DirecTV

Based on numbers gathered in September 2010 by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, DirecTV is the second leading multiple system operator, or MSO, with around 18,934,000 subscribers. This MSO started in the summer of 1994 and is owned by the DirecTV Group, which is controlled by Liberty Media. To date, it has generated over $17 billion dollars. DirecTV’s main competitor is Comcast, but is also threatened by Time Warner Cable, Inc. and Dish Network Corporation. DirecTV, however, