Study: All Major ISPs Have Declined in Customer Satisfaction

Megalith

Megalith

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High prices, poor customer service, and myriad other factors have led to a continually declining US broadband scorecard. Figures from the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index survey show a poor industry average of 64, which is actually a decrease from last year. Some ISPs, such as Charter Spectrum and Suddenlink, are seeing dramatic declines (8%) annually. They say that things can only get worse due to the growing power of monopolies.

"According to users, most aspects of ISPs are getting worse," the ACSI said. "Courtesy and helpfulness of staff has waned to 76 and in-store service is slower (74). Bills are more difficult to understand (-3 percent to 71), and customers aren’t happy with the variety of plans available (-3 percent to 64)." Not a single ISP tracked by the firm saw an improvement in customer satisfaction scores.
 
Scratching my head as to how this is news? I cannot remember the last time I talked to anyone who said they were happy with their ISP.

We just accept thjey are all crap and pay them anyway.
 
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BSmith said:
Scratching my head as to how this is news? I cannot remember the last time I talked to anyone who said they were happy with their ISP.

We just accept thjey are all crap and pay them anyway.
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I'm happy with mine when I switch, all of them :D, but I won the location lotto in an annexed area of the city at a centralized hub.
I have service available through suddenlink, spectrum, att, century link, and grande.

Currently on the 400/40 package with suddenlink it is annoying they block port 80 inbound, but I get around it with a AWS URL redirect box.
I was with TWC for almost 7 years, when they switched to Spectrum they wouldn't honor any new customer deal and would have raised my cost by like 25$/mo for a lesser 300/30 service.
 
Most want value for their money do this no surprise.

Most don’t have choices and when compared to other areas you can see how much is lacking.

With promotions of streaming and gaming bundles and then data caps it’s easy to becom frustrated.

Especially since they can basically do as want when there is no choice.

But they pretty much have us by the balls. Only thing we can do is tell them we don’t like it while they adjust their grip.
 
This is not exactly surprising - big companies care about the bottom line, not the service nor the availability. I live on a cul-de-sac surrounded by Comcast fiber, but with no fiber run down our road. They don't want to touch our little road because the number of houses is too small. Luckily, a tiny, local ISP is considering running their own fiber and plugging into another provider's trunk. Until then, we're stuck with DSL or a WISP... (they're all garbage). Anyways, it's interesting to me that, while Comcast would turn a profit running their own line, they're under the impression that they wouldn't turn ENOUGH of a profit and they don't seem to care they've created multiple opportunities for smaller companies to come in and provide services to customers they've snubbed.
 
Thank you local municipalities that granted local monoploies.

That being said, I have very little to complain about regarding Comcast. Steady as a rock and fast enough for reasonable, if not great, rates. Of course, Frontier fibre is a local competitor, so Comcast has a reason to not be douchy.
 
You still have to consider the other side of the matter. When I worked for TWC I had someone call in saying he wasn't getting the speed he was supposed to . Go to find out he had some kind of linux firewall on his network slowing him down. So there is a percentage where the issue is end user devices and people automatically blaming the ISP because after all, they're all connected.
 
beemanit said:
You still have to consider the other side of the matter. When I worked for TWC I had someone call in saying he wasn't getting the speed he was supposed to . Go to find out he had some kind of linux firewall on his network slowing him down. So there is a percentage where the issue is end user devices and people automatically blaming the ISP because after all, they're all connected.
Click to expand...

People blame ISPs for WiFi problems constantly as well...
 
BSmith said:
Scratching my head as to how this is news? I cannot remember the last time I talked to anyone who said they were happy with their ISP.

We just accept thjey are all crap and pay them anyway.
Click to expand...
I have been a very happy FIOS customer for 11 years now. Recently upgraded to Gigabit and it delivers full performance with very, very few outages. I think I had about 3 outages over 11 years that were not power outages.
No cap and full performance all day, for a decent price (bundle with TV and phone ~$115.)
 
Since its not a matter of choice for customers, i am sure these articles are framed in some corporate offices somewhere, as a badge of honor, and admiration to the corruption that let's them do this.
Cant wait for Space X's StarLink.. can i sign up yet?!
 
beemanit said:
You still have to consider the other side of the matter. When I worked for TWC I had someone call in saying he wasn't getting the speed he was supposed to . Go to find out he had some kind of linux firewall on his network slowing him down. So there is a percentage where the issue is end user devices and people automatically blaming the ISP because after all, they're all connected.
Click to expand...

I did this once and felt like an idiot when the help desk guy had me plug straight into the modem and I had full speed again. You get so used to the issue being on the ISP end that you skip out troubleshooting steps, and the issue I had was similar - The router/firewall decided to slow down out of no where with no configuration changes so I just assumed it was the ISP.
 
There is one option here for low latency internet, and it is a terrible DSL company. They have no plans for increasing speed.

They also do not tell customers when they do maintenance so I call them usually once a week about when my internet will come back. Usually is down about 6 hours a week for an afternoon/evening.

I was able to negotiate my price down to just $15 a month, but the speed I get is laughable.

Since there are no cell towers where I am, the only other option is Satellite internet. Comcast wants about $20k for installation into the neighborhood. My DSL company quoted me $12k for higher speed (more lines). Nope.
 
BB Gun said:
Thank you local municipalities that granted local monoploies.

That being said, I have very little to complain about regarding Comcast. Steady as a rock and fast enough for reasonable, if not great, rates. Of course, Frontier fibre is a local competitor, so Comcast has a reason to not be douchy.
Click to expand...

It's usually not the fault of local municipalities; it's state & federal laws / regulations.

In fact municipalities are the ones that can fix the problem. For instance, Longmont, Co has city-run fiber 1 gig up/down and no caps for $50/month

https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/de...ngmont-power-communications/broadband-service

Compare that to laughable Comcast (400mbps down / ??? up for $111/month) and Qwest (40mbps down / ??? up for $85 / month)


_l_ said:
Just a matter of time before it becomes Government supplied
Click to expand...

See above. I have to say it's awesome :)
 
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Spartacus09 said:
I'm happy with mine when I switch, all of them :D, but I won the location lotto in an annexed area of the city at a centralized hub.
I have service available through suddenlink, spectrum, att, century link, and grande.
Click to expand...

And I have to opposite. I get to choose from COX or ...... Actually I don't have to choose. I can't even get low speed DSL.
However, other than the price and the caps, service is usually good, both speed and low latency.

I find it interesting how COX raises the price for home internet service every year.
Yet at my office, they offer me lower pricing or higher speeds every year.
Could it be that it due to competition? Both COX and AT&T have fiber into the building.
AT&T sent me a list of their prices, so I might have to turn the screws on COX to see if they can beet them :p
 
The actual product is rarely an issue, it's the billing and constant rate hikes and limited window pricing that irritate me.
 
Cox implemented 1tb caps in my area right after the Trump admin came in.

That said, compared to other ISP's Cox seems to be pretty cool. My bill hasn't gone up for all the years I've had them and their 100mpbs down/10 up service is consistently faster than advertised.
 
Net Neutrality won't fix this. Declaring the ISPs as the common carriers they are might do something about it. Getting rid of exclusive franchise agreements MIGHT help, but only if there is enough demand for another option that some alternative would actually expand into the area. Whole thing's a huge joke and we the consumers are the suckers - see the "franchise fee" on your bill? That's the bribe that goes directly to your local municipality as their 'reward' for granting the right for that company to serve the area.
 
I can't complain about cablevision. The only real negatives I have with them are that they forced everyone into 100/50 service like it or not, and the pricing to go with it this year. The other negative is their choice of modems. The most available one has weird latency issues that are to date unfixable. So you either go with marginal perfromance, go hunting for the good modem that is faster than most tiers of service, or go for the readily available latest and greatest and get weird latency spikes constantly.

On the plus side, they have improved their hardware return process so you get a damn receipt with serial numbers on it when you hand in equipment, and the phone line robot to do the basic reset of your modem from their end is once again accessible via the phone menu (you can now deal with people or the bot as you prefer, although people are the default).

I may be biased as one of their senior techs for maintaining their lines lives down the street, so short of significant natural disasters, the immediate neighborhood doesn't deal with shitty line issues.
 
And every major ISP is straight up laughing in their board room meetings saying "just what options do these stupid fucking customers have? NONE! Fuck em if they complain. Not like they can switch service when we have a monopoly".
 
Megaslug said:
Net Neutrality won't fix this. Declaring the ISPs as the common carriers they are might do something about it. Getting rid of exclusive franchise agreements MIGHT help, but only if there is enough demand for another option that some alternative would actually expand into the area. Whole thing's a huge joke and we the consumers are the suckers - see the "franchise fee" on your bill? That's the bribe that goes directly to your local municipality as their 'reward' for granting the right for that company to serve the area.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what title II classification did... That common carrier classification is what gave the FCC authority to enforce the NN regulations. Rebuplicans have undone both (taking effect in a week or so), it's now back to title I, and the NN regulations created when Wheeler was FCC chair have been repealed.
 
If it's a trend across the board then it shows either the whole industry sucks or...


...maybe consumers just have unrealistic expectations?

(*Note: Not defending ISPs, just pointing out that people in general tend to have unrealistic expectations, like that kid who got a degree in library sciences and wonders why he doesn't get 80k+ straight out of college.)
 
I have 2 providers....AT&T "Up to 25Mbit..." or comcast "Up to 2Gbit..."

Yeah, some choice.
 
End of last year I upgraded to 500/500 with Frontier for 165 a month. What they didn't tell me was that price was a 1 month promotion and your bill then goes to 270. They had also signed me up for a slew of other services I did not ask for that added another 20 bucks a month. I wasn't paying attention to my auto pay and let this go on for 7 months. I called and complained for about 6 weeks, and they blew me off or refused. I even asked them to pull the call with the sales rep and they wouldn't. Then I decided to submit an FCC complaint. Once the FCC complaint went through they lowered my bill to 165 for as long as I wanted the service, and credited me all overages (around 750 bucks). I would highly suggest submitting FCC complaints to resolve issues with your provider if they aren't making things right with you. Hell you can even complain about being overcharged in areas with a monopoly in place. There are some FCC processes in place that hold value, even though its run by selfish idiots.
 
I have been using AT&T U-verse for many many years.
The service is reliable, but the price is not that great.
 
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