Phillip “More empty promises from the cable industry” Dampier

Listening to Time Warner Cable’s “Here today and gone much richer tomorrow” CEO-in-passing Rob Marcus prattle on endlessly about improving “the customer experience” on analyst conference calls, the cable company’s blog, and in various press statements always makes me pinch myself to be certain I am not dreaming.

Time Warner’s Rob Marcus:

I’m focused on ensuring we establish a customer-centric, performance-oriented, values-driven culture defined by four basic tenets:

• We put our customers first,
• We are empowered and accountable,
• We do the right thing, and
• We are passionate about winning

What does that mean for customers? If we expect customers to trust us to connect them to what matters most, we must put them at the center of everything we do.

How is that working out for you?

Based on consumer surveys, many of Marcus’ customers may have a different sentiment:

• Time Warner puts what is best for Time Warner first,
• Time Warner is empowered to raise rates for no clear reason and as a deregulated entity is accountable to no one,
• Time Warner does the right thing for Time Warner executives and shareholders,
• Charlie Sheen was also passionate about “winning.”

So much for Comcast’s customer service improvement project promised back in 2007. (Source: ACSI)

There is nowhere to go but up when it comes to improving the abusive relationship most Americans have with the local cable or phone company. CNN asked the question, “do you hate your Internet provider,” and within hours more than 600 customers sang “yes!”

Marcus

This is hardly a new problem. Karl Bode at Broadband Reports reminds us that Comcast broke its promises for major improvements in customer service more than five years ago. CEO Brian Roberts at the time blamed the troubles on Comcast’s enormity — taking 250 million calls a year handling orders, customer complaints, etc., is a lot for one company to handle.

“With that many calls, you are going to have failures,” Roberts admitted.

With more than 10 million Time Warner Cable customers waiting to move in at Comcast, if what Roberts says is true, things are about to get much worse. In fact, even before the merger was announced Comcast was just as despised as ever, thanks to rate hikes, usage caps, and poor service often delivered from their notorious sub-contractors that appear on the news for falling asleep, murder, digging in the wrong yard or blowing up laptops, dishwashers or homes.

Judging from the enormous negative reaction customers of both Time Warner Cable and Comcast had to the news the two were combining, it’s clear this merger isn’t the exciting opportunity Marcus and Roberts would have you believe.

‘If you despise Comcast today, your hate will know no bounds tomorrow as Comcast spends the next two years distracted with digesting Time Warner Cable,’ suggested one customer.

Another asked whether Americans have resigned themselves to a trap of low expectations, seeking out one abusive telecom company relationship after another.

“After twenty years of Time Warner’s broken promises, service you can’t count on, and price hikes you can, I made the fatal mistake of running away from one bad relationship into the arms of another with the Bernie Madoff of broadband: AT&T,” wrote another. “Slower service, an unnecessary allowance on broadband usage, and one rate increase too many is hardly the improvement we were promised in the shiny brochure. But we have nowhere else to go.”

Being stuck with an independent phone company with no cable provider nearby can mean even worse service.

“I live in Seattle, and the only option in my neighborhood is CenturyLink DSL,” wrote Jen Wilson.

CenturyLink’s top speed in Wilson’s neighborhood? 1Mbps. At night, speeds drop to 122kbps — just twice the speed of dial-up Internet.

CNN’s Frida Ghitis observed the current state of broadband in the United States is alarmingly bad, and allowing Comcast and Time Warner Cable to merge won’t fix it:

Americans are divided on many issues, but resentment against these telecom giants is so pervasive that it may just be the most heartwarming symbol of national unity. And that’s as it should be. Except that the resentment should extend to politicians who have made this disastrous system possible and allow political contributions to prevent them from fixing it. The problem is not just one of dismal customer service. Instead, it is a growing threat to the country’s economic and strategic position.

If you travel overseas, you will quickly notice that Web access in much of the developed world is light years ahead of America’s. You may also be irritated to discover that far better Internet is much, much cheaper in other countries.

Time Warner’s notorious modem rental fee was just a hidden rate hike, according to the ex-CEO.

Thus far, Time Warner’s remedy to improve service is yet another rate increase. Broadband prices are rising an average of $3 a month — $36 a year, with no speed enhancements on the horizon except in New York, Los Angeles, and cities where Google Fiber is threatening to kick the cable company in the pants. That means Time Warner’s 11.1 million broadband customers will deliver as much as $33.3 million more in revenue each month for broadband service alone. What will you get in return? In most cases, nothing.

Television customers will be pick-pocketed for the newly-“enhanced” on-screen guide many still loathe, which carries a new surcharge applied to the cost of set-top boxes and DVRs. This “enhancement” alone will cost most customers with two boxes an extra $30 a year. It will provide Time Warner with more than $170 million each year in revenue enhancement.

The cable company that fought a battle with CBS last summer “on behalf of customers” faced with paying extortionist pricing for CBS-owned cable networks and local stations will instead send their extortion payment direct to Time Warner, thanks to a new $2.25/mo “Broadcast TV Fee” imposed this spring by the cable company.

But Time Warner is unlikely to hang on to that money for long.

If it wanted to discourage programmers from demanding double-digit percentage rate increases, the plan is likely to backfire once the networks smell the money — more than $25 million a month, $300 million a year — Time Warner claims to be collecting on their behalf.

Charter Communications’ march to all-digital service is one big Excedrin headache for many of the communities enduring the cable company’s conversion.

Charter is embarked on a campaign to end analog cable television service, freeing up bandwidth to offer more HD channels and increase broadband speeds. But the switch to digital has been accompanied by frequent service disruptions and outages.

In Texas, customers complain their digital channels are often frozen or pixelated. In Casper, Wyo., where Charter acquired an older cable system from Cablevision that was originally built by Bresnan Communications, customers’ complaints range from inconsistent service and slow response times to loss of sound and frozen video during airing of City Council meetings.

But some of the loudest concerns about Charter originate from the Outer Banks of North Carolina where customers are finding the switch to digital can be very costly.

Tourism is a major part of the local economy and the Outer Banks are filled with seasonal homes, rental condos and hotels. Many property owners maintain seasonal accounts with Charter Cable, only active during the tourist season. Some hotel owners notified about Charter’s plans to transition towards digital service worked with the cable company to buy televisions that would not need additional equipment to work after the switch. With the cable company’s recommendations, some hotel chains purchased dozens or even hundreds of digital-ready television sets installed in rooms that were ready for the switch.

Only recently, Charter notified customers they also planned to encrypt the basic lineup, rendering the digital televisions useless without the additional cost and inconvenience of installing Charter’s digital set-top boxes. Although Charter will temporarily offer customers free rental of the boxes, after the offer expires, customers will pay Charter $6.99 a month for each box. For some upper end condos, the cost of renting multiple boxes will exceed the cost of the cable TV package.

The Outer Banks Voice details several other customer complaints:

With the older analog systems, many owners flat mounted their televisions to walls and had the cable wired directly into the television, out of sight. With boxes now required, rental homeowners will need to figure out where to place the box and how to run the cables to the set.

In addition, rental companies and homeowners will need to keep track of numerous remotes and keeping those remotes supplied with working batteries.

[…] Thus far, Charter is not offering boxes for sale, so owners cannot absorb the cost over the long-run use of the box, and there appears to be some confusion on whether homes with five or more televisions will require a “Pro Installation” at extra cost to ensure signal strength is sufficient.

If such an installation is required, owners and rental management companies will also be required to arrange access for Charter installers.

Rental condos are also faced with yet another logistic hurdle.

Many condos include cable television fees in their monthly association dues, and the cable contracts for all units are in the name of the condo association.

To obtain boxes, condo owners are now going to be required to set up their own individual accounts, often from an out-of-state location, and then determine how to get the boxes installed.

Signal strength is also a concern in condo projects. Even with analog signals, the multiple connections in one area make reception fuzzy and of low quality.

