Charter Spectrum's Bullshit 'Broadcast TV' Fee Soars To $16.45 Per Month

from the nonsensical-surcharges-may-apply dept

Like countless other American business sectors, U.S. cable and broadband providers have been using hidden fees to covertly jack up their advertised rates for much of the last decade. These fees, which utilize a rotating crop of bullshit names, help these companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock the consumer with a significantly higher rate post sale (often when locked into a long-term contract). They also let them falsely try and claim that prices haven't increased, when they pretty clearly have.

Back in 2014, Comcast introduced a new $1.50 per month surcharge on cable bills it called its "Broadcast TV Fee." Said fee was really just a portion of the cost of doing business for Comcast (programming costs), busted out of the full bill and hidden below the line -- again to help the company falsely advertise a lower price. Fast forward to 2020 and the fee is now $15 per month, per user, and growing -- despite a number of lawsuits (correctly) alleging that the fees are misleading and predatory.

And it's not just Comcast. Charter (Spectrum) has also heavily embraced such a fee, its own "broadcast TV surcharge" getting jacked from $13.50 to $16.45 a month starting in August:

Charter has raised the fee repeatedly—it stood at $9.95 in early 2019 before a series of price increases. At $16.45 a month, the fee will cost customers an additional $197.40 per year. Charter sells TV, broadband, and phone service under its Spectrum brand name and is the second largest cable company in the US after Comcast.

One other "handy" benefit to the fee (for Charter and Comcast) anyway, is that it lets the companies tap dance out of consumer "price lock" guarantees or promotional rates, by letting them pretend that arbitrary fee increases are not actual price hikes. Charter also imposes a slightly smaller Broadcast TV fee on its streaming TV plans, with that fee getting jacked from $6 to $8.95 a month. That's, of course, in addition to all the other arbitrary fees and surcharges tacked onto your monthly bill, including broadband usage caps and overage penalties.

It's the sort of running scam that would be prohibited by functioning, objective consumer protection regulators or lawmakers, were we to actually have such a thing.

Filed Under: bogus fees, broadcast tv fee, cable tv, fcc, ftc, price increase, truth in advertising
Companies: charter, comcast

The Cable Industry Makes $28 Billion Annually In Bullshit Fees

from the false-adverting-by-another-name dept

Last week we highlighted a study showing that your cable bill can be as much as 45 percent higher than the advertised price thanks to bullshit fees. Now a new study by Consumer Reports shows that up to 24 percent of your monthly cable bill is comprised of said bullshit fees. The fees are designed specifically for one purpose: to let companies falsely advertise one rate, then charge you significantly more money. It's effectively false advertising, but efforts to rein in the practice are fleeting to nonexistent, because creatively fleecing American consumers is just so hot right now.

Consumer Reports examined 787 consumer cable bills from 13 top cable providers and found that while the average user paid around $156.71 per month for cable TV, users in reality paid $217.42 a month once fees were included. As such about 24 percent of your cable TV bill each month ($37.11) is made up of fees and hidden surcharges, generating about $450 per year per consumer for the industry, or about $28 billion in total.

The report is quick to highlight how some of the bullshit fees (like the "regulatory recovery fee") are named in such a way to trick the consumer into blaming government. The group reached out to 74 consumer reps posing as a customer and found that support reps are pretty clearly trained to create that impression:

"Often these fees are misleadingly portrayed by cable providers as government-mandated surcharges so that consumers blame the government instead of cable providers. One such fee is the “regulatory recovery fee,” specifically named for just this purpose.

Consumer Reports researchers say they posed as consumers and called 74 customer service representatives (CSR), who routinely tried to blame government for excessive surcharges.

"At least one CSR of every major provider that our secret shoppers contacted misstated that fees were mandated by the government, without a clear distinction made between company-imposed fees and regulatory pass-through fees," the report said.

One of the industry's favorite, more recent fees is the "Broadcast TV fee," which we've hammered on previously. This fee simply involves taking a portion of the cost of programming and burying it below the line as an itemized fee, again with an eye on falsely advertising a lower rate. Thanks in part to a government that can't be bothered to protect consumers from said false advertising, Comcast has quietly been jacking up this fee for the better part of the last decade with zero repercussions whatsoever:

"The study found that in 2015, Comcast started charging consumers a $1-a-month Regional Sports Fee and $1.50-a-month broadcast TV fee ($2.50 per month). By 2019 those fees had ballooned to $18.50 a month, or a 600 percent increase in just four years."

Cool. While some bills have been proposed to rein in the practice, they routinely go nowhere thanks to our campaign contribution slathered Congress. And the FCC just neutered much of its authority over broadband and cable TV providers at lobbyist behest. Good times, yeah?

Keep in mind this is how the cable TV industry behaves when competition from streaming alternatives is steadily driving customers to cut the traditional cable TV cord, illustrating how organic competition isn't always enough to prevent entrenched predatory monopolies from behaving badly. Cable giants figure that sure, they may lose some TV subscribers by being predatory bastards, but they'll just recoup those costs by raising the costs of broadband (where they hold a more solid natural monopoly, another problem we apparently don't want to do anything about).

Filed Under: bogus fees, broadcast tv fee, cable industry, false advertising, fcc, fees, ftc, price hikes, regulatory recovery fee
Companies: comcast

Minnesota AG Just The Latest To Ding Comcast For Shady Fees

from the transparency! dept

How many lawsuits does it take to get Comcast to back off of shady fees designed to falsely inflate the company's advertised prices? Good question.

For several years now cable and broadband providers have been using hidden fees to covertly jack up their advertised rates. These fees, which utilize a rotating crop of bullshit names, help these companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock the consumer with a significantly higher-rate post sale (often when locked into a long-term contract). The practice also allows the company to falsely claim they're not raising rates on consumers. They omit that they're talking about the above-the-line rate being charged, implying that anything below the line (where real fees like taxes are levied) is outside of their control.

Back in 2014, Comcast introduced a new $1.50 per month surcharge it called its "Broadcast TV Fee." Said fee was really just a portion of the cost of doing business for Comcast (programming), busted out of the full bill and hidden below the line -- again to help the company falsely advertise a lower price. Over the last four years Comcast has quietly but quickly pushed this fee skyward, this week informing customers that -- alongside numerous other rate hikes like its "Regional Sports Network" fees -- the company's Broadcast TV fee would now be up to $10 per month for some cable TV customers.

While the federal government (FTC, FCC) routinely turned a blind eye to this practice (regardless of which party was in control), Comcast and other cable ops have been hit by a rotating crop of investigations and lawsuits for the practice. Just before Christmas, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson joined the festivities, announcing that her office had filed suit against Comcast for "charging customers more than it promised for cable television packages, charging for unordered equipment and services, and not delivering prepaid Visa cards promised in its promotions."

The AG's office is quick to point out that Comcast enjoys falsely telling complaining customers that the bogus fees it uses to covertly raise rates are the fault of the federal government:

"Comcast/Xfinity falsely told some consumers who questioned these extra fees that the fees were out of the company’s control. For example, it told one customer that “those fees are actually local fees and correspond to the FCC and we don’t manage those okay? Those aren’t up to Comcast.” It told another customer that “we have no control over the fees.” Comcast is not, however, required by any state or federal law to collect such fees, and does so simply to generate revenue.

When criticized, Comcast has routinely tried to claim that adding these sneaky fees then lying about what they're for is just the company's way of being "transparent" with its customers. Denial appears to be the company's response to these allegations as well, despite the fact the practice has now been well illustrated by countless settlements and lawsuits.

In the streaming video wars to come, Comcast could differentiate itself by being clear with customers about how much its services actually cost, using "zero hidden fees" as a marketing point of pride. This being Comcast, the company is likely to instead move in the opposite direction, and just double down on the practice of misleading and confusing its customers in its relentless quest to nickel and dime the lion's share of America.

