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For those of us who are Americans, isn't it amazing how the companies that provide us with access to the internet are pretty much among the most hated companies

For those of us who are Americans, isn't it amazing how the companies that provide us with access to the internet are pretty much among the most hated companies in our country? I feel like I'd rank them almost up there with Halliburton, Sodexo and Blackwater. First of all they are incredibly expensive. They try to actively create worse experiences for their customers. Forced inclusions of apps on android phones on mobile carriers. A comcast rep wanted to install a browser toolbar on my computer. Vague billing that leads to sticker shock. $0.25 per tiny little text message, really? I paid next to nothing to post this comment on HN, but had I posted such large amounts of text via a text message, it would have cost a lot of money. Talk to them on the phone and they try to sell you things you don't need. Like one time I wanted to get HBO, HBO costs $15 a month, period, but when you talk to them on the phone they wont tell you that unless you ask a specific question, they'll tell you about their bundles which will cost you hundreds of dollars extra. This is a really scummy thing to do. They know the person who contacted them only wants HBO, but then they sell them something way worse they didn't want. Collusion with illegal federal programs that involved lying to congress, lying to our public representatives. These companies are filled with scum from top to bottom. The people that you deal with in the stores, the people that decide which phones you can buy at their store and what they have on them, the people you talk to on the phone, the executives. It must be like working for a tobacco company, once you're willing to work at such a place the culture just destroys your integrity or something. I have no idea. I even still considerably distrust tmobile, even though they seem to be trying to change things.

