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Comcast complains to FCC that listing all of its monthly fees is too hard
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mikece 3y agoSimple fix: pass a law rendering null and void any invoice or bill that cannot itemize all included fees, taxes, and surcharges.
- tptacek 3y agoThis isn't about invoices or bills, it's about point of sale price labels.
- tptacek 3y agoBelieve it or not, Comcast is probably right about this. I'm on a commission in my local municipality that oversees the franchise contract with Comcast, and we've been hung up in negotiations with them for years over the new contract, with the sticking point being "pass-through franchise fees", I think largely pertaining to PEG ("Public, Educational, and Governmental") programming. The thing to understand about pass-through fees is: they're not Comcast fees. They're municipal taxes collected by providers, which municipalities ask to have labeled as "fees", because they're too chickenshit to acknowledge that they're (in our case) raising $850k pa for "PEG programming" (most of which just goes into the general fund) from Comcast users. What's crazymaking is that these fees for technical and historical reasons apply to Comcast, but not to AT&T, Comcast's primary regional competitor --- so it's a tax on the customers of a particular company, ostensibly for public access programming, but really that's just a pretense. I can't blame Comcast in the least for pushing back on having standardized labeling for this kind of thing, which varies from township to township.
- jmholla 3y agoIf they can calculate these costs, why can't they show their work?
- tptacek 3y agoIn a price label, at the point of sale? These are surreptitious taxes municipalities are forcing Comcast to collect. Why is Comcast being asked to build new IT infrastructure to warn residents that their local government is screwing them over?
- LocalH 3y ago"Municipal Fee: $X" as a sign at the register
- alfanick 3y agoWhy not? Just make a bill: * cable fee * the actual service fee * local tax * ... * federal tax Nothing wrong about transparency
- tptacek 3y agoThere is in this instance, because the "fees" we're talking about here are intrinsically non-transparent --- they're not fees, they're taxes, and local governments force Comcast to call them fees in their franchise contracts. Comcast probably shouldn't play along here, because those taxes harm their users. I'm betting that if I surveyed my town, not one resident in 50 knows they're being charged a Comcast Tax by the local government; they just assume these fees are all Comcast soaking them. That's a problem, not because Comcast is good (they're odious), but because it establishes a precedent that municipalities can raise money from residents without going through the actual transparent levy process that everyone pays attention to. Fuck that! Municipal governments should get in front of their residents and tell them they're doing this, and not sneak it onto Comcast's price label as if it were a decision Comcast had made.
- crote 3y ago
- okwhateverdude 3y ago> I can't blame Comcast in the least for pushing back on having standardized labeling for this kind of thing, which varies from township to township. To be fair, for a billion dollar company with literal billions in profit from a subsidized mono/duopoly and considering there are only so many towns in so many states where they operate, this is super weak. It can totally be done even if tedious, expensive, and time consuming. Thing is, most of the work has already been done accounting wise because they need to comply with the laws in those areas. Now they just need to report it accurately at point of sale.
- tptacek 3y agoThere are over 1,300 municipalities in Illinois alone, and each of them negotiates their franchise contract independently.
- fatnoah 3y ago> Believe it or not, Comcast is probably right about this. I read this more as being about either "we can't right now" than it is about "we can't ever do it." They're obviously able to generate bills for all customers, so they clearly know what fees are being passed on to consumers. Now, it's very likely that those values may not be exposed to their sales/marketing systems used to provide quotes to consumers, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be. DISCLAIMER! One of my first experiences was for a company that created SaaS billing software (founded just before SaaS became a term) for telecoms, so we had to deal with all manners of rates, tiers, tapers, discounts, taxes, fees, etc. that all varied by location and one feature we provided was being able to give the exact combination of all of those things that would apply to a given geographic area (typically zip code). It was fantastically complicated.
- PMacDiggity 3y agoAnd yet they’re able to somehow send out bills for these incalculable fees?
- tptacek 3y agoThey're not incalculable, but: (1) They vary from municipality to municipality (2) Customers don't make purchasing decisions exclusively in their own municipality (3) They aren't Comcast's fees to begin with.
- crote 3y agoSo what's preventing them from just providing a price calculator where you can enter your ZIP code and get an itemized invoice? Don't forget to include the taxes, of course.
- tedunangst 3y agoZIP codes are not coterminous with municipalities.
- crote 3y agoThen just enter your full address, I don't care. Whatever they are already using to calculate your bills.
- OrwellianChild 3y agoIf they can charge it, they can show it. Any concerns/issues with municipal fees, taxes, etc. is a completely tangential issue. Just as easily, Comcast could choose to simplify pricing... T-Mobile charges "tax-inclusive" rates that give you a nice round number net of taxes/fees. These are free choices and can be leveraged as a competitive advantage should the companies choose.