Charter Communications’ takeover of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks has not proved popular, according to a new survey from Temkin Group.

The cable operator received rock bottom scores among customers frustrated about how Charter handles its acquired customers, especially those facing a transition to Spectrum plans and pricing. Customers have filled the company’s own forums with complaints about rate increases for newly required equipment or cable television plan changes that force customers to upgrade to win back channels deleted from their long-standing Time Warner Cable or Bright House lineups.

Customer dissatisfaction about the changes was picked up in Temkin Group’s 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings, U.S., published in March.

Just 35% of Charter/Spectrum customers were emotionally satisfied after interacting with Spectrum, the third worst performing company among the 318 surveyed across 20 different industries. Spectrum saw a ratings drop of 8.2% from 2017-2018, the worst performance decline among all TV and internet service providers,  according to Temkin’s survey.

Spectrum also scored just 57% on the “effort” metric, which measures how difficult it was to interact with the company to resolve a problem. Only 51% reported satisfaction with the ability of Spectrum to resolve their concern or problem, putting Spectrum on Temkin’s “Bottom 50 Organizations” — 312th best performer out of 318 companies. (Comcast, Cox, and Altice-Optimum actually performed slightly worse.)

Temken explains the root cause for perennially poor ratings of cable and phone companies: they often have a monopoly.

“There are some industries that have habitually poor customer experience,” Temken explains. “In many of the cases, these problem stems from some form of monopolistic power. TV service providers and internet service providers have carved out regions and have limited competition.”

This marks the eighth year Temkin has published its Temkin Experience Ratings, generated from compiling the results of a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers about their recent interactions with 318 significant U.S. companies. Temkin measures three dimensions of a customer’s experience:

• Success: To what degree were customers able to accomplish what they wanted to do after a recent interaction with a company.
• Effort: How easy was it to interact with the company.
• Emotion: How did the customer feel about those interactions.

The TV/internet service category has stood out in recent years for consistently delivering rock bottom ratings — the worst of Temkin’s surveyed industries. Only health insurance companies come close to the dismal ratings phone and cable companies deliver year after year.

Much of the decline in Spectrum’s rating is attributed to an increase in the negative emotions customers experienced after interacting with the company. In the last year, the company has adopted a much firmer position on pricing and packages that customers criticize as “take it or leave it pricing.” Spectrum also recently scaled up digital television conversion in many legacy Time Warner Cable markets, with many customers paying for new set-top boxes to continue receiving cable television service on all televisions in the home. The company has also frustrated early and enthusiastic adopters of broadband speed upgrades with compulsory upgrade fees as high as $199.

Based on Temkin’s four customer experience core competencies, it seems like Charter is mired at the first stage of what Temkin calls ‘Customer Experience Maturity’:

Stage One — Ignore: Organization does not focus on customer experience management and does not view customer experience as a core part of its value proposition.

The best performers in Temken’s annual study were supermarkets, which took five of the top 11 spots. The top-rated company in the 2018 study was Wegmans, a privately held supermarket chain operating in the northeastern U.S. Other top scorers included H-E-B, Publix, Aldi, Wawa, Citizens Bank, USAA, Subway, and Ace Hardware.

Bad results for Frontier DSL in Nevada. (Source: Elko Residential Broadband Survey)

Only six Frontier Communications customers surveyed in Elko, Nev. gave the phone company an “A” for its DSL service, while 42% flunked Frontier for what they considered unacceptable internet service.

The Elko Broadband Action Team has surveyed residential and business customers about broadband performance and found widespread dissatisfaction with Frontier Communications over slow connections and service interruptions.

“I’m pretty disappointed in them,” said Elko councilman John Patrick Rice.

Businesses and residential customers were in close agreement with each other rating Frontier’s service, with nearly 87% complaining they endure buffering delays or slowdowns, especially when watching streaming video. When browsing web pages, nearly three-quarters of surveyed customers still found service lacking.