A small sample of complaints found all over Charter’s social media pages.

Charter Communications shared their side of the story about the digital conversion:

Outer Banks, N.C.

Charter customers are notified by newspaper, direct mail, bill messages, phone calls from Charter representatives, and Charter commercial spots beginning at least 30 days prior to their cutover. Charter is making it easy for customers to receive one or more digital boxes at no cost for one, two or five years, depending on the customer’s programming package and other qualifying factors.

Customers that need less than four boxes can have them shipped directly to their home by calling 1-888-GET-CHARTER or pick them up at a Charter Store.

Customers that live out of town, that own vacation homes, can authorize personnel with their property management company or other specified individuals to pick up their boxes. Customers must first authorize those individuals and add them to their account by calling 1-888-GET-CHARTER. The customer account owner can rescind authorization of individuals at any time.

Property Management companies or authorized individuals can then obtain up to five set-top boxes at a Charter Store.

Customers needing more than five boxes should contact Charter 1-888-GET-CHARTER. A professional technician will be scheduled to assist customers with the installation.

Charter Stores are currently operating with expanded hours to accommodate customers during this all-digital project. Charter Store hours will also be expanded in April where peak volume is expected.

Commercial properties have several options available and can work with their Charter Business account representative on the best solution for their business.

Due to advances in technology, solutions available may involve the need for additional equipment in order to provide the best possible cable, Internet and voice products for our customers.

Tom Wheeler circa 1983, when he represented the cable industry. (Image: The Cable Center)

Skepticism persists over whether new FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, a former cable and telco lobbyist and venture capitalist, will have the interests of an industry he was a part of for decades ahead of the people he is supposed to represent.

The doubts are so significant, The Wall Street Journal’s ‘All Things D’ devoted an entire piece on the subject, interviewing Wheeler about his plans for the federal agency.

“My client today is the American people, and I am going to be the most effective advocate they could hope for,” Wheeler told AllThingsD in a phone interview on Wednesday. “I was (involved in) the early days of cable television when everybody was trying to squash it; I was a was champion for a diversity of voices and the competition that represented. I’m very proud of that period, but it was 30 years ago that I was in in cable, and 10 years ago that I was in wireless.”

Both periods were extremely important for both industries. When Wheeler was president of the National Cable TV Association (now the NCTA), his leadership helped enact the 1984 nationwide deregulation of the cable television industry. Wheeler promised the single national “hands-off” policy for cable television would put control “back in the hands of customers” instead of the local, state, and federal government. The cable lobby pushed hard for extra provisions in the law that would prohibit local or state governments or franchising authorities from reimposing controls the federal government eliminated.

The 1984 Cable Act contained three major provisions to strip away regulatory/rate oversight:

1. “Basic Cable” rate regulation was removed in any community where a cable company faced “effective competition” from at least three unduplicated over the air television stations. If your community received two fuzzy network affiliates and one local religious station, that was considered effective competition.
2. Local franchise authorities and cable TV commissions, often citizen-run, had most of their oversight and enforcement powers stripped away, including the most important power to deny a franchise renewal to a bad-acting local cable company, except in the most extreme cases. Cable operators effectively used this provision to launch costly lawsuits burying local communities in litigation expenses when they tried to find a different provider.
3. Granted local franchise authorities to right to demand cable systems set aside a few channels for Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) use.

The cable industry carefully lobbied for an effective definition of “competition” that made it into the final version of the bill. Estimates from congressional researchers predicted that 97 percent of the country’s cable systems would be deregulated when the law took effect Dec. 29, 1986.

In a 1984 C-SPAN call-in program, Wheeler noted that before deregulation, “the cities were in the driver’s seat” controlling the franchising process. Wheeler claimed cable operators competing for franchise agreements were forced to promise services and technology that ultimately proved too burdensome or expensive to actually deliver. Deregulation, Wheeler promised, would “keep cable rates low because you are not going to be paying for services that [the government says] have to be provided that nobody watches.”

