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Americans don't feel they can get justice when wronged by their ISP – survey

264 points by KaiserSanchez 6y ago

tinaleaton 6y ago
Same. And pretty much every other service/utility provider, as well.
meredydd 6y ago
As an Englishman, the consumer rights situation (or, uh, lack thereof) in the US boggles me regularly. It's not just the complete absence of consumer regulators ("we let the courts handle that") -- it's that even the courts have been neutered! The Supreme Court has basically ruled that consumer class action suits don't exist any more (https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-supreme-court-dims-the-light-on-class https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-supreme-cour...) -- everything can now be forced into binding arbitration. This survey is from FairShake, whose whole schtick is that they can represent you in an arbitration proceeding so efficiently that you can actually afford to participate. They got written up in the NYT the other month: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-overload.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-over... The only reason I found out about this at all is that FairShake are a customer of ours (their whole dispute-resolution process runs on https://anvil.works https://anvil.works), so I talked to them for our podcast (https://anvil.works/blog/podcast-fairshake https://anvil.works/blog/podcast-fairshake). Even with the profanities edited out, I'm pretty sure you can hear the incredulity in my voice.
- kube-system 6y ago
  It is worth noting that a lot of the function of consumer protection is also handled by state authorities, the feds aren't the only authority that people have to lean on. State attorney generals are usually elected so they tend to focus heavily on consumer protection issues.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    CA has generally had good consumer protection laws for decades now.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      It is shocking how many Americans hate CA for it too.
      - azinman2 6y ago
        Because those who don't want it give lots of money to politicians who then train their audience that it's bad, 'job killing', and 'big government' even though it benefits them.
      - kube-system 6y ago
        I'm not sure consumer protections are the reason people dislike CA. CA just has an enormous number of laws. If you pass enough laws you're bound to have a few dumb/misguided ones along with a lot of good ones.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I’ve personally spoke to people that hate CA because of their environmental protection laws (since it apparently makes polluting products unavailable in other states too), as well as business owners that don’t like the non compete bans and employee protections.
        kube-system 6y ago
        That's kind of my point -- those aren't consumer protection laws.
        novok 6y ago
        The hate for stupid laws in CA is stuff like CEQA which is ostensibly about protecting the environment, but really used as a blackmail tool for residents to block more environmentally friendly apartment buildings they don't like to protect their city subsidized parking and in the end causes housing to cost more than it should. Or the useless "anything could cause cancer" labels that get slapped on everything so everybody just ignores them. Or the classic prop 13 which helps fuel housing affordability. Or AB5 which will get rid of a lot of gig economy jobs outright and needed 100s of profession exceptions to not destroy even more people from getting employed.
- 737maxtw 6y ago
  You are correct that it has gotten worse since the arbitration decisions. Also, if you think its hard to resolve something when you're a customer, wait till you see how they treat you if you aren't! To wit: I spent months fighting with Comcast about a bill for an address that I never lived at, let alone during time in question. Sent them proof multiple times but they kept sending it to collections (and collections would claim I had to go through comcast). I still remember when I mentioned how many debt collection laws they were violating... then the retorts, then hearing the fight leave his voice when i explained i have never been a customer of comcast and thus cannot be bound by their arbitration agreement. Which brings up a huge reminder that these companies are only able to get away with these things because in most of the country if you want internet you will have to settle up with them sooner or later. Thats the other thing I got from the conversations: Comcast doesn't seem to be selling off the debt. (Probabpy for reasons listed above.) Every collection agency claimed that they were 'contracted to collect' but did not own the debt. As a result trying to prove it was identity theft was a kafkaesque nightmare that I never actually succeeded at. They only left me alone because I made it clear that I had sent them more than enough documents to prove it could not have been me, and every time they would call or send another letter I would tie up 1-2 hours of one or more phone reps time.
  - konceptz 6y ago
    >and every time they would call or send another letter I would tie up 1-2 hours of one or more phone reps time. That's an extremely large personal investment, I'm sorry you ended up having to essentially value your own time like this.
    - murph-almighty 6y ago
      I'd imagine if you're at that point you're just Kitboga-ing it and trying to fuck with them to make them suffer dollar-wise for the time you've lost while doing something more productive or entertaining in the background. At least that's how I'd do it.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      Sadly, all too much of modern life has become about wasting your own time, and money, to mitigate screwups made by completely unaccountable third parties.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  The US has a common law system, like the UK. However, arbitration panels cannot set precedent and do not issue opinions. That means the law is perpetually frozen in place. So, we really have a civil law system with none of the mechanisms that make those systems function properly. There are obviously bigger problems with arbitration, but this one is often overlooked.
  - xphilter 6y ago
    Awesome point. I keep thinking about this and want to yell at all law professors in the country (who I think have more influence than they recognize): what the hell are you going to be teaching in 20 years? Only cases before AT&T v. Concepcion?
- LiquidSky 6y ago
  >The Supreme Court has basically ruled that consumer class action suits don't exist any more (https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-supreme-cour https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-supreme-cour...) -- everything can now be forced into binding arbitration. And disputes with ISPs are nearly the ideal use case for class action suits: a large group of people being harmed, but the individual harms are relatively small, and individually pursuing a case is usually too costly or complicated to be worth it.