Among the complaints (Res)-Residential (Bus)-Business:

• Service interruptions: 74.43% (Res)/79.69% (Bus)
• Too slow/not receiving advertised speed: 72.16% (Res)/65.75% (Bus)
• Price: 63.64% (Res)/37.5% (Bus)
• Customer Service: 38.07% (Res)/45.31% (Bus)

The Nevada Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection received a steady stream of complaints about Frontier’s DSL service in the state over the past year.

Answering the survey question, “would you be interested in faster download and upload speeds at prices that are somewhat comparable to what you are paying now?” 97.87 percent of residential respondents said yes.

Frontier representatives responded to the survey results at a March 27 Elko City Council meeting.

“Frontier did recognize it could improve upstream and downstream flow and educated the council and the public on some of the issues,” Elko assistant city manager Scott Wilkinson said.

Nathan Gray woke up one morning this month and received an alarming notification from Comcast, his internet provider, claiming he had exceeded his Comcast terabyte data cap and was being billed an additional $10 for a 50 GB allotment of extra data.

“This has never happened before and I was only six days into my monthly billing cycle, so I assumed it must be a mistake,” Gray told Stop the Cap! “But Comcast told me it wasn’t a mistake.”

Gray was hardly alone. One month earlier, “Bogreenwoo” discovered his family had blown the roof off their internet usage, exceeding 1 TB by the middle of the billing cycle, with more usage piling up hour after hour.

“Xfinity was adding 50 GB blocks every day at $10 each and calls to tech support were no help,” he shared on Comcast’s customer support forum.

Similar complaints are brought up on that forum at least weekly, if not more often. Comcast counterclaims that usage exceeding 1 TB a month is so rare, it represents only about 1% of its customer base. But customers with huge internet bills from Comcast who stumble their way to the company’s support forum strongly dispute that notion.

“Well good luck with finding a solution or even finding anyone at Comcast who cares or anyone anywhere else as far as that goes,” shared “Amaasing.” “I have had this issue more than once and have talked with every vice president of customer service and had discussions with the security department and even filed a complaint with the FCC and nothing happened at all.”

Some users, like Amaasing, have received so many bills stung with overlimit fees they now turn their computers off in the evening and unplug their cable modems. In many cases the usage keeps rising anyway.

“Today when I logged in, I had apparently used 196 GB yesterday,” Amaasing wrote. “196 GB in 24 hours?  Seriously?”

For most customers in this predicament, Comcast is quick to blame customers for the usage and leave the detective work up to them. Customer support will not entertain suggestions their usage meter is inaccurate. In their view, it is more likely someone is illicitly connected to your Wi-Fi and stealing your service or you are running some bandwidth-heavy application or your computer has been hijacked by hackers or pirates.

While you are left to investigate which of these might be true, Comcast is free to continue billing your account overlimit fees.

Comcast claims it will forgive customers who exceed their data allowance twice ‘a year’:

“We’ll provide you with two courtesy months, so you will not be billed the first two times you exceed a terabyte while you are getting used to the new data usage plan. This means that you will only be subject to overage charges if you use more than a terabyte for a third time in a 12-month period. If you use more than a terabyte two times or less in a 12-month period, your courtesy month balance will reset to two at the end of these 12 months. However, if you use more than a terabyte three times in a 12-month period, no more courtesy months will be given.”

After “courtesy months” expire, you are on the hook for whatever excess usage Comcast determines you have consumed. Some Comcast customers assume the courtesy month counter resets each calendar year, but in fact it only resets after 12 consecutive months of staying within your allowance limit.

What causes “excess usage” is anyone’s guess. Comcast customers have documented several recent causes why they have mysteriously started blowing through their 1 TB data allowance:

