Love can be a fickle thing.

Take Comcast’s affair with J.D. Power & Associates, for example. In Comcast’s filings with regulators, it is very proud that J.D. Power cited Comcast for the most improvement of any cable operator scored by the survey firm. Comcast touted the fact it had managed to increase its TV satisfaction score by a whopping 92 points and Internet satisfaction was up a respectable 77 points. (Comcast didn’t mention the fact J.D. Power rates companies on a 1,000 point scale or that it took the cable company four years to eke out those improvements.)

Last month, J.D. Power issued its latest ranking of telecommunications companies and… well, the love is gone.

If customer alienation was an Olympic event, J.D. Power awarded tie gold medals to both Comcast and Time Warner Cable for their Kafkaesque race to the bottom.

The survey of customer satisfaction largely found only dissatisfaction everywhere in the country J.D. Power looked. While Comcast likes to cite its “customer-oopsies-gone-viral” blunders as “isolated incidents,” J.D. Power finds them epidemic nationwide.

The highest rating across television and broadband categories achieved by either cable company was ‘Meh.’ J.D. Power diplomatically scored both cable companies on a scale that started with “among the best” as simply “the rest.” Customers in the west were the most charitable, those in the south and eastern U.S. indicated they were worked to their last nerve.

“The ability to provide a high-quality experience with all wireline services is paramount as performance and reliability is the most critical driver of overall satisfaction,” said Kirk Parsons, senior director of telecommunications, in a statement.

Having competition available from a high-scoring provider also demonstrates what is possible when a company actually tries to care about customer service. In the same regions Comcast fared about as popular as hemorrhagic fever, WOW! Cable and Verizon FiOS easily took top honors. Even AT&T U-verse scored far higher than either cable company, primarily because AT&T offers very aggressive promotional packages that include a lot for a comparatively low price.

Other cable and smaller phone companies didn’t do particularly well either. Frontier and CenturyLink both earned dismal scores and Charter Cable only managed modest improvement. The two satellite television companies did fine in customer satisfaction for television service, but it was the two biggest phone companies that managed the best scores for Internet service. Among cable operators, only independents like WOW! (and to a lesser extent Cox) did well in the survey.

If J.D. Power is the arbiter of good service Comcast seems to claim it to be, the ratings company just sent a very clear message that when it comes to merging Comcast and Time Warner Cable, anything multiplied by zero is still zero.

J.D. Power ranking (Image courtesy: Reviewed.com)

Vincent Sisounong and Blessing Gainey were charged with attempted murder.

A Kirkland, Wash. family nearly lost their son in a brutal home invasion that Comcast’s home security system failed to deter and now the family is taking the cable company to court.

Leena Rawat and her family depended on Comcast’s home security system to keep their home intruder-proof, and that is precisely what the company and its contractor, Pioneer Cable, promised.

But the night two teenage neighbors went looking for blood, they had no trouble bypassing Comcast’s unarmed basement sensor and entering the family’s home.

Within minutes, the two men grabbed 18-year old Deep and began torturing him while his family slept.

“They were going to play a game with him tonight – and the game would be that he would be fighting for his life,” Rawat told KING-TV in Seattle. “He was full of blood from head to toe, with gashes. He was in the worst situation possible that a mother wants to see her child in.”

The intruders’ impromptu mission: to chop off one of Deep’s arms and legs with various cutting tools while robbing the family home.

Police say Vincent Sisounong and Blessing Gainey began the attack in Deep’s bedroom, then dragged him to the basement, where Sisounong instructed Gainey to hack at Rawat’s leg down to the bone, and then stabbed Rawat himself. Court documents said Sisounong told detectives that he wanted the victim to “fight for his life,” and when asked if the experience was enjoyable, he said, “yeah.”

Rawat eventually managed to break free, prompting Gainey to leave the scene. But Sisounong chased after Rawat as he ran to the bathroom, further slashing him with a knife. Rawat mustered enough strength to punch the intruder in the face and escape, but not before the men stole keys, electronics, and money before walking out the door.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KIRO Seattle Police Suspects tried to kill for pleasure and greed 11-4-13.flv[/flv]

KIRO-TV in Seattle reported on the home invasion back in early November 2013 and learned horrified neighbors were arming themselves to protect against another random attack. (2:27)

During the incident, the only alert that something might be wrong came from the family’s car alarm that accidentally went off during a struggle for the keys. At no time did Comcast’s alarm system activate or signal police an intrusion was underway. Authorities were summoned only after Deep arrived, bleeding and badly injured, on a neighbor’s doorstep.

Vincent Sisounong, 21, and Blessing Gainey, 19, were located by authorities after matching fingerprints were found inside the Rawat home and both were charged with first-degree attempted murder and first-degree burglary.

When interviewed by police, Sisounong said he “really wanted” to kill the teenager, court documents said, noting that neither man knew the Rawat family.

“I just say God was there that night,” said an incensed Leena. “God, but not Comcast security. It’s been very tough. It was not a one night thing. It’s changed our life.”

That night and every night, the one thing Comcast’s security system manages to protect more than anything else is the cable company itself.

The traumatized family quickly learned Comcast was disavowing any and all responsibility for the failure of their alarm system, and Comcast’s contracts include clauses that require customers to waive all liability, even if Comcast is later found negligent. In fact, customers who sign Comcast’s contract must also side with the cable company and against their own insurance company during any claims process.

Comcast’s security contract lets the company walk away from responsibility for almost everything.

The first duty of every Comcast home security customer is to protect Comcast, as made clear in particularly bold, all-capital letter print:

YOUR DUTY TO PROTECT/INDEMNIFY THE COMPANY APPLIES EVEN IN THE CASE OF THE COMPANY’S OWN NEGLIGENCE.

“If their argument is to be accepted, they could put in empty black boxes throughout the house and say, ‘That’s your system.’ And then something goes wrong, and they say, ‘We never promised you it would work,'” said Ken Friedman, attorney.

Comcast’s response:

“We want to take this opportunity to extend our sympathies to the Rawat family. However, after a review of our records, we are confident that our home security system functioned properly.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KING Seattle Comcast Sued Over Home Security System Failures 10-1-14.flv[/flv]

KING-TV in Seattle talked with Leena Rawat about how Comcast let her and her family down on the worst night of their lives. (2:29)

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee, but mostly AT&T and Comcast)

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is angry that FCC chairman Tom Wheeler is sticking his nose into AT&T, Comcast, and Charter Communications’ private playground — the state of Tennessee.

In an editorial published by The Tennessean, Blackburn throws a fit that an “unelected” bureaucrat not only believes what’s best for her state, but is now openly talking about preempting state laws that ban public broadband networks:

Legislatures are the entities who should be making these decisions. Legislatures govern what municipalities can and cannot do. The principles of federalism and state delegation of power keep government’s power in check. When a state determines that municipalities should be limited in experimenting in the private broadband market, it’s usually because the state had a good reason — to help protect public investments in education and infrastructure or to protect taxpayers from having to bailout an unproven and unsustainable project.

Chairman Wheeler has repeatedly stated that he intends to preempt the states’ sovereign role when it comes to this issue. His statements assume that Washington knows best. However, Washington often forgets that the right answers don’t always come from the top down.

It’s unfortunate Rep. Blackburn’s convictions don’t extend to corporate money and influence in the public dialogue about broadband. The “good reason” states have limited public broadband come in the form of a check, either presented directly to politicians like Blackburn, who has received so many contributions from AT&T she could cross daily exercise off her “things to do” list just running to the bank, or through positive press from front groups, notably the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

According to campaign finance data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, three of Blackburn’s largest career donors are employees and PACs affiliated with AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. Blackburn has also taken $56,000 from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the lobby for the big telecoms.

Combined, those organizations donated more than $200,000 to Blackburn. In comparison, her largest single donor is a PAC associated with Memphis-based FedEx Corp., which donated $68,500.

Phillip “States’ rights don’t extend to local rights in Blackburn’s ideological world” Dampier

Blackburn’s commentary tests the patience of the reality-based community, particularly when she argues that keeping public broadband out protects investments in education. As her rural constituents already know, 21st century broadband is often unavailable in rural Tennessee, and that includes many schools. Stop the Cap! regularly receives letters from rural Americans who complain they have to drive their kids to a Wi-Fi enabled parking lot at a fast food restaurant, town library, or even hunt for an unintentionally open Wi-Fi connection in a private home, just to complete homework assignments that require a broadband connection.

