My experience with the cable company went like this. The previous tenant of my first apartment informed me that the cable was still on although he had requested that it be disconnected. I hooked up my television, and sure enough, it was still on. My conversation with the cable company went something like this.
Me: I just moved, and the cable is already on in new apartment. I would like to have it placed in my name. CC: Sure no problem, I can get an installer to you in about a week. What is your address? Me: No, you don’t understand. It’s already on. As a matter of fact, I am watching it now. CC: Sir, we have to schedule an installer to come out. Me: Is there a charge for that? CC: Yes, it’s $39.95 for the initial installation. Me: Why should I pay for you to come out and install something that’s already on? CC: Because we can’t hook you up to cable without having an installer come out. Me: Nevermind.
The cable stayed on the entire time I lived there. I was never charged, and they stopped billing the previous tenant, who was a friend of mine, on the date that he had requested. They just left behind a year and a half of free cable.
The stories of isthatsowrong? and jmpride62 demonstrate quite clearly that, if the cable companies are indeed struggling financially as the OP seems to think, then they only have their own fuckwad selves to blame.
I have read with great interest all of the posts in this thread. This is another point I’d like to touch on.
I’d like to comment on this directly:
No, I did not insinuate that our company is in bad financial shape. In fact, I have great respect for our company and the way they were able to pull out of a bad financial situation by clamping down on just about every negative aspect that has been mentioned in this thread.
Let me also point out, though, that the industry of cable television is a very seasonal one. Around here, our busy seasons center around the school year. The fact that we have three good sized universities in an area of only about 150,000 has a lot to do with that.
So, yes…disconnects do occasionally get put off. However, it is extremely uncommon for any residence to be hooked up to “free” cable for more than 60 extra days. During the spring we have our disconnect season where we just simply have so many disconnects, we can’t schedule them all in one day. During the fall, we have so many installs that we have guys working 60-70 hour weeks without being able to even touch the disconnects. Considering that we have 45 technicians which aren’t enough to fill our Septembers…and 45 technicians that have trouble finding things to do during the slow months (right now, for example), it is extremely tough to properly staff for all times of the year especially in a department that prides itself on its extremely low turnover rate.
The poster who mentioned that he got 1 1/2 years of free cable did the right thing. In fact, even though I mentioned before that I have no respect for people who steal cable, this individual cannot be blamed for his actions. I would do the same if I was in his shoes. I would not want to work in a company that was so backwards that they can’t even spot an “improper” disconnect. If you were to call into our company, we would be making a trip to your residence to see if the cable was hooked up or not.
There is another simple point I’d like to make: the cable company gets blamed for a lot of issues that aren’t its fault. Some examples:
A contractor building a fence doesn’t call into locates and accidentally cuts a main feeder line. Who gets blamed? The cable company.
The local electric company (who controls our power supplies) has an outage that encompasses a four block radius. It affects the cable company for a 12 block radius. When we tell a caller that his cable was down because the power went out, he doesn’t understand because his power was working just fine. Who gets blamed? The cable company.
Joe Do-It-Yourselfer decides he wants to save some money by wiring his house himself. He uses 8 different splitters and cable that does not comply with the minimum recommended standard for impedence. Of course, his cable stops working. We come out on one of our free service visits to diagnose the problem and notify him that we are going to charge him the low rate of $20 per outlet to fix his problem (which is what we would have charged to do the job the first time). Plus, we are going to charge him $50 for an amplifier which we buy for $44.95 because it is against FCC regulations for him to use the UHF/VHF antenna amplifier that he purchased at Radio Shack for CATV because the amplifier radiates signal. When the total bill comes to over $200…and he has already spent over $200 to do it his way…he gets irate. Who gets blamed? The cable company.
A siding company puts a nail through an externally ran cable. Two days later, we have to come and wire an outlet over the siding for free because of the siding company’s mistake. The customer doesn’t care if the outlet is free or not…he wants the cable under the siding (part of the reason he sided in the first place). There is nothing we can do except have the siding company come out (for a charge) to remove the siding so we can replace the line. Who gets blamed? The cable company.
Any of this sound familiar? I have just accounted for about 3/4’s of our service calls.
There is another aspect to consider here. About a year and a half ago, our company instituted a policy where if a caller called into have their cable hooked up even though the previous cable was still active, we would waive the install fee and just keep the customer active. We felt it was a practice that promote customer service along with rewarding honest people. However, in the year and a half since we instituted the policy, we have experienced close to 40% in “service calls after installs” (sidenote: in multiple dwelling units, this percentage is less than 10%…but with houses, it is over 60%. There is a reason why we insist on scheduling an installation time when transferring the billing in a house.). Therefore, it is a policy that costs us money. When it is all said and done, we are willing to make that sacrifice in order to promote better customer service. Somewhere along the line, I guess someone realized how bad that national perception of cable TV was.
There is a reason why the cable industry has seen such dynamics in the past five years or so.
One final point to consider…and I ask this of everyone who has ever had a complaint with the local cable company…how did you try to interact? While I do run into situations where we are wrong (I always offer a credit), and I do run into customers who are wrong but are very polite; once a customer cusses or raises his voice, the discussion is over. If you are transferred to me, it means I am going to try to make the situation right (I always try to find a compromise…and the nicer a customer is, the better that compromise will be for him). If you don’t give me a chance to make the situation right, then I’m not going to go out of my way.
Okay, I’ve read all the threads, and gotta believe bjohn is either a cable company executive in real life, OR he needs to get a real life outside of work.
He’s got a legitimate beef about continuous non-payment of bills by deadbeats, however there are legitimate gripes in the cable “horror stories”. I’ve got a few of my own.
I had expanded basic with the local cable monoply. Had it for years. Local monoply calls and offers their brand new digital cable service, with free extra cable box for second television, free installation, and a gazillion channels. Bill would be X amount of dollars. Okay great, sounds like a great deal, and it’s only $5.00 more a month than the current expanded basic. Sign me up. Okay, I have the service for one month. Decide I don’t need fifty sports channels and 50 premium movies channels that are ALL showing the same thing. I call them up and ask about dropping down to the next tier of service. Nope can’t do that. Then they’ll charge me for the second box. Charge for second box would add actually ADD to the entire cable bill and cable bill would MORE. Less channels (premium), MORE money. Me (pleasantly): Boy, you’ve got me coming and going, don’t you? Cable rep: Yep, we realize it’s not right, but you’re right. Me: By the way, I say. I can’t order PPV through the box. Okay, we’ll come and take a look at it says rep. I take time off from work again, repair person comes, discovers initial wiring wasn’t quite connecting, fiddles about. Seems to work. Next week, can’t order PPV through box, repair person comes out, new connector, etc. Works for a week. Long story short, I’ve had them out two or three more times, works for a week, then quits. I give up!
Next story: Local cable monopoly decides they’re adding channels to my package. Okay fine. Well of COURSE the cable bill creeps up. Can’t downgrade, can’t customize package. Long story short…over the few years I’ve had digital cable, bill has gone from $50.00 a month to about $80.00. Cable company adds fifty WBNA and other USELESS, STUPID channels I DON’T WANT! Bill creeps up. Still can’t customize.
Final horror story. Hubby wants broadband internet. Finally offered to my area last summer. Cable company calls us, offers it, and says they can install following Saturday. Hubby jumps on it, gets great introductory rate. All is good until, we get a phone call from local monoply, they can’t make that install time. You need to reschedule. Obviously, marketing is not checking installer’s schedule, but this is OUR fault. Now, two days later, they don’t DO Saturday installations. Hmmm, interesting, I see cable/broadband installers every weekend around our neighborhood. Long story short, company gets snotty with hubby, not a great idea. He gets a little tense, finally works out install date, has to take time off, and we have to wait for three weeks. Oh, but WAIT! They called us initially and OFFERED the first Saturday date, but have conveniently forgotten it. :smack:
Now I pay an exorbitant cable bill. Still can’t customize digital cable tv package and possibly lower bill. No discounts for using both their services, still can’t order PPV through box.
I’d drop cable, but I do enjoy the Discovery and History channels, and I happen to like “The Sopranos”. The kids have their favorites, and believe it or not, watching the news is sometimes homework for them.