1. The growing prevalence of 4K video, the highest streaming video quality available through online video streaming services can be responsible for a sudden spike of usage. Netflix and other services that support 4K video content with high dynamic range can eat up 7 GB to 10 GB of data per hour. Many services allow you to downgrade your video settings with minimal quality loss. We recommend trying settings typically labeled 720 or 1080 — the lower the better if you are running up against your allowance.
2. Third party backup and cloud storage tools: That online backup or cloud storage service you are using may be malfunctioning. There are several reports about Amazon Drive having problems recently, causing files to be repeatedly transferred and driving up usage to several hundred gigabytes a day in some cases. If you use Amazon Drive and have seen a huge spike in usage, try uninstalling or turning off the service for several days and see if usage falls dramatically. Other file and computer backup services that store your data in the cloud can consume a lot of data, especially when installing them on a new computer for the first time. Even some cell phone backup services designed to store your photos in the cloud can malfunction and repeatedly try to send the same photos over and over. Disable these tools for several days and check your usage levels.
3. Third party usage: Family members doing something bandwidth intensive can also be responsible for dramatic usage spikes. Although downloading video game updates can consume very large amounts of data, game play itself typically has little impact on your data usage. Check with family members to see if they are watching high bandwidth video or have installed a file backup service. Less common is an uninvited guest on your Wi-Fi network. Comcast often points to Wi-Fi security as a major problem when a neighbor gains access to your internet connection to download huge numbers of files. You can change your Wi-Fi password to help lock down your network. Make sure not to use plain word passwords — use a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols.
4. Comcast’s meter is simply inaccurate. There is no independent third-party verification or government oversight of Comcast’s usage meter. Most ISPs hire a third-party contractor to design and implement their data measurement meters, but those contractors are ultimately answerable to the provider — not to you, giving little peace of mind to consumers who are forced to trust their cable company to be honest. Our country’s Founding Fathers placed great importance on accurate measuring and weighing tools, so much so it is addressed in Section VIII of Article I of the U.S. Constitution. That section gives authority to Congress to establish accurate and regulated measurement tools. Each state has their own way of managing this, often with a bureau of weights and measurements that independently verifies and certifies — with a tamper-evident sticker, the accuracy of the food scale at your local grocer or the gas pump at a nearby service station. Comcast has resisted similar third-party oversight for its usage meter. But considering the company’s overlimit fees can add a substantial sum to customer bills, having this kind of oversight seems appropriate.

Avoiding the usage cap: Comcast ironically provides its own insurance plan to protect customers from its own arbitrary data allowance. For peace of mind, Comcast collects an extra $50 a month ($20 for gigabit speed DOCSIS 3.1 plans) if you wish to waive the data cap altogether. Data caps are completely under the control of Comcast and are especially prevalent in regions of the country where a lack of competition exists. But Comcast’s arguments in favor of data caps don’t wash at the nation’s second largest cable company – Charter Communications, which markets its internet service as having no data caps at all. In fact, Charter CEO Thomas Rutledge never saw much use for data caps at Charter or Cablevision, the company he used to head.

Debunking arguments for usage caps at Comcast and other ISPs. (5:46)

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) has opened an inquiry into whether Frontier Communications is meeting its service obligations to customers after receiving a major spike in complaints about the phone company.

The MPUC acknowledged it has been “receiving a large volume of complaints related to the service quality, customer service, and billing practices of Frontier Communications.” The regulator is concerned that “after attempts to mediate these complaints, many of them remain unresolved.”

The investigation will include the Minnesota Department of Commerce and Minnesota’s Attorney General, both tasked with determining if Frontier is complying with MPUC rules and Minnesota state law.

Frontier provides service to more than 98,000 landlines in Minnesota, doing business as Frontier Communications and Citizens Telecommunications. Most Frontier customers are located in northeastern and southern Minnesota, as well as communities like Apple Valley, Burnsville, Farmington, and Rosemount.

A survey of filed complaints found many involved Frontier’s DSL internet service, which customers complained was slow and prone to frequent outages. Other complaints involved inaccurate billing and missed service calls, which sometimes led to delays of days or weeks before service could be restored.

“I’d heard a bunch of complaints of poor service all across my district,” said Rep. Rob Ecklund (DFL-International Falls) in a news release. “I am a Frontier customer myself, and the service has been lousy.”

Other customers had their complaints published in the Timberjay newspaper, which has been the unofficial meeting place for frustrated customers who cannot get satisfaction from Frontier.

“This has been the worst service experience of my life,” said Melissa Holmes, of Embarrass in northeastern Minnesota. “My whole neighborhood here on Wahlsten Road in Embarrass has had service issues with Frontier for decades. Repeated calls to the company go nowhere.”