In reality, after the passage of the 1984 Cable Act, cable systems were bought and sold in a frenzy that left control ultimately in the hands of a handful of operators. Soon after, cable rates skyrocketed and cable-industry-owned networks and channels were shoveled on to cable lineups. With every sale and every new channel addition, rates were raised even higher, whether customers wanted the extra programming or not.

Without oversight, cable service itself deteriorated in quality. In some cities, cable operators ignored rights-of-way and often refused to hang or bury cable lines left scattered on lawns. Customer complaints often went unresolved for days or weeks. Cable operators also rolled out new charges for monthly programming magazines and equipment, even as they continued to boost rates for basic cable itself. Prior to deregulation, customers usually paid less than $10 a month for basic cable. After, rates rapidly pushed towards the $20 a month mark. Today’s cable TV prices are much higher.

In the summer of 1984, Wheeler left the NCTA to pursue a new business – The NABU Network, a precursor to cable broadband that turned out to be a commercial failure. The NABU Network coupled a home computer system with a cable-based data service. The only significant North American trial of NABU was in Ottawa, Canada and required significant subsidies from the Canadian government. Wheeler said the NABU system would offer subscribers a mountain of software at a monthly subscription price. Canadians had to buy the NABU PC for around $950 and pay around $10 a month for software access.

The venture fell apart because cable systems in that era lacked two-way capability, making it cumbersome for users to interact with the NABU platform or manage applications. Ottawa Cablevision and Skyline Cablevision introduced NABU in 1983 and discontinued it in 1985.

In 1992, Wheeler went on to become president of CTIA – The Wireless Association, the nation’s biggest cell phone industry trade group. Wheeler beefed up the association’s lobbying forces after joining, turning CTIA into “one of the most influential lobbying forces on Capitol Hill,” according to Connected Planet.

Once there, Wheeler presided over efforts to get government spectrum policies relaxed and keep cancer questions about RF energy leaking from cellphones under wraps:

In a 1994 memo, Wheeler raised objections to a draft of a mobile-phone manual that, among other things, advised consumers how to limit radio-frequency radiation from mobile phones. The book says Wheeler succeeded in getting the industry consumer safety document watered down.

In a September 1994 memo, Wheeler mapped out “a pre-emptive strike” on Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) by highlighting to Markey the involvement of Harvard University. Wheeler, according to the book, even had a backup plan to curry favor with Markey that, if necessary, would “send all cash through Harvard.”

By 2000, Wheeler was being questioned about conflict of interest charges about his lucrative investments in businesses represented under the CTIA’s public policy umbrella, according to RTR Wireless:

But conflict-of-interest issues-real, perceived and otherwise-that flow from Wheeler’s lucrative ties to Aether, OmniSky and now, Metrocall, could have long-term consequences that CTIA and the wireless industry would rather not consider in these halcyon days of soaring stocks, consolidation and deregulation.

The unorthodox arrangement Wheeler has with outside wireless firms begs closer scrutiny by CTIA’s board. Do Wheeler’s money and management ties to firms he advocates set a bad precedent? Could it diminish CTIA’s credibility as an organization?

Wheeler claims to be committed to three principles that will govern how he looks at issues before the FCC:

1. Is it good for competition? “You can’t have economic growth if you don’t have competition. You can put me down as rabidly pro-competition,” Wheeler said.
2. Trust between those who run networks and those who use them must be maintained.
3. Opening up high-speed networks must include guarantees that content will be open and accessible to all. “I am pro-the ability of individuals to access an open network,” he said.

Wheeler asked for a review of all proposals before the FCC and expects that in two months.

Tom Wheeler, then retiring president of the National Cable TV Association (NCTA), appeared on this fascinating 1984 C-SPAN call-in program at the NCTA Convention with future president Tom Mooney. The NCTA promised deregulation would deliver many benefits to cable subscribers. They got higher bills and declining service instead. (June 5, 1984 – 39:00)

Worst

Broadband customers in Lawrence, Kan. have been liberated from Internet Overcharging schemes after years of usage-capped Internet access from Sunflower Broadband and Knology.