EGreg 12y ago
I think minimal infrastructure should be free. We already have this with open source programs, public education, etc. but I think it should extend to the internet and other things. What is "minimal" should be determined by some kind of system, and above that, there should be a free market. I believe the role of government is to ensure people's "minimal expectations" are met, and beyond that people can do whatever they want. And hopefully I will be living by my own principles ... the platform that we've spent years building has been open sourced and put on Github. I think small businesses / apps can be built on top of it, but minimal infrastructure eventually becomes free.
- josh2600 12y ago
  >I think minimal infrastructure should be free. I think you mean minimal infrastructure should be subsidized. There is no free in the physical world. The internet you are using comes in on big copper (or glass) cables and tearing up the ground costs lots of money. Overhead wireless internet is feasible, but not at the scale of an entire city, let alone a nation. It's not like you can wave your hand and have a network magically appear. People have to dig up the streets, put the cables in the ground and connect things. There are servers in big datacenters and routers and all sorts of technical devices that have to be configured. It is not as simple as pushing a button and making your code open-source; building networks is construction not publishing. If you think the internet should be subsidized (or nationalized) that's a conversation, but asking private companies to give things for free is ludicrous (you either mandate it to be free or accept the private status quo). If you really want free wifi, lobby for it. Is the Internet a business or not? Is telecom a business or not? The highways are nationalized, and I'd argue that they work pretty darn well. It's very politically difficult to go from a privatized industry to a nationalized one, particularly in America (it has only historically happened during times of war or massive banking crises and even then quite rarely). The fundamental question is this: Are these networks public or private? If they're public, most of these questions are non-issues. If they're private, again, most of these questions are non-issues. The reason we're talking about this stuff is because the line between public and private is hard to define.
  - EGreg 12y ago
    Yes, I meant free in the sense that a certain basic level would be free OF CHARGE to everyone physically using it. Free basic level of food, water, education, medical care, internet, police, etc. There are good economic reasons for this. Subsidized isn't exactly right because it sounds like the customer still has a copay. I mean wealth redistribution, but only to provide the basics for everyone. One can probably achieve this by a basic income calculated in terms of the "minimal cost of living" in a certain area. If people want more than that, then they can start a company, pay taxes, go work etc. But those taxes would go towards ensuring the minimum. In short I'm arguing for a very well-defined minarchist position that I can defend.
- 12y ago
jonnathanson 12y ago
The reason they're so hated is a perfect combination of Service Quality x Frequency. The service quality is horrendous and intentionally misleading, for all the reasons you've stated, among others. But that's just the half of it. We, as consumers, have to deal with these companies on a regular basis. We get their crazy bills every month. We get outages, and we have to navigate a labyrinth of bullshit to get them serviced. We get their up-sales calls every month, despite repeatedly asking to be removed from whatever hell-spawned list we're on to get them. Every now and then, we have to deal with their customer service reps on the phone. The point is, we have tangible, direct experience with these companies every year. By comparison, our experiences with the folks at Halliburton, Monsanto, BP, etc., are indirect. We might rely on their products and services, but we don't deal with these companies directly. This makes them more of an abstraction in our minds. Many of us despise that abstraction, but it remains an abstraction, all the same. If you look at polls of the most hated brands and companies in America, many of them are brands and companies we engage with personally and frequently. Airlines, credit card companies, cable and ISPs, cellular companies, insurance providers, etc. Companies like Blackwater (or whatever it's currently calling itself) don't make those lists, because aside from hearing about them in the news, most people don't have any direct experience with them.
mikeash 12y ago
I actually am pretty happy with both my wired and wireless internet providers, although I know that makes me the odd man out. I have FiOS for the home connection, and they've been nothing but great. I have AT&T for wireless, and I'm fairly happy with them. It's not cheap, but for what I get it's not tremendously expensive either. I pay $130/month for two smartphones with 10GB of data and unlimited everything else, which isn't bad. They're actively discouraging the old contract system with subsidized phones, which was the source of a lot of trouble. I'll probably buy my next phone outright and they won't bat an eye. I used to have Comcast and they were indeed awful. Terrible customer service, frequently clueless and unhelpful techs, and the service wasn't all that great either. Just trying to show that I'm not a complete corporate shill.... Anyway, I know that AT&T and Verizon aren't always liked either, but I think there's some substantial variation within the industry, even if maybe it's only between "awful" and "less bad".
- jotm 12y ago
  $130/month for 10GB data is kind of a ripoff. Granted, it's only for one phone, but right now I pay 25 Euros (~$30) for unlimited calls and SMS and 5GB data per month (extendable for 10 Euros per 5 GB whenever I run out) in Germany. And that's expensive compared to other EU countries...
  - Aqua_Geek 12y ago
    Agreed. I lived in Germany for about 9 months last year. I had cell service for about 15€/month. It really sucked to come back to the US and pay $100/month for worse service.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      A lot of it is coverage. I could pay substantially less if I was willing to go with a worse network. How much would it cost you for a plan that covered all of Europe?
      - mnx 12y ago
sillysaurus3 12y ago
