Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Businesses Communications

Comcast Complains To FCC That Listing All of Its Monthly Fees is Too Hard (arstechnica.com) 109

mschaffer shares a report: Comcast and other ISPs have annoyed customers for many years by advertising low prices and then charging much bigger monthly bills by tacking on a variety of fees. While some of these fees are related to government-issued requirements and others are not, poorly trained customer service reps have been known to falsely tell customers that fees created by Comcast are mandated by the government. The FCC rules will force ISPs to accurately describe fees in labels given to customers, but Comcast said it wants the FCC to rescind a requirement related to "fees that ISPs may, but are not obligated to, pass through to customers." These include state Universal Service fees and other local fees. As Comcast makes clear, it isn't required to pass these costs on to customers in the form of separate fees. Comcast could stop charging the fees and raise its advertised prices by the corresponding amount to more accurately convey its actual prices to customers. Instead, Comcast wants the FCC to change the rule so that it can continue charging the fees without itemizing them..

I suppose it's just easier to grab people's money than it is to make up names for the fees, Mschaffer adds.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Comcast Complains To FCC That Listing All of Its Monthly Fees is Too Hard

Comments Filter:
  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @01:48PM (#63602720) Journal

    I suppose it's just easier to grab people's money than it is to make up names for the fees, Mschaffer adds.

    Like the Flux Capacitor Fee.

  • Screw them. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tyr07 ( 8900565 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @01:51PM (#63602732)

    They're basically saying, "Uhhh..we don't want people realize how much we're charging them..uhh please let us keep deceptive billing practices that are effective. It would be devastating if people actually understood what we were charging and our marketing"

    Take the screws to them and simplify prices, make them charge it inclusively so they can't use deceptive marketing.

    • Re:Screw them. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:03PM (#63602780)

      I always admired the chutzpah Comcast shows by charging something like $25/month for providing your local broadcast channels to you (and not giving you a choice to *not* get the local channels).

    • Re:Screw them. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:38PM (#63602906)

      They're basically saying, "Uhhh..we don't want people realize how much we're charging them..uhh please let us keep deceptive billing practices that are effective. It would be devastating if people actually understood what we were charging and our marketing"

      Take the screws to them and simplify prices, make them charge it inclusively so they can't use deceptive marketing.

      Yea, the come - on pricing is deceptive; but if they did advertise and all in one price, anytime the fees change they'd need to raise prices and while the small print would not doubt allow that we'd all be screaming how there "price guarantee" was false advertising. Plus, fees could vary within a service area; and of course Comcast would simply bundle in all the fees at the highest rate... With any luck 5G will help break their monopoly over the lines so new providers can move in to compete. I suspect some MVNOs will decide to be ISPs as well, especially those owned by the large cell phone companies. That could also break apartment complex monopolies as well.

      • Re:Screw them. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by torkus ( 1133985 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:54PM (#63602968)

        It's not like comcast is the only business that has variable costs associated with providing service. In fact, they have more control than many others - at least they can negotiate the cost for rebroadcasting local channels or whatever sports package. Airlines have to buy jet fuel to make their planes go. Yes, the negotiate future contracts to hedge against large swings but they ultimately must buy their go-juice on the global commodities market.

        Yet I can buy a plane ticket for next year - taxes and fees upfront included in the DISPLAYED price - and that seat is mine. They don't get to come back later and add a fuel surcharge to my ticket if prices go up after I bought it.

        Comcast is a terrible, awful company and they deserve to be forced to abuse their customers slightly less.

      • by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

        Yea, the come - on pricing is deceptive; but if they did advertise and all in one price, anytime the fees change they'd need to raise prices and while the small print would not doubt allow that we'd all be screaming how there "price guarantee" was false advertising

        Right, their price guarantee is false advertising, as they make it look like your bill will be only X dollars, and then they work around it by adding 'fees'.

        I don't get extra fees from my ISP, and they're quite large. Prices with this company are different based on the service area, that's just a fact, and the services they offer. No one has said comcast shouldn't be able to put different prices per region. It's the deceptive billing practices.

        Also, then we rightly should be upset when they raise the price

      • by Calydor ( 739835 )

        How often do the fees change that this is a legitimate concern?

