Schneiderman: Spectrum-Time Warner defrauded customers on internet service
blog.timesunion.com
blog.timesunion.com
An example set of rules could be:
1. Periodic monitoring of connection speeds is to be expected, and any action requires a minimum of X samples (say, X=10). Measurements may be performed by any party and the measurement method must be fully disclosed. If more than 30% of samples are failing to meet advertised Internet speeds by at least 5%, or any one sample is more than 50% below advertised speed, customer is entitled to a one-day refund of Internet fees. If more than 5 total occurrences in a single calendar month are failing, customer is entitled to a 15-day refund of Internet fees.
2. If the Internet becomes unusable for more than 10 minutes at a time in a single month and the outage can be traced to ISP-given equipment, customer is entitled to a one-day refund of Internet fees. If Internet is unusable multiple times, customer is entitled to a 5-day refund.
3. If company has cause to adjust Internet delivery expectations (such as, too many additional customers to serve original speeds on pipe to same area), existing customers are all immediately released from any contracts and may terminate service immediately with no penalties. In additional, ISP is liable for crediting customer monthly bills for the remainder of service, proportional to the difference in service speed with a 10% penalty for violation of original contract by the ISP.
4. Internet is considered a separate service and may not be bundled with anything else.
And it doesn’t even have to say this much to be a huge improvement. The point is that companies have been getting away with lousy services FOR YEARS and appear to be largely unpunished, while meanwhile the number of customers overpaying and not receiving stable and promised service numbers in the millions.
ISPs must charge customers per byte transferred. In other words, no all you can eat plans allowed, usage based pricing only. This has the benefit of aligning consumer and ISP goals in the sense that providing fast service allows ISPs to make more money, so they are incentivized to provide high quality service built on high quality infrastructure. If the Internet is not working, they make no money. If it is slow, they make less. On the consumer side, it incentivizes efficient use of bandwidth.
Of course, this is only one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is that most ISPs have a defacto monopoly in their region. Not sure how we can solve this one. This is partially caused by bad decision by municipal governments, industry collusion, and it seems in part by just the nature of running physical utilities to homes and businesses (many regions also have electric, water, sewage, and gas monopolies).
That effectively kills the Internet as we know it.
You can browse thousands of web pages of text for the same bandwidth cost as 1 HD video. The way we use bandwidth today (animate gifs, ugh) is wasteful and makes everyone's internet more expensive.
The issue is mainly with monopolies and Oligopolies of the ISP and telecoms providers.
So why am I posting? I'll tell you why. I have found a perverse interest in the fact it took google 18 months to drag fiber literally 250 feet to my house. I measured it. My neighbor had it. It took them 18 months. They kept telling me every quarter, it should just be two more months at the latest.
Do you know how long it takes cable companies to repair a downed power line?
Not 18 damn months! And that's if the power line is beamed up by aliens and disappears. Requiring an entirely new pole and cable run.
My point is there is no panacea so far. Cable companies suck, and milk the copper tit cash cow for all they can. They won't upgrade their infrastructure and will not compete with google fiber and other high speed offerings. But they do get work done on lines pretty fast.
Google screams in infrastructure but sucks at actual deployment. I'm really unimpressed with google. Gmail, android, fiber they just suck imo.
I'm more convinced now than ever that laws need to be revoked and cities need to deploy their own fiber to the home network at tax dollar expense and operate it like a utility. Open the backbone for leasing as well to interested parties at a fair price.
It's clear telcos and cable have a chokehold on the legislative. Things won't get any better. Competition won't increase. It's way beyond time to nuke the current system from orbit.
Did you ever get an official response on the reason for the delay?
The reason I'm asking is because I wonder if there could be a local ordinance or government interdiction that needed to be overcome in order to make what, on its face, seems like a relatively simple change. Incumbent utility companies tend to have a more streamlined process for requesting changes due to their familiarity and rapport with the local government processes and personnel.
No one takes that long to repair infrastructure. No one! Not electricity companies. Not gas companies. Not cable companies. Not telcos. Google should be ASHAMED they took a year and a half to fix that! And should have given me 18 months free service to make up for it.
Also google bills a month ahead. Who does that?? Who bills for services not yet rendered??
Yeah I'm not not impressed with google. At all. I can't fathom they were able to get as big as they did.