isn't it amazing how the companies that provide us with access to the internet are pretty much among the most hated companies in our country? I feel like I'd rank them almost up there with Halliburton, Sodexo and Blackwater. Blackwater is a company whose employees kill people. Sometimes civilians. And sometimes for no reason. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/blackwater-guilty-verdicts/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/blackwater-gui... The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as “Baghdad’s bloody Sunday,” operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. If, after reading this, anyone is still nodding their head and entertaining the idea that their internet company is in the same league as Blackwater, then they have some pretty strange value judgments.
- toufka 12y ago
  For the sake of information, Blackwater changed its name to Xe, and then changed it again to Academi. Academi is the name you should rub in the dirt.
  - Hemospectrum 12y ago
    It can change its name all it wants, and then there's just a trail of obsolete names being attacked by people with outdated information. It would be more productive to name the people on the board of directors, who can't abandon their identities so easily.
    - tlrobinson 12y ago
      Well, in 2011 it was sold, the founder left, and a new board of directors was installed, so that doesn't really work either.
- 542458 12y ago
  I don't think swartkrans was making any statement about the relative evil or harm of these companies, rather, he was simply commenting on their public perception. Yes, Blackwater/Xe/Academi does terrible things. Despite this, the general population has an even stronger negative perception of Comcast/AT&T/whatever, which should serve to further highlight the absurdity of the whole thing.
Igglyboo 12y ago
Calling the low tier employees scum is really unfair. They either do their job how management mandates it is done or they are fired. The lowly customer service rep isn't the reason Comcast is a piece of shit.
- scott_karana 12y ago
  I dunno. Some employees are sympathetic: other times, people get defensive and toe the company line even when they know it's a bullshit policy. There is nothing wrong with saying "I'm sorry, if I did this for you I would be fired." Conversely, there is everything wrong with saying "No, I'm sorry sir, but I can't change that for you" when you know he can, he just won't. (in general; not referring to this case) For reference, I worked in a Cable/ISP/telecom call center doing tech support, and had wildly varying feelings about different coworker's stances. So I'm not just armchairing opining.
  - cannonpult 12y ago
    "There is nothing wrong with saying "I'm sorry, if I did this for you I would be fired."" Actually if you want to keep your job, everything is wrong with saying that. I worked at a Verizon Wireless call center for 3 years and there was no way that a statement like that would go ever well with any manager doing a call review. "Conversely, there is everything wrong with saying "No, I'm sorry sir, but I can't change that for you" when you know he can, he just won't. (in general; not referring to this case" Saying this is how you keep your job. There are call quotas that must be met. Calls are timed. Everything is monitored. Saying you can't change something for somebody does not mean that it isn't at all possible. It means, "I can't change this for you or else I would be in trouble with my managers." There is no point in wasting time explaining why something can't be changed when it's company policy it can't be changed. Above all else, these reps are just the messengers. For many of those that I worked with, their stances came from a place of "would I rather get fired or feed my three children?"
  - otoburb 12y ago
    >There is nothing wrong with saying "I'm sorry, if I did this for you I would be fired." There is no external cost to you, but the customer service representative saying this may bear a personal cost for making this statement. Most customer calls are recorded for quality control. Believe it or not, these types of calls are actually listened to for both quality control and CSR script updates. In general, a CSR will be unlikely to state that and really mean it unless they are willing to run the risk of being corrected or reprimanded by superiors.
thathonkey 12y ago
It's true. Their convoluted billing schemes belong in the "mislead the customer for great profit!" hall of fame, right up there with insurance providers.
jordanpg 12y ago
I'm sure no one wants to hear this, but folks, this is what good capitalism looks like. While it's true that it's possible to run a company without being horrible, it's almost certainly far better for short-term profits to do so. > Halliburton, Sodexo and Blackwater Guess what the executives running these companies have in common with the ones running AT&T? Downvote away. AT&T is behaving rationally.
- rlpb 12y ago
  > While it's true that it's possible to run a company without being horrible, it's almost certainly far better for short-term profits to do so. Only when you're in a monopoly or an oligopoly or similar. And this is a market failure in a capitalist economy. In this case, it's enforced by regulation, which is the opposite of what a capitalist economy is supposed to have.
  - jordanpg 12y ago
    I don't follow your use of the pronoun `this`. Is monopoly in general a failure? Or is it AT&T in this particular instance? Are the problems of monopolies solved by regulation in general? Or is this particular AT&T situation solved by regulation? Is regulation the opposite of what capitalist economies should have? Or monopolies?
    - rlpb 12y ago
      I'm saying that the argument that we're observing capitalism at work is false. > Is monopoly in general a failure? Or is it AT&T in this particular instance? Monopoly is in general a market failure (which is why antitrust laws exist). Therefore AT&T having the position it does (not a monopoly, but an oligopoly at best) is a market failure. > Is regulation the opposite of what capitalist economies should have? My understanding is that capitalism (in the sense that the great-grandparent post was using it) is something that involves not having regulation. Since AT&T's position is a consequence of this regulation, the assertion that we're observing capitalism (in the sense I think the great-grandparent used the term) is false.
    - 12y ago
gadders 12y ago
