Here’s a problem most North Americans wish they had: confusing rate cuts that are coming as a result of fierce competition for your telecom dollar.

In Ireland, the problem is real and some consumers are finding themselves perplexed watching the cost of broadband, telephone, and television service dropping by as much as $159 a year from the four different providers competing across much of the country. Telco Eircom has a 35% market share (39% in 2013), UPC/Virgin Media Cable – 28% (25% in 2013), Vodafone – 21% (17% in 2013), and Sky – 12% (1% in 2013).

“Neighbors are talking to one another and comparing bills only to find some are paying less than others even though they have the same types of services,” says Richard Donahue, a Dublin resident turned compulsive comparison shopper. “Because competition is getting stronger, local providers are pushing to get customers into bundles of services to keep them from switching.”

The result is lower pricing to help convince consumers to take all of their business to one provider. The ongoing drop in the price of telephone, television and broadband service has now been measured by Comreg, Ireland’s telecoms regulator. It released a report this month stating prices have “fallen significantly for the average Irish household.”

Consumers willing to make providers fight for their business are saving over $100 a year on bundled service packages. Comreg reported that even without asking, the average consumer subscribing to a package of television and broadband service has seen prices fall by nearly $75 a year across the board. Those also subscribing to telephone service are paying around $50 less a year. Only the cost of standalone broadband has remained the same, but that price has stayed close to what the Irish consider an acceptable range for Internet access — between $15 and $40 a month.

Irish cable competitor UPC (now Virgin Media) sells a package of 240Mbps broadband with an unlimited calling landline for around $50 a month.

“Standalone broadband pricing may not be falling, but it isn’t rising either,” reports Donahue. “Service has improved with faster speeds and better reliability so you receive better value for money.”

Even mobile service prices are down by almost $90 a year, but there are some caveats.

“Ireland has one significant mobile problem yet to be sorted — the penalty for breaching allowances, which can be substantial,” Donahue said. “Comreg found almost a third of Ireland has received a warning text from a provider about nearing a limit provided by our allowances for voice minutes, texts, or data.”

Donahue adds the Irish are reticent about changing mobile providers, even if it would save them money.

“We love to complain about poor providers in this country that drop calls and leave us without coverage but 73 percent of us have not changed our provider in at least three years,” he reports. “Most don’t believe there are any savings doing so.”

Ireland appears to be a few years behind North American trends dealing with telecom services. The Comreg report found:

• Only 9 percent of Irish households subscribe to Netflix
• 76% of Irish mobile users still text back and forth but are gradually shifting towards app-based messaging services like Hangouts, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp
• 43% of those watching online video report watching less traditional live/linear TV
• Only about 58% of mobile users browse the web with their phones
• 60% of broadband users couldn’t tell you what broadband speeds they receive/are supposed to receive
• 88% of those 65+ still have landline phone service, while 46% of those 18-24 still use landlines to make and receive calls.

Time Warner Cable is turning lemons into lemonade with full-page ads in select newspapers promoting the company’s “improved customer service,” including a YouTube selection of their best hold music.

If looks could kill… you’d already be dead.

Time Warner’s website expands on the list of improvements, including not trapping you on hold for more than 90 seconds, 24/7 online and phone support hours, scheduling a time for a customer service representative to call you back, and commitments for same day or next day in-home service calls with as little as one-hour window appointments, promising no more all-day waits for the cable repair guy to arrive. An app even tells you an estimated time the technician will arrive at your home.

Despite the commitments for better service, Time Warner’s tongue-in-cheek pokes at its own past performance fell flat with some customers.

A bizarre five-minute video offered customers who miss spending 30 minutes on hold a chance to listen to Time Warner’s best on-hold hits.

Sometimes, it’s too soon for jokes.

If Time Warner is really putting marathon-length hold times behind it, why not wait to prove it before lampooning it? Otherwise, depicting a humorless Time Warner customer dancing to hold music only reminds us of our own collective customer service agony, like calling to complain about a service outage and being walked through resetting a cable modem or web browser instead.

Nurse Ratched

The customer’s dead, staring eyes and near-motionless face were all clear signs of BCS: Bad Customer Service. The disturbing video left us waiting for Nurse Ratched to appear with a small paper cup containing medication. Message: Time Warner mentally tortured its own customers and has now finally promised to stop. (Tip: Next time, hire Seth “Family Guy” MacFarlane to manage your attempts at humorous irony. He would have gone over the top and turned Big Cable’s record for lousy service into an animated Broadway song and dance number that would have brought the house down.)

