Cable company to bar owner: If you have volume, I'll charge you per seat?

Factual Questions
1

I overheard this in a restaurant recently. The bar had several TV sets, but all were muted. Someone asked the manager to turn up the volume, but he said, “Oh, no! If someone from the cable company came in her and saw that I had the volume up, he could charge me per seat for the service.”

Now, only the manager knows from sure, and I can’t ask was he telling the truth–but does this sound normal? If it makes any difference, the restaurant was an “Applebee’s.” I won’t name the cable company, but will say that its corporate headquarters recently agreed to drop the “AOL” from its corporate name.

2

I don’t know, but on a related note companies who have music on hold are sometimes required to pay per incomming trunk line, even though the chance of all incomming trunks being on hold at the same time is practically zero.

3

From my limited experience in such things,** if ** the cable company could charge more for extra viewers/seats it wouldn’t matter whether the sound was muted or not.

About a 1/2 doz years or so ago,the companies in my area were selling their NFL packages with different rates for seating capacaties of businesses (think casino vs.sports bars).

Also some cable companies may charge for extra outlets/rooms.

Nowhere in either of those contracts was the volume of the sets aligned with the service addressed.

I think the manager is trying to control his personal environment

4

I’ve worked in various capacities in the Cable TV industry for the last seven years and have never heard of such a thing. How would we know if you had the volume turned up or not? While we can make a converter box volume control stop working, we can not make your TV volume control not work, nor do we care. We used to charge bars based on their capacity, but as of last year my system started charging bars a flat rate. I find this difficult to believe.

5

If he turns up the volume a bunch of other people are going to complain so this is a clever way to avoid an argument and/or pissing off a customer. Just like often some company will tell you you can’t do something because of the insurance regulations. It just puts the blame somewhere else rather than telling you directly to get lost.