>I feel like I'd rank them almost up there with Halliburton, Sodexo and Blackwater. i.e. the typical left-wing "bogey man" companies. I'm surprised you didn't throw in News Corp as well. I think Blackwater saved more lives than they lost, and if they were that bad why did the State Department keep re-employing them? You should read Erik Prince's biography. It might change your perspective.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > if they were that bad why did the State Department keep re-employing them? Most people that think that Blackwater/Xe/whatever they are called today is bad also think that the government decision makers deciding to employ them are/were bad, at a minimum in the context of that decision, and quite frequently that the whole, long-term, multi-decade policy of progressively outsourcing formerly-military conflict-zone functions to civilian contractors is a bad trend driven in no small part by corrupt business-government relations in the military industrial complex. So, saying "Well, the State Department hired them, so they must be good" is, well, kind of ignoring the entire basis of the opposition.
  - gadders 12y ago
    Ah, ok. It's a conspiracy theory. Got you.
vlunkr 12y ago
I recently changed my internet provider to a small ISP based in my state. Partially because they had good prices, but also on principle, I'm tired of giving my money to companies that are so incompetent/evil. I think more people need to start doing the same if they can. They ONLY way these companies will really change is if we stop giving them our money.
anigbrowl 12y ago
They try to actively create worse experiences for their customers. No, of course they do't. They try to create revenue-maximizing opportunities for themselves at the expense of their customers - although many non-geek customers may even like these siloed, suboptimal applications for want of a better understanding of how they could be using their devices. Nobody deliberately sets out to make their product worse, that's a good way to lose customers to the competition. IT's an unwanted side-effect of trying to extract more revenue from each customer. This doesn't preclude the companies from being greedy, negligent, compromising customers' security and so on. I agree that the effect of their policies is to create worse customer experiences. But to assume that their underlying motivation is make you unhappy is silly. In gneral you'll be much happier if you stop worrying about why people do stuff like this and just learn to firmly insist on what you want, eg 'I purchased this unlocked phone because I do not like extra apps. Please sell me a SIM card and sign me up for a month-to-month service plan that I can opt out of any time. If you try to upsell me I'm going to leave and go to your competitor's store.' I do appreciate how annoying and stressful you find this. I'm not American either and intensity of sales tactics in the US consumer space is culturally alien to me, but competitive contractualism seems to be regarded as the keystone of individual economic freedom in the US, vs the more paternalistic approaches that prevail in some other places.
exelius 12y ago
I completely agree with you that their service is awful and primarily geared towards sales. I also agree that they engage in price obfuscation in order to nickel and dime you to death: it's really obnoxious and makes for an awful customer experience. I'll even agree with you that they are expensive (because they are). But they are expensive with good reason: a nationwide communications network is really expensive to run, and there's no fair way to allocate costs. When considering throughput / capacity on infrastructure, peak usage is all that really matters. In that sense, someone who goes on Netflix and watches 2 hours of video every night at 8-10PM costs you roughly the same as someone with torrents running 24/7. Some ISPs have resorted to data caps because they at least introduce the possibility that you might go over, which causes people to at least think about their bandwidth usage. When all is said and done, telecom companies in the US are profitable, but not insanely profitable. This is the entire reason that Comcast is the sole broadband provider in many of its markets: the payouts (margins) aren't big enough for another company to justify the upfront costs, except in a few profitable suburbs. If you look at cellular, where the big players DID overbuild in comparison to landlines, net margins STILL settled out close to 10-15% (not coincidentally, those are about the same as cable/landline.) And cellular is still awful, even though it is much more competitive than wireline. Having worked at a number of big telecom companies, the vast majority of people who work at them have no exposure to any of the crap you're talking about. I know it's fun to generalize on the internet, but most people working at these companies are so far removed from anything regulatory or customer service related that it doesn't bother them. Hell, most of them are consultants who don't even work for the company. Marketing is a hypothesis-driven steamroller: you test several variants of marketing material and see which one works best. The one that works best is probably the least honest one! So you go with it because your goal is to produce the most effective marketing material, not the most transparent. You probably don't even know enough about the product that's being sold to know you're being dishonest.
- nikanj 12y ago
  A lot of that infrastructure was build with municipal grants and other forms of taxpayer money, an advantage a new competitor probably would not get
wpietri 12y ago
> For those of us who are Americans, isn't it amazing how the companies that provide us with access to the internet are pretty much among the most hated companies in our country? My read is that when companies get large enough not to have to really compete, and especially when they have services that are hard to live without, then they go from seeing people as customers (whose loyalty they must win) to territory (which they conquer and exploit). Capitalism works really well in the small when there's plenty of competition: I live in a neighborhood with a lot of local restaurants, and they're generally great. But dealing with an incumbent telco or cable company quickly makes me look like I have Tourette's.
sp332 12y ago
Small note: Blackwater changed its name to Xi, then Academi. And Academi is now part of Constellis Holdings. So if you hear about any of those in the news, it's the same group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi

EGreg 12y ago

I think minimal infrastructure should be free. We already have this with open source programs, public education, etc. but I think it should extend to the internet and other things. What is "minimal" should be determined by some kind of system, and above that, there should be a free market. I believe the role of government is to ensure people's "minimal expectations" are met, and beyond that people can do whatever they want. And hopefully I will be living by my own principles ... the platform that we've spent years building has been open sourced and put on Github. I think small businesses / apps can be built on top of it, but minimal infrastructure eventually becomes free.

josh2600 12y ago
>I think minimal infrastructure should be free. I think you mean minimal infrastructure should be subsidized. There is no free in the physical world. The internet you are using comes in on big copper (or glass) cables and tearing up the ground costs lots of money. Overhead wireless internet is feasible, but not at the scale of an entire city, let alone a nation. It's not like you can wave your hand and have a network magically appear. People have to dig up the streets, put the cables in the ground and connect things. There are servers in big datacenters and routers and all sorts of technical devices that have to be configured. It is not as simple as pushing a button and making your code open-source; building networks is construction not publishing. If you think the internet should be subsidized (or nationalized) that's a conversation, but asking private companies to give things for free is ludicrous (you either mandate it to be free or accept the private status quo). If you really want free wifi, lobby for it. Is the Internet a business or not? Is telecom a business or not? The highways are nationalized, and I'd argue that they work pretty darn well. It's very politically difficult to go from a privatized industry to a nationalized one, particularly in America (it has only historically happened during times of war or massive banking crises and even then quite rarely). The fundamental question is this: Are these networks public or private? If they're public, most of these questions are non-issues. If they're private, again, most of these questions are non-issues. The reason we're talking about this stuff is because the line between public and private is hard to define.
- EGreg 12y ago
  Yes, I meant free in the sense that a certain basic level would be free OF CHARGE to everyone physically using it. Free basic level of food, water, education, medical care, internet, police, etc. There are good economic reasons for this. Subsidized isn't exactly right because it sounds like the customer still has a copay. I mean wealth redistribution, but only to provide the basics for everyone. One can probably achieve this by a basic income calculated in terms of the "minimal cost of living" in a certain area. If people want more than that, then they can start a company, pay taxes, go work etc. But those taxes would go towards ensuring the minimum. In short I'm arguing for a very well-defined minarchist position that I can defend.
12y ago

jonnathanson 12y ago

The reason they're so hated is a perfect combination of Service Quality x Frequency. The service quality is horrendous and intentionally misleading, for all the reasons you've stated, among others. But that's just the half of it. We, as consumers, have to deal with these companies on a regular basis. We get their crazy bills every month. We get outages, and we have to navigate a labyrinth of bullshit to get them serviced. We get their up-sales calls every month, despite repeatedly asking to be removed from whatever hell-spawned list we're on to get them. Every now and then, we have to deal with their customer service reps on the phone. The point is, we have tangible, direct experience with these companies every year. By comparison, our experiences with the folks at Halliburton, Monsanto, BP, etc., are indirect. We might rely on their products and services, but we don't deal with these companies directly. This makes them more of an abstraction in our minds. Many of us despise that abstraction, but it remains an abstraction, all the same. If you look at polls of the most hated brands and companies in America, many of them are brands and companies we engage with personally and frequently. Airlines, credit card companies, cable and ISPs, cellular companies, insurance providers, etc. Companies like Blackwater (or whatever it's currently calling itself) don't make those lists, because aside from hearing about them in the news, most people don't have any direct experience with them.