- rlpb 6y ago
  Another specific couple of aspects of the US situation boggle me: > The Supreme Court has basically ruled that consumer class action suits don't exist any more... The Supreme Court ruling only applies under the current law and does nothing to prevent the law being changed. But for some reason, Americans (as a whole; I realise HN is probably different) act as if this situation is final and it cannot be fixed by Congress. The other thing that boggles me is that it's as if a service isn't cancelled until the company providing it agrees it is cancelled, and that's something their retention departments will resist doing. Where I live, the service is cancelled* when I've given notice of cancellation, whether the company wants to accept it or not. So I don't need to care about whether they'll try to put me off cancelling or not, or if they have a script or not. After I've told them, it's done; as long as I keep a record then any subsequent bills aren't my concern. But for some reason that I cannot fathom, a company not "accepting" notice of cancellation seems to be a problem in the US. * subject to minimum terms or similar stipulations of course
  - tstrimple 6y ago
    > But for some reason, Americans (as a whole; I realise HN is probably different) act as if this situation is final and it cannot be fixed by Congress. Yeah, I can't imagine why Americans don't have faith in the legislative process. https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnell-grim-reaper-395-house-bills-senate-wont-pass-1487401 https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnell-grim-reaper-395-hou...
  - Fauntleroy 6y ago
    It's a bit too easy for large corporations to exercise control over Congress, so we (Americans) have little faith that they'll execute on pro-consumer legislation.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > But for some reason, Americans (as a whole; I realise HN is probably different) act as if this situation is final and it cannot be fixed by Congress. Because Congress has, essentially, been gridlocked for many years now. That is also the reason why the Supreme Court has gotten so utterly important over the same time frame, because real fundamental change in politics only happen in the courts these days.
- paultopia 6y ago
  U.S. law professor here. Yeah, it's really embarrassing. The bullshit story for why this is all the case is that it's priced into products and services---which are supposedly cheaper than they might otherwise be if companies had to fear massive liability and regulation. The real story for why this is the case is the combination of (a) fake contract law, in which we pretend people agreed to things that they in no way could have agreed to---including all those arbitration agreements that strip away class action rights, (b) a federal system that lets Congress preempt state economic regulations, including consumer protection regulations,[1] and (c) most fundamentally, the point that Mancur Olson identified in Logic of Collective Action: narrow special interests with intense preferences are lots better at getting their wills achieved than diffuse general interests; in the U.S. political lobbying is basically unrestrained; big industries like telecom have just utterly captured legislatures and regulators at every level. [1] This is my least favorite example, and a case that explains a lot about why airlines are so happy to crap all over the heads of their victims: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-462_p8k0.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-462_p8k0.pdf
  - javajosh 6y ago
    Thanks for speaking openly! Can I ask you for your opinion? I have come to believe that the justice system itself is the root of the problem, namely that it is so expensive and slow that it doesn't provide justice. Trials used to take days, and now they take months or years. They used to cost hundreds, now tens of thousands, or more. It is only within such a moribund system that lobbying can be successful! If trials were fast and cheap, people might still try to lobby, but the feedback loop would be fast and accurate.
    - paultopia 6y ago
      Indirectly. This is kind of a complicated issue, so let me unpack it a bit. First, it's absolutely true that litigation is super-expensive. But from the company end, that doesn't necessarily make a real difference---arbitration is fairly expensive too (though not as expensive as litigation), they're not likely to realize huge savings from shoving consumers into all the arbitration agreements. Where costs really matter is from the consumer side, and it's intertwined with class actions. Arbitrations don't have class actions, real court does (in most states). So an arbitration clause is really a "no class actions" clause. And, because of litigation costs, a "no class actions" clause is really really effective at keeping consumers out of court at all. Why? Because a huge number of consumer claims are for really small rip-offs. For example, the phone company sneaks an extra 50 cents onto the bill of everyone every month for a fake tax that doesn't really exist, and in doing so dodges some rate regulation. No consumer in their right mind is going to incur the time and expense of suing (or arbitrating) individually for 50 cents a month. But the phone company, with millions and millions of customers, benefits hugely from this ripoff. With a class action system, some entrepreneurial lawyer can bring suit and win those millions back on behalf of the class of ripped-off consumers. Now, those class actions are pretty controversial, because the ripped-off consumers never really see any direct benefit from those lawsuits. They usually get some bullshit coupon in the mail, while the lawyer and one or two plaintiffs (the "named plaintiffs" or "class representatives") walk away with a big payday. But the point isn't to compensate the people who lost the 50 cents. The point is to hold out the threat of those stupid huge judgments against companies who would otherwise nickel-and-dime mass consumers to death. So when companies kill the class action, they know that they won't be held accountable in the courts for that kind of misconduct, and they can engage in small ripoffs with impunity. (Mostly less blatant than fake tax thing, because government regulators might pick up on that.)
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  ISPs are a bit of a special case in America, because they lobby effectively for favorable local regulation. In other industries, it suffices to threaten a bad Yelp review if it even takes that. The worst experiences I’ve had were with Hertz, Visa, and an ISP (the latter two are monopolies). We need better consumer protections and monopoly busting, but these are low on my list of improvements.
tschwimmer 6y ago
Because they can't. Most places have a single choice for for ISP, so they can charge what they like and treat customers in a way that minimizes cost. Telecom is a usually a regional monopoly or duopoly, and they act accordingly.
- DudeInBasement 6y ago
  But with speeds up to 'x'. There is no way you'll get x/20 speed....
LurkersWillLurk 6y ago
The sad truth is that the United States has a severe access to justice problem. Most people don't know which regulator to contact, and the process requires a certain amount of time, effort, and knowledge that's out of reach of most people.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> time, effort, and knowledge Time+effort = money. Knowledge = lawyers = also money. The US system is based on the notion that anyone worth listening too will have ready access to lawyers. Those who cannot afford lawyers have little voice. "Let the courts handle" means "rich people only".
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    The problem with capital punishment, is that those without the capital get the punishment. Not sure who the quote is due to
- kube-system 6y ago
  It's a perfect storm of being large, highly federated, and not particularly great at teaching civics.
  - smolder 6y ago
    We could teach civics well if we chose to. Public education is purposefully undermined, likely because it has the word "public" in it.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      I went to a well funded school in a highly educated district with a constituency that consistently voted for every bill to raise funding for public schools. We had a single required credit for civics. That’s barely enough time to brush the surface of the four levels of independent government we had. Opportunity cost was the driving factor. Much of the constituency voiced a desire for more courses in STEM or arts, not civics.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
It's difficult to get justice when ISP lobbyists literally write the laws that govern their industry. ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffnt&q=site%3Atechdirt.com+isp+lobbyists+write+laws https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffnt&q=site%3Atechdirt.com+isp+lob...
- Causality1 6y ago
  Beyond simple consumer protection, the US really needs some massive conflict of interest law, maybe even on the level of a constitutional amendment.
  - zadkey 6y ago
    I can't agree more.
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    Politicians trade campaign cash for law & services, every moment of every day. Voters don't think much about it because news orgs aren't very interested in covering bribery. Regarding conflict of interest: There's nearly zero discussion about where campaign finds finally end up. Those billions are firehosed to the parent corps of news orgs, in the form of campaign ad buys. To restate the above, politicians are funding the news orgs that cover their campaigns.
  - smolder 6y ago
    Yes, it does. How likely do you think that is, with everyone whipped into a furious culture war all the time, and regulators captured? I hate being a pessimist all the time, but in my memory, I see little precedent to suggest an optimistic long view is the right one.
    - Causality1 6y ago
      I think violent revolution/civil war is more likely. Corporations have as strong a death grip on the US government as any dictator.
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RandomBacon 6y ago
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov
biohax2015 6y ago
I feel this way for most things. Healthcare, dental care, employment. The only avenue I see in dealing with this stuff is hiring an expensive lawyer.
mrgordon 6y ago
My ISP (Hotwire) randomly added a $1 monthly fee for mailing a statement and took multiple months to stop charging the fee after I complained and they kept promising to refund the most recent month or two but I'd have to call back and complain again after a month just to try to get justice. The customer service reps would literally tell me they could only authorize a $1 refund. $2 was "too much" and required all kinds of manager approval and there was never a manager available...
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juped 6y ago
It's a shame "net neutrality" was co-opted by hostile corporate interests, because the original vision outlined in Tim Wu's 2003 paper was pro-consumer and likely would have led to a much better internet if ever pursued. You can get his paper here: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1281/ https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/128...
- linsomniac 6y ago
  I regret not saying "net neutrality" as the reason for cancellation when I cancelled my Xfinity last week. I instead said "Unusable upstream bandwidth when 3-4 people are doing remote work/learning". We just got municipal fiber and it's committed to Net Neutrality, and gigabit up and down. Aside: They spent several minutes up front establishing rapport (I kid you not "You sound like such a nice person!") then when I said I was calling to cancel service he turned it into a personal slight ("I thought we were friends, why would you do that!").
  - eddiecalzone 6y ago
    Reminds me of this snippet of an hour-long call to cancel service. “You don’t want something that works?”; “So you’re not interested in the fastest internet in the country?”; “I’m really ashamed to see you go to something that can’t give you what we can!”; “What is it about this other internet provider???” https://time.com/2985964/comcast-cancel-ryan-block/ https://time.com/2985964/comcast-cancel-ryan-block/
awill 6y ago
of course not. You can't threaten to cancel if there's no alternative.
Pfhreak 6y ago
"Americans don't feel they can get justice" is probably sufficient.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  Maybe tack on a "because they can't" if you want to be thorough.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I recently had it out with my ISP which concluded after I filed a BBB complaint after exhausting several other avenues. But the issue I have is irritatingly not avoidable by switching carriers: The Chicago Cubs have levied a tax on all cable and satellite TV customers in the Chicagoland area. The Marquee Sports Network costs every Chicago area resident a new $7 a month cost, every cable provider has agreed to it, and Sinclair Broadcasting makes it a contract term that customers cannot opt out of this new channel and massive fee. It'd be like if HBO Max rolled out by signing everyone up, billing everyone, and making it impossible to cancel. I got my ISP to grant me a credit for the next year or so, but it seems like a government action is the only long-term way to escape.
- criddell 6y ago
  I never watch CBS but it's part of my bundle. Is my situation different than yours?
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    My "bundle" may include 100+ channels for under $100, for one, and Marquee is $7 for a single channel. Which is to say, it's exceptional in how extremely overpriced Marquee is. It's billed at the level of a premium movie channel like HBO, which is generally optional. And a key problem is that most bundled channels are part of the price I agreed to when I signed up for service, whereas Marquee functions as an additional tax the Chicago Cubs can decide to charge me over and above the price I agreed to pay with my cable provider.
tyingq 6y ago
I was a Verizon FIOS customer when they turned all their stuff over to Frontier. I had bought a good amount of movies in their on-demand store. They just took them away. No recourse, no refund. It was highly frustrating. And calling them meant a long hold time.
CivBase 6y ago
I'm concerned about FairShake's data. Their conclusion may be correct. Based on my experience with ISPs in the United States, I am inclined to believe them. But I just can't overlook this. They start the article with this: > We recently set out to discover which ISP was the most-hated in every U.S. state ...and a link to their "The Most Hated Internet Service Providers in Every US State" article[0]. I live in Iowa so I scrolled down to see what our most-hated provider would be. I was fairly confident I already knew the answer: Mediacom. Their article said Cox. If you're a fellow Iowan, you should be scratching your head. Cox only serves three cities in Iowa[1][2]: Carter Lake, Council Bluffs, and Crescent. Only one of those cities even makes it into the top 50 Iowa cities by population (Council Bluffs at #10)[3]. If you compare the coverage map on BroadbandNow for Cox[4] with the one for Mediacom[5] or even CenturyLink[6], it isn't even close. I've lived in many cities across Iowa and everywhere I've been people hated Mediacom. CenturyLink get the silver medal, but Mediacom is hands down the most hated ISP in Iowa thanks to their awful customer service, unreliable connections, anti-competitive practices, and high prices for what would barely pass as acceptable in other parts of the world. I didn't even know we had Cox and I doubt most other Iowans do either! I want to believe FairShake's story because it lines up with my perceptions of ISPs in the United States, but I just can't put any faith in their data if it's that unrepresentative. How can most Iowans hate Cox if the overwhelming majority of them can't even get their service? [0] https://fairshake.com/consumer-guides/mapped-the-most-hated-internet-service-providers-in-every-u-s-state/ https://fairshake.com/consumer-guides/mapped-the-most-hated-... [1] https://www.cox.com/local/residential/ia https://www.cox.com/local/residential/ia [2] https://www.cox.com/local/business/ia https://www.cox.com/local/business/ia [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Iowa_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Iowa_cities_by... [4] https://broadbandnow.com/Cox-Communications https://broadbandnow.com/Cox-Communications [5] https://broadbandnow.com/Mediacom-Cable https://broadbandnow.com/Mediacom-Cable [6] https://broadbandnow.com/CenturyLink https://broadbandnow.com/CenturyLink
- thomastjeffery 6y ago
  It's not a count of how many people hate the ISP, but of how much hate is expressed.
kaliali 6y ago
Break them up. There should be more competition in this industry.
- CivBase 6y ago
  I don't think the problem is that ISP market is a monopoly or even an oligopoly. I think the problem is that it has successfully formed a cartel[0]. Breaking up ISPs would just create more members of the same cartel. There are many ISPs who could compete with one another, but have an unwritten agreement to not compete. Competition drives lower margins, which just aren't worth it when you consider the upfront investment to start building out networks in a competitor's neighborhood - especially since the competitor is likely to retaliate by doing the same in your neighborhood. It is more cost effective for them to milk everything they can from the regions they currently dominate. Whatever the solution looks like, I think it will have to actively incentivize ISPs to compete for each other's customers instead of just adding more ISPs to the market. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
- gpm 6y ago
  I don't think competition is the primary issue here. There are numerous examples of ISPs committing outright fraud with no punishment. Lying about speeds, stealing money from customers by adding fake charges, and so on. Competition doesn't work in a market where you can't get information about the options because people are lying cheating and stealing. This strikes me as a failure of the regulators and justice department on not stopping false advertising, punishing fraud, and generally enabling access to justice.
  - darkwizard42 6y ago
    I think competition is the root of the issue. With good competition you will see a lot of these issues be greatly reduced. Again, this depends on what you expect the regulator's job and your trust in its ability to do that job correctly. I think the parent commenter leans that even if you had the regulators stepping in more, they simply couldn't do it enough to make probability_of_getting_caught * fine_of_getting_caught > money_made_defrauding_customers (which based on the latest level of corporate scandals like VW emissions and privacy related tech scandals seems to be true, regulators just can't keep up or penalize harsh enough) With competition, you always have someone enforcing your behavior... the other guy, who will happily step in and take market share when you falter with customers.
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bird_monster 6y ago
Americans don't feel they can get justice.
pontifier 6y ago
Americans don't feel they can get justice. ftfy
TwoNineFive 6y ago
I am actively on week five of trying to make Cox realize they have a problem in their network. One of my clients in Gilbert Arizona sees intermittent packet loss outbound, making their service basically unusable. Cox both acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with the layer 2 DOCSIS circuit between our modem and their head node, and that there is loss within their network. They just don't care about fixing it.
thomastjeffery 6y ago
I sure as hell can't. My ISP decided >$100/mo. for 20mbit fiber was too much. They decided to put us into a new 10mbit fiber plan (for the same price), in an overt effort to get us to shell out even more for a faster connection (up to gigabit). The trouble is, I'm in a very remote area, so my ISP is free to bully me all they want. They make the rules, and I have to live with it, because satellite (with data caps) is not a viable alternative. It's beyond frustrating to deal with a 10mbit connection when I know it would cost my ISP practically nothing to give me gigabit instead.
bradknowles 6y ago
I submit that most people don’t know when they are wronged by their ISP. The advertisement they should have been shown got replaced by something else, they got silently downgraded in video quality for that movie they watched, they got their DNS query hijacked and sent to a different site where it could be monetized, etc.... When you are sufficiently ignorant of what is being done to you on a regular basis, it’s easy to commit all sorts of crimes against you.

