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The Internet

ISPs Say Their 'Excellent Customer Service' Is Why Users Don't Switch Providers (arstechnica.com) 76

Posted by BeauHD from the say-what-now dept.
Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin reports: Lobby groups for Internet service providers claim that ISPs' customer service is so good already that the government shouldn't consider any new regulations to mandate improvements. They also claim ISPs face so much competition that market forces require providers to treat their customers well or lose them to competitors. Cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association told the Federal Communications Commission in a filing (PDF) that "providing high-quality products and services and a positive customer experience is a competitive necessity in today's robust communications marketplace. To attract and retain customers, NCTA's cable operator members continuously strive to ensure that the customer support they provide is effective and user-friendly. Given these strong marketplace imperatives, new regulations that would micromanage providers' customer service operations are unnecessary."

Lobby groups filed comments in response to an FCC review of customer service that was announced last month, before the presidential election. While the FCC's current Democratic leadership is interested in regulating customer service practices, the Republicans who will soon take over opposed the inquiry. USTelecom, which represents telcos such as AT&T and Verizon, said that "the competitive broadband marketplace leaves providers of broadband and other communications services no choice but to provide their customers with not only high-quality broadband, but also high-quality customer service."

"If a provider fails to efficiently resolve an issue, they risk losing not only that customer -- and not just for the one service, but potentially for all of the bundled services offered to that customer -- but also any prospective customers that come across a negative review online. Because of this, broadband providers know that their success is dependent upon providing and maintaining excellent customer service," USTelecom wrote. While the FCC Notice of Inquiry said that providers should "offer live customer service representative support by phone within a reasonable timeframe," USTelecom's filing touted the customer service abilities of AI chatbots. "AI chat agents will only get better at addressing customers' needs more quickly over time -- and if providers fail to provide the customer service and engagement options that their customers expect and fail to resolve their customers' concerns, they may soon find that the consumer is no longer a customer, having switched to another competitive offering," the lobby group said.
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ISPs Say Their 'Excellent Customer Service' Is Why Users Don't Switch Providers More

ISPs Say Their 'Excellent Customer Service' Is Why Users Don't Switch Providers

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  • Summary: ISPs lie, Trump will help them do it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @05:27PM (#64974537)
    Did I miss anything?

  • I must be dreaming (Score:5, Funny)

    by clovis ( 4684 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @05:30PM (#64974545)

    Have you ever had one of those dreams where things happen that are so Kafkaesque weird that you think you must be in another world?
    Kudos to the lobbyist. It's a masterwork of gaslighting.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jamesjw ( 213986 )

      Thankfully here in Australia we have the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman for Comms provider complaint escalation, its not perfect but it looks to be better than whatever the fresh new level of hell that this looks to be turning out to be.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by chrish ( 4714 )

        Here in Canada, we have the CRTC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Radio-television_and_Telecommunications_Commission), the poster-child for regulatory capture. Our ISPs don't even have to pretend.

    • Luckily we have Russian, where this sort of thing and many similar ones have been going on for decades, to give us the right terms to describe it. In this case the word is vranyo, you're lying, and I know you're lying, and you know I know you're lying, and I know you know I know you're lying, but we'll just pretend all is right and move on.

      Next on this list come January, vor v zakone.

  • Because the only thing worse than their Internet service is their customer support.

  • Nobody switches because (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @05:33PM (#64974555)
    There are no alternatives, usually big broadband ISPs hold monopoly power in neighborhoods and towns & cities

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      Comcast is so bad where I am that being low priority on a cellular network is better (I switched to T-Mobile when it became available, and aside from no ip6 passthrough and carrier level NAT it's significantly better).

      I really wish they'd do IP6 passthrough so I could have a unique IP address (there are occasional issues that I assume are related to the NAT), but I get actual upstream bandwidth for dramatically less money.

      • Comcast is so bad where I am that being low priority on a cellular network is better (I switched to T-Mobile when it became available, and aside from no ip6 passthrough and carrier level NAT it's significantly better).

        I really wish they'd do IP6 passthrough so I could have a unique IP address (there are occasional issues that I assume are related to the NAT), but I get actual upstream bandwidth for dramatically less money.

        I dumped ATT 1Gig fiber for TMob first chance I got. $25/month, streaming works fine, upload speeds slower but saving $75+/month makes waiting an extra 30 seconds for an upload to finish is a fair tradeoff.

      • I'm kinda surprised anyone on /. would actually be satisfied with T-Mobile's home broadband. I tried it myself awhile back and just couldn't tolerate the latency (makes VOIP nearly unusable), various multiplayer games not working because of the CGNAT, and the T-Mobile's modem/router combo basically being a massive pile of festering dog shit in regards to configurability.

        Verizon's home wireless broadband offering is much better in every aspect except for speeds in my area. It gives you a real IPv4 address a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AvitarX ( 172628 )

          I find the latency fine, I've been using it for meetings for a few years now.

          The CGNAT is my only complaint, but I don't play multiplayer games, I'm sure the latency could be a problem there perhaps.

          I don't use their router for anything, just add another layer of NAT and use the same unifi setup I was using before inside.

          The cost to get more than 6mbps up from Comcast here was prohibitive, or I wouldn't have dropped my cable, but I was looking at something like $150/month for 500/25 to get anything resembli

    • Even if there's a choice, changing ISPs means a lot of work. You dn't keep the same email most of the time, possibly you need new wiring, a new visit by some clueless installer, etc. It's disruption that means you put up with constant minor annoyances rather than face the giant one time annoyance.

      • You dn't keep the same email most of the time

        Someone uses the ISP-provided email?

        • Well... Google it out, I'm avoiding them. I have a paid-for account that used to be free for life (but only for a year until they realized it wasn't profitable) but it's only $24 for email only, and it forwards to ISP. the UI is too nasty to use as-is. But too many people use the ISP email because too often the reply-to indicated that address, even after setting it up. So at this point ISP is the default. I don't know of other options that aren't gmail/yahoo.

          • If you have your own email address, your ISP, has not much chance to smuggle in an reply-to.
            SMTP and POP etc. are encrypted with TLS.
            How should anyone be able to add an reply-to?

          • Proton?

          • I don't know of other options that aren't gmail/yahoo.

            FastMail, ProtonMail and MailFence to name a few. I think they all do GPG too though I maybe not up-to-date on that as they may use something else or not be able to import keys if you want to use your own generated ones.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      There are no alternatives, usually big broadband ISPs hold monopoly power in neighborhoods and towns & cities

      And a counter-example to help illustrate your point. In my area Comcast was the one-and-only broadband provider. Then rules changed and smaller fiber ISPs could start accessing the utility poles. One came down my street offering free installation and 250 Mbps for half what Comcast was offering. You're damn right I jumped ship - I ditched Comcast as fast as I could. Even when the introductor

  • Partly true (Score:3)

    by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @05:33PM (#64974557)

    In some markets this argument holds merit. While others they are the only game in town with agreements with the municipalities for exclusive access to telephone poles. Maybe the compromise is to waive regulations in circumstances where there are at least 5 competing carriers able to provide at least 40% of the bandwidth of the fastest carrier in that municipality.

    • There are 18 ISPs here using the Public Utility District's fiber.

      There is a catch that not all providers cover the whole county (2800 sq miles, half again Delaware) but there is still a decent selection for where you do live.

  • There is a single fiber provider in my area, and frankly they suck. The only alternative is cable, which sucks even more. There is no real choice and if I had one I'd probably take it at least once.

    With the stupid 'introductory pricing' if there were two viable providers I would flip/flop every other year and pay less.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      Consider yourself lucky. I my options for "wired" connections are Xfinity or DSL. No fiber anywhere near me. I hate Comcast enough that I'm still willing to suffer through Verizon's 5G Home Internet. (Which, I'll be honest, isn't THAT bad.)

  • HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa Oh, you're serious?

  • Flat out lie (Score:5, Informative)

    by haxor.dk ( 463614 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @05:42PM (#64974585)

    Most US ISP hold pretty strong regional monopolies or participate in likewise strong duopolies.

    • I live in a country where there is (allegedly) significantly more competition, but the ISP's customer "service" team are so heavily incentivised to prevent cancellations they'll simply transfer you to a random extension or put you on indefinite hold if you try.

      I'm presently awaiting a response to a legal letter sent by recorded post since all other forms of contact have been ignored.

      It doesn't seem to matter how the industry is structured, they always seem to find a way of keeping you in their claws.

  • WTF are they talking about? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @05:42PM (#64974587)

    With large portions of the country essentially locked to one, and only one, ISP, how is competition so fierce they can't possibly need regulation? I know in my neighborhood there's only one choice unless you want the unreliability of the local wireless provider. I think defacto, and sometimes local government enforced monopoly power pretty much negates this argument.