Blackburn’s favorite telecommunication’s company — AT&T — has petitioned the state legislature to allow it to permanently disconnect DSL and landline service in rural areas of the state, forcing customers to a perilous wireless data experience that doesn’t work as well as AT&T promises. While Blackburn complains about the threat of municipal broadband, she says and does nothing about the very real possibility AT&T will be allowed to make things even worse for rural constituents in her own state.

Who does Blackburn believe will ride to the rescue of rural America? Certainly not AT&T, which doesn’t want the expense of maintaining wired broadband service in less profitable rural areas. Comcast won’t even run cable lines into small communities. In fact, evidence has shown for at least a century, whether it is electricity, telephone, or broadband service, when large corporate entities don’t see profits, they won’t provide the service and communities usually have to do the job themselves. But this time those communities are handcuffed in states that have enacted municipal broadband bans literally written by incumbent phone and cable companies and shepherded into the state legislature through front groups like ALEC.

Chairman Wheeler is in an excellent position to understand the big picture, far better than Blackburn’s limited knowledge largely absorbed from AT&T’s talking points. After all, Wheeler comes from the cable and wireless industry and knows very well how the game is played. Wheeler has never said that Washington knows best, but he has made it clear state and federal legislators who support anti-competitive measures like municipal broadband bans don’t have a monopoly on good ideas either — they just have monopolies.

That isn’t good enough for Congresswoman Blackburn, who sought to strip funding from the FCC to punish the agency for crossing AT&T, Comcast and other telecom companies:

Marsha is an avowed member of the AT&T Fan Club.

In July, I passed an amendment in Congress that would prohibit taxpayer funds from being used by the FCC to pre-empt state municipal broadband laws. My amendment doesn’t prevent Chattanooga or any other city in Tennessee from being able to engage in municipal broadband. It just keeps those decisions at the state level. Tennessee’s state law that allowed Chattanooga and other cities to engage in municipal broadband will continue to exist without any interference from the FCC. Tennessee should be able to adjust its law as it sees fit, instead of Washington dictating to us.

Notice that Blackburn’s ideological fortitude has loopholes that protect a very important success story — EPB Fiber in Chattanooga, one of the first to offer gigabit broadband service. If municipal broadband is such a threat to common sense, why the free pass for EPB? In fact, it is networks like EPB that expose the nonsense on offer from Blackburn and her industry friends that claim public broadband networks are failures and money pits.

In fact, Blackburn’s idea of states’ rights never seems to extend to local communities across Tennessee that would have seen local ordinances gutted by Blackburn’s telecommunications policies and proposed bills. In 2005, Blackburn introduced the ironically named Video Choice Act of 2005 which, among other things:

• Would have granted a nationwide video franchise system that would end all local oversight over rights-of-way for the benefit of incumbent telephone companies, but not for cable or other new competitors like Google Fiber;
• Strips away all local oversight of cable and telephone company operations that allowed local jurisdictions to ensure providers follow local laws and rules;
• Prohibited any mechanism on the local level to collect franchise payments;
• Eliminated any rules forbidding “redlining” — when a provider only chooses select parts of a community to serve.

More recently, Blackburn has been on board favoring legislation restricting local communities from having a full say on the placement of cell towers. Current Tennessee law already imposes restrictions on local communities trying to refuse requests from AT&T, Verizon and others to place new cell towers wherever they like. She is also in favor of highest-bidder wins spectrum auctions that could allow AT&T and Verizon to use their enormous financial resources to snap up new spectrum and find ways to hoard it to keep it away from competitors.

Not everyone in Tennessee appreciated Blackburn’s remarks.

Nashville resident Paul Felton got equal time in the newspaper to refute Blackburn’s claims:

Rep. Marsha Blackburn is on her high horse (Tennessee Voices, Oct. 3) about the idea of the Federal Communications Commission opposing laws against municipal broadband networks, wrapping herself in the mantle of states’ rights. We know that behind all “states’ rights” indignation is “corporate rights” protection.

The last I heard, there was only one Internet, and anyone can log into Amazon or healthcare.gov just as easily from any state. Or any budget.

No, this is about the one Internet being controlled by one corporate giant (or two) in each area, who want to control price and broadband speed, and now want to link the two. They don’t want competition from any pesky municipal providers hellbent on providing the same speed for all users, at a lower price. Check the lobbying efforts against egalitarian ideas to find out which side of an issue Marsha Blackburn always comes down on.

But comments like these don’t deter Rep. Blackburn.

“Congress cannot sit idly by and let a federal agency trample on our states’ rights,” she wrote, but we believe she meant to say ‘AT&T’s rights.’

“Besides, the FCC should be tackling other priorities where political consensus exists, like deploying spectrum into the marketplace, making the Universal Service Fund more effective, protecting consumers, improving emergency communications and other important policies,” Blackburn wrote.

Remarkably, that priority list just so happens to mirror AT&T’s own legislative agenda. Perhaps that is just a coincidence.

Comcast’s customer relations team apparently is better at ferreting out contacts at their customers’ employers than fixing problems with their service, despite being given multiple chances to make things right. When one customer made a seventh attempt to resolve his problems, Comcast called his boss and got him fired.

The Consumerist details the latest Comcast Customer Service Horror Show. On one side, Conal, who signed up for Comcast after being sold on a 9-month new customer promotion. On the other, Comcast’s billing and customer service department. Almost from the beginning, the two were locked in combat over service and billing issues:

• Comcast misspelled his last name in their records, which meant some of his bills were allegedly returned to Comcast by the post office;
• Comcast charged him for set-top boxes that were never activated on his account;
• After multiple complaints, Comcast reduced his promotional discount, raising his bill $20 while adding new charges for a second cable modem he didn’t have and continuing charges for set-top boxes he never used;
• Conal tried to cancel his service in October 2013 because of the mishaps, but a representative convinced him to stay after promising to fix his account. Instead, Comcast sent him a dozen pieces of equipment he never ordered and billed his account $1,820 for the unwanted equipment.

Conal returned the unrequested DVRs, cable modems, and everything else Comcast sent, and brought along a spreadsheet detailing his ongoing dispute, including every overcharge he incurred. He’s a professional accountant used to dealing with companies that understand numbers, and was convinced putting everything on paper would finally get through to the cable company.

Not a chance.

Comcast was unmoved and unconvinced by Conal’s spreadsheet, denied there was ever a problem with his account, and upon learning he intended to continue contesting the equipment charges, turned his account over to collections despite the fact it was not past due.

On Feb. 6 Conal dared to escalate his concerns to Comcast’s Office of the Controller. A subsequent callback from a testy representative began with, “how can I help you.” There was no greeting or mention she worked for Comcast, but there was plenty of attitude. The mysterious rep disputed Conal’s claim that a Comcast technician never showed up for an appointment, but could not tell him which appointment she was referring to. After that debate ended, the only remaining question on her mind was the color of Conal’s house.

Realizing a short time later that call was a waste of time, Conal called back the Controller’s office to let them know Comcast’s latest ambassador of goodwill was unhelpful. At this point, he casually mentioned the unresolved accounting issues with his bill should probably be brought before the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a private-sector, nonprofit corporation created by the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 to end the accounting tricks and executive-ordered embargoes on bad news that fleeced investors in the 1990s. A professional accountant would be familiar with the PCAOB and how to appeal for an independent review, ordinary consumers would be unlikely to know the Board even existed.

That Conal would raise the matter of the PCAOB to the Controller’s Office apparently piqued the interest of someone at Comcast, who launched a small research project to determine who Conal was and where he worked. When they discovered his employer did work for Comcast, the cable company struck gold in the leverage department.

Comcast called Conal’s employer and spoke with a partner at the firm, who also received e-mail containing a summary of conversations Comcast evidently recorded between Conal and its various representatives. Comcast complained Conal was using the name of his employer to seek an unfair advantage with customer service. Conal told the Consumerist he never mentioned his employer by name, but once the Controller’s Office learned he was an accountant willing to escalate his complaints outside of the company, it would be a simple matter to look him up online and learn where he worked.