264 points by KaiserSanchez 6y ago

Same. And pretty much every other service/utility provider, as well.

As an Englishman, the consumer rights situation (or, uh, lack thereof) in the US boggles me regularly. It's not just the complete absence of consumer regulators ("we let the courts handle that") -- it's that even the courts have been neutered! The Supreme Court has basically ruled that consumer class action suits don't exist any more (https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-supreme-court-dims-the-light-on-class https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-supreme-cour...) -- everything can now be forced into binding arbitration. This survey is from FairShake, whose whole schtick is that they can represent you in an arbitration proceeding so efficiently that you can actually afford to participate. They got written up in the NYT the other month: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-overload.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-over... The only reason I found out about this at all is that FairShake are a customer of ours (their whole dispute-resolution process runs on https://anvil.works https://anvil.works), so I talked to them for our podcast (https://anvil.works/blog/podcast-fairshake https://anvil.works/blog/podcast-fairshake). Even with the profanities edited out, I'm pretty sure you can hear the incredulity in my voice.

kube-system 6y ago
It is worth noting that a lot of the function of consumer protection is also handled by state authorities, the feds aren't the only authority that people have to lean on. State attorney generals are usually elected so they tend to focus heavily on consumer protection issues.
- azinman2 6y ago
  CA has generally had good consumer protection laws for decades now.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    It is shocking how many Americans hate CA for it too.
    - azinman2 6y ago
      Because those who don't want it give lots of money to politicians who then train their audience that it's bad, 'job killing', and 'big government' even though it benefits them.
    - kube-system 6y ago
      I'm not sure consumer protections are the reason people dislike CA. CA just has an enormous number of laws. If you pass enough laws you're bound to have a few dumb/misguided ones along with a lot of good ones.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I’ve personally spoke to people that hate CA because of their environmental protection laws (since it apparently makes polluting products unavailable in other states too), as well as business owners that don’t like the non compete bans and employee protections.
        kube-system 6y ago
        That's kind of my point -- those aren't consumer protection laws.
        novok 6y ago
        The hate for stupid laws in CA is stuff like CEQA which is ostensibly about protecting the environment, but really used as a blackmail tool for residents to block more environmentally friendly apartment buildings they don't like to protect their city subsidized parking and in the end causes housing to cost more than it should. Or the useless "anything could cause cancer" labels that get slapped on everything so everybody just ignores them. Or the classic prop 13 which helps fuel housing affordability. Or AB5 which will get rid of a lot of gig economy jobs outright and needed 100s of profession exceptions to not destroy even more people from getting employed.
737maxtw 6y ago
You are correct that it has gotten worse since the arbitration decisions. Also, if you think its hard to resolve something when you're a customer, wait till you see how they treat you if you aren't! To wit: I spent months fighting with Comcast about a bill for an address that I never lived at, let alone during time in question. Sent them proof multiple times but they kept sending it to collections (and collections would claim I had to go through comcast). I still remember when I mentioned how many debt collection laws they were violating... then the retorts, then hearing the fight leave his voice when i explained i have never been a customer of comcast and thus cannot be bound by their arbitration agreement. Which brings up a huge reminder that these companies are only able to get away with these things because in most of the country if you want internet you will have to settle up with them sooner or later. Thats the other thing I got from the conversations: Comcast doesn't seem to be selling off the debt. (Probabpy for reasons listed above.) Every collection agency claimed that they were 'contracted to collect' but did not own the debt. As a result trying to prove it was identity theft was a kafkaesque nightmare that I never actually succeeded at. They only left me alone because I made it clear that I had sent them more than enough documents to prove it could not have been me, and every time they would call or send another letter I would tie up 1-2 hours of one or more phone reps time.
- konceptz 6y ago
  >and every time they would call or send another letter I would tie up 1-2 hours of one or more phone reps time. That's an extremely large personal investment, I'm sorry you ended up having to essentially value your own time like this.
  - murph-almighty 6y ago
    I'd imagine if you're at that point you're just Kitboga-ing it and trying to fuck with them to make them suffer dollar-wise for the time you've lost while doing something more productive or entertaining in the background. At least that's how I'd do it.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    Sadly, all too much of modern life has become about wasting your own time, and money, to mitigate screwups made by completely unaccountable third parties.
rmrfstar 6y ago
The US has a common law system, like the UK. However, arbitration panels cannot set precedent and do not issue opinions. That means the law is perpetually frozen in place. So, we really have a civil law system with none of the mechanisms that make those systems function properly. There are obviously bigger problems with arbitration, but this one is often overlooked.
- xphilter 6y ago
  Awesome point. I keep thinking about this and want to yell at all law professors in the country (who I think have more influence than they recognize): what the hell are you going to be teaching in 20 years? Only cases before AT&T v. Concepcion?
LiquidSky 6y ago
>The Supreme Court has basically ruled that consumer class action suits don't exist any more (https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-supreme-cour https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-supreme-cour...) -- everything can now be forced into binding arbitration. And disputes with ISPs are nearly the ideal use case for class action suits: a large group of people being harmed, but the individual harms are relatively small, and individually pursuing a case is usually too costly or complicated to be worth it.
rlpb 6y ago
Another specific couple of aspects of the US situation boggle me: > The Supreme Court has basically ruled that consumer class action suits don't exist any more... The Supreme Court ruling only applies under the current law and does nothing to prevent the law being changed. But for some reason, Americans (as a whole; I realise HN is probably different) act as if this situation is final and it cannot be fixed by Congress. The other thing that boggles me is that it's as if a service isn't cancelled until the company providing it agrees it is cancelled, and that's something their retention departments will resist doing. Where I live, the service is cancelled* when I've given notice of cancellation, whether the company wants to accept it or not. So I don't need to care about whether they'll try to put me off cancelling or not, or if they have a script or not. After I've told them, it's done; as long as I keep a record then any subsequent bills aren't my concern. But for some reason that I cannot fathom, a company not "accepting" notice of cancellation seems to be a problem in the US. * subject to minimum terms or similar stipulations of course
- tstrimple 6y ago
  > But for some reason, Americans (as a whole; I realise HN is probably different) act as if this situation is final and it cannot be fixed by Congress. Yeah, I can't imagine why Americans don't have faith in the legislative process. https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnell-grim-reaper-395-house-bills-senate-wont-pass-1487401 https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnell-grim-reaper-395-hou...
- Fauntleroy 6y ago
  It's a bit too easy for large corporations to exercise control over Congress, so we (Americans) have little faith that they'll execute on pro-consumer legislation.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > But for some reason, Americans (as a whole; I realise HN is probably different) act as if this situation is final and it cannot be fixed by Congress. Because Congress has, essentially, been gridlocked for many years now. That is also the reason why the Supreme Court has gotten so utterly important over the same time frame, because real fundamental change in politics only happen in the courts these days.
paultopia 6y ago
U.S. law professor here. Yeah, it's really embarrassing. The bullshit story for why this is all the case is that it's priced into products and services---which are supposedly cheaper than they might otherwise be if companies had to fear massive liability and regulation. The real story for why this is the case is the combination of (a) fake contract law, in which we pretend people agreed to things that they in no way could have agreed to---including all those arbitration agreements that strip away class action rights, (b) a federal system that lets Congress preempt state economic regulations, including consumer protection regulations,[1] and (c) most fundamentally, the point that Mancur Olson identified in Logic of Collective Action: narrow special interests with intense preferences are lots better at getting their wills achieved than diffuse general interests; in the U.S. political lobbying is basically unrestrained; big industries like telecom have just utterly captured legislatures and regulators at every level. [1] This is my least favorite example, and a case that explains a lot about why airlines are so happy to crap all over the heads of their victims: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-462_p8k0.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-462_p8k0.pdf
- javajosh 6y ago
  Thanks for speaking openly! Can I ask you for your opinion? I have come to believe that the justice system itself is the root of the problem, namely that it is so expensive and slow that it doesn't provide justice. Trials used to take days, and now they take months or years. They used to cost hundreds, now tens of thousands, or more. It is only within such a moribund system that lobbying can be successful! If trials were fast and cheap, people might still try to lobby, but the feedback loop would be fast and accurate.
  - paultopia 6y ago
    Indirectly. This is kind of a complicated issue, so let me unpack it a bit. First, it's absolutely true that litigation is super-expensive. But from the company end, that doesn't necessarily make a real difference---arbitration is fairly expensive too (though not as expensive as litigation), they're not likely to realize huge savings from shoving consumers into all the arbitration agreements. Where costs really matter is from the consumer side, and it's intertwined with class actions. Arbitrations don't have class actions, real court does (in most states). So an arbitration clause is really a "no class actions" clause. And, because of litigation costs, a "no class actions" clause is really really effective at keeping consumers out of court at all. Why? Because a huge number of consumer claims are for really small rip-offs. For example, the phone company sneaks an extra 50 cents onto the bill of everyone every month for a fake tax that doesn't really exist, and in doing so dodges some rate regulation. No consumer in their right mind is going to incur the time and expense of suing (or arbitrating) individually for 50 cents a month. But the phone company, with millions and millions of customers, benefits hugely from this ripoff. With a class action system, some entrepreneurial lawyer can bring suit and win those millions back on behalf of the class of ripped-off consumers. Now, those class actions are pretty controversial, because the ripped-off consumers never really see any direct benefit from those lawsuits. They usually get some bullshit coupon in the mail, while the lawyer and one or two plaintiffs (the "named plaintiffs" or "class representatives") walk away with a big payday. But the point isn't to compensate the people who lost the 50 cents. The point is to hold out the threat of those stupid huge judgments against companies who would otherwise nickel-and-dime mass consumers to death. So when companies kill the class action, they know that they won't be held accountable in the courts for that kind of misconduct, and they can engage in small ripoffs with impunity. (Mostly less blatant than fake tax thing, because government regulators might pick up on that.)
throwaway894345 6y ago
ISPs are a bit of a special case in America, because they lobby effectively for favorable local regulation. In other industries, it suffices to threaten a bad Yelp review if it even takes that. The worst experiences I’ve had were with Hertz, Visa, and an ISP (the latter two are monopolies). We need better consumer protections and monopoly busting, but these are low on my list of improvements.

tschwimmer 6y ago

Because they can't. Most places have a single choice for for ISP, so they can charge what they like and treat customers in a way that minimizes cost. Telecom is a usually a regional monopoly or duopoly, and they act accordingly.

DudeInBasement 6y ago
But with speeds up to 'x'. There is no way you'll get x/20 speed....

LurkersWillLurk 6y ago

The sad truth is that the United States has a severe access to justice problem. Most people don't know which regulator to contact, and the process requires a certain amount of time, effort, and knowledge that's out of reach of most people.

sandworm101 6y ago
>> time, effort, and knowledge Time+effort = money. Knowledge = lawyers = also money. The US system is based on the notion that anyone worth listening too will have ready access to lawyers. Those who cannot afford lawyers have little voice. "Let the courts handle" means "rich people only".
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The problem with capital punishment, is that those without the capital get the punishment. Not sure who the quote is due to
kube-system 6y ago
It's a perfect storm of being large, highly federated, and not particularly great at teaching civics.
- smolder 6y ago
  We could teach civics well if we chose to. Public education is purposefully undermined, likely because it has the word "public" in it.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    I went to a well funded school in a highly educated district with a constituency that consistently voted for every bill to raise funding for public schools. We had a single required credit for civics. That’s barely enough time to brush the surface of the four levels of independent government we had. Opportunity cost was the driving factor. Much of the constituency voiced a desire for more courses in STEM or arts, not civics.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

It's difficult to get justice when ISP lobbyists literally write the laws that govern their industry. ref: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffnt&q=site%3Atechdirt.com+isp+lobbyists+write+laws https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffnt&q=site%3Atechdirt.com+isp+lob...

Causality1 6y ago
Beyond simple consumer protection, the US really needs some massive conflict of interest law, maybe even on the level of a constitutional amendment.
- zadkey 6y ago
  I can't agree more.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  Politicians trade campaign cash for law & services, every moment of every day. Voters don't think much about it because news orgs aren't very interested in covering bribery. Regarding conflict of interest: There's nearly zero discussion about where campaign finds finally end up. Those billions are firehosed to the parent corps of news orgs, in the form of campaign ad buys. To restate the above, politicians are funding the news orgs that cover their campaigns.
- smolder 6y ago
  Yes, it does. How likely do you think that is, with everyone whipped into a furious culture war all the time, and regulators captured? I hate being a pessimist all the time, but in my memory, I see little precedent to suggest an optimistic long view is the right one.
  - Causality1 6y ago
    I think violent revolution/civil war is more likely. Corporations have as strong a death grip on the US government as any dictator.

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RandomBacon 6y ago

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov

biohax2015 6y ago

I feel this way for most things. Healthcare, dental care, employment. The only avenue I see in dealing with this stuff is hiring an expensive lawyer.

mrgordon 6y ago

My ISP (Hotwire) randomly added a $1 monthly fee for mailing a statement and took multiple months to stop charging the fee after I complained and they kept promising to refund the most recent month or two but I'd have to call back and complain again after a month just to try to get justice. The customer service reps would literally tell me they could only authorize a $1 refund. $2 was "too much" and required all kinds of manager approval and there was never a manager available...

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juped 6y ago

It's a shame "net neutrality" was co-opted by hostile corporate interests, because the original vision outlined in Tim Wu's 2003 paper was pro-consumer and likely would have led to a much better internet if ever pursued. You can get his paper here: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1281/ https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/128...

linsomniac 6y ago
I regret not saying "net neutrality" as the reason for cancellation when I cancelled my Xfinity last week. I instead said "Unusable upstream bandwidth when 3-4 people are doing remote work/learning". We just got municipal fiber and it's committed to Net Neutrality, and gigabit up and down. Aside: They spent several minutes up front establishing rapport (I kid you not "You sound like such a nice person!") then when I said I was calling to cancel service he turned it into a personal slight ("I thought we were friends, why would you do that!").
- eddiecalzone 6y ago
  Reminds me of this snippet of an hour-long call to cancel service. “You don’t want something that works?”; “So you’re not interested in the fastest internet in the country?”; “I’m really ashamed to see you go to something that can’t give you what we can!”; “What is it about this other internet provider???” https://time.com/2985964/comcast-cancel-ryan-block/ https://time.com/2985964/comcast-cancel-ryan-block/

awill 6y ago

of course not. You can't threaten to cancel if there's no alternative.

Pfhreak 6y ago

"Americans don't feel they can get justice" is probably sufficient.

a1369209993 6y ago
Maybe tack on a "because they can't" if you want to be thorough.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

I recently had it out with my ISP which concluded after I filed a BBB complaint after exhausting several other avenues. But the issue I have is irritatingly not avoidable by switching carriers: The Chicago Cubs have levied a tax on all cable and satellite TV customers in the Chicagoland area. The Marquee Sports Network costs every Chicago area resident a new $7 a month cost, every cable provider has agreed to it, and Sinclair Broadcasting makes it a contract term that customers cannot opt out of this new channel and massive fee. It'd be like if HBO Max rolled out by signing everyone up, billing everyone, and making it impossible to cancel. I got my ISP to grant me a credit for the next year or so, but it seems like a government action is the only long-term way to escape.

criddell 6y ago
I never watch CBS but it's part of my bundle. Is my situation different than yours?
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  My "bundle" may include 100+ channels for under $100, for one, and Marquee is $7 for a single channel. Which is to say, it's exceptional in how extremely overpriced Marquee is. It's billed at the level of a premium movie channel like HBO, which is generally optional. And a key problem is that most bundled channels are part of the price I agreed to when I signed up for service, whereas Marquee functions as an additional tax the Chicago Cubs can decide to charge me over and above the price I agreed to pay with my cable provider.

tyingq 6y ago

I was a Verizon FIOS customer when they turned all their stuff over to Frontier. I had bought a good amount of movies in their on-demand store. They just took them away. No recourse, no refund. It was highly frustrating. And calling them meant a long hold time.

CivBase 6y ago

I'm concerned about FairShake's data. Their conclusion may be correct. Based on my experience with ISPs in the United States, I am inclined to believe them. But I just can't overlook this. They start the article with this: > We recently set out to discover which ISP was the most-hated in every U.S. state ...and a link to their "The Most Hated Internet Service Providers in Every US State" article[0]. I live in Iowa so I scrolled down to see what our most-hated provider would be. I was fairly confident I already knew the answer: Mediacom. Their article said Cox. If you're a fellow Iowan, you should be scratching your head. Cox only serves three cities in Iowa[1][2]: Carter Lake, Council Bluffs, and Crescent. Only one of those cities even makes it into the top 50 Iowa cities by population (Council Bluffs at #10)[3]. If you compare the coverage map on BroadbandNow for Cox[4] with the one for Mediacom[5] or even CenturyLink[6], it isn't even close. I've lived in many cities across Iowa and everywhere I've been people hated Mediacom. CenturyLink get the silver medal, but Mediacom is hands down the most hated ISP in Iowa thanks to their awful customer service, unreliable connections, anti-competitive practices, and high prices for what would barely pass as acceptable in other parts of the world. I didn't even know we had Cox and I doubt most other Iowans do either! I want to believe FairShake's story because it lines up with my perceptions of ISPs in the United States, but I just can't put any faith in their data if it's that unrepresentative. How can most Iowans hate Cox if the overwhelming majority of them can't even get their service? [0] https://fairshake.com/consumer-guides/mapped-the-most-hated-internet-service-providers-in-every-u-s-state/ https://fairshake.com/consumer-guides/mapped-the-most-hated-... [1] https://www.cox.com/local/residential/ia https://www.cox.com/local/residential/ia [2] https://www.cox.com/local/business/ia https://www.cox.com/local/business/ia [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Iowa_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Iowa_cities_by... [4] https://broadbandnow.com/Cox-Communications https://broadbandnow.com/Cox-Communications [5] https://broadbandnow.com/Mediacom-Cable https://broadbandnow.com/Mediacom-Cable [6] https://broadbandnow.com/CenturyLink https://broadbandnow.com/CenturyLink

thomastjeffery 6y ago
It's not a count of how many people hate the ISP, but of how much hate is expressed.

kaliali 6y ago

Break them up. There should be more competition in this industry.

CivBase 6y ago
I don't think the problem is that ISP market is a monopoly or even an oligopoly. I think the problem is that it has successfully formed a cartel[0]. Breaking up ISPs would just create more members of the same cartel. There are many ISPs who could compete with one another, but have an unwritten agreement to not compete. Competition drives lower margins, which just aren't worth it when you consider the upfront investment to start building out networks in a competitor's neighborhood - especially since the competitor is likely to retaliate by doing the same in your neighborhood. It is more cost effective for them to milk everything they can from the regions they currently dominate. Whatever the solution looks like, I think it will have to actively incentivize ISPs to compete for each other's customers instead of just adding more ISPs to the market. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
gpm 6y ago
I don't think competition is the primary issue here. There are numerous examples of ISPs committing outright fraud with no punishment. Lying about speeds, stealing money from customers by adding fake charges, and so on. Competition doesn't work in a market where you can't get information about the options because people are lying cheating and stealing. This strikes me as a failure of the regulators and justice department on not stopping false advertising, punishing fraud, and generally enabling access to justice.
- darkwizard42 6y ago
  I think competition is the root of the issue. With good competition you will see a lot of these issues be greatly reduced. Again, this depends on what you expect the regulator's job and your trust in its ability to do that job correctly. I think the parent commenter leans that even if you had the regulators stepping in more, they simply couldn't do it enough to make probability_of_getting_caught * fine_of_getting_caught > money_made_defrauding_customers (which based on the latest level of corporate scandals like VW emissions and privacy related tech scandals seems to be true, regulators just can't keep up or penalize harsh enough) With competition, you always have someone enforcing your behavior... the other guy, who will happily step in and take market share when you falter with customers.

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bird_monster 6y ago

Americans don't feel they can get justice.

pontifier 6y ago

Americans don't feel they can get justice. ftfy

TwoNineFive 6y ago

I am actively on week five of trying to make Cox realize they have a problem in their network. One of my clients in Gilbert Arizona sees intermittent packet loss outbound, making their service basically unusable. Cox both acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with the layer 2 DOCSIS circuit between our modem and their head node, and that there is loss within their network. They just don't care about fixing it.

thomastjeffery 6y ago

I sure as hell can't. My ISP decided >$100/mo. for 20mbit fiber was too much. They decided to put us into a new 10mbit fiber plan (for the same price), in an overt effort to get us to shell out even more for a faster connection (up to gigabit). The trouble is, I'm in a very remote area, so my ISP is free to bully me all they want. They make the rules, and I have to live with it, because satellite (with data caps) is not a viable alternative. It's beyond frustrating to deal with a 10mbit connection when I know it would cost my ISP practically nothing to give me gigabit instead.

bradknowles 6y ago

I submit that most people don’t know when they are wronged by their ISP. The advertisement they should have been shown got replaced by something else, they got silently downgraded in video quality for that movie they watched, they got their DNS query hijacked and sent to a different site where it could be monetized, etc.... When you are sufficiently ignorant of what is being done to you on a regular basis, it’s easy to commit all sorts of crimes against you.