    The last two stories here are real "corporations have a problem with reality" takes. Is there going to be a point were reality is forced back to being acknowledged? Or have we gone past the point of no return and are now heading into fantasyland?

    Also, Lobbyist must be the absolute shittiest job. I have days where I go home feeling guilty about automating away some other jobs. Those folks must feel like the scum under the scum on the bottom of the pond. The ick makes me queasy from this distance. I can't imagine looking yourself in the mirror after spouting off this type of nonsense.

    • Or have we gone past the point of no return and are now heading into fantasyland?

      We have gone past the point of know return and we are not merely heading into fantasyland, we are firmly there. Think about it, a Supreme Court justice has been given huge gifts by people who were involved with judgements that they were making... and nothing is done, nobody who can do anything cares. That puts us very firmly in fantasyland.

  • Competition (Score:3)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @05:42PM (#64974589)

    Good customer service, and the pricing, and quality, all mostly depend on if there is or is not competition in that space. So many areas have government-approved/allowed/granted/mandated/whatever monopolies on cabled ISP and those customers are trapped. Those customers can only hope for government regulation and interference, and even then it doesn't work out that great.

    I have been locked into a monopoly at home for decades. My only realistic choice has been the cable company (DSL is either long gone or a joke, and satellite is not in the same type of service) or nothing. Finally, there is a new company pulling cable (and it happens to be fiber) in my area, and magically, the prices are much lower than what I pay and at 3 times the speed (and symmetric as well). You can bet that the pricing of the old/existing entrenched cable company will drop a lot, very soon. And service and speeds are likely to improve as well.

    Will I switch? Not sure yet. The devil you know and such... but just the presence of competition is likely to improve my situation, even if I don't switch. We need to focus more on removing red tape and restrictions on competition more than anything else.

  • At least in my case, it's definitely true.

    I'm on Comcast right now, and I could very easily switch to CenturyLink fiber. But for as nice as the higher upload speeds would be, CenturyLink's network engineering and customer support is notoriously bad around these parts. They have far more downtime and service outages (DNS, etc) than Comcast does.

    Not that Comcast is a saint, especially in terms of pricing. But their network engineering and infrastructure management is top notch; the only time I'm out of servic

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Dear lord, please consider carefully before going to CenturyLink.

      They offered me a promo rate on a higher-bandwidth connection and assured me the only change would be speed. Not so: port 25 blocked. No big deal, I'll just call like I did all those years ago and request it be opened, right?

      Literally 14 hours later, the entire time spent on the phone trying to get escalated or find a single person who had any idea what I was talking about or could follow the explanation, I realized it was almost 8AM. So I w

  • One of the things I find funny (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @06:05PM (#64974637)
    Is how people selectively choose when they allow themselves to be lied to.

    So your ISP lies to you about their anti-competitive behavior and that's a no-go.

    Your favorite politician lies to you about tariffs and suddenly that's cool.

    In both cases you know they're lying just sometimes one person gets a pass and the other doesn't.

    • So your ISP lies to you about their anti-competitive behavior and that's a no-go.

      Why don't you go and ask ChatGPT what the market capitalization is of the cable industry? Hell, I was just at a major theme park recently that happens to be owned by a cable company (bonus points if you can guess their name).

      Where rubber meets the road, people are just as willing to accept cable company lies as they are the ones that come out of politicians' mouths. That's what happens when you don't have a lot of options.

      • It's that they don't have the power to do anything about it, largely because of their own political decisions but they're not making those political decisions intentionally they just don't understand how anything works so they consistently make the wrong choices.

        But in terms of believing or not believing lies people make selective decisions which lies to believe all the time largely based on emotional reasons.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mcarp ( 409487 )
        Disney is a global entertainment network which owns some cable networks and some theme parks. So I would guess Disney World/Land. Also Six Flags used to be owned by Time Warner, but no longer. So I will not guess Six Flags.

    • ... one person gets a pass ...

      When a person says you're getting the best service in the world, it triggers the thought "do I feel the best?" When a person says, "I will make tariffs (and fix it)", it triggers the thought "not my problem."

      To most, tariffs is a subject they don't understand so it must be a good answer. Yes, people don't want to know what it means, and most probably weren't taught about the damage from tariffs in the 1970s, or the resulting GATTs.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by necro81 ( 917438 )

        To most, tariffs is a subject they don't understand so it must be a good answer. Yes, people don't want to know what it means, and most probably weren't taught about the damage from tariffs in the 1970s, or the resulting GATTs.