The newspaper blamed Frontier’s wrong priorities in a scathing editorial last fall:

Prospects for an improvement in Frontier’s service quality appear unlikely given the increasingly tenuous financial condition of the company. Frontier went deeply in debt in early 2016, when it completed an $11 billion purchase of landline infrastructure formerly owned by Verizon in California, Texas, and Florida. The acquisition more than doubled the size of the company, but also prompted a major restructuring, which included significant layoffs.

Frontier officials had touted the acquisition at the time, arguing that the company knew how to make money from traditional landline infrastructure even as the industry is rapidly transitioning to wireless. But the company has yet to demonstrate it is up to the challenge and as complaints over poor service have mounted, the company has hemorrhaged customers, particularly in more populated regions, where customers often have viable alternatives.

In response, Frontier claims it updated its billing software and is making “process improvements” in the way it conducts business.

If you live in Minnesota and wish to share your views with the MPUC, you can visit their website, register, and comment until May 25, 2018.

The state’s initial investigation and report on Frontier is due on May 11.

KSTP-TV in Minneapolis-St. Paul reports Frontier is under investigation by the state telecom regulator for poor service. (2:21)

Some residents in Houston and Dallas are furious at AT&T and its contractors for causing major damage to homeowners’ property, in one case burning down a Houston family home after accidentally hitting a natural gas line that resulted in a fire.

Joyce Skala’s home in Cypress was seriously damaged in a fire just before Thanksgiving 2017 and almost three months later, Skala says AT&T and its contractors won’t talk to her about the damages and who will pay for them.

“Everything you look at when you leave your house in the morning, it was gone,” Skala told KPRC News after the Nov. 14 fire. “I have not heard from a soul — not one. Not even a representative of a representative.”

The damage was not an isolated incident. KPRC noted two days later, AT&T’s contractors damaged an electric line in Shelli Moore’s yard in a different neighborhood, causing a power outage. Repairing the damage will cost her almost $2,000, and so far, Moore appears to be left holding the bill.

“That would break me,” she said. “I have no idea where I would come up with that kind of money, but we have to have lights and heat,” Moore said.

Joyce Skala’s home, destroyed by fire after an AT&T contractor hit a natural gas line (Image: KTRK)

In the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, utility workers made themselves right at home at Norma Logan’s home, using her back patio as a dining area and completely “trashing” her backyard.

Logan came home to find AT&T digging a deep trench along her back fence, damaging sections of it, as well as destroying her personal property. Then they left without a word.

“They broke many things out there,” Logan told KTVT. “They broke the fence. They broke the statue. They broke some of the things that I use to decorate the flower bed.”

A day later, the workers returned unannounced, this time with heavy equipment that continued to tear up her yard. But before getting to work, they spent a leisurely breakfast at her patio table just outside her back door. They didn’t bother to clean up after they finished.

The subcontractor responsible in these cases was NX Utilities, which has piled up a number of complaints against it since last fall. But AT&T appears to still be using the company to construct its fiber to the home network in both cities.

Contractors left evidence of their presence behind. (Image: Logan)

Anni Shugart’s Cypress home was damaged by an electric surge, and AT&T didn’t want to talk to her about the damage to her home either.

“I couldn’t get anywhere with AT&T,” Shugart said.

Shugart, like others, was left holding the bill after AT&T denied her claim, suggesting they are not responsible for the damages. They pointed her to NX Utilities, but that didn’t make much difference either so she called her insurance company, which is covering her repairs, except for the $4,500 deductible she is paying out of pocket.

“Well, I hope I’ll get it back eventually,” she said. “It’s a lot of money.”

Two days later, contractors hit another gas line. Four days after that they cut another underground power line.

“People in my neighborhood are mad at AT&T,” homeowner Pam Grossman told KPRC.

AT&T claims that it is not directly responsible for the damage, because it was caused by its third-party contractor NX Utilities. In fact, NX is just one of several layers of contractors working on AT&T’s fiber project, and in the event of a problem, the contractors are excellent at pointing fingers at one another.

KPRC reports when the fire marshal turned up to investigate the fires, the report included claims from contractors blamed each other while holding themselves harmless.

“There was no way that his company was involved in the fire,” said the owner of Connect Links in the fire marshal’s report.