Conal’s employer in fact does consulting work for Comcast, so the outcome of a brief ethics investigation predictably led to Conal’s termination. Conal was never allowed to see the transcripts of conversations with the cable company, nor given access to any recordings of those calls. Conal said before he tangled with Comcast, he had received only positive feedback and reviews for his work.

Conal’s lawyer has been in contact with Comcast over the matter and received a pithy reply from Comcast’s senior deputy general counsel, who likely fears a forthcoming lawsuit, admitting Comcast did call Conal’s employer but said Conal “is not in a position to complain that the firm came to learn” about his dispute with Comcast.

“Our customers deserve the best experience every time they interact with us,” reads a statement from Comcast. The company says it has previously apologized to Conal, but adds “we will review his lawyer’s letter and respond as quickly as possible.”

Comcast had no comment about whether the company considers it proper to identify and contact customers’ employers and push its weight around when it feels the need to do some complaining of its own.

The merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable includes castoffs that will be served by a completely unknown spinoff – GreatLand Connections, that nobody can speak with and does not have a website.

At least 2.5 million Comcast customers in cities like Detroit and Minneapolis could soon find their service switched to a new provider that doesn’t have a website, doesn’t answer questions, and won’t give detailed information to municipal officials about its plans, pricing, or service obligations.

GreatLand Connections is the dumping ground for communities Comcast no longer wants to serve, including cities in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Formerly known as “SpinCo” for the benefit of Wall Street investment banks advising Comcast, the new cable company has been created primarily to help Comcast convince regulators to approve its merger with Time Warner Cable. Comcast believes supersizing itself with Time Warner Cable will win a pass with the FCC by self-limiting its potential television market share. The deal is also structured to dump a large amount of debt on the brand new cable company, allowing Comcast to avoid a significant tax bill.

GreatLand will, for all intents and purposes, be Charter Cable under a different name. Charter will act as the “management company,” which means it will be in charge of most consumer-facing operations.

Beyond that, almost nothing is known about the new cable company, except that it will open its doors laden with $7.8 billion in debt, according to a securities filing. That is equal to five times EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. In comparison, Comcast is 1.99 times EBITDA and Time Warner Cable is 3.07 times EBITDA, making the new cable company highly leveraged above industry averages. Charter Cable, which declared bankruptcy in 2009, is loaded down it debt itself, as it continues to acquire other cable operators.

Finances for the new company appear to be “less-than-middling,” according to MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett, in a note to investors.

Because cable operators face little serious competition, the chances of any significant cable company liquidating in bankruptcy is close to zero, but a heavily indebted company may be very conservative about spending money on employees and operations. It may also leverage its market position and raise prices to demonstrate it can repay those obligations.

With many customers having only one choice for High Speed Internet access above 15-25Mbps — the cable company — the arrival of GreatLand concerns many municipalities facing deadlines to approve a transfer of franchise agreements from Comcast to the new entity.

Jodie Miller, executive director of the Northern Dakota County Cable Communications Commission in suburban Minneapolis said it was impossible to find anyone to talk to at GreatLand. The commission needs to sign off on franchise transfers by mid-December, but nobody can reach GreatLand and the company has no track record of service anywhere in the country.

“We’re not even saying it’s unqualified,” she told Businessweek. “We’re saying we don’t really have information.”

Coon Rapids, Minn. has put franchise renewal negotiations on hold. Michael Bradley, a municipal cable TV attorney and the city’s longtime cable counsel said the deadline has been extended from Oct. 15 to Dec. 15.

“It’s a challenge,” he said. “No one knows who we can deal with locally. Nothing is certain yet and discussions are on hold.”

“We don’t have the answers we need,” added Ron Styka, an elected trustee with responsibility for cable-service oversight in Meridian Township, Michigan, a town served by Comcast about 80 miles west of Detroit.

“Answers have been inadequate at best and mostly not forthcoming,” echoed David Osberg, city administrator of Eagan, Minn. in a filing to the Federal Communications Commission.”It’s not clear whether GreatLand will be financially qualified.”

Eagan has had problems with Comcast in the past, and does not want new ones with GreatLand, especially with broadband service, which is vital to an effort to attract technology jobs to the community.