There are other problems as well:

• Recent tests of the “convenient call back” feature have not always worked as intended, leaving customers waiting for hours for a callback. Others never got one at all;
• The “Ask TWC” virtual attendant could handle simple queries, but was otherwise as satisfying as talking to a Moroccan call center. She delivered a lot of non-answers to more complicated questions, just like regular customer service. We asked if Time Warner Cable had usage caps. She had no idea. We asked why a certain channel cannot be found on our lineup. She offered a channel guide we already have (no help there) or a tutorial on how to use a remote control (ditto);
• TWC’s TechTracker is going nationwide by the end of this year and promises to let you manage appointment reminders from the app and display a photo of the technician en route. That could be useful to show the authorities if the tech goes missing.

Customers in Cleveland who saw the ad in their local newspaper tell The Plain Dealer they are skeptical.

Michelle tweeted, “I’ll believe it when I see it. Otherwise, it’s just lip service.”

The company has a long way to go to change the perceptions of Wolf7: “TWC is the worst company in the entire history of everything.”

Customers report discontent with Time Warner’s product (slow Internet access, too many TV channels), its cost, and the quality of customer service — notably missed appointments, incorrect bills, and unresolved service problems.

Still, some of Time Warner’s improvements do seem to be making a difference in some areas, especially the possibility of in-home, same-day service calls (including weekends and evenings), and early detection of significant service outages. Time Warner needs to make sure its customer callback system is audited for performance and its TechTracker app should include some type of limited GPS tracking that automatically alerts customers the tech is really on the way, showing their progress as they drive to the customer’s address.

Time Warner’s potential buyer — Charter Communications — has a service and satisfaction record comparable to Time Warner, so customers should understand these changes remain a “work in progress.”

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Time Warner Cable’s new ad promising reduced hold times for customers. (30 seconds)

Phillip “Victory is Ours” Dampier

It has been 14 months since we heard for the first time Comcast was planning to acquire Time Warner Cable. It was the night of February 12, 2014. I still remember where I was the moment I first learned the news.

Stop the Cap! has maintained a civil relationship with Time Warner Cable for the most part over our seven-year struggle fighting usage caps, lousy broadband, and high prices. We fought one major battle with the company in April of 2009, when Time Warner executives planned a compulsory usage cap experiment on customers in Rochester, N.Y., Austin and San Antonio, Tex., and Greensboro, N.C.

Just as we had done with Frontier Communications a year earlier, we successfully beat down their efforts to impose usage allowances on customers already paying a significant chunk of money for broadband Internet access. After that battle ended, Time Warner Cable changed their position on usage caps and stated emphatically that customers should always have the option of unmetered/unlimited access. They have kept their word. In fact, their optional usage cap experiments have been a spectacular flop, attracting less than 1% of their customer base and delivering the message we’ve tried to get across the industry for years: customer hate usage caps, usage-based billing, and speed throttles.

Comcast is a company that long ago stopped listening to their customers. It applied an arbitrary usage cap on all their customers in retaliation for a FCC decision that disallowed them from running hidden speed throttles on peer-to-peer Internet traffic. Comcast lied about throttling traffic, paid homeless people to stack a hearing on the issue to keep company critics out of the room, and slapped the caps on in the fall of 2008 with the flimsy excuse it represented “fairness” to customers. Only later, we would learn usage caps were never about “fairness” or good traffic management. It’s just a way to deter customers from spending too much time on the Internet, especially if that time is spent watching online videos. Too much time spent watching Netflix might convince you your cable TV package isn’t necessary any longer.

Comcast customer service horror stories reached a level unparalleled by other cable companies when a Comcast predator-installer was convicted of raping and strangling to death 23-year old Comcast customer Urszula Sakowska,  whose lifeless body was found in a bathtub inside her Chicago-area home back in 2006. But Triplett’s violent service calls didn’t stop there. He also faced charges in the death of 39-year old Janice Ordidge, a Comcast customer in Hyde Park. Those two Comcast customers lost their lives. In 2009, another Comcast installer set a Pennsylvania customer’s house on fire. Other installers stole jewelry right out of customers’ homes. Others have exposed themselves in front of female customers or fallen asleep on their couches.

