Stop the Cap! reader Joanne wants to see the back of Frontier Communications’ DSL service so she headed to Time Warner Cable to get information about their broadband pricing. Things quickly got confusing when she opened a chat session with a support representative over exactly what the cable company was charging for service and installation. We’re going to participate after the fact (our comments are in blue):

Joanne: I am looking at basic Internet service at $19.95 per month.

TWC: Great choice!

STC: Did anyone think the representative would say anything different no matter what level of service Joanne wanted?

TWC: What kind of questions do you have regarding this one?

Joanne: Is installation included at no charge?

TWC: Not actually there is an installation of 49.99 but you can get a very special discount of $19.99, but if you are not able to pay that you can always get the recurring method of payment or auto payment and you can get free installation!

STC: What?

Joanne: Which is it – 49.99, 19.99 or zero?

TWC: I mean once you order the service we will make a discount of 19.99 for the installation, but if you want you can select the auto payment and you will get free installation.

STC: Joanne should have asked at this point for TWC to waive the installation fee so she need not reach for a bottle of Tylenol and decoder ring to figure all this out. 

Joanne: By auto payment, do you mean automatic via my checking account?

TWC: Yes, or credit or debit card as well.

STC: Joanne could also set up automatic billing on a credit card nearly set to expire and then just drop back to regular billing if she was uncomfortable with Time Warner automatically sipping money out of her accounts. 

Joanne: What is the total including taxes for this plan, per month?

TWC: $19.99 + 2.50 if you need a modem and $2 or $2.50 taxes. No more than that.

STC: Of course she needs a modem. But if Joanne plans to stick around with Time Warner, she might want to buy one herself and avoid the modem rental fee altogether. Why pay that forever?

TWC: Once they process the order you will be getting an email with all the details about it!

Joanne: Thanks, but I prefer to know the details BEFORE I sign up. If I wanted to sign up for two years, or three, could I do that at the 19.95 rate?

TWC: No, it is 12 month promotions with no contract.

STC: Just threaten to leave after the 12 months are up and watch it get extended for another year. By the way, can you say “offshore chat support center?” 

Joanne: What is the current full rate for basic service per month?

TWC: As we do not have a contract involved we do not handle prices after the promo expiration, what we have is a promotional time that will be for 12 month that way we will be always sure you as our customer are taking advantage of the earliest and best promotion by the time your promotion is about to expire!

STC: (banging head on desk)

Joanne: So you can’t tell me what the current full rate is as of today, for your current customers?

STC: Apparently not. More than two minutes passed before Joanne finally asked if the representative was still there.

TWC: Yes, I’m checking into that. Just a moment please. […] That would be 29.99 + 2.50 + taxes.

Joanne also learned there are no usage caps, for now anyway.

Our recommendations is to call Time Warner Cable by phone for anything more complex than a service credit request or address change. The time and unnecessary confusion that is saved could be your own.

Big cable and phone companies can thank 2011’s Hurricane Irene for keeping them from scoring #1 on the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s top most disliked companies in America. Those choice spots were reserved for utility companies on Long Island and in Connecticut.

But even the rain-soaker that left millions without power for weeks couldn’t keep America’s perennial hatred of cable and phone companies from the top 15 list:

#3 Charter Communications – The “Don’t Care-Bears” of Cable

America’s worst cable company delivers downright shoddy customer service and dodgy billing practices a loan shark would not dare try. The company has been flopping around like a beached whale since exiting its “stiff our creditors good with a quick trip to bankruptcy court,” and is now back to stiffing their customers instead:

“The sales rep originally promised us a $42.95 a month for services, with an introductory price of $24.95 for the first 3 months (a savings of $18 a month). After the introductory period ended, the company started charging me $56.95, when I finally caught on that they were charging me $14 more per month than what is said on the Work Order (could provide at anytime for proof), he never once mentioned that there will be a $10 more per month, and now the company says if you have no other cable service with us (Charter Communications), you are to be charged $10 more per month!!”

#4 Comcast – Hey, It Could Be Worse — At Least We’re Not Charter!

Comcast had a bad year with faulty e-mail, failing equipment, and more excuses than CVS has pills. Unprofessional contract installers also have problems keeping their hands to themselves. The largest cable operator in the country has also been known to empty checking accounts when they want their money, and there are horror stories about installers leaving wires, clips, and nails scattered on front lawns, quickly becoming projectiles when the mower runs over them.