mikeash 12y ago

I actually am pretty happy with both my wired and wireless internet providers, although I know that makes me the odd man out. I have FiOS for the home connection, and they've been nothing but great. I have AT&T for wireless, and I'm fairly happy with them. It's not cheap, but for what I get it's not tremendously expensive either. I pay $130/month for two smartphones with 10GB of data and unlimited everything else, which isn't bad. They're actively discouraging the old contract system with subsidized phones, which was the source of a lot of trouble. I'll probably buy my next phone outright and they won't bat an eye. I used to have Comcast and they were indeed awful. Terrible customer service, frequently clueless and unhelpful techs, and the service wasn't all that great either. Just trying to show that I'm not a complete corporate shill.... Anyway, I know that AT&T and Verizon aren't always liked either, but I think there's some substantial variation within the industry, even if maybe it's only between "awful" and "less bad".

jotm 12y ago
$130/month for 10GB data is kind of a ripoff. Granted, it's only for one phone, but right now I pay 25 Euros (~$30) for unlimited calls and SMS and 5GB data per month (extendable for 10 Euros per 5 GB whenever I run out) in Germany. And that's expensive compared to other EU countries...
- Aqua_Geek 12y ago
  Agreed. I lived in Germany for about 9 months last year. I had cell service for about 15€/month. It really sucked to come back to the US and pay $100/month for worse service.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    A lot of it is coverage. I could pay substantially less if I was willing to go with a worse network. How much would it cost you for a plan that covered all of Europe?
    - mnx 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago

isn't it amazing how the companies that provide us with access to the internet are pretty much among the most hated companies in our country? I feel like I'd rank them almost up there with Halliburton, Sodexo and Blackwater. Blackwater is a company whose employees kill people. Sometimes civilians. And sometimes for no reason. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/blackwater-guilty-verdicts/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/22/blackwater-gui... The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as “Baghdad’s bloody Sunday,” operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. If, after reading this, anyone is still nodding their head and entertaining the idea that their internet company is in the same league as Blackwater, then they have some pretty strange value judgments.

toufka 12y ago
For the sake of information, Blackwater changed its name to Xe, and then changed it again to Academi. Academi is the name you should rub in the dirt.
- Hemospectrum 12y ago
  It can change its name all it wants, and then there's just a trail of obsolete names being attacked by people with outdated information. It would be more productive to name the people on the board of directors, who can't abandon their identities so easily.
  - tlrobinson 12y ago
    Well, in 2011 it was sold, the founder left, and a new board of directors was installed, so that doesn't really work either.
542458 12y ago
I don't think swartkrans was making any statement about the relative evil or harm of these companies, rather, he was simply commenting on their public perception. Yes, Blackwater/Xe/Academi does terrible things. Despite this, the general population has an even stronger negative perception of Comcast/AT&T/whatever, which should serve to further highlight the absurdity of the whole thing.

Igglyboo 12y ago

Calling the low tier employees scum is really unfair. They either do their job how management mandates it is done or they are fired. The lowly customer service rep isn't the reason Comcast is a piece of shit.