      • Yea, the come - on pricing is deceptive; but if they did advertise and all in one price, anytime the fees change they'd need to raise prices and while the small print would not doubt allow that we'd all be screaming how there "price guarantee" was false advertising.

        You are correct that the price guarantee would be false advertising if they raised prices. But that was their choice to advertise it as a "price guarantee", and their choice to raise prices. They should be sued by their customers, and lose, for false advertising if they do that.

        They don't "need" to raise prices if the fees go up, that is an active decision by them. If they don't want to get screwed by their own "price guarantee', then they shouldn't use it as a marketing tactic, then try to weasel out of i

        • Yea, the come - on pricing is deceptive; but if they did advertise and all in one price, anytime the fees change they'd need to raise prices and while the small print would not doubt allow that we'd all be screaming how there "price guarantee" was false advertising.

          You are correct that the price guarantee would be false advertising if they raised prices. But that was their choice to advertise it as a "price guarantee", and their choice to raise prices. They should be sued by their customers, and lose, for false advertising if they do that.

          They don't "need" to raise prices if the fees go up, that is an active decision by them. If they don't want to get screwed by their own "price guarantee', then they shouldn't use it as a marketing tactic, then try to weasel out of it when costs go up - that's the entire point of a "price guarantee" - the company takes the risk of rising costs, not the customer.

          I agree, and the only company I've ever felt stuck to a pice guarantee is T-Mobile. Most price guarantees, whether for cell service or price matching, are ruses to get you to buy a product under the assumption you are getting the best price and thus need not shop around.

        • by kmoser ( 1469707 )
          FTA:

          Comcast could stop charging the fees and raise its advertised prices by the corresponding amount to more accurately convey its actual prices to customers.

          Or, Comcast could stop charging the fees and keep its advertised prices exactly the same. Heaven forbid they actually make less of a profit.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Bob_Who ( 926234 )
      And Ticketmaster, too. The two most despised companies must be destroyed. Just out of spite.
  • "Poorly trained" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EmagGeek ( 574360 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:01PM (#63602770) Journal

    Poorly trained? Horse shit. They are very carefully trained to read very-carefully worded bullshit that leads the caller to infer that the fees are imposed by government, without actually saying that the fees are imposed by government.

  • by kellin ( 28417 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:04PM (#63602784)

    I have a local ISP that literally charges me $39.99/mo for 500 Mbps. No extra fees, no extra taxes, nada. If they can do it, Comcast and any of the other big providers can do the same, it's not complicated at all. Comcast is just a greedy, parasitic ISP.

    • by laxguy ( 1179231 )

      1GB here for 70$ a month, hasnt changed in a years

    • I have a local ISP that literally charges me $39.99/mo for 500 Mbps. No extra fees, no extra taxes, nada. If they can do it, Comcast and any of the other big providers can do the same, it's not complicated at all. Comcast is just a greedy, parasitic ISP.

      Yea, I went to 300Mbs 5G service at 1/3 the price, and get about the same speeds as I did before for higher speed service. It's fast enough for streaming and surfing, only thing that is much worse is upload speeds but I can live with that as I rarely upload anything large.

    • by slazzy ( 864185 )
      Same here, even in Canada the land of over priced services I've got fast unlimited internet from a reseller on the Cable company lines for $39/month. Getting the same service from the actual cable company would cost $120 a month and they are always making up extra fees and charge for overage as well.
      • Same. I switched away from the bastards at Shaw years ago, and the only times my bill went up was twice when I got my speed increased. In fact their cheapest tier of service is still available and I am pretty sure it is the same price I was paying so long ago.
        aebc.com for any of my BC neighbours, highly recommended.
    • I got a better reason why this is bullshit. The inability to list fees shows an inability to understand your own fee structure and therefore means that what is being charged has a high risk of being incorrect. A company which can't charge the correct fee to its customers shouldn't be in business.

      If they can charge the fee, they have a way of calculating the fee. If that have that then they can publish how it's done. It's really not more complicated than that.