Billing errors are the stuff of legend at Comcast. Offshore call centers with language barriers, inept customer service, and long, long, long lines at cable stores with windows only partially manned by agents sitting behind bullet-proof glass also helped cultivate a customer relationship that can best be described as “perp and victim.”

Comcast isn’t just a bad cable company, it’s a menace. We didn’t have to spend hours proving our case. Fortunately, Comcast’s appalling reputation preceded it. Outside of two executive suites in Philadelphia and New York, nobody was for supersizing Comcast. Just to make sure our regulators knew this, we traveled to Buffalo in June of last year to testify at a Public Service Commission hearing on the subject of the merger. We didn’t mince words.

Sure, there were non-profit groups like the Boys & Girls Club that absolutely sullied their reputation pushing for the merger (Comcast wrote large checks to the organization so you need not give the group a single penny of your money in the future). “Civil Rights” organizations like the Urban League, NAACP, and others that used to defend minority rights now concern themselves with defending the interests of giant cable companies, just as long as they get a nice check in the mail with Comcast’s name on it. Among the worst of all – Shakedown Al Sharpton who will either be your merger deal’s best friend or will go away and leave victims of racism in peace, if you cut his organization a big fat check. (Now that the merger has collapsed, perhaps Comcast-owned MSNBC will end the thinly veiled quid-pro-quo arrangement it has with the man that gives him an hour a night to perform a talent train wreck.)

My own state assemblyman, Joe Morelle, who served as New York’s interim assembly speaker for about five minutes literally plagiarized his letter in support of the Comcast merger (after cashing their check) almost word-for-word from Comcast press releases and congressional testimony. Say it ain’t so, Joe!

N.Y. State Assembly Leader Joe Morelle: “The combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable will create a world-class communications, media and technology company to help meet the increasing consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces and on-the-go.”

David Cohen, executive vice-president, Comcast: “The combination of Comcast and TWC will create a world-class communications, media, and technology company to help meet the insatiable consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces, and on-the-go.”

There was not a doubt in my mind that replacing Time Warner Cable with Comcast would be a disaster for Time Warner Cable customers. Despite promises Comcast would upgrade Time Warner’s network, it would also upgrade customer bills, resorting in higher priced service, higher modem fees, and lousy customer service. Comcast vice president David Cohen also made it clear usage caps would be a part of our life within five years. No amount of protesting or rational argument would stop Comcast from being Comcast. Don’t like it? Just try to cancel.

Time Warner Cable can be bad but it is no Comcast.

Malone: Waiting in the wings?

Life will be just fine without Comcast, but danger lurks on the horizon. Still interested in the possibility of taking over Time Warner Cable is the smaller Charter Communications, now effectively controlled by cable magnate John Malone (he owns his own castles). Malone has a long history of enriching himself at the expense of customers with no other choices for cable/broadband service. He used to control Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), a cable company that literally threatened city officials who didn’t do what TCI wanted.

We remain unsure exactly what will happen next. Charter could bid aggressively to buy Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Cable could go it alone, or Time Warner Cable could start buying other cable companies (like Charter).

What we hope will happen is Time Warner Cable will refocus its energy on expanding its Maxx upgrade program as quickly as possible to reach all Time Warner Cable markets with faster broadband and a better cable TV experience. We also hope the company will stand by its word that compulsory usage caps are off the table.

I’d like to thank all of our readers who took the time to get involved in the fight and helped make a difference. Wall Street and Washington, as well as Comcast CEO Brian Roberts are all shocked the merger deal collapsed after a torrent of criticism from consumers. It also left state regulators cautious about how to proceed. New York’s Public Service Commission delayed making a decision eight times, recognizing the merger as a hot potato.

Our experience demonstrates that ordinary citizens can wield considerable power when unified and involved. We’ve proved that with multiple victories on the usage cap front as well as the AT&T/T-Mobile merger and Net Neutrality.

Let the fight for better broadband continue!

After a year-end customer audit, some Comcast customers report they are now being notified by the cable company they were not charged modem rental fees in error even though they previously purchased their own equipment.

“Late last year, I received a form letter from them notifying me that they had noticed that I wasn’t being billed for the modem they claimed they were renting to me,” wrote a Reddit contributor. “An hour-long phone call with four representatives later, the $8 charge was removed. However, it seems that since they increased the modem rental fee to $10 per month, they’ve brought my modem back into their flock.”

He isn’t alone.

Another customer found Comcast still billing him for a modem he returned to Comcast three months earlier.

