Comcast - Why They're Hated

[Music] cable companies there look I know I'm generalizing here but nobody likes them right there's something called the American consumer satisfaction index each year they survey thousands of people about how satisfied they are with different products and companies well the actual results get a little complex but usually the lowest rated industries tend to be the cable companies in the internet providers and I don't think anyone is shocked by those results people just don't care much for cable companies they sneak those hidden fees into your bill and make you pay for channels you don't want they'll provide you with an unreasonable range of times as for when they're going to show up and then still end up getting their fifteen minutes late people have been making these kind of jokes for years and the company that's at the core of it at least in the recent years is Comcast those surveys tend to place Comcast toward the bottom of those cable and Internet companies that's pretty bad when you're the most disliked part of an already disliked industry The Consumerist was a website that used to do this tournament-style voting competition to determine the worst company in America in 2010 Comcast won the title and then in 2014 they reclaimed their title in fact I'd say the hatred for Comcast was at an all-time high in 2014 and I have some explanations for that but it's not like things have gotten much better from there in 2017 PC Magazine named Comcast America's most hated company even today I'm guessing many of you still dislike them so let me try to identify why before I get to the real reasons I want to give a technical one first and say that they're disliked by so many people because they reach so many people Comcast claims to be the largest cable company in the United States actually want to make a video one day focusing on how Comcast is bigger than many people realize but for now I'll just give you a few numbers focusing on their cable communication segment these should help give you an idea of their region their internet service is available in 39 states and offer service to 112 million people which is about a third of the u.s. population they currently have over 30 million customers 28 million of residential of the residential customers 25 million are subscribed to their high-speed Internet services 21 million are subscribed to their video services that's the cable TV you pay for 10 million are subscribed to their voice services that's the telephone and then they also have 1.3 million subscribe to security and automation services all of those numbers add up to way more than their 28 million total customers because most of them pay Comcast for multiple services you know how they always get you to sign up for more with their bundle pricing it's effective though their average monthly revenue per customer is over a hundred and fifty dollars meaning 28 million customers pay Comcast an average of a hundred and fifty dollars every month which totals to over fifty billion dollars a year now that's the crazy part we all dislike Comcast yet we pay them more than 50 billion dollars every year because honestly what else are you gonna do for many Americans if you want TV or internet service there's not many practical alternatives so world is kind of forced to deal with Comcast are you familiar with cable franchising deals because that's the core of it simply put if a cable company like Comcast wants to provide cable in your area they have to make a deal with your city's government the deals have a few different aspects to them but basically the city says we'll allow you to install your cable lines in the rest of your equipment throughout the city and in return every month you pay us a dollar 50 for every customer the amounts vary of course but it has to be lower than five percent of their total revenue so after the deal is made Comcast is free to provide cable to the residents of that city at any price they want but they're always sure to tack on that dollar fifty franchise fee have you ever seen that franchise fee on your cable bill and it's usually listed there every year those franchise fees total to about 1.5 billion dollars for Comcast which is about half of the industry's total payment of three billion then I'm a little sketchy on this part so it's not confirmed but I think there's a bit of an unspoken agreement between the competitors to respect each other's territory so that's how I end up with all these limited options the city government effectively acts as the bouncer outside of the nightclub but they determine who to let in and as a customer you're reliant on the decisions the system results in a lack of competition within that area and that's never good for the customer because it takes away all of our power Comcast doesn't have to compete on speed or price or customer service because again what else are you gonna do in 2014 their hatred level was hitting all-time highs in part from their attempted acquisition of Time Warner Cable I already expressed how large Comcast is that they were smaller in 2014 but this would have been a huge push forward for them it was a 45 billion dollar deal that was really looking like it was going to happen both Time Warner and Comcast approved of it but it was opposed by just about everyone else the public spoke out about it other companies in the industry didn't like it the Department of Justice didn't seem to care for it either the reason for the Opposition was pretty obvious everyone felt Comcast was already too big and powerful and something like this would just make things worse that combined company would have accounted for 57 percent of the country's broadband market and almost 30 percent of the pay television services they spent about a year getting approval until finally in early 2015 it was looking like the Department of Justice was going to block the deal so instead of continuing to fight it they decided to walk away it never ended up happening but things were getting pretty heated there for a while so those are my reasons when it comes down to it comcast is a large powerful company in the system that's in place almost forces us to deal with them while giving them even more power the biggest most noticeable effect of all of this from the customers perspective is poor service that's a hard thing to measure but there are many examples of customers being treated terribly by Comcast some of them are almost unbelievable so I chose a few of them to highlight now I should make it clear that these are some more extreme specific examples so I wouldn't expect you to have the same experience but they are real and they do show how awful this company has been represented at times these are so out of line they actually get to be a little funny probably the most famous one was from Ryan block this one was so bad that it actually made headlines he called Comcast and told them that he wanted to cancel his service the representative simply did not allow him to cancel his service he kept insisting that he give reasons for the cancellation which you know just let him cancel the service there is a clip of the second half of the conversation but I want to warn you that it is very aggravating to listen to because that representative is just ridiculous the entire time and then meanwhile Ryan the caller stays calm and cool the whole time my favorite part of it is when he says this phone call is a really actually amazing representative example of why I don't want to stay with Comcast I wish I could say that this was an isolated incident but based on the public's response to the call I don't think this sort of thing was terribly uncommon from what I hear the employees are pressured pretty heavily to retain the customers Aaron Spain this one was really disrespectful it happened only one month later he called Comcast customer service and was put on hold for over three hours he then learned that the office on the other end of the call had closed while he was on hold so apparently everyone there just left without telling him the final one is my favorite because it's the most insane wait till you hear about Gary O'Reilly he moved into a new home near Chicago with his pregnant wife and two-year-old son one of the first things he did when he moved in was order the entire package from Comcast he got the internet cable even an alarm system and a digital thermostat with everything he purchased you would expect that he would be a valued customer to them they came out spent eight hours installing everything in just hours after they left the thermostat was malfunctioning it was a digital one too so we couldn't control it in the house was freezing Comcast left him hanging there in the cold for a few days before finally coming out to replace it then once it was replaced they sent him a bill for the new thermostat obviously he shouldn't have to pay for the faulty thermostat that they gave him so he claims he spent 8 to 10 hours arguing with customer service before finally getting it removed from his bill he keeps going about a month later that second thermostat stopped working and the whole thing happened a second time they replaced it they sent him a bill for it and he had to spend hours on customer service trying to get that charge removed so he's now up to his third thermostat which was also faulty because he said he had to replace the batteries in it multiple times a week when he told Comcast about it they basically ignored him and said just keep replacing the batteries and as you can imagine the third thermostat stopped working and had to be replaced with a fourth thermostat which after a couple months stopped working - I have to give credit to Gary because he hung in there way longer than I would have but at this point he finally said just forget it and canceled the whole thing it's still not over because once he cancelled the service they sent him a bill for a $1,000 cancellation fee he refused to pay that bill so it ultimately made his credit score drop a hundred and fifty points and made it difficult for him to refinance his house oh my gosh Comcast was ruining his life all these examples sounds so unreal oh another thing that's hard to believe I'll be careful how I say this but there are multiple separate instances of Comcast customers receiving their bill with their name replaced by an explicit insult I'm talking about their actual name on the bill being replaced I know that sounds unreal but there are four confirmed instances that I've come across and I have to assume more that weren't publicly revealed what that's all I could say what and there are countless stories like this these were just a few that stood out to me an interesting coincidence though is every one that I just mentioned happened in 2014 the here's their attempted time warner acquisition in their second worst company in america title the following year they did recognize how terrible the service had gotten and put together a plan to improve things it involved hiring 5500 customer service agents opening new customer support centers changing a few of their policies and being more transparent with their pricing it appears to have helped things somewhat I still don't think Comcast is very well liked but things have gotten a little better let me know in the comments how do you feel about Comcast and has that feeling changed over time I don't think I have to point out that this is not a complete list of reasons people hate Comcast but it does touch on the bigger ones so if you have more to add I'd love to hear them in fact I'm curious to hear if you have any of those crazy stories to share whether it happened to you personally or maybe you heard it from somewhere else I'd like to hear what you have to say thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Company Man

Views: 958,523

Rating: 4.9325995 out of 5

Keywords: Comcast, Most Hated Companies, Internet Companies, Time Warner, Corporations, Cable Companies

Id: 9JMgfJdkvrg

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020

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