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PHILADELPHIA - High-definition television? Cool. Pausing and rewinding live TV? Wow.
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Getting that stuff to work as promised? Good luck. Paying the bill? Ouch.
Those gee-whizzy new video products offered by cable- and satellite-TV providers may be compelling, but for some customers they're also confounding.
That two-sided coin may be one reason a yearly survey to be released Tuesday by the University of Michigan shows that cable- and satellite-TV providers have the worst customer-satisfaction scores of any service-providing industry.
Wireless phone service providers, who also sell increasingly complex technology -- with complex pricing plans to boot -- were just above them in the survey.
``Rising prices, the complexity of the plans, the complexity of operating the stuff -- it all contributes to consumer frustration,'' said Allan Tilullo, a telecommunications analyst with Probe Research in Cedar Knolls, N.J. ``And it's only going to get worse.''
``I think the bigger source of dissatisfaction is that the rates never go down,'' he said. ``When the key metric is RPU, that doesn't leave customers with warm and fuzzy feelings about these companies.''
On a scale of zero to 100, where zero is worst and 100 is best, cable- and satellite-television service providers got a score of 61, unchanged from last year.
The best scores went to companies in the express delivery business -- such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service -- which got scores of 77 to 83.
The two dominant satellite firms, DirecTV and Dish Network, which took millions of customers away from the cable industry by stressing lower prices, then raised their prices in January and March of this year, saw their scores drop from 71 each to 67 and 68, respectively.
``We're pleased to see the gap'' with satellite companies ``closed,'' said Dave Watson, who heads Comcast's cable and Internet-access business. ``But we know without a shadow of a doubt that we have a lot more work to do.''
PHILADELPHIA - High-definition television? Cool. Pausing and rewinding live TV? Wow.
ADVERTISEMENT
Getting that stuff to work as promised? Good luck. Paying the bill? Ouch.
Those gee-whizzy new video products offered by cable- and satellite-TV providers may be compelling, but for some customers they're also confounding.
That two-sided coin may be one reason a yearly survey to be released Tuesday by the University of Michigan shows that cable- and satellite-TV providers have the worst customer-satisfaction scores of any service-providing industry.
Wireless phone service providers, who also sell increasingly complex technology -- with complex pricing plans to boot -- were just above them in the survey.
``Rising prices, the complexity of the plans, the complexity of operating the stuff -- it all contributes to consumer frustration,'' said Allan Tilullo, a telecommunications analyst with Probe Research in Cedar Knolls, N.J. ``And it's only going to get worse.''
``I think the bigger source of dissatisfaction is that the rates never go down,'' he said. ``When the key metric is RPU, that doesn't leave customers with warm and fuzzy feelings about these companies.''
On a scale of zero to 100, where zero is worst and 100 is best, cable- and satellite-television service providers got a score of 61, unchanged from last year.
The best scores went to companies in the express delivery business -- such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service -- which got scores of 77 to 83.
The two dominant satellite firms, DirecTV and Dish Network, which took millions of customers away from the cable industry by stressing lower prices, then raised their prices in January and March of this year, saw their scores drop from 71 each to 67 and 68, respectively.
``We're pleased to see the gap'' with satellite companies ``closed,'' said Dave Watson, who heads Comcast's cable and Internet-access business. ``But we know without a shadow of a doubt that we have a lot more work to do.''
