers waiting, giving them conflicting information, and proving the employees should be availing themselves of the “Wireless Workshops, online educational tools, and consultations with experts who provide advice and guidance on devices that are more sophisticated than ever.”

The latest nightmare began with an upgrade to Samsung’s Galaxy S3 that arrived with two 4G SIM cards that were initially declared useless-on-arrival. Despite early assurances that a customer service representative should be able to manage the activation of the phones without loss of our coveted unlimited data plan, it turned out a visit to a local Verizon Wireless store was recommended to swap out the 4G SIM cards enclosed in the box as part of a slightly-complicated activation.

Walking into the Pittsford, N.Y. Verizon store brought a feeling of trepidation when I realized my friend “the Verizon Wireless Welcome Kiosk” that I had been signing in at during previous visits was now missing. Instead, the store manager, armed with an Apple iPad, registered me for the inevitable queue of customers waiting for assistance.

“The wait should be around 15 minutes,” the store manager promised.

Nearly 30 minutes later, as I watched what seemed to be the only employee not on break deal with Ms. I-Don’t-Know-and-I-Can’t-Decide, the store manager returned to ask why I bothered to show up in-store to activate phones I could have managed online or by phone.

“Because I was told to,” I explained. “I have two phones that require new SIM cards and special attention to ensure I don’t lose my unlimited data plan.”

“Well, you have to activate them first,” came the reply.

That was news to me, of course, when a Verizon Wireless phone representative an hour earlier warned me specifically not to activate the phones and let a store customer service representative handle everything.

“Please don’t even attempt to activate the phones because I have had customers doing that all day who forfeited their unlimited data plans when they tried,” urged the phone representative. “You need to bring everything to the store and make sure they do it for you because I don’t want you inconvenienced.”

Good intentions, but reality always intrudes.

Phillip “Kill Me Now” Dampier

By now, 35 minutes into my 15-minute wait, several additional frustrated customers trickled in, all with the same phone. One found he couldn’t activate it even when he tried. Another needed his assigned a different number. Again, the store manager insisted the customers activate their phones before approaching a store employee.

As I wearily watched Ms. Indecision -still- taking up the time of the employee that was going to serve me next, I heard other customers casually griping about upgrade fees, the new Share Everything plan, and Verizon’s idea of customer service these days. The consensus: Verizon was shaking down their customers for more cash and also punishing people forced to walk into a store to resolve a problem. Pittsford is one of Rochester’s wealthiest suburbs, and even here customers were tapped out.

I have literally been here before. Back in December, at the same store, a remarkably unhelpful Verizon Wireless employee insisted the problems with my last phone, intermittent they might be, were not his problem if he could not exactly duplicate it while I waited. Since he did not have time to try (but had at least 15 minutes to chat up a young lady that preceded me about his holiday pie-making experiences), I was on my own, just as my warranty was set to expire.

He no longer works there.

As each new customer arrived on this remarkably warmer July day, the store manager warned the wait was growing longer and longer. He didn’t mention the customer -still- at the counter contemplating this or that and holding up the entire free market wireless economy in the process.

At this point, I was advised I could activate my phones by dialing *228 and I’d be all set. Only a year earlier, a Verizon employee told me 4G LTE customers should burn their fingers with a cigarette lighter if they ever felt the urge to try, because it would “scramble the SIM card forever.” True or false, I felt burned already.

I decided instead to call Verizon Wireless customer service, ironically, from inside the Verizon Wireless store that was supposed to be giving me “the level of service and support I have come to expect.”

“Due to (incredibly) high call volumes, your wait (is likely to be until the snow flies before someone will pick up your call).”

I then realize there are two other customers doing precisely the same thing I am, which probably explained those high call volumes.

Mr. Store Manager returned to ask if I had activated my phones yet. I explained I could not get through, but was bemused to notice the phones had now powered up with messages indicating they were in the process of activating themselves.

An hour into my 15 minute wait…

“That’s because you had your phones turned on,” came the odd explanation. “You have to turn the phones off before you call customer service.”

“I don’t think so, I seem to recall my Samsung Droid Charge activated itself in a similar fashion,” I replied.

“No, that isn’t how it works.”

Two minutes later, the phones activated themselves. I’m not certain I’ll ever know exactly why, especially after being told I had dud 4G SIM cards. But I also found it ironic that even a confused customer like myself, now dying in my personal Verizon hell, seemed to know more than the people working there, and I didn’t even take that Wireless Workshop.

Regardless, I was elated that stage of my trial had come to an end. Now I only had to have an employee swap those SIM cards out to assign the phones to the proper phone numbers. Then I could escape my excellent customer experience for good.

But there was Ms. Should-I-or-Shouldn’t-I, still tying up the growing line (the wait had now grown to perhaps an hour for customers entering the store… at their own risk.)

Suddenly, an employee miraculously returned from break and I was finally helped.

“You want insurance on these phone, right?”

“No.”

“But you have 14 days to change your mind.”

“No.”

“Which phone do you want on which number.”

“Since the phones are precisely the same, it does not matter to me.”

Those were the days.

Long pause.

The employee kept dropping below the counter to deal with an interminable number of snake-long thermal cash-register-like receipts that kept spitting out of the printer whenever he did anything on the slowly-responding computer.

After another 15 minutes, the new 4G SIM cards were in.

“Now let me show you some of the cool new features on your phone, but first enter your name and password.”

I compromised by entering my name and password but suggested we skip the training course. Besides, my personal lease renting space inside the store (and my new 2-year contract) was likely to expire before I would finally get out of there.

“We have some nice new cases to show you to protect your phones.”

“No thanks.” Now I am questioning why I bought the phones in the first place.

“Okay, now it is time to restore your apps.”

Kill me now.

As soon as the phones were up and running, back into the boxes they went, and polite thank-yous were delivered to all concerned. I then busted out of the store, more than an hour after my promised 15-minute wait, like a prisoner escaping Attica. Sure I realize I am not “free at last,” stuck on a new contract with Verizon for another two years, but I can do my time standing on my head so long as I can avoid ever dealing with another Verizon Wireless store… and keep my unlimited data.

They should pay me $30 to go through upgrading anything with them. Oh wait, just a year or so ago they did — $100 as part of Verizon’s long-gone “New Every Two” program… exorcised right along with their budget-minded voice calling options, unlimited data, and text plans suitable for the occasional text here and there. In their place, the all-new, super exciting $90 Share Everything plan… including $50 for a “generous” 1GB data allowance.

Thanks Verizon Wireless!