“I’m now on my third month where I had to call, get a refund, and get a promise it won’t happen again,” wrote another Comcast customer.

The customer service representative argued the charges were valid, despite the fact the customer went to extraordinary lengths to document the return of the equipment to avoid being charged for it. Instead of claiming the customer never returned the modem, Comcast registered the customer’s newly-purchased modem as Comcast property.

“It shows that modem is with the customer,” said the confused Comcast representative.

“They are that s****y of a company, I saw this coming from a mile away,” said the customer, who recorded the return of Comcast’s modem in a video he made at the local XFINITY store. Despite that effort, he was unprepared for the possibility Comcast would unilaterally adopt his new equipment and claim it as their own.

Watching your Comcast bill like a hawk for unauthorized charges can also get confusing when Comcast keeps changing the name of the fee.

Customers with their own modems should find no charge for modems, gateways, or routers on their bill.

“I had to make three calls, each one more and more frustrating,” another customer complained. “The first was to remove the equipment fee, the equipment fee then morphed into a modem fee [… and the] final call was when the modem fee evolved into a router fee.”

One Comcast customer complained on the company’s own support forum he was charged modem fees for over a year for a modem he purchased himself.

“I have gone through customer service both on the phone and through chat,” complained the customer. “The charge will come off for a month and then get put back on my bill. I even went through Comcast Corporate Escalation and it was removed in October 2014. I went back through my bills and noticed that the charge went back on the very next bill and I have been charged ever since.”

To add insult to injury, Comcast now also bills a “change of service fee” to remove the erroneous charge, only to have it return the following month.

Because Comcast billing errors are so common, still another customer shared some tips on how to prove Comcast customer-owned equipment does not belong to the cable company.

“My advice if you are thinking about buying your own modem is to make sure you file all receipts,” said the customer. “I went through this same runaround with Comcast last year and luckily I still had both the sales receipt from Amazon as well as the Comcast document stating I had turned in my rented modem. It still took a few phone calls and a week or so for them to straighten it out. Pretty ridiculous.”

A Tennessee man is facing $1,300 in unauthorized cable charges and ruined credit after at least one Comcast employee allegedly stole his identity and provided it to an outside vendor who signed up new Comcast customers who never had any intention of paying their bills.

Ricky McClure of Murfreesboro first learned about the fraud when collection agencies working for Comcast sent him collection notices demanding payment of a combined $1,300 in unpaid charges made in his name in Shreveport, La.

McClure is already a Comcast customer, and he does not pay his cable bill late, so he called Comcast over what he thought was a simple billing error and ran into a customer service buzz saw.

“Comcast basically said the name and social matches what we have on record so this is your account. You need to pay the money and we’re not going to pull it back from collections,” McClure told WKRN-TV.

McClure was left investigating the mysterious charges on his own and discovered the extra accounts on his credit report, both using his Social Security number, and opened without his permission. Even more disturbing, the service addresses on file were in a city McClure has no ties to.

“Where is our money, lady?”

“It’s very alarming. You don’t know who is going to be calling you next,” said McClure.

Comcast’s customer service seemed unconcerned McClure’s identity was stolen. They simply wanted to clear up the matter of the $1,300 in unpaid charges. In fact, Comcast reserves the right to terminate an identity theft victim’s own service until the billing matter is settled or the fraud verified.

An isolated incident? Not quite.

Stop the Cap! reader John Spencer (not his complete real name at his request) in Nashville was also a victim of Comcast fraud. He wrote to share the story of McClure, which he recognized only too well. He faced over $2,000 in Comcast bills sent to collections for another “customer” in Shreveport. This time, the thieves were smart enough to submit a change of address for the bills headed for Louisiana, claiming it was a vacation property. The collection agency finally connected the Social Security number to Spencer’s address in Nashville and commenced collection activity that dropped his FICO score by more than 90 points, which now hovers around 600. Spencer’s damage went far beyond dealing with persistent collection calls. Alarmed credit card issuers running periodic credit checks suspended or slashed Spencer’s credit lines because he was suddenly a credit risk, and Verizon wants him to pay a deposit on his new cell phone account. His car insurance even went up $65 semi-annually, the insurance company explained, because his credit score necessitated a re-evaluation of his rate.