Their cable service shampoos in mediocrity scoring 61 out of 100 and the “digital phone” service they run is the conditioning rinse, doing slightly better with a score of 67.

#6 Time Warner Cable – Always Listening to Customers, and Then Ignoring Them

Rated 63/100, Time Warner Cable managed a four point improvement over last year, which will be promptly erased if they keep experimenting with Internet Overcharging schemes.

Derided for “third world” customer service worthy of a despotic backwater dictatorship, slow Internet speeds, endless outages, and gouging rates, the ACSI has few nice things to report about America’s second largest cable conglomerate.

One customer vented, “TWC has destroyed my business and doesn’t give a damn: I first complained five weeks ago about outages and miserable upload speeds. I need to send large files to clients. I’ve had two technicians visit, who both found it was in the neighborhood. Today, I found the situation has not changed and am told there’s no further work order.”

Customers also complain about being stuck with Time Warner because there are no competing services in the area.

That being said, we’d rather have Time Warner Cable than AT&T or Comcast, and our personal customer service experience in western New York has been excellent for us, so it depends on where you live (and what competition they have in your area.)

#7 Cox Communications – Beam Me Up, Scotty!

Now we know where Time Warner’s four extra points came from — at the expense of Cox Cable, which is down by that same amount turning in a truly pathetic score of 63 out of 100.

Time Warner Cable occasionally threatens to buy out Cox, at least if industry rumors prove true, which might actually be an improvement.

Cox’s problem is time-honored for the cable industry — it gouges customers with outrageous rate increases the oil and gas industry don’t have the stomach to attempt.

Customers complain Cox is the High Priestess of Bait & Switch, signing customers up on one promotion and then shifting them to another, pretending the original offer was a figment of someone’s imagination. One customer:

 “I setup 2yr service w/Cox —1st yr @ $29.99, 2nd @ $49.99. Now after 6mon they changed it to 1st 6mon @ $29.99, 2nd 6mon @ $49.99, and 1 year @ 79.99.”

#11 CenturyLink – (Last)CenturyLink — America’s Worst Phone Company (Hey Frontier, You Get a Pass This Time)

CenturyLink, you must be so proud of your 66/100 score. In fact, add one more “6” and you’ll convince customers who already suspect you are the devil’s phone company.

“They lie about everything and do nothing,” one customer told ACSI. “I have been having issues with my Internet for a year and they have yet to help.” Another customer wrote that they’ve “had issues with CenturyLink employees flat out lying to [me] about the bill.”

Billing issues are most likely to be cited by complaining customers along with customer service representatives having less knowledge about the company’s products than customers do.

That being said, at least they don’t have the Frontier employee who insisted on telling us about the company’s wireless “wee-fee” network.  She admitted she had no idea it was “Wi-Fi.”

#14 DirectTV – Hey, We’re Looking Pretty Good Compared to the Other Guys

The satellite company managed 68/100, and the biggest problem they still have is misleading contracts and promotions that leave customers out of pocket for hundreds of dollars for deals that go un-honored and rebates that never arrive.

Discounts seem “luck of the draw” among customer service representatives:

“DirectTV raised the price for 30% after one year and said that they told me about this verbally, which is not true. My agreed price with Saha on the phone, a DirecTV employee, was $56.99 including two receivers and one HD/DVR receiver. DirecTV overcharged me on my first bill. When I complained, they said they forgot to give me my 30% discount. So over the next six months, they kept revising my bill but never got it right.”

Comcast is running “welcome back” ads in Chattanooga that still claim they run America’s fastest ISP, when they don’t.

EPB, Chattanooga’s publicly-owned utility that operates the nation’s fastest gigabit broadband network, has already won the speed war, delivering consistently faster broadband service than any of its Tennessee competitors. So when facts are not on their side, competitors like Comcast and a conservative “watchdog” group simply make them up as they go along.

Comcast is running tear-jerker ads in Chattanooga featuring professional actors pretending to be ex-customers looking to own up to their “mistake” of turning their back on Comcast’s 250GB usage cap (now temporarily paroled), high prices, and questionable service.