KPRC in Houston reviews the damage being done in the Houston area by AT&T’s subcontractors managing the company’s fiber buildout. (3:58)

AT&T contractor NX Utilities allegedly damaged Norma Logan’s fence in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. (Image: KTVT)

AT&T won’t say how many damage reports about it or its contractors have been filed in Houston and Dallas-Ft. Worth. But AT&T did say it was doing both cities a big favor by enabling them for gigabit fiber internet, and regrets the problems that have developed along the way.

“Our goal is to minimize impact on residents before, during and after construction and to keep them informed through a variety of means throughout the network expansion process,” AT&T said in a statement. “If construction-related issues do occur, we work quickly to resolve and restore any impacts from our work.”

The key emphasis is “our work” and AT&T feels its subcontractors are responsible for fixing their own problems.

“Whether large or small, these damages impact the public and that is not lost on us,” AT&T said. “We track damages and other issues and review performance with our contractors performing the work. As we identify poor performers, we cull those out. Damage can occur for a number of reasons, from contractor error to locates not being accurate. Before we begin a project, we talk with locating firms to provide them with some high-level visibility into where we anticipate completing work on a regular basis. Furthermore, as a part of the large project locate process, we typically provide 30-60 days’ notice versus the minimum 10 days.”

Logan discovered utility workers dug this trench in her backyard along the fence line. (Image: KTVT)

AT&T says projects of this large size and scope require careful planning and implementation, and the company has gotten significant experience managing fiber upgrades in a number of cities where it provides telephone and broadband service.

“We have dozens of supervisors and inspectors in the field to ensure our contractors are performing to our standard,” said AT&T. “We work closely with city officials to ensure our work is done in a timely and orderly fashion. Our contractors are trained to obtain proper permitting, closely follow local construction codes, and abide by rules governing rights-of-way and property easements.”

But many homeowners report they never got any advance notification about the construction work and even less often understood how it would impact on their property.

Logan said she received no notification, despite claims by NX it placed fliers on her door. But those fliers said nothing about heavy construction equipment being brought in, driven over grass and into a cramped backyard to dig. Logan was incensed as she watched equipment dig a trench several feet deep along her backyard fence line, ruining some of her lawn ornaments and damaging her fence.

A second day of empty coffee cups and fast food wrappers left on her patio table was also an unpleasant reminder of their presence.

NX later claimed they reprimanded their workers, not for the damage done to her property, but for not cleaning up their trash as they left.

The sudden arrival of heavy equipment attempting to navigate into Logan’s backyard only upset her further. (Image: KTVT)

AT&T is not the only telecom company that receives criticism for property damage while installing fiber cables. Google Fiber generated “hundreds of complaints” in the Austin area for construction mishaps, including alleged flooding from backed up storm drains that damaged multiple properties. In Charlotte, N.C., Google was accused of causing damage to water wells and allegedly struck a sanitary sewer, flooding a home with raw sewage.

Since September 2015, Charlotte city officials have cited contractors for ordinance violations more than 40 times for $21,300, data show. That included $14,200 in general violations and $6,700 for closing a portion of a right-of-way without the proper traffic control. Fines ranged from $100 to $1,800. Ansco, a contractor for AT&T, was cited the most: 17 times for $8,400. Bechtel, which does work for Google, was cited six times for $2,100, including fines that also mentioned another subcontractor.

How to protect yourself

If a company is performing work involving installation of underground cables, that carries the greatest risk of potential damage to property or other utilities. Many mishaps are caused by inaccurate maps that purport to show where other underground utilities are installed. In some areas, those maps are incomplete or wrong. In the United States, these problems are so serious that there is a nationwide free hotline – 811 – available to consumers and contractors for free on-site location flagging of where underground utilities are actually located.

AT&T is installing fiber optics in several Texas cities.

You can request your own site survey at no charge and photograph the results for your records.