        Worse, when the pain of higher prices and lowered supply inevitably comes around, those same people will happily latch onto some scapegoat for their woes, rather than blaming the politicians they themselves voted into office.

  • I have 19 ISPs to choose from for my municipal fiber here.
    When I set it up in 2019, I had very specific requirements that only one of them could meet. That's no longer relevant, and I've had good experiences in the past with another one of the options, but I stay out of inertia.
    Price and customer service seem pretty comparable across the board.
    But obviously most people don't have a real choice of ISPs.

  • Customer service? You just haven't been irritating enough to drive me away yet.

  • I have had the same cable Internet provider at my home for 12 years now. It isn't because they have the best customer service (but to be fair, they are pretty decent all things considered.) It's because there is exactly one provider that can provide something resembling "broadband" in my neighborhood. The telco offers "12mbps down" DSL in my neighborhood, but in reality you're lucky if you get 4mbps down. That's what my mom had at this house before she passed and I moved in. The only other options I hav

  • A few months ago when my street had a transformer blow, Spectrum actually arrived hours ahead of FPL. I felt a little bad telling their techs that they were sent on a wild goose chase, because the service disruption the neighbors were reporting was a result of Spectrum's equipment being offline due to the power outage. Anytime I've had any issues which required a technician they've been similarly prompt.

    My gripes with Spectrum are primarily in the areas of pricing and poor speeds (which I'm assuming is du

  • Where I live, I actually have competition between the cable provider and the fiber provider. I now have fiber and cable in my house, and I am in permanent "introductory offer" mode. As soon as the other company offers an introductory rate for a year or two, I order, plug my router into their modem and cancel the existing service. I don't even bother threatening the existing company with leaving them. I just leave them. I do the same thing for my mom.

    So, clearly, loyalty dominates in areas where there is no

  • Last weekend (Score:3)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @08:14PM (#64974833) Homepage Journal

    Last weekend just for giggles, I watched a few episodes of "Lost in Space". Do you guys remember when Dr. Smith would boast of great strength or courage and the robot would emit that grating mechanical laugh?

    I kept hearing that in my mind while reading the summary.

  • Sure, ISP customers voluntarily stay... (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @08:18PM (#64974839)

    Just like Prigozhin's plane voluntarily blew up.

  • I asked my North Korean friend how life was inside the country.

    He said he couldnâ(TM)t complain.

  • I live in an area with ONE coax cable wire. You can NOT choose an alternative unless its the phone company and you want a service that is 10x or more slower. I live in an area with ZERO fiber access. So if I no longer want 1Gbps then sure, I have a choice. I am ***NOT*** staying with my cable company because they have great customer service. So ISPs listen up! You're LYING! Stop it.

  • I think people just stay with their provider because switching is a pain

  • Taliban (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Fons_de_spons ( 1311177 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @01:48AM (#64975171)
    Other news: Taliban say they are doing a great job as Afghans do not switch nationality. Aah how cute!

  • Invented probably by religion, but perfected by Goebbels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Well they sure didn't ASK me and 10,000's of other people who are stuck with Windstream/Kenetic DSL @ 25 Mbps DL or worse. There is NO OTHER OPTION, NO FIBEROPTIC ! Comcast also gets blamed for bad service, but they at least have 300 Mbps DL......

  • In the real world, I just had a chat with Comcast CSRs about a mailbox error that was bogus. They transferred me 6 times, and none of the south asian based morons knew anything or did anything, but they assured me that I shouldn't worry and that they will assuredly fix my problem, then told me they had no access to anything, but kept telling me how to log in to a page I told them I could not log in to. Seriously, AI is a lot better. Not chatbots, but actual AI.

    • I bet they knowingly lied to you, making statements of such udder stupidity that they had no excuse for being incorrect. In Ontario, Canada, and we have Rogers, a company whose customer service is so bad, when people mention they're with Rogers you can see regret in their faces.

      With one exception that I can think of, literally one, I can't recall any other useful exchange I've ever had with Rogers, even be accident. Usually, the customer service is terrible, to the point I'm not sure if the people hav

  • When I lived in Germany, I had 20 years the same ISP, then they go bought.
    Never had any contact with customer support. I do not even know if they had one.

    Here in Thailand, team of workers is at your door before you even realize internet is gone. Not a joke, we were eating lunch, so no one was using WiFi/internet. We got interrupted by a team from the fibre company, they wanted to use our endpoint to measure something in the network.
    In Thailand the worst case is you live in a rural area, and you have a physi

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