Cable Companies Use Hidden Fees To Raise Prices 24% a Month (arstechnica.com) 77
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Consumer Reports analysis of cable bills found that companies add $37.11 per month in fees to the average bill, raising consumers' actual costs way above the advertised prices. The $37.11 "in fees created by the cable industry" add 24% to the average base price of $156.71 a month, Consumer Reports said. That doesn't include another $13.28 in government-related taxes and fees, which raise prices even higher. "With the proliferation of add-on fees, it's nearly impossible for consumers to find out the full cost of a cable package before they get locked into a contract -- and cable companies count on this," Consumer Reports Senior Policy Counsel Jonathan Schwantes said.
Consumer Reports analyzed 787 cable bills from 13 companies for a report released today. Nearly all 787 bills included TV service, while at least 426 of them included Internet service, and at least 282 included phone service, Consumer Reports told Ars. Some of the bills listed the services only as "double-play" or "triple-play," so it wasn't always clear which services were included. The bills were collected from 787 volunteers between June and August 2018. The average base price was $156.71 a month, but the actual price consumers paid was $217.42. The data includes bills from Comcast, Charter, Cox, Altice USA (Optimum), Frontier, RCN, Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-Verse, SuddenLink, WOW, Service Electric, Grande Communications, and ImOn.
Consumer Reports analyzed 787 cable bills from 13 companies for a report released today. Nearly all 787 bills included TV service, while at least 426 of them included Internet service, and at least 282 included phone service, Consumer Reports told Ars. Some of the bills listed the services only as "double-play" or "triple-play," so it wasn't always clear which services were included. The bills were collected from 787 volunteers between June and August 2018. The average base price was $156.71 a month, but the actual price consumers paid was $217.42. The data includes bills from Comcast, Charter, Cox, Altice USA (Optimum), Frontier, RCN, Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-Verse, SuddenLink, WOW, Service Electric, Grande Communications, and ImOn.
Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
And then those fucking morans wonder why people are ditching them.
Oh well, no matter. They'll simply increase their prices until they only have one customer with a ten billion dollar bill every month.
Yep. The government. Their hand puppet anyway. (Score:3)
They will simply write themselves a law, saying the government must guarantee every citizen cable and Internet. With only them being eligible, due to "dominant existing infrastructure". And you get to 1.pay for it as a tax that completely goes into their pockets, 2. hate the government for them so they can create even more laws from inside their human^Wgovernment shield.
Or, alternatively, they get a bailout, and you pay for it anyway.
Given that you chose to let them, obvioisly. Which you can make by laying
Re: Yep. The government. Their hand puppet anyway. (Score:2)
You act like there's a way to make a different choice without committing a crime.
Re: (Score:1)
As usual Americans bend over and lube up for corporations.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe its time your ass stood up and committed a crime against the criminals raping our laws and pocketbooks.
Or you can be a contributor to the problem, and do nothing, like a typical fucking nerd.
I have my felon^W^W^Wbadges of honor, where the fuck are yours you riskless cowardly fuck?
Re: (Score:2)
If your felonies don't include the murder of a politician or CEO, I'm not impressed. Just not giving a shit about the law isn't the same thing as being a revolutionary.
Re: (Score:1)
Attempted Bodily Harm of a Public Official is the official charge on my record. What's yours?
Re: (Score:2)
The health insurance companies managed to get the government to require all citizens to purchase their products, why not any other sector?
Re: (Score:1)
So why NOT mandate profit for business everywhere?
Well, real estate has a guaranteed profit margin on rents.
And Weapons makers.
And Stock Brokers
Shall I go on?
Because some things actually HAVE to be done for the public good. Note:Sarcasm flag set
Re:Incredible (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the same companies that provide gigabit internet with a 1TB data cap that you could technically burn through in a few hours if your where really downloading something that big. Then charge you an extra $50 for unlimited and you pay it because although you don't download files that big you do have 4k tvs and they will eat that up about 2/3rds into the month.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I had a BRI line back in the day, $99/mo for 64kb x2, and how to use that 16kb d-channel...
When you could, if you were clever, get a T-1 for $199/mo.
Got cable internet, bill was $99/mo for well over 10MB, and I exercised it just to see. Woot.
But then this all got popular, and Docsis turned everything upside down, and vector DSL, etherloop, all that come and gone stuff, and ti got cheaper for a while, per MB.
Now it's so damned important they can charge market rates, not cost plus. And fees etc same as airli
Bow down before your masters, scum! (Score:3)
Meanwhile, in Ukraine (a poor third-world country) you can get a gigabit connection for about $10 a month. A 100mbit connection is around $7 a month. No caps.
Well, Ukraine is too poor? How about Sweden? It's around $20 a month there.
Re: (Score:2)
Ukraine is part of the *definition* of "second world"--an integral part of the Soviet empire.
'Third World" meant those not part of the free and industrialized first world, the enslaved communist Second World, or aligned with either as client states. As a practical matter, these countries were (almost?) uniformly poor and underdeveloped.
Re: (Score:2)
The progress of technology is great, but you're still paying a lot for that package. Unless you have a very fancy selection of TV channels, I could get the equivalent for half the price here (the Netherlands).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I cannot get "internet only" offer from Ziggo; does not seem to exists. The packet with minimum extras is 250mbit with standard TV (50 channels or so) for Euro 56 per month.
BTW, I don't have experience with any other provider in NL but Ziggo (former Chello) seems to have some pretty good virus/spam protection. My PC is awfully opened to the world (if /. ers could check I'd be banned from the site for extreme lameness). Every few months I check if I have caught something. So far, for more than 10 yrs I got o
Re: (Score:1)
"You all should be kissing verizons feet."
I'm more than happy to kick your ass instead. Your dumbass forgot they were supposed to have provided fiber to us DECADES ago and they re-wrote the law to walk off with $200 BILLION of our money, along witht he rest of the telecoms industry.
You fucking corporate cocksucking shill.
Re: Incredible (Score:1)
For 49 (39 if you're a mobile customer, which I am) there's an offer for 10 gbit plus 250 tv channels plus unlimited calls in Switzerland.
There's no difference between 1 gbit and 10 if you check the effective speeds, I don't have nor need a TV, already have unlimited calls in the country on mobile subscription, and the hassle of changing without guarantee that things will work equally well is not worth the 15 bucks at the moment
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Incredible (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Because companies that don't grow profits every year eventually get punished in free markets and are taken over.
This is your course in American Capitalism 101.
Re: (Score:1)
They must either steal from customers, slowly raising prices by hook or crook, take public funds via government contracts(government prints money and gives it to them), or in the case of Facebook, try to print their own money.
This is why my last laptop cost $179 and is better than the $7900 model I bought in 1994.
Re: (Score:1)
"This is why my last laptop cost $179"
No, your laptop cost that little because you're being sold the fuck out and spied upon.
Holy shit take your fucking blinders off.
Re: Incredible (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just wait until you have to buy six to eight streaming accounts to watch what you want. I worked for a small cable company for over ten years. We didn't have crap like that. We had the broadcast recovery fee. It wasn't a add on. It was us getting our money back that we had to pay all the local TV stations.
Re: (Score:2)
Just wait until you have to buy six to eight streaming accounts to watch what you want.
I already do. And it's still cheaper than a month of "basic" cable.
When I moved to South Florida the cable was $65 (Score:3)
When I moved here, analog expanded-basic was $65.
FFWD 20 years, and it was digital cable and expanded-basic was about $130.
I did cut it, like four months ago. Huh. Almost exactly 20 years, with 12 of those being digital and usurious.
Rot in hell, Comcast.
Phone guys, you're next.. you're doing the same exact thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, who do you go through? sprint is charging 90ish for that amount of hotspot bandwidth (and near as I can tell, that's the cheapest in my area)
Has anyone ever asked them about that "free market (Score:3)
The one they are trying to keep away with monopolistic regulation, via their lobbyist politician puppets posing as government?
Re: (Score:2)
The one they are trying to keep away with monopolistic regulation, via their lobbyist politician puppets posing as government?
Monopoly or not, "hidden fees" are a form of information asymmetry. [wikipedia.org] That asymmetry means the market is not free. In this case, it's due to deception.
Gotta pay for all that regulatory B.S. somehow (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't think for one second of cheering when some government bureaucrat mandates some regulatory fee thinking they're sticking it to rich corporations. YOU, dear reader, are the one who is going to foot the bill.
Re: (Score:2)
At least when the government charges the fee, you might eventually see some benefit from the money collected. When a corporation slips in fees like this then it goes straight to the shareholders and exec bonuses.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of those fees are just the ISP's lying to their customers to make extra profit. Not actual taxes from the government. Man, if there were just regulations to prevent that BS....
Re: (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure the government didn't mandate the $1.50 "Paper Bill Convenience Fee" my cable ISP charges me, although I'm sure I'm doing my part to prop up the USPS.
Re: (Score:2)
The article is about 24% number and the $37.11 is all about the bullshit made-up fees the cable companies charge. The government related taxes and fees are less at $13.28. I mean, it's second sentence in the summary FFS.
Public utilities. (Score:5, Interesting)
If they have carved up the nation into de-facto monopolies in most jurisdictions, and play all of the classic anti-competitive games on a cycling basis... do they really need to be a fully private industry anymore?
In the same sense that medical insurance is perhaps no longer productive in their stagnant position - perhaps cable companies need to be regulated as public utilities going forward, with fixed prices and limited profit.
Not that I expect this with the current administration.
But I wouldn't mind seeing plans ballparked to make this happen. Sometimes the market fails - and I'd call this scenario a full-on failure of a market. Most nations end up with better internet with a few limitations placed on industry.
Or at least, I'd like to see these particular industries sweat a little, as their actions show how useless they are becoming toward the services they were founded on.
Ryan Fenton
Re:Public utilities. (Score:4, Insightful)
they have carved up the nation into de-facto monopolies in most jurisdictions ... I'd call this scenario a full-on failure of a market
Really? Government monopoly grants are a market failure? Please explain the inhibitory effect of the Price Mechanism in this context.
Would it be more American to nationalize the entertainment transmission industry or actually allow competition? I mean, philosophically "American", not the DC hive-mind bureaucratic rule - those people are socialists through and through.
Remember when they said Ma Bell had to be broken up because there was only room for one telephone provider? Last I checked, more households were using their cable company for telephone service than their local ILEC's at this point. "Natural Monopoly" theory is the last refuge of the central planner.
Re: (Score:3)
Last refuge of libertarian derp. Last mile + market consolidation will naturally lead to just one or two providers. Thus the bargain of government-granted monopolies (which will happen anyway) in return for some regulation. The only alternatives to this are letting ISP's charge a mint for shit internet access, regulate ISP's to within an inch of their lives, or giving ownership of the lines to the public.
Pic one.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't much of the USA already have just one or two providers?
I'm in Australia, paying the ISP of my choice for 25mpbs (I can pay more for higher speeds) and it's AU$70/month. And it's unlimited. my 4K tv displays 4k streaming content quite nicely (YouTube, Prime and the cheapest (non-4k) Netflix.
I have a choice of dozens of ISPs, since the govt here owned the phone lines, privatised them, but mandated rules for sharing them.
My 4G phone is $249/year via another provider.
I have no landline, no need for one.
Why so much? (Score:2)
$200/mo? For stuff that is 95% junk, or, at best, that you are not interested in? Assuming 500 different channels, how many of those channels do average viewers watch with any regularity? I would be surprised if it is more than 10.
Mind you, my reference is probably out of date, for I haven't had cable for over ten years. Maybe their offering is SO much better these days that paying $200/mo is reasonable?
[Grin]
America, WTF??? (Score:2)
Are you mad???
Re: (Score:2)
Are you mad???
My thought exactly. Up here in the frozen wastes of Canada, I pay $56 a month including taxes for internet only. 75Meg Down 7.5Meg up. (Always do better than the advertised speeds too.) No useless bundled TV or home phone. They don't even bother me with stupid "Promotional offers" No data cap, and higher speeds are available, but I am cheap.
Re: (Score:2)
One month when I was trying out various back up strategies to a remote server I went well over 3TB.
Re: (Score:2)
May I ask which ISP you're talking about?
Crooks (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've done the same. Unfortunately, the only wired, broadband Internet access in my area is from the cable company. My wife texted me this morning to let me know that our cable Internet bill is going up by another $5 a month. We have no options except pay it or go without home Internet.
Cable is dying, and they don't care. (Score:4, Insightful)
Cost for content is high. Tying agreements make them pay for additional unwanted channels (I thought that was illegal). Local government makes them broadcast local government channels (high school sports anyone?). But they make money with internet. So they will keep raising prices until the last customer quits and they become an ISP.
There should be truth in advertising (Score:2)
Advertisements that include prices should be required to list the "actual price" that a typical consumer will pay, possibly excluding ACTUAL taxes that are levied directly on the purchase, such as sales taxes.
Re: (Score:2)
Oddly enough, where I live, the price you will actually pay is what is required to be on the label or quoted to you when you're contemplating making the purchase. Including ALL taxes, fees, levies, tariffs, duties, imposts, etc.
What about community owned cable? (Score:2)
Know they do this - eyes wide open (Score:2)
Since most places in 'Merica have one viable high speed choice, you have to either take what they give you or walk away. I always ask, and escalate to a manager if necessary, for an all inclusive bill BEFORE I agree. I'm with Comcast currently and I knew going in about the true end monthly cost.
Fuck Comcast, AT&T, and all the rest of them t (Score:1)
$15/month?? more like $15/espn $4/cubs $4/NBC chi (Score:3)
$15/month??
more like
$15/espn
$4/cubs
$4/NBC Chicago
$2/BTN
$2/Fox sports
$3/ NHL NET + NFL NET + MLB NETWORK + NBA TV.
and that is just sports
about $20 for all of the other basic channels as well.
Inconceivable (Score:3)
I do not think that headline means what the author thinks it means. "...To Raise Prices 24% a Month" would mean that after one month the price would be 1.24 times as much as before, after two months it would be a little under 1.54 times as much, after a year your bill would be more than 13 times as much and after a couple of yaears you'd be paying about 175 times as much as where you started. So, no, they are not.
What that really should say is "Cable Companies Use Hidden Fees To Raise Monthly Bill by 24%". I'm sure that they'd love to do what the original headline says but thankfully they aren't doing that (yet).
AT&T (Score:2)
Victim here (Score:1)
I can personally attest to this multiple times from a company that rhymes with "Ate Pee and Tea".
Wells Fargo was just the opening act; they did it because everyone else does it.
Family (Score:4, Interesting)
Not just cable, but other services too. Had a family member with a POTS line. I took over their bill, and it was literally at ~100% fees. The initial bill was around $25 with another $25 in fees. They literally doubled the bill over time by adding this bullshit. Luckily, I've since gotten this family member switched over to FttH + VoIP to avoid all this bullshit.
Re: (Score:3)
I had the same situation with my father before he passed away. All of his utility bills had nonsense bullshit in them, even the water bill. It added up to about $900/yr in stuff he didn't need and didn't know he was paying for.
Re: Family (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
No, that was the cost of the POTS line by itself, and they also had cable internet. CenturyLink offers FttH gigabit for $65-80 depending on area (I have both prices in two different cities)
Re: Family (Score:1)
Re: Family (Score:1)
almost got me (Score:2)
my modem went bad (so they say) and they replaced it with a modem/router. a week later I had more problems, called them and they saw I still had my old router hooked up. which was true because I did not have time to switch everything over yet. then they mentioned to use their router, it was another t0 bucks a month. I got them to disable it so I would not have to pay the fee. good thing I did not switch everything over. Wonder why I was not told that when they installed it. It also surprised me th
yup, it happens all over (Score:2)
$12/mo for a "router" POS that I returned to them two years ago. Frontier won't take it off the bill and my only other choice is Spectrum.
They can blow me.... (Score:1)
No, really (Score:1)
I recall when I used to envy American internet (Score:3)
Back when I was young, I used to envy you guys heaps.
We had 33.6, maybe 56k modems, you had ISDN or T1.
Eventually we had ADSL 1 and you had cable.
Eventually we had ADSL 2 with small "shaped"quotas BV and you had unlimited cable.
Time has gone on and while Australia still has terrible internet in many many ways, the carrier options to us are huge. I've heard from many Americans with NO choice but one internet provider, period and they are limiting to 1TB or even 300GB limits.
I have literally literally dozens of resellers available to me and most of them offer truly unlimited options.
Also with a nerd house, a few console, iPad, Netflix, etc, you can let use over 1TB in a month, legally.
Not good America!
Re: (Score:2)
It's the land of the free, where market forces create & offer the best options for the consumer and the customer is not only always right, but at the centre of the experience.
Umm, isn't it?
Glad to see an old classic (Score:1)
Wildly exaggerated (Score:1)
The triple play plan I have from Comcast includes gigabit Internet, HBO, and phone with free long distance. It was advertised at $170/month and my bill is $193. The $23 increase is $15 dollars in taxes and franchise fees and $8 added by Comcast to cover the current fees they pay for access to local programming and regional sports networks. The offer price is guaranteed for two years and the programming fees are separated from it because they can vary year-by-year depending on how greedy the content distribu