scott_karana 12y ago
I dunno. Some employees are sympathetic: other times, people get defensive and toe the company line even when they know it's a bullshit policy. There is nothing wrong with saying "I'm sorry, if I did this for you I would be fired." Conversely, there is everything wrong with saying "No, I'm sorry sir, but I can't change that for you" when you know he can, he just won't. (in general; not referring to this case) For reference, I worked in a Cable/ISP/telecom call center doing tech support, and had wildly varying feelings about different coworker's stances. So I'm not just armchairing opining.
- cannonpult 12y ago
  "There is nothing wrong with saying "I'm sorry, if I did this for you I would be fired."" Actually if you want to keep your job, everything is wrong with saying that. I worked at a Verizon Wireless call center for 3 years and there was no way that a statement like that would go ever well with any manager doing a call review. "Conversely, there is everything wrong with saying "No, I'm sorry sir, but I can't change that for you" when you know he can, he just won't. (in general; not referring to this case" Saying this is how you keep your job. There are call quotas that must be met. Calls are timed. Everything is monitored. Saying you can't change something for somebody does not mean that it isn't at all possible. It means, "I can't change this for you or else I would be in trouble with my managers." There is no point in wasting time explaining why something can't be changed when it's company policy it can't be changed. Above all else, these reps are just the messengers. For many of those that I worked with, their stances came from a place of "would I rather get fired or feed my three children?"
- otoburb 12y ago
  >There is nothing wrong with saying "I'm sorry, if I did this for you I would be fired." There is no external cost to you, but the customer service representative saying this may bear a personal cost for making this statement. Most customer calls are recorded for quality control. Believe it or not, these types of calls are actually listened to for both quality control and CSR script updates. In general, a CSR will be unlikely to state that and really mean it unless they are willing to run the risk of being corrected or reprimanded by superiors.

thathonkey 12y ago

It's true. Their convoluted billing schemes belong in the "mislead the customer for great profit!" hall of fame, right up there with insurance providers.

jordanpg 12y ago

I'm sure no one wants to hear this, but folks, this is what good capitalism looks like. While it's true that it's possible to run a company without being horrible, it's almost certainly far better for short-term profits to do so. > Halliburton, Sodexo and Blackwater Guess what the executives running these companies have in common with the ones running AT&T? Downvote away. AT&T is behaving rationally.

rlpb 12y ago
> While it's true that it's possible to run a company without being horrible, it's almost certainly far better for short-term profits to do so. Only when you're in a monopoly or an oligopoly or similar. And this is a market failure in a capitalist economy. In this case, it's enforced by regulation, which is the opposite of what a capitalist economy is supposed to have.
- jordanpg 12y ago
  I don't follow your use of the pronoun `this`. Is monopoly in general a failure? Or is it AT&T in this particular instance? Are the problems of monopolies solved by regulation in general? Or is this particular AT&T situation solved by regulation? Is regulation the opposite of what capitalist economies should have? Or monopolies?
  - rlpb 12y ago
    I'm saying that the argument that we're observing capitalism at work is false. > Is monopoly in general a failure? Or is it AT&T in this particular instance? Monopoly is in general a market failure (which is why antitrust laws exist). Therefore AT&T having the position it does (not a monopoly, but an oligopoly at best) is a market failure. > Is regulation the opposite of what capitalist economies should have? My understanding is that capitalism (in the sense that the great-grandparent post was using it) is something that involves not having regulation. Since AT&T's position is a consequence of this regulation, the assertion that we're observing capitalism (in the sense I think the great-grandparent used the term) is false.
  - 12y ago

gadders 12y ago

>I feel like I'd rank them almost up there with Halliburton, Sodexo and Blackwater. i.e. the typical left-wing "bogey man" companies. I'm surprised you didn't throw in News Corp as well. I think Blackwater saved more lives than they lost, and if they were that bad why did the State Department keep re-employing them? You should read Erik Prince's biography. It might change your perspective.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> if they were that bad why did the State Department keep re-employing them? Most people that think that Blackwater/Xe/whatever they are called today is bad also think that the government decision makers deciding to employ them are/were bad, at a minimum in the context of that decision, and quite frequently that the whole, long-term, multi-decade policy of progressively outsourcing formerly-military conflict-zone functions to civilian contractors is a bad trend driven in no small part by corrupt business-government relations in the military industrial complex. So, saying "Well, the State Department hired them, so they must be good" is, well, kind of ignoring the entire basis of the opposition.
- gadders 12y ago
  Ah, ok. It's a conspiracy theory. Got you.

vlunkr 12y ago

I recently changed my internet provider to a small ISP based in my state. Partially because they had good prices, but also on principle, I'm tired of giving my money to companies that are so incompetent/evil. I think more people need to start doing the same if they can. They ONLY way these companies will really change is if we stop giving them our money.

anigbrowl 12y ago

They try to actively create worse experiences for their customers. No, of course they do't. They try to create revenue-maximizing opportunities for themselves at the expense of their customers - although many non-geek customers may even like these siloed, suboptimal applications for want of a better understanding of how they could be using their devices. Nobody deliberately sets out to make their product worse, that's a good way to lose customers to the competition. IT's an unwanted side-effect of trying to extract more revenue from each customer. This doesn't preclude the companies from being greedy, negligent, compromising customers' security and so on. I agree that the effect of their policies is to create worse customer experiences. But to assume that their underlying motivation is make you unhappy is silly. In gneral you'll be much happier if you stop worrying about why people do stuff like this and just learn to firmly insist on what you want, eg 'I purchased this unlocked phone because I do not like extra apps. Please sell me a SIM card and sign me up for a month-to-month service plan that I can opt out of any time. If you try to upsell me I'm going to leave and go to your competitor's store.' I do appreciate how annoying and stressful you find this. I'm not American either and intensity of sales tactics in the US consumer space is culturally alien to me, but competitive contractualism seems to be regarded as the keystone of individual economic freedom in the US, vs the more paternalistic approaches that prevail in some other places.

exelius 12y ago

I completely agree with you that their service is awful and primarily geared towards sales. I also agree that they engage in price obfuscation in order to nickel and dime you to death: it's really obnoxious and makes for an awful customer experience. I'll even agree with you that they are expensive (because they are). But they are expensive with good reason: a nationwide communications network is really expensive to run, and there's no fair way to allocate costs. When considering throughput / capacity on infrastructure, peak usage is all that really matters. In that sense, someone who goes on Netflix and watches 2 hours of video every night at 8-10PM costs you roughly the same as someone with torrents running 24/7. Some ISPs have resorted to data caps because they at least introduce the possibility that you might go over, which causes people to at least think about their bandwidth usage. When all is said and done, telecom companies in the US are profitable, but not insanely profitable. This is the entire reason that Comcast is the sole broadband provider in many of its markets: the payouts (margins) aren't big enough for another company to justify the upfront costs, except in a few profitable suburbs. If you look at cellular, where the big players DID overbuild in comparison to landlines, net margins STILL settled out close to 10-15% (not coincidentally, those are about the same as cable/landline.) And cellular is still awful, even though it is much more competitive than wireline. Having worked at a number of big telecom companies, the vast majority of people who work at them have no exposure to any of the crap you're talking about. I know it's fun to generalize on the internet, but most people working at these companies are so far removed from anything regulatory or customer service related that it doesn't bother them. Hell, most of them are consultants who don't even work for the company. Marketing is a hypothesis-driven steamroller: you test several variants of marketing material and see which one works best. The one that works best is probably the least honest one! So you go with it because your goal is to produce the most effective marketing material, not the most transparent. You probably don't even know enough about the product that's being sold to know you're being dishonest.

nikanj 12y ago
A lot of that infrastructure was build with municipal grants and other forms of taxpayer money, an advantage a new competitor probably would not get

wpietri 12y ago

> For those of us who are Americans, isn't it amazing how the companies that provide us with access to the internet are pretty much among the most hated companies in our country? My read is that when companies get large enough not to have to really compete, and especially when they have services that are hard to live without, then they go from seeing people as customers (whose loyalty they must win) to territory (which they conquer and exploit). Capitalism works really well in the small when there's plenty of competition: I live in a neighborhood with a lot of local restaurants, and they're generally great. But dealing with an incumbent telco or cable company quickly makes me look like I have Tourette's.

sp332 12y ago

Small note: Blackwater changed its name to Xi, then Academi. And Academi is now part of Constellis Holdings. So if you hear about any of those in the news, it's the same group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi