Facing Massive Subscriber Defections AT&T Chooses: Rate Hikes & New, Bogus Fees

from the synergies dept

AT&T's had a bit of a tough stretch lately. Saddled by massive debt from its $200 billion Time Warner and DirecTV mergers in recent years, the company keeps deciding to recoup that debt from its subscribers in the form of relentless price hikes. That, in turn, has resulted in millions of subscribers heading for the exits. In fact, AT&T has lost roughly eight million pay TV subscribers since 2017 -- not exactly the sector domination AT&T executives dreamed of when they first began their massive acquisition spree back in 2015.

Normally, a company hoping to make inroads in a sector like TV (traditional or streaming) would try and focus more on not pissing its subscribers off. But as a government pampered telecom monopoly unfamiliar with things like competition, this is all alien territory for many AT&T executives. So, relatively unsurprisingly, the company is imposing all manner of new rate hikes across its AT&T broadband, TV, and DirecTV service options.

That includes a $5 to $9 rate hike for many of DirecTV and AT&T's already pricey cable bundles, but it also includes entirely new bogus fees the company has introduced design to sound like a government-mandated surcharge, specifically designed so you'll get mad at government, not AT&T:

"DirecTV is also adding a "Federal Cost Recovery Fee of $0.19 per month," similar to a fee that used to be charged once per year. Despite the name, the fee is not mandated by the government. AT&T said the fee covers "expenses that DirecTV pays to the Federal Communications Commission."

While this fee is starting small, AT&T has a history of sneakily raising overall prices by adding new fees and then steadily raising them through the years. The Federal Cost Recovery Fee will be charged in addition to a number of other fees that AT&T excludes from listed prices so that it can advertise lower prices than it actually charges."

In a functional society with functional regulators, companies wouldn't be allowed to make up a completely bogus fee, then blame the government -- all so it can falsely advertise a lower rate. This not being a serious country with functioning regulators, these bullshit fees have become incredibly commonplace across both the cable TV and broadband ecosystem. In fact the cable industry is estimated to make $28 billion annually in bullshit fees. Occasionally these companies will face a class action or regulatory action, but the penalties are almost always a pittance compared to the money made from the bullshit fees in the first place.

Granted a serious country with functioning regulators wouldn't have approved AT&T's DirecTV merger (because it reduced TV sector competition) or the Time Warner merger (because economists repeatedly warned the leverage from vertical integration and overall consolidation hurts both consumers and competitors alike), but hey, here we are.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fees, rate hikes
Companies: at&t

2019 Brings Another Wave Of Cable Programming Blackout Feuds Nobody Wants To Address

from the just-cut-the-cord-already dept

We've written for years about how retransmission and carriage fee disputes in the cable industry have grown increasingly common and are only getting worse. The short version: when it comes time to sign a new deal paying for content, broadcasters generally demand huge rate hikes for the same channels. Cable operators then play hardball, and during negotiations one side or the other (usually broadcasters) pulls their content from the cable lineup in a bid to apply the resulting consumer anger against the other guy in negotiations.

According to cable providers, there were 140 such blackouts last year, up from just 8 back in 2010. One of the biggest problems with these feuds: consumers never see refunds, even though they're often left without access to channels they've already paid for, for months. And while regulators from both parties occasionally make some noise about protecting consumers from such tactics, nothing ever actually happens. Generally, these fights are seen by regulators as "boys just being boys," and the consumer impact is routinely ignored.

So as 2019 arrives, so too arrive yet another round of consumers losing access to content they pay for. Millions of Charter (Spectrum) customers in 24 markets this week lost access to local broadcast channels after the cable company couldn't reach an agreement with Tribune Media:

"As many as 24 markets are affected by the TV blackout, including Denver, Houston, New York, Los Angeles and St. Louis. Tribune pulled its signal at 5 p.m. Eastern time after negotiations stalled. The programming outage comes days before sports fans are expected to switch on their cable TV to watch highly anticipated postseason college and professional football games.

The same story is playing out between Verizon (FiOS TV) and Tegna, resulting in Verizon cable TV customers losing access to local broadcast channels just as the NFL playoffs heat up. And while broadcasters often do deserve the blame for the outages for demanding huge and often unreasonable increases, it's fun to watch cable providers (legendary for their own nickel-and-diming) claim they're the ones standing up for consumers:

"The talks stalled because Tegna had demanded a “significant rate increase” for its channels, said Verizon in a statement on its website.

“The rising cost of programming is the single biggest factor in higher TV bills, and we are standing up to broadcasters like Tegna in order to protect you from rate increases,” Verizon said.

Of course it has been made pretty clear that nobody in this dance of dysfunction (including regulators) actually really cares about the impact on consumers. As a result what usually happens is customers get pissed, they're directed by both sides to yell at the other guy, prompting the two sides to strike a confidential new deal. Those costs are then quietly passed on to consumers, and the whole thing repeats itself in a year or two.

The FCC has occasionally pondered rules requiring that the two sides engage in "good faith" negotiations without harming user access to the content they've paid for, but because this is seen as "heavy handed intervention in the markets" in American culture, nothing really gets fixed as we wait, rather uselessly, for "the market" to somehow magically fix itself. But because said market is a coagulation of politically-powerful natural broadband monopolies which avoid genuine price competition (even with the rise of streaming) like the plague, that's not happening anytime soon.

And while consumers can cut the cord and switch to streaming alternatives, we've already seen heavy-handed efforts on the streaming front as well. In its fight with Cablevision in 2010, News Corporation went so far as to get Hulu to block Cablevision broadband customers from accessing all Fox content. Viacom did something similar in 2014 when it blocked all CableONE broadband customers from accessing Viacom content online, even if those broadband users were paying for TV from another provider.

There's ample room for creativity here where broadcasters (increasingly launching their own streaming services) could attempt to ban streaming customers from accessing this as well via IP range blacklists and other absurd, internet-breaking behavior. In the wake of the death of net neutrality and FCC oversight of cable providers, you can expect this particular problem to get notably dumber before we finally, actually decide to impose a simple rule that lets broadcasters bicker and battle all they like over rates, as long as consumers don't lose access to programming they've already paid for.

Filed Under: blackouts, cable programming, isps, negotiations, rate hikes, tv, tv companies

Happy New Year From Comcast: Usage Caps, Rate Hikes, And More Sneaky Fees In 2017

from the innovation! dept

Comcast continues to perfect the art of raising rates in a variety of creative new ways. In addition to just straight rate hikes to TV and broadband service, the company has taken to using hidden fees to covertly jack up the cost of service even higher. These fees take some of the cost of doing business and bury it below the line, letting Comcast falsely advertise a lower rate. This is all before you even get to Comcast's slow and steady expansion of usage caps and overage fees, which are just glorified rate hikes being imposed on uncompetitive broadband markets.

This week the company began informing customers that they'll be paying 3.8% more for service starting in the new year. In addition to increases in most of the company's bundles, TV and broadband packages, Comcast will be raising the company's sneaky "broadcast TV fee," as well as the company's ever-skyrocketing regional sports fees:

The Broadcast TV fee is moving from $5 a month to $7 a month, while the Regional Sports Network fee is rising from $3 a month to $5 a month, according to notices sent to customers in several cities. Combined, that's a change from $8 to $12 a month, giving Comcast an extra $48 a year from each customer that has to pay the fees.

Comcast began charging these fees a few years ago, and has increased them quickly. Just over a year ago, Comcast raised the Broadcast TV fee from $3 to $5 and the Regional Sports fee from $1 to $3. The two fees have thus gone from $4 to $12, combined, in little more than a year.

...The Broadcast TV fee was introduced in 2014, initially as $1.50 a month, and the Regional Sports fee was added in 2015 at $1 a month.

You might recall that Comcast is currently being sued over the broadcast TV fee, which simply takes a part of the cost of programming and buries it below the line, again letting Comcast mislead customers as to what the service actually costs in advertising. When the company was criticized back when the fee was introduced in 2014, Comcast tried to claim that hiding the real cost of service was just its way of being "transparent" with consumers. While Comcast's certainly being transparent, it's not quite in the way they meant.

Comcast, for what it's worth, continues to justify the rate hikes with the usual statement about how gosh, programming these days sure is expensive:

"We continue to make investments in our network and technology to give customers more for their money— like faster Internet service and more Wi-Fi hotspots, more video across viewing screens, better technology like X1 and a better customer experience. Unfortunately, the costs we are charged to carry popular networks continue to increase significantly, especially broadcast television and sports programming, which are the largest drivers of increases in price adjustments."

And while Comcast certainly does pay a significant amount for programming, it certainly helps that the company owns NBC Universal, not to mention a number of regional sports networks. But these programming-related fees also aren't the only fees seeing an increase. The company is also informing users that the company's "digital adapter outlet fees" will be increased from $3.49 to $5.49 per outlet, and a fee to reactivate TV service is being bumped from $1.99 to $3.50. And again, this is all before we get into Comcast's usage caps, which penalize users looking to use streaming video competitors.

And if you're looking for things to get better anytime soon, you may be waiting a long while. Comcast may be facing greater competition from streaming competitors on the video front, but its monopoly over broadband is only growing as phone companies like AT&T and Verizon give up on upgrading unwanted DSL users. Combine that with an incoming Trump administration that's giving every indication it intends gut the FCC as a consumer watchdog, and there's going to be less market and regulatory pressure on Comcast than ever to offer quality service and decent customer service at a reasonable price.

Filed Under: data caps, rate hikes, sneaky fees, usage caps
Companies: comcast