  • No. I don’t begrudge the cable companies a healthy profit from what they provide. We’re a capitalist society. Nothing’s free. But this is basically like the laws requiring the ingredient list on a food package, or the breakdown of costs on a grocery receipt.

    Cough up your fee structure, comcast. Pay some college intern $16 per hour to make a spreadsheet with the figures and go ahead with your regularly scheduled 6 martini lunch.
  • Anything you can't declare, you can't charge. Deal?

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:18PM (#63602836)

    Comcast said it wants the FCC to rescind a requirement related to "fees that ISPs may, but are not obligated to, pass through to customers"

    Comcast can't figure out how to list all their (bogus) fees w/o having to also list: "Fee to list all monthly fees" ...

    • is make them sound like taxes. I get one on my bill that's a "regulatory compliance fee". This sounds like a tax, but it's literally *them* charging *me* a fee to comply with regulations. Naturally this is not part of the advertised price.

      We keep voting for pro-corporate asshole politicians because of moral panics and culture war issues. So this is what we get.
      • Sometimes thats a fee to settle a lawsuit (see verizons patent that is literally DNS, against vonage)
      • We keep voting for pro-corporate asshole politicians because of moral panics and culture war issues. So this is what we get.

        Ya, but not wanting you or others to get reamed is woke -- can't have that. /s :-)

    • Comcast can't figure out how to list all their (bogus) fees w/o having to also list: "Fee to list all monthly fees" ...

      Brilliant - thanks for my second laugh in this set of posts!

  • I typically figure paying for cable to day is like the people that still pay for AOL dial up. They probably don't even realize they are still paying for cable.

    Because there is no rational reason to pay for cable today, right?

    • by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:28PM (#63602874) Homepage
      They are basically an ISP now, try to keep up. All they did was pivot their billing lies into 'Internet Service.'

      Classic 'Cable' is no longer a thing. Unless you are in the boonies.
    • for some that is the only way to get on line with good speed.

    • by madbrain ( 11432 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:44PM (#63602942) Homepage Journal

      In many places, the only broadband ISP is Comcast cable, aka Xfinity.
      So, no, it's not irrational. I pay them for Internet and nothing else. No cable TV. I have an OTA , blu rays and streaming for video content.

      • Of course they like. See them claiming 10G service vs 5G ?? Total snakeoil bullshit.
        • Agree. But 5G in my area is actually 1kbps, so it's not like I have a real choice. Xfinitys 10G delivers 120 Mbps upstream, 1400 Mbps downstream. It could be worse. Was 35 Mbps upstream until last month.
          The price is not great though. $80/month. But no data cap at least.

          • That asynchronous shit is what keeps you from doing shit like zoom, teams meetings, unified communication etc.
            • Zoom works fine with async. No issues. But the service really should be symmetrical. Alas, I've been waiting for 13 years and all AT&T could deliver is 128 kbps IDSL.
              And I live in San jose...

              • Damn! Only went there once in 93. Drove from hayward based on an ad in the Computer Shopper. Sang that damn song all the way there.
              • by Bob_Who ( 926234 )
                Yep, They are the previous money grubbing liars that charge you more for less and lie about fake fees, etc. We have a great tradition of scumbag monopolies that steal as much money as possible every minute each day and then the send you the bill. You know, if the retirement funds for Americans were not tied to those earnings the angry villagers may have grabbed their pitchforks and torches and murdered them all in there sleep. Like before when the SBC PacBell name switch after we chopped Ma Bell. The Re
          • Xfinitys 10G

            10G? Really? I have seen ads strongly implying that Xfinity is offering 10G, but those speeds only exist in the backbone, not in the last mile.

    • by jonadab ( 583620 )
      In some geographical areas, cable-modem is the best option for decent-but-affordable internet service.

      For example, in areas where the phone land-line network used to be run by GTE North, Verizon bought it out and ran it into the ground (charitably, we can say they mismanaged it and failed to prioritize basic maintenance because land lines weren't a priority for them since they were principally a mobile-phone company; less charitably, we could accuse them of deliberately destroying the land-line service to f
      • DSL is basically a dead technology unless you are using site telephone wiring to share a fiber line run into a multi-tenant building. There's literally nothing Frontier can do to improve home-to-telco DSL other than replace the copper with fiber, at which point it no longer is DSL.