“It turns out that the speeds I was looking for, Xfinity Internet had all along,” says the actor, before hugging an “Xfinity service technician” in the pouring rain. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

The ad closes repeating the demonstrably false claim Comcast operates “the nation’s fastest Internet Service Provider.”

“I see those commercials on television and I’m thinking, I wonder how much did they pay you to say that,” says an actual EPB customer in a response ad from the public utility.

It turns out quite a lot. The high-priced campaign is just the latest work from professional advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco, which is quite a distance from Tennessee. Goodby has produced Comcast ads for years. The ad campaign also targets the cable company’s other rival that consistently beats its broadband speeds — Verizon FiOS.

EPB provides municipal power, broadband, television, and telephone service for residents in Chattanooga, Tennessee

Comcast tried to ram their “welcome back” message home further in a newspaper interview with the Times Free Press, claiming “a lot of customers are coming back to Xfinity” because Comcast has a larger OnDemand library, “integrated applications and greater array of choices.”

Comcast does not provide any statistics or evidence to back up its claims, but EPB president and CEO Harold DePriest has already seen enough deception from the cable company to call the latest claims “totally false.”

In fact, DePriest notes, customers come and go from EPB just as they do with Comcast. The real story, in his view, is how many more customers arrive at EPB’s door than leave, and DePriest says they are keeping more customers than they lose.

EPB fully launched in Chattanooga in 2010, and despite Comcast and AT&T’s best customer retention efforts, EPB has signed up 37,000 customers so far, with about 20 new ones arriving every day. (Comcast still has more than 100,000 customers in the area.)

Many come for the EPB’s far superior broadband speeds, made possible on the utility’s fiber to the home network. EPB also does not use Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, which Charter, AT&T, and Comcast have all adopted to varying degrees. Although the utility avoids cut-rate promotional offers that its competitors hand out to new customers (EPB needs to responsibly pay off its fiber network’s construction costs), its pricing is lower than what the cable and phone companies offer at their usual prices.

Comcast claims customers really don’t need super high speed Internet service, underlined by the fact they don’t offer it. But some businesses (including home-based entrepreneurs) do care about the fact they can grow their broadband speeds as needed with EPB’s fiber network. Large business clients receiving quotes from EPB are often shocked by how much lower the utility charges for service that AT&T and Comcast price much higher. It costs EPB next to nothing to offer higher speeds on its fiber network, designed to accommodate the speed needs of customers today and tomorrow.

The competition is less able. AT&T cannot compete on its U-verse platform, which tops out shy of 30Mbps. Comcast has to move most of its analog TV channels to digital, inconveniencing customers with extra-cost set top boxes to boost speeds further.

The fact EPB built Chattanooga’s best network, designed for the present and future, seems to bother some conservative “watchdog” groups. The Beacon Center of Tennesee, a group partially funded by conservative activists like Richard Mellon Scaife through a network of umbrella organizations, considers the entire fiber project a giant waste of money. They agree with Comcast, suggesting nobody needs fast broadband speeds:

EPB also offers something called ultra high-speed Internet. Consumers have to pay more than seven times what they would pay for the traditional service — $350 a month. Right now, only residents of a select few cities worldwide (such as Hong Kong) even use this technology, and that is because most consumers will likely not demand it for another 10 years.

Actually, residents in Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea do expect the faster broadband speeds they receive from their broadband providers. Americans have settled for what they can get (and afford). DePriest openly admits he does not expect a lot of his customers to pay $350 a month for any kind of broadband, but the gigabit-capable network proves a point — the faster speeds are available today on EPB at a fraction of price other providers would charge, if they could supply the service at all. Most EPB customers choose lower speed packages that still deliver better performance at a lower price than either Comcast or AT&T offer.

The Beacon Center doesn’t have a lot of facts to help them make their case. But that does not stop them:

• They claim EPB’s network is paid for at taxpayer expense. It is not.
• They quote an “academic study” that claims 75 percent of “government-run” broadband networks lose money, without disclosing the fact the study was bought and paid for by the same industry that wants to keep communities from running broadband networks. Its author, Ron Rizzuto, was inducted into the Cable TV Pioneers in 2004 for service to the cable industry. The study threw in failed Wi-Fi networks built years ago with modern fiber broadband networks to help sour readers on the concept of community broadband.
• Beacon bizarrely claims the fiber network cannot operate without a $300 million Smart Grid. (Did someone inform Verizon of this before they wasted all that money on FiOS? Who knew fiber broadband providers were also in the electricity business?)

