The Real Reason You Hate Your Cable Company

Yet another survey shows that cable providers are among the most hated companies among consumers.

But it’s not all cable companies—mainly just the big ones. A survey by Consumer Reports ranks Comcast and Time Warner Cable at the very bottom of cable, telephone, and Internet companies. You might remember them as the firms that recently tried to merge, but then withdrew from the deal when it became clear that the government wasn’t going to allow it. Now Time Warner Cable is seeking a merger with Charter Communications, which also fared poorly in the survey.

Comcast and Time Warner landed at the very bottom of the survey along with Mediacom, a regional provider, on consumer attitudes toward bundled services.

Not surprisingly, the survey also found that younger people are far more likely to favor Internet-streamed video over cable, either supplementing their cable viewing with it or dropping cable altogether.

That might be part of the reason that cable companies are apparently very open to negotiating fees with disgruntled customers. Nearly half the respondents who tried such negotiations were successful in getting as much as $50 knocked off their monthly bills, getting a new promotional rate, or getting extra premium channels at no extra cost.

Customers with fiber-to-the-home Internet service like that provided by Verizon FiOS and satellite-TV companies DirecTV and Dish were in general much more satisfied with their service, mainly because of the high data speeds and better reliability.