        This is why Verizon sold it off - land line business is dying, and it's not a viable ISP business any more.

  • by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:21PM (#63602848) Journal

    Sounds like they need to be audited. They just confessed that their accounting is shit. That smells like trouble. They need a court-mandated audit, by an independent auditor, at their expense.

    Whassat? A big pile of cash? Nevermind.

  • by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:23PM (#63602862)
    This is a problem for the legislature as well. Instead of giving the company a choice, they should have just made the charges mandatory so that companies would have to put them on the bill as line items. That way if Comcast wanted to pass the charge to the customers, as it does, it'll look like a mandatory line item charge. On the other hand, if they were benevolent (which they're not), they could have "credited" the bill by the amount, as in "Hey! As a token of appreciation, we're flipping this charge so you don't have to pay for it" and made themselves look good.
    • Government hates admitting that they drive up the cost of goods and services. At the same time, it would behoove Comcast to show their customers a proper accounting of exactly how much that is true.

      • by MycoMan ( 132840 )

        Comcast is *hardly* the only business that (gleefully) wants its customers to know how much money they're forced to collect from its customers that's then handed back to some government (federal or state... whatever). They refuse to roll up all the fees/taxes and present the total as 'their' charge for the product/service. They want their customers to know how much stinky old regulators are grabbing money out of customers' pockets.

        • Comcast certainly isn't telling anyone which parts of their fees are due to governments or other businesses upcharging them and how much is Comcast just being greedy/disingenuous.

    • by labnet ( 457441 )

      Well, in civilised countries like Australia,
      The advertised price is the price you pay.
      Not like the USA, where they add on sales tax, then tips, then resort fees, then local govt fees.
      But you know,unbridled capitalism ftw.

  • by Lavandera ( 7308312 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:26PM (#63602866)

    title says it all...

    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:42PM (#63602926)

      Is this the socialism that republicans claim to be protecting me from? I thought the free market was supposed to offer endless competition and rock bottom prices.

      • by sfcat ( 872532 )
        No, its population density and government subsidies which exist in all economic systems.
        • No, its population density and government subsidies which exist in all economic systems.

          The population density and urbanisation of most major US cities is far higher than in Europe. This should be counted in America's favour and produce lower prices there. Yet people living in downtown Chicago are still getting ***fucked by Comcast.

      • ... offer endless competition ...

        The competition is provided by the number of telecom cables outside your house, since the USA does not have a separate last-mile provider (which is a US-ian consequence of private ownership). Each telecom company is careful to not put their cable beside a competing provider, so it's really a cartel, not a free market.

        ... by advertising low prices and then charging much bigger monthly bills ...

        The US government protects this cartel by allowing various forms of fraud.

    • like 35 mbps up... getting 331 mbps down right now - with their 1 TB cap. Usually it's around 600 tops.

      They fuck with the plans all the time and I have to jump from 'special promo' to 'special promo' every year to avoid paying 50%+ more.

      They aren't regulated nearly enough for their local monopoly.

  • The airlines are forced to list the full all cost.
    With all taxes and fees that do very from airport to airport.
    But no Comcast likes to have the nice low price in the National ads that does show the real cost that verys in each market.

    • I don't want to be a prick, complaining about spelling and punctuation errors, but I honestly can't make out what you are saying.
  • by laie_techie ( 883464 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:44PM (#63602934)

    My wife wanted to sign up for Vasa gym as they were advertising $9.99 / month. By the time they tacked on non-negotiable fees, it was over $40 / month (includes a fee to guarantee the membership won't raise the following year). We consumers need to know the real price before we sign on the dotted line.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      My wife wanted to sign up for Vasa gym as they were advertising $9.99 / month. By the time they tacked on non-negotiable fees, it was over $40 / month (includes a fee to guarantee the membership won't raise the following year). We consumers need to know the real price before we sign on the dotted line.

      We customers need the courts to enforce the law.

      If you sign on the line and it says 9.99, it should be a simple no-effort way to submit that plus the bill to court and forcibly extract any additional charges above 9.99, plus fines for fraud.

    • by Bob_Who ( 926234 )
      We need to crack some skulls, as they say.... Clown time is over. Laws are not enforced. Courts are a worthless waste of time. We need Guidos.
  • Or to enlightening?
  • If you're able to bill it, you're able to list it.

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @03:17PM (#63603036)

    Now they'll add a "monthly fee listing fee," even though they don't list the fees.

  • It should be against the law to advertise a price and charge a different price. That's called fraud.

    Why Americans put up with that BS is beyond me.

    • Why Americans put up with that BS is beyond me.

      Being taught that government=bad and corporations=good. In evil socialist Europe the sticker price is what you pay.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by vivian ( 156520 )

      In other countries, that is usually the case. Where I live, there must be a clear stated total price, including all taxes, fees etc. If you want, you can also list the price without tax, or list the amount of tax that is included, but there must be a clear indication of the total price as well. If there are any discounts or amendments to the price, such as when getting a quote, the final price must include all taxes and fees also.

      I recently bought a glass pool fence, which on the quote, the vendor discounte

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • My $30 a month internet is really $50 a month. Before there was a $10 WiFi fee, despite owning my own router and not using any of their equipment. Eventually that was made illegal and the $10 fee got a new name essentially Not to mention brazen illegal practices like dividing up territory between the competitors to avoid competition
  • Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Serif ( 87265 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @04:04PM (#63603164)

    Make a rule so that they can only charge for things that they can list. They'll soon figure it out.

  • Since this is so difficult, surely they'll have just as difficult of a time even billing for them!
  • Why don't we go a step further and force all businesses everywhere to advertise all prices inclusive of ALL fees and TAXES!

    I'd love to go into a grocery store and see a price of $5 and know that i'm paying $5. If i'm on a road trip and I don't know that a local tax of 20% exists of course i'm going to buy more stuff than I would otherwise know. By having taxes baked into all advertised prices, since they are known and mandatory for all purchases at a location, I can then know exactly what i'm spending.

    For full transparency, they can list itemized taxes on receipts still. Knowing that the thing I bought for $5 is really only $3 with $1 state tax and $1 town tax is amazing for pushing for reforms and changing unfair legislation - the people should still know why a price is what it is as marked on the shelf.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Why don't we go a step further and force all businesses everywhere to advertise all prices inclusive of ALL fees and TAXES!

      This is how it works in most countries that aren't the USA.

  • I've worked for those fuckers. They choose to be a complete fucking mess internally. If it's too hard it's because they literally just don't want to try to be better. Nobody's bonus will get bigger by trying to comply with these things, but they will get bigger if they protect the company's bottom line by hiding the fees.

  • poorly trained customer service reps have been known to falsely tell customers that fees created by Comcast are mandated by the government

    ... none of these customers are federal officials. 18 U.S. Code Sec 1001 sets a penalty of up to 5 years in prison for making false or misleading statements to federal officials. I don't think being "poorly trained" would be a defense. Although the DoJ might negotiate the sentence down a bit if said employees can identify the Comcast management that trained them improperly. If I were a Comcast service rep, I'd think hard about even showing up for work tomorrow. Or ever.

  • I'll leave it to others to go after Comcast - plenty will and I do not know enough specifics on them (not a customer) but allow me to point out the other side (not that I TAKE that side, just that it's being overlooked a bit).

    Comcast wants (as do all such companies) to pass on all fees to the consumer and does not want to look like the "bad guy". The FCC however, ALSO does not want to look like the "bad guy". The FCC is mandating certain fees...fees they demand Comcast pay to them, they just do not want Com

    • by srg33 ( 1095679 )

      I tried to follow this logic, but it is broken. Comcast can show the fee, label it Fee paid to FCC, and show/have a lower base price: Comcast wins (looks like a good guy).

  • I suppose it's just easier to grab people's money than it is to make up names for the fees, Mschaffer adds.

    It's not THAT hard to create a line-item "Because we can" fee.

  • So, LISTING the feeds is too hard, but CHARGING them is not. NNnnnnngotcha.
  • There's no competition, and they way they get rewarded is by extracting harder.

    Why is that so hard to understand?

One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.

Working...