Still got us coming and going and now due to merger/buyout, whatever it is, I’ve got change my e-mail address again. Ugghhh!
I’ll respond to this bit by bit and will admit that some are legitimate gripes
Just be glad I proofread my last post. I eliminated four paragraphs of discussion about my company that I deemed were not necessary to the overall argument.
First, I have to point out…cable television is not a monopoly. Cable television has two very fierce competitors called dish and broadcast. Believe it or not, close to half of the nations population relies on strictly broadcast television for entertainment. Cable television has less than half of the total potential customers nationwide. Furthermore, cities contract their cable television franchising rights. Ever five years (or so), a cable television company is up for review in the community it serves. If you have serious gripes about your cable television company, there are aveneues to persue.
Henceforth, the word “monopoly” will be changed to “franchise” in all attributed material.
What you just described we call “bundle packaging”. We have three of them, all involving internet. If you order internet with a modem lease, a digital box and HBO, we’ll not only discount the cost by $20 a month, but we’ll throw in a second box for free. However, we also have a package without HBO, but the savings is considerably less. You pay $99.95 with HBO and $89.95 without HBO. HBO normally costs $16.95 (12 HBO channels and 8 Cinemax channels)…so you’re only saving $10 as opposed to the $16.95 one would think. However, for a brief period (perhaps three months before we noticed the public backlash), we did not offer the basic package. Therefore, dropping HBO actually cost the customer quite a bit more money.
The dish works in the same way. If you call to cancel a premium service, you will oftentimes find yourself paying more money.
The horror story from hell. I have heard of these frequently…and the only thing I can blame is either incompetent staff or inadequate training. My mother had trouble with her cable for years…and her digital simply did not work. She had guys out several times to try to fix the problem. They kept insisting the problem was inside.
As she was so frustrated, I lugged my signal level meter to her house. It took me five minutes to determine that she did not have adequate signal as mandated by the FCC hitting her home. We called the cable company again and informed them. The next day, the company was out again…and the found out the cable feeding her condo complex was bad (as often happens in cold climates). Unfortunately, the cable went underneath a major roadway…it costs thousands of dollars to rebury such a line. As a result, she received free cable for a year and a half until the company could budget enough money to replace the line. In a metropolitan area of 1.2 million people, I have to wonder how many such lines have to be replaced by them in a typical year…especially since the company has been offering shoddy service for an indefinite amount of time.
Strange question here…does your cable company offer any smaller plans on their digital cable plans? Most cable companies offer a very inexpensive “digital basic” plan that offers anywhere from 10 to 20 extra channels at a very modest price. If that doesn’t suit your interest, have you considered dropping digital altogether? Eighty dollars a month seems exhorbantly high for basic digital cable…
However, I’d like to offer an argument towards customization in general. One of our cheif concerns is that people want to select thirty channels and only be billed for those thirty channels. There is a huge problem with that…cable channels are expensive. Companies like Time Warner and Disney own a whole slew of cable channels and give discounted/bulk rates for selling them to the cable companies. Therefore, it actually costs the subrscriber less to have MTV, MTV2, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon added to the channel lineup rather than just MTV. The reason that such a discount is offerred is because, based on the package in which the programming is placed, it is guaranteed to reach an x amount of viewers. The more viewers a station has, the bigger its advertising profit will be. It’s a rather viciuos circle, and the only one who gets hurt is the consumer. Believe it or not, in some cases (especially those involving pay channels like HBO, Cinemax, Shotime, Encore, Flix, Starz, etc) it actually costs the cable company less money to offer more channels (hence the bundle packaging).
Always remember this. The two biggest expenses a cable company has are, in this order, bandwidth and programming. The phone company doesn’t have to worry about programming, just bandwith.
I’ll admit, this will happen in all professions where scheduling three or four days out is a necessity. Sometimes people forget what day it is…I have no other excuse.
You should have gotten some sort of reimbursement for your time. It sounds to me like your cable company doesn’t want you as a subscriber bad enough. Have you looked into buying a dish?