WideOpenWest’s (better known as WOW!) acquisition of Knology, which in turn purchased Sunflower Broadband from the local newspaper, means usage limits are a thing of the past.

Consumer Reports has top-rated WOW! for customer friendly service, and banishing usage caps is an example of why the cable company earns such high marks.

The company reminds customers that “all WOW! Internet speeds have no usage caps.”

Sunflower Broadband originally offered four different broadband plans, only one without usage caps. Lawrence customers did get speed upgrades faster than many other cable broadband customers, but most were accompanied with draconian usage limits.

Bad

♦ Bronze: Originally offering 3Mbps/256kbps service, Sunflower’s “lite” usage plan included a 3GB monthly usage limit boosted by Knology in 2012 to $22.95/month offering 3/1Mbps service and a still ridiculously low 5GB usage limit. WOW! has kept the lite plan but removed the usage cap.

♦ Silver: Sunflower’s equivalent of Standard Internet service offered 10/1Mbps broadband with a 50GB usage cap. Knology raised the price to $37.95, left the 50GB cap intact and increased speeds to 18/2Mbps. WOW! dropped the cap.

♦ Gold: Sunflower’s premium 50/1Mbps service offered 250GB of usage for under $60 a month. When Knology took over, speeds were boosted to 50/5Mbps along with the price: $62.95 a month. But the usage cap stayed the same. Today WOW! continues the plan without any caps.

Much Better

♦ Palladium: Sunflower responded to customer complaints about metering Internet usage by offering residents a trade — an unlimited use plan with no speed promises. Palladium could be as slow as 2Mbps during peak usage, 25Mbps when traffic was very low. Knology kept the plan and its 1Mbps upload rate, but raised the price to $47.95 a month. WOW! dumped Palladium altogether, replacing it with a 30/2Mbps unlimited use plan for customers who don’t want to pay $63 a month for the Gold plan.

A number of Lawrence customers annoyed with Sunflower and Knology switched to AT&T U-verse when it was introduced locally. Although U-verse has a 250GB usage cap, Lawrence residents report it remains unenforced.

Stop the Cap! reader Mike, who shared the news WOW! had recently shelved the caps, tells us he switched to AT&T years ago and is happy with their service.

“So far, their cap is not enforced at all here,” Mike writes. “The minute they start enforcing it, I’ll switch to WOW!”

Rogers Communications customers frustrated with customer service or billing problems are advised the first representative they speak with regarding the issue does not necessarily have the final word on the matter. Eastern Canada’s biggest cable operator reminds customers 91 percent of all complaints are resolved to the customer’s satisfaction by the time they appeal to Rogers’ Ombudsman.

“We’re the only telecommunications provider in North America to have an Ombudsman to provide an independent review of unresolved customer concerns,” noted Rogers’ blog.

Rogers recommends the following four-step process to resolve complaints:

• Step 1: Contact Rogers’ Customer Care Center – available by live chat, phone, regular mail, or through social media: on Twitter – @RogersHelps, @RogersVousAide or you can find Rogers on Facebook;
• Step 2: Request to speak with a manager at the Customer Care Center;
• Step 3: Contact the Office of the President;
• Step 4: Write to the Office of the Ombudsman, either by mail, fax or email.

Walker

Kim Walker, Rogers’ Ombudsman reported that 84 percent of customer complaints reported to her office were either entirely or partly Rogers’ fault. The Ombudsman’s office only found entirely in favor of Rogers or its prepaid unit Fido 16 percent of the time.

Over half of the complaints escalated to the Ombudsman’s office related to wireless service. Billing and service changes constituted the majority of those complaints.

If Rogers’ Ombudsman is still unable to offer customer satisfaction, customers have one more place to appeal: the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services.

Customers can file complaints with the Commissioner on the CCTS website or by calling toll-free 1-888-221-1687.