The “watchdog” group even claims big, bad EPB is going to drive AT&T, Comcast, and Charter Cable out of business in Chattanooga (apparently they missed those Comcast/Xfinity ads with customers returning to Kabletown in droves):

Fewer and fewer private companies wish to compete against EPB, which will soon have a monopoly in the Chattanooga market, according to private Internet Service Provider David Snyder. “They have built a solution looking for a problem. It makes for great marketing, but there is no demand for this service. By the time service is needed, the private sector will have established this for pennies on the dollar.”

Ironically, Snyder’s claim there is no demand for EPB’s service fall flat when one considers his company, VolState, has been trying to do business with EPB for two years. He needs EPB because he is having trouble affording the “pennies on the dollar” his suppliers are (not) charging.

Snyder tells “Nooganomics” his company wants an interconnection agreement with EPB, because the private companies he is forced to buy service from — including presumably AT&T, want to charge him a wholesale rate twice as much as EPB currently bills consumers. Snyder calls EPB’s competition “disruptive.”

Nooganomics calls EPB’s low priced service a “charity” in comparison to what AT&T and Comcast charge local residents, and the free market can do no wrong-website seems upset consumers are enjoying the benefits of lower priced service, now that the local phone company and cable operator can’t get away with charging their usual high prices any longer.

Deborah Dwyer, an EPB spokeswoman, told the website the company got into the business with state and city approval, followed the rules for obtaining capital and pays the taxes or payments-in-lieu of taxes as the same rate as corporate players. “We believe that public utilities like EPB exist to help improve the quality of life in our community, and the fiber optic network was built to do just that. One of government’s key responsibilities is to provide communities with infrastructure, and fiber to the home is a key infrastructure much like roads, sewer systems and the electric system.”

Snyder can’t dispute EPB delivers great service. He also walks away from the competition-is-good-for-the-free-market rhetoric that should allow the best company with the lowest rates to win, instead declaring customers should only do business with his company to support free market economics (?):

“If you are a free market capitalist and you believe in free markets, you need to do business with VolState,” Mr. Snyder says. “And if you’re highly principled, every time you buy from a government competitor, what you’re voting for with your dollars is, you’re saying, ‘It’s OK for the government come in to private enterprise and start to take over a vast part of what we used to operate in as a free market.’”

Perhaps Snyder and his friends at the Beacon Center have a future in the vinegar business. They certainly have experience with sour grapes.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast Ad Welcome Back.flv[/flv]

Comcast’s emotionally charged ad, using paid actors, was produced by advertising firm Goodby Silverstein & Partners. The commercial running in Chattanooga is a slight variation on this one, which targets Verizon FiOS. (1 minute)

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/EPB Ad.flv[/flv]

EPB uses actual customers, not paid actors, in its own advertising that calls out Comcast’s false advertising.  (1 minute)

Prism is CenturyLink’s fiber to the neighborhood service, similar to AT&T U-verse.

CenturyLink is feuding with the mayor of Colorado Springs, Colorado over whether or not the company intends to roll out its Prism IPTV service in lower income neighborhoods in the city.

The phone company is planning expansion of its fiber-to-the-neighborhood television service in Colorado for the first time, but has run into problems negotiating a franchise agreement with city officials that guarantees equal access to the upgraded broadband, phone, and television service.

“To be candid, CenturyLink does not want to put in the franchise agreement any specificity as to serving lower-income neighborhoods,” Mayor Steve Bach said last Wednesday during a meeting with City Council. “I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t work for me.”

CenturyLink wants to secure a franchise agreement that will permit the company to gradually roll out their Prism service to 22 percent of the city of Colorado Springs. But the company has refused to commit to a specific percentage of homes in lower income neighborhoods the company will wire for the new service.

Bach has the apparent support of incumbent cable operator Comcast, who seems in agreement CenturyLink should deliver its service equitably across the city.

Comcast spokeswoman Cindy Parsons told The Gazette any new cable company should be held to the same standards as Comcast was.