My first recommendation is this: Call the company one last time. Be as polite and professional as humanly possible given your past experiences. Give them a brief explanation and ask them a question like, “Is there any possible way for me to lower my bill?”
If you have already tried that, then you have done all you can. Go get a dish.
Hopefully, this merger will be beneficial for you. I’m glad I live in a community where the cable television is not only well-respected, but has been a staple of the community for 20 years. A buyout does not seem iminent either unless the entire company gets bought out.
This thread isn’t about poor people wanting things, it’s about poor people stealing the things they want and cannot afford by subscribing to services and then not paying their bills.
My word. I had no idea that cable was such a controversial issue.
It seems that the OP has a valid point: People who don’t pay their bills don’t have room to bitch when they lose whatever privilege they haven’t paid for. Why should it be any different for cable companies than for anyone else?
And frankly: Cable companies are SUPPOSED to make money, for heaven’s sake. It’s a company. Do you suppose it’s a non-profit enterprise? Why shouldn’t they format their policies to ensure a profit, or at the very least, to ensure that they don’t LOSE money on some doofus who fails to pay his bill or decides he can tap into the neighbor’s cable with electrical tape and some cheap wiring? No one HAS to have cable; it’s a luxury and you have to expect to pay for luxuries.
Maybe I’m the only one here, but overall I’m happy with my cable. It costs less than $40/month, the people in the office are great if there is a (rare) problem, and I don’t think that a $20 reconnect fee is over-the-top. If I get disconnected, (and I have, when we went on vacation and Someone forgot to pay the bill), that’s just the consequene of my failure to pay. If I don’t want to pay it, I don’t have to reconnect. If I’m unhappy with my service, I can have it disconnected. Now, if my basic cable cost $80 or something, I’d be unhappy, but that wouldn’t be addressing the OP’s complaint anyway, so it really would be a moot point.
It would be nice if companies had more flexibility in packaging, so I could choose only my favorite channels, but what the hell. For $40 a month, I’m not going to complain much. That’s a zillion or so hours of Teletubbies and the Wiggles for the kids, and Justice Files and Trading Spaces for me.
I don’t know how it works in your area, but in Madison our local cable company is granted an exclusive contract to service the city and no competition is allowed. Sounds like a monopoly to me. yes, it is possible to get a dish or broadcast stations, but that doesn’t change the fact that the cable company has a monopoly on providing cable service.
I’ve got a somewhat off-topic question regarding cable. I don’t have it now, because I’m not paying $50 a month for the three channels I’d watch. Why doesn’t some bright company come up with some kind of Pick Your Own Channels deal? I could, say, get the local channels, and then get the ones I’d actually watch, while not paying for the other 47 or so channels.
GMRyujin, I think that bjohn13’s comments below sort of cover your question:
The way I’m reading the info above, cable companies enter into agreements to provide certain channels in groups in order to get them at a certain price, because in the minds of the channel owners, they’re then reaching a broader range of people for advertising purposes…and that’s what you’re really buying when you buy cable. The only reason you’re able to see any programming at all is because advertisers (who are paying the salaries of the people who put together the programming) are betting you’ll sit through their commercials. In order to offer packages where you’d pick your own channels, the cost of offering individual channels outside of the discounted bundles would make it cost prohibitive…it may even cost the consumer more to only get those 10 channels they actually watch than it would be to get the 40 channels you get with basic cable.
Well, though this IS the bbq pit, I’m not really emotionally involved here, so you can simmer down and switch to decaf if you want, or continue being cranked, fine with me either way.
In any event, one of two conditions apply for people who “steal” cable:
They steal cable because they are morally flawed and see no problem with stealing whenever they can get away with it, and they’re poor enough to think that stealing cable is worthwhile. (It woldn’t be worth the trouble of stealing to an immoral, wealthy person like, say, Ken Lay or George Bush.
They are in severe economic straits and steal cable because they are so fond of cable that they are willing to do compromise their values.
In either case, the consequences of their situations to them personally are are far graver than the consequences for the cable company that has to deal with late payers and deadbeats. It would be nice if no one was ever late with a payment or a deadbeat, but it’s not likely.