Here is how to request a site survey:

• Call 811 from anywhere in the country at least two days before digging and your call will automatically be routed to your local one call center. Visit the 811 service state map to see if your local one call center accepts online requests.
• Give the operator information about how to contact you, approximately where you or a contractor will likely dig, and what type of work will be done. If you don’t know all the details, that is okay. Request a general assessment of where utilities have placed their cables on or near your property and let 811 know a contractor hired by the telecom company will be doing the work independently.
• Utility companies who have potential facilities involved will be notified of the imminent arrival of a contractor preparing to dig on or near your property.
• Each affected utility company will send a location team to mark the approximate location of underground utility lines. Sometimes they spray paint the location on grass or pavement in different colors reflecting the service. In other cases, they plant small plastic flags in a line where the cabling is located. This typically occurs within 2-3 working days, but some states may have different rules.  To access specific information about your state, visit the 811 state map.

Contractors are usually required by ordinance to notify you in advance of any utility work that is done on or near your property. This notice is usually in writing and can be a mailed or placed flier or a doorhanger card. Retain this notification until the work is complete. It will generally include contact information about the company doing the work and what to do in case a problem arises, and most importantly, who to contact.

Prior to the arrival of the construction crews, photograph your yard to document its current condition. Make sure to get clear photos along property lines or easements, documenting the condition of fencing, landscaping, and any pre-existing structures. If damage occurs, you will have before and after photos to show the contractor, town officials, and/or your attorney.

If possible, stay home on the day work is being done. Making your presence known will greatly reduce the chance utility workers will be careless with your personal property or how they conduct themselves. Document any suspicious or disturbing activity by taking video on your cell phone. Watch for workers attempting to access areas of your property unaffected by the work. They do not have the right to use your outdoor furniture for lounging or eating. They also do not have the right to relieve themselves in your yard.

Buried wire flags

In every case, they are responsible for reasonably restoring your property to the same condition it was in before they arrived. That means repairing ruts or reseeding disturbed portions of your lawn, repairing or replacing damaged items like fencing, lawn ornaments, buildings, and other personal property. If they damage or kill a tree, they are responsible for removing and replacing it, if it was located on your property and not in an easement (in those cases, contact your local town or city officials and ask how to proceed.)

If you discover damage to another company’s infrastructure (or public utilities), call the affected company or public utility right away. They will need to document the damage and arrange for repairs. If a utility power line is knocked down or damaged between the pole or yard pedestal and your home, some companies may require you to hire a private contractor to replace the line. You will want to notify the contractor that did the damage about the incident and begin documenting the process to receive reimbursement.

It is not your responsibility to navigate a company’s complex maze of contractors and subcontractors. Contact the telecom company doing the work and insist they identify the contractor involved and agree to liaison with you to get the matter resolved quickly to your satisfaction. They cannot walk away from their responsibility to correct damage just because they chose to hire an independent company to perform work on their behalf.

When an AT&T contractor hit a utility line, it caused a power surge damaging homeowners’ utility boxes and outside walls. (Image: KPRC)

KPRC asked Texas real estate attorney Nikolas Spencer about who is responsible in these cases according to Texas state law.

“All of them are,” he said. “If they know that this particular subcontractor is routinely causing fires at people’s houses, or even just nicking the lines themselves, that’s a repeated and dangerous situation that AT&T is on notice as happening. They’re responsible for that.”

Your municipality may be willing to share violation details about contractors performing work in your area. If you can document repeated instances of careless work or violations, that can be strong evidence to prove AT&T was aware of the situation, yet continued to use an offending contractor.

KPRC recommends hiring an attorney if severe damage is caused by a utility. For minor property damage, you may get fast results asking for a supervisor or filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau or a state Attorney General’s office. Those complaints are generally forwarded to a senior customer service manager better empowered to get quick results.

Having a fiber optic upgrade is almost always a good thing, and can increase the value of your home in a sale. But for many homeowners, it has been decades since major utility construction work was done in older neighborhoods and people can forget the disruption, noise, inconvenience, and occasional damage that can be done along the way. Those best prepared in advance to fight for their interests are the most likely to win quick resolution and satisfaction from utility companies that do damage and may not have adequate resources (or interest) in correcting the problem before you give up in frustration and go away.

KTVT in Dallas reports AT&T’s fiber construction crews have damaged personal property and inconvenienced customers. (2:03)