And as far as ordinances and interdiction that was supposed to be the reason Kansas City was the first google fiber city. Because the city relaxed a bunch of regs so it would be easier for google to deploy fiber. Easier.
TimeWarner does.
https://www.timewarnercable.com/en/support/faqs/faqs-account...
For fixed-price services like cable service, video subscription services, housing, etc. I've had a consistent experience of being asked to pay for the next month up front. (They typically phrase this as "at the beginning of the billing cycle" on their terms of service.) I'm guessing the reason is that when it's done this way it reduces the risk of the customer defaulting on the amount after the service has already been consumed.
> Monthly charges are billed at the beginning of your billing cycle and may take a few days after the billing date to appear on your account.
https://help.netflix.com/en/node/27
> We automatically bill your Payment Method on the calendar day corresponding to commencement of your subscription.
> You pay for your subscription in advance of the covered month.
http://help.hbonow.com/app/answers/detailHBO/a_id/139/~/how-...
"If $company does not refund/provide the service that I paid for, my next call will be to the State Attorney General of $homestate and the State Attorney General of the state your company is incorporated in, for charges of fraud."
It's the upgraded version of "I want to speak with your supervisor," and it has never failed me.
Many customer service workers are underpaid/overworked and DGAF.
Threatening to call or write some gov't body doesn't mean anything at this level. The support reps are not there to fix your problems or improve your services. They exist to satisfy your outrage and or upsell you. As long as your anger is satisfied, you will probably keep paying your bill. If your outrage can not be satisfied with the tools that reps have access to such as a form of credit, a new modem, or a service call you are wasting your breath. From what I could tell higher corporate people at cable/telcos are highly insulated to consumer feedback. The only thing that they understand is service cancellations by the 100,000s maybe millions. Massive numbers of customers jumping ship would get there attention. How long have people been cutting the cord in favor of Netflix etc and cable companies are just now beginning to come up with competing offers?
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(Aside: I think a law should be enacted requiring anyone who sets up an automated customer service line to provide visual data and menu options to smartphones for people who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, have trouble deciphering the words used, or just don't want to sit around for half an hour listening to every option slowly listed trying to figure out how to get to the solve-my-fucking-problem menu. If they can use voice recognition then this shouldn't be that burdensome.)
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...and then deal with inexperienced or upselling reps.
This goes more than double when the customer is a corporation.
Just sternly ask for a supervisor.
My grad school was trying to charge me for a semester I did not attend which was ridiculous considering I was getting a research stipend for much more than my tuition in my comp sci PhD program. Every year or so they would start harassing me again, when the supervisor trick stopped working, I threatened multiple law suits and contacting the State Attorney General and I haven't heard from them again.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/republican-led-f...
I've been able to sustain 760 Mbps down and 105 Mbps up, it's the most satisfying experience I've had on the internet.
Would they give you a higher proportion of bandwidth when you first subscribe for internet service (and checking speedtest.net), eventually reducing it to give way to other new subscribers? Or do they just not perform sufficient maintenance to keep the high speed?
What can I do? The only competitor, AT&T is not very cost effective either and I dread doing business with them---just paying the bill was an exercise in frustration due to their constantly broken website.
It's shady, and slimy. I expect nothing else from telcos and cable co's.
First they put charges for channels and shows I never purchased over a 3 month period adding up to $900. I tried to fight it and they wouldn't remove the charges. I cancelled my service and found Earthlink.
I gave Earthlink a little over $100 to hook up a cable modem to my house. 12 hours later it was disconnected and I was told I owed Time Warner $900. They never told me when I signed up that the line would be owned by TWC or that I owed money.
They kept my $100 so, I called AT&T which was the only other option. AT&T lied to me and told me I was getting fiber at 25Mb/sec. When the installer showed up with twisted pair I asked, this is DSL isn't it? He told me yes it was DSL and I'd only get 17Mb/sec. I just tested it on Fast.com and I get 12Mb/sec. Oh well, this is the only choice I have left for working at home at this point.
Seems spectrum maxes out at 120mbps, whereas they used to sell 300mbps. (or is that just me?)
I confronted customer support with a well-crafted chat message pointing this out, with links to their own specs. They moved me to the 100Mbps tier and credited me $80 or $90 for overcharging me, and didn't fight about it at all. It's like they made damn sure I didn't engage the Streisand Effect.