In almost all U.S. communities, cable companies are monopolies, in fact, they are the worst kind of monopolies, unregulated defacto monopolies. Cities initially granted cable companies monopoly rights to lay down cable to make it financially attractive to do so.
Later, when cable was widespread, cable was deregulated. Good idea, right? Wrong. Sure, anybody COULD compete by laying down cable in a community that already had cable, but nobody does. Why? Because what you’d be doing is offering a service that already exists to a community where an existing firm has been offering those same services for years, which means thehy have most of the potential customer base. Your only hope is to snag off a lot of their customers, offering the same services at the same prices (since your cost for content is the same as the cable company’s) while your expenses are much higher because you’re having to pay to lay down cable while your competitor has long ago amortized those costs.
It’s not a pretty business plan, it’s so ugly in fact that even though there’s plenty of opportunity to compete on those terms in the U.S., virtually no one is.
Broadcast is not really a competitor of cable – virtually everyone who wants the programming options that cable offers takes them up.
Dish antennas ARE a real competitor or cable, especially now that they have to option to carry local stations. And if it weren’t for dish antenna competition, cable service would be a LOT crummier and a LOT more expensive, because dish antennae are the ONLY thing that keeps cable companies from running roughshod over their customers.
I’m not saying that cable companies are by nature morally flawed, but I am saying that the status of cable companies as an uregulated monopoly makes them extremely prone to abusive practices, as witness the history of monopolies.
All the admittedly well-documented whining about the cost of doing business is forgetting one very important thing.
Those trucks you go on and on about… in 5 years, they’re completely depreciated, meaning at most tax rates for corporations, it’s real cost is only about 10 grand. [snip long, drawn-out amortization of costs vs. deduction… not worth the time]
Now for the hard questions. Does your company abide by the FCC ruling that requires cable operators to unbundle their packages on consumer’s request, removing your ability to force 20 crap channels they don’t want, for the privilege of getting two sports channels they do? (exception of course, for the upgrade from analog to digital cable)
That said, I wholeheartedly approve cutting off people who don’t pay their bills. It’s much better though, if you forcibly upgrade them all to digital cable, in the name of better video quality (often not the case, though), so you can just do it remotely.
Jadis did a good job paraphrasing…but there is another aspect.
With the advent of digital cable, it will become easier to offer people a “pick your own channel” plan as there is legislation currenly in Congress which is attempting to regulate programming providers plans when they make their contracts with the cable companies. One of those aspects (one that lies heavily in anything that Disney carries) is a providers insistance that the channel be placed in the basic channel plan. They offer much cheaper rates if the cable company abides…but that isn’t fair to the masses who don’t watch that channel. If this legislation is successful, the world of CATV will be drastically changed.
But all cable company’s still have an analog channel lineup. We have 54 channels of basic analog cable here. A trap is needed to block out each individual channel (except for the midband trap blocks out 14-22). If a person wanted to order only three channels, his line would require 51 traps.
A trap is a small metal cylinder with resisters that stop certain frequencies. They range in length from about 2" to about 6" and they weigh an average of about 10 ounces. A string of 51 traps would not only be very heavy, but there would be no place to put them. Finally, they are very expensive. Each one costs about $2.50. So, in essence, a person who wanted to order just three channels would have to pay a $150 hookup fee just for his equipment.
a friend of mine recently got married and as a wedding gift his mother in law bought them a mobile home, the trailer is a little beaten up and has some windows covered with plywood, a couple of friends and i offered to help him fix the place up, he thought that it would be a great idea to have a “fix-my-trailer-superbowl party” which of course caused the workforce to quit, soon after i ran into him online where he proceded to tell me about his new dsl connection, it had been a while since we had talked so i told him that i’d give him a call rather then show off my impressive typing skills, nope, the phones disconnected, a few months later i ran into his wife online and she’s telling me about the new computer with webcam they just purchased, still no windows but the world can still see in
The problem is…cable is not an unregulated monopoly. An individual can get every service that the cable company offers elsewhere. If cable had exclusive rights to television, internet, or telephony, we could then call them a monopoly. They don’t…and they really never did.