“Just as Comcast was required to make video services available throughout the city, we believe a new entrant into the video business should also be held to those same regulatory requirements,” she said.

“I honestly thought we had reached an understanding about the language that was to be included in the agreement,” Mary LaFave, CenturyLink’s director for public policy told the newspaper. “What we have discussed with the city is something that we have never discussed (in other communities). I’ve never seen it before.”

Bach

The newspaper last week met with CenturyLink executives to discuss the dispute and found them to be unaccommodating.  The newspaper issued an editorial critical of CenturyLink’s apparent unwillingness to get specific:

To lay fiber, the company needs to use public right-of-way. That means it needs permission of city government, in the form of a franchise agreement.

Allocation of right-of-way is a subsidy, given that companies are granted permission to use a public resource in pursuit of profits. As such, some politicians take quite seriously any request for an agreement.

Mayor Steve Bach went public this week with a concern that CenturyLink might choose to serve only the most affluent neighborhoods, giving no assurance to the city that it would invest in less advantaged areas. His concern has led to a proposed agreement in which CenturyLink would provide a “significant” amount of service to low-income areas.

[…] “What we have discussed with the city is something that we have never discussed. I’ve never seen it before,” said Mary LaFave, CenturyLink’s director for public policy.

Welcome to the new Colorado Springs. We don’t try to match best practices elsewhere. We try to surpass them.

In our meeting, a Gazette editorial board member expressed concern about a contract that relies on the wiggle word “significant.” That could mean 10 percent to some, 80 percent to others. It’s a recipe for potential consternation and even litigation. We suggested a contract that specified a percentage of service, even a very low percentage, to low-income neighborhoods. LaFave said no way.

Low-income households often buy cable. So Bach’s concern may be mostly political, as market demand will likely cause CenturyLink to reach into a cross section of neighborhoods.

Given this likelihood, and the heartfelt assurance that CenturyLink will serve a broad socioeconomic spectrum, it is hard to understand why the company balks at committing to a base-level percentage.

We urge City Council and Bach to approve a business-friendly agreement with a specified safety-net percentage of service that will go to low-income households. Set a number slightly below CentryLink’s anticipated service to low-income areas, but achieve contractual specificity.

When local government trades in right-of-way, it allocates a resource that belongs to every resident of Colorado Springs. A reasonable effort to protect them, with a contract that codifies at least the minimal goals stated by CenturyLink, makes good business sense. This is not just any old town, and it should not settle for just any old contract.

CenturyLink was already awarded a cable franchise in Monument and is seeking franchises in Fountain and unincorporated El Paso County. The company currently operates Prism in eight cities nationwide.

Beahn’s booking photo

A competitor to dominant cable provider Mediacom has been accused of stealing the cable company’s broadband service and reselling it as its own in a bizarre Georgia case that also includes a feud between Albany’s Water, Gas & Light Commission and the defendant.

Back in December, a Georgia Power representative alerted Mediacom about unauthorized equipment placed on a utility pole. When Mike Donalson, Mediacom’s regional security manager arrived at the location off McCollum Drive in Albany, he was surprised to discover a residential Mediacom cable modem powered by a standard car battery sealed in a weatherproof enclosure. Tracking the wiring that exited the box, Donalson eventually found himself at the front door of Addtran Logistics, Inc.

Mediacom immediately launched an investigation and discovered that L2Networks had allegedly contracted with Addtran to provide Internet service. Mediacom alleges in its lawsuit L2 provided the service through a cable modem originally assigned to Beahn’s mother-in-law for residential broadband service at her home.

The company called the Dougherty County Police Department, who arrested Beahn on felony charges for theft of service.

Mediacom is seeking compensatory and punitive damages in its civil suit.

Beahn first came into national prominence in May when he filed the first formal Net Neutrality complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against the Albany Water, Gas & Light Commission claiming the local authority was refusing to allow L2 employees 24-hour access to utility-owned facilities where L2 has placed equipment.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFXL Albany Mediacom Files Suit Against L2 6-8-12.flv[/flv]

WFXL in Albany, Ga. reports L2 Networks is headed to court to face charges it used to a Mediacom residential cable modem to deliver business class service under L2’s name.  (1 minute)