It took over three months for Comcast to finally get the negative information off his credit report, and nine months later he is still trying to get his former credit reputation back. While credit card companies did restore his former credit lines, they made new credit inquiries before granting his request, which has cost him 40 points on his restored FICO score for “excessive credit inquiries.” Verizon won’t budge on demanding a deposit, and his insurance company will reconsider his rate only after it comes up for renewal.

Comcast’s identify theft reporting form runs six pages and requires a police report, a notarized signature, and copies of your valuable photo ID.

Identity theft has become pervasive enough at Comcast that the company dedicates a special section of its website to accept reports from customers victimized by unauthorized charges.

Comcast doesn’t offer much of a shoulder to cry on either, sternly telling victims they must complete and sign a notarized affidavit, attach a police report for the claim, and prove to Comcast’s satisfaction where they actually live.

Some customers already victimized by Comcast once aren’t too happy about another requirement – providing a copy of a valid government-issued photo ID like a driver’s license or passport. If Comcast employees were willing to peddle your Social Security number for quick cash, imagine what they can get for a copy of your driver’s license.

Don’t expect the collection calls to end immediately either. Comcast warns it considers all accounts valid and payable amounts due until proven otherwise.

San Francisco area customer Tammerlin Drummond was also a victim of a rogue Comcast employee who sold her Social Security number and address to an unknown third-party who opened an account and collected a bounty of cable equipment.

Comcast billed Drummond $442.13 for service at an address she had nothing to do with. Ironically, Comcast sent Drummond a separate letter claiming that the security of her account was “a top priority at Comcast” and included a PIN number.

Comcast doesn’t like to break a sweat investigating these scams and kept the fraudulent account open while putting Drummond on its customer fraud treadmill, insisting she do all the work completing the aforementioned affidavit. Another representative even suggested visit a Comcast store in Oakland because people associated with the fraudulent account were recently there to pick up more cable equipment.

“She gave me the ID of the rep who had handled the transaction and suggested I might go to the store to ask if he remembered anything,” Drummond wrote in a column published by the Contra Costa Times. “She said there was a lot of activity connected to my Social Security number and that it was an obvious case of fraud. It smelled like an inside job to me, and I told her so.”

Comcast admitted in all three cases different employees used their positions at the cable company to access customers’ Social Security numbers and other personal information and resell it to other criminals that offer “free” cable service or tell customers to pay them, not Comcast, for “discounted service.”

The two cases in Shreveport were never uncovered by Comcast. It took the initiative of the Shreveport Police Department to launch an investigation last March. Comcast first learned about it not from customers, but from the police department who contacted the cable company about the problem.

Victims were eventually sent letters from Comcast explaining what happened:

“Based on what we know at this time, a small group of individuals employed by a third-party vendor and a former Comcast employee were engaged in identity theft and theft of Comcast services. These individuals may have used your information, including your name and/or social security number, for these unauthorized purposes.”

The letter goes on to say the company is offering a complimentary identity protection plan for a year.

But identity protection may not help much if Comcast can’t secure its customers private, personal information.

Out in San Francisco, Comcast spokesman Bryan Byrd told Drummond a Comcast employee had opened the fraudulent account and that “he has been dealt with.”

Comcast has closed the account, erased the bill and removed the mess from her credit report. Because Drummond was a victim, anyone (including her) will now need to show ID and proof of residence before opening a Comcast account — provisions that would likely protect every Comcast customer from identity theft if broadly enforced.

“It makes you wonder how protected one’s personal data is,” Drummond complained. “How many others did this rogue employee target?”

Comcast says these are all isolated incidents and not a pattern to a wider problem. But apologies are not forthcoming to Mr. McClure or Spencer.

Alex Horwitz, a Comcast spokesperson in Tennessee released the following statement:

“We take this matter very seriously and, out of an abundance of caution, we have contacted a small number of people whose information may have been used to create unauthorized accounts and are providing them with credit monitoring services. We have no evidence that this was an online system breach or that any additional personal information was obtained or used for any other purpose. We are continuing to cooperate with law enforcement and are conducting our own internal investigation. The individuals involved in this are no longer working on our behalf, and we have reinforced our privacy and security policies with employees and third-party vendors.”

Comcast won’t comment on how many cases of identity theft it deals with annually.

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Several mid-Tennessee Comcast customers have been victims of identity theft, discovering unpaid Comcast bills run up in their names for service several states away. WKRN in Nashville shares the story of Ricky McClure, who faced $1,300 in Comcast charges sent to collections he didn’t owe. (2:41)