Filed Under: broadcast tv fee, fake fees, false advertising, fcc, fees, ftc, lori swanson, minnesota
Companies: comcast

From $1.50 To $10 Per Month: How Comcast's Bogus Fees Are False Advertising

from the fees-and-surcharges-may-apply dept

For several years now cable and broadband providers have been using hidden fees to covertly jack up their advertised rates. These fees, which utilize a rotating crop of bullshit names, help these companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock the consumer with a significantly higher-rate post sale (often when locked into a long-term contract). The practice also allows the company to falsely claim they're not raising rates on consumers. They omit that they're talking about the above the line rate being charged, implying that anything below the line (where real fees like taxes are levied) is outside of their control.

Back in 2014, Comcast introduced a new $1.50 per month surcharge it called its "Broadcast TV Fee." Said fee was really just a portion of the cost of doing business for Comcast (programming), busted out of the full bill and hidden below the line -- again to help the company falsely advertise a lower price. Over the last four years Comcast has quietly but quickly pushed this fee skyward, this week informing customers that -- alongside numerous other rate hikes like its "Regional Sports Network" fees -- the company's Broadcast TV fee would now be $10 per month for the company's cable TV customers:

"Comcast is raising its controversial "Broadcast TV" and "Regional Sports Network" fees again on January 1, with the typical total price going from $14.50 to $18.25 a month. The newly raised broadcast TV fee will be $10 a month, and the sports fee will be $8.25 a month, Cord Cutters News reported last week. The new fee sizes are confirmed in a Comcast price list for the Atlanta market. About a year ago, Comcast raised the broadcast TV fee from $6.50 to $8 and the sports fee from $4.50 to $6.50."

Not to be outdone, Comcast's also socking millions of its customers with a bevy of additional fees in the new year. Including a wide variety of modem and cable box rental fees, the latter of which arrive after Comcast worked overtime to kill FCC plans to improve cable box competition. Comcast users still routinely pay an arm and a leg in rental fees for hardware that actually costs very little for Comcast to buy wholesale:

"Equipment rental fees are rising, too. Comcast last year raised its modem rental fee from $10 to $11 a month. The new price list for January 1 lists an "Internet/Voice Equipment Rental" fee as $13. Comcast confirmed to Ars that the modem rental fee is rising $2 a month. Customers can avoid that fee by purchasing their own modem."

There's nothing healthy about a scenario where customers don't know how much they'll pay for service until the bill actually arrives, and face a rotating bevy of covert fees while purportedly under contract. In a country with functional regulators or healthy competition (or hey, both) Comcast wouldn't be allowed to completely make up a bogus fee specifically to help it advertise a lower price. But despite some occasional noise on this front, neither party has given much of a damn about such "creative" pricing. It sends a pretty clear message: ripping off consumers is fine if you're semi-creative about it.

As such, regulatory promises to mandate some transparency on this front come and go without meaningful change, and bills attempting to stop the practice routinely get crushed by lobbyist cash in Congress. The FCC's net neutrality rules included some meager provisions requiring that ISPs being transparent about hidden surcharges, but even those requirements were killed during the agency's net neutrality repeal (at direct Comcast lobbyist behest).

And while Comcast is occasionally singled out for the practice via lawsuits and consumer groups, it routinely tries to insist that socking customers with bullshit fees is just Comcast's way of being "transparent."

Obviously it's not just the cable industry that engages in such nonsense; telecom companies learned the tactic from the banking, airline, and other industries, who similarly get to confuse customers with surprise surcharges with zero meaningful market or regulatory repercussions. From hotel "resort fees" to family-separating airline assigned seating fees, the United States has repeatedly made it clear across industries that lying to consumers about how much they'll pay is now a great American pastime akin to baseball.

Filed Under: below the line fees, broadband fees, broadcast tv fee, false advertising, fees, sneaky fees
Companies: comcast