Comcast Today: Everybody Hates Comcast

Customer service, prices, and more combine for very low satisfaction.

We feel like we pick on Comcast too much around here, sometimes. But honestly, what are you going to do with headlines like this?

“Hate your television or Internet provider? You’re far from alone: Time Warner Cable and Comcast earned bottom-of-the-barrel scores in a consumer satisfaction survey published Tuesday.”

It gets worse:

We asked ACSI to provide us with customer satisfaction scores for every company in every industry that they cover and it turns out that Comcast and TWC have the lowest customer satisfaction ratings of any of them.

In fact, Comcast and TWC’s Internet service businesses were the only two businesses in the United States to score below a 60 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale. What’s most amazing is that both Comcast and TWC have even lower customer satisfaction ratings than United Airlines, which has a notoriously bad reputation in an industry that, due in part to government security requirements, is known for delivering a miserable experience.”

Other notable companies that had higher customer satisfaction scores than Comcast and TWC included Bank of America, perennially unpopular wireless carrier Sprint, health insurance giant Aetna and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. It’s unfortunate that ACSI didn’t ask how people felt about Skeletor, Gargamel and Cobra Commander, because we get the feeling that Comcast and TWC would have had lower ratings than them as well

Consumerist adds: “Whenever a new survey portrays Comcast badly, they point to their improving performance in J.D. Power’s rankings, conveniently not pointing out that they come in last in those rankings. Who comes in second to last? Time Warner Cable, of course.”

The Wire reports on what’s going wrong: “High prices, poor reliability, and declining customer service are to blame for low customer satisfaction with pay TV services. The cost of subscription TV has been rising 6% per year on average—four times the rate of inflation. But now, dissatisfied pay TV customers have more alternatives than ever before. The rise of streaming video from companies like Netflix and Amazon, combined with pay TV’s deteriorating service quality and higher prices, has led to the first-ever net loss of television service subscribers for a full year in 2013.”

One other Comcastic headline:

• Several groups plan to protest the Comcast Corp. shareholders meeting Wednesday morning, saying that Comcast’s deal to acquire Time Warner Cable Inc. would be bad for consumers. About 100 people have indicated that they would participate in a demonstration outside the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts on the 300 block of South Broad Street, organizers said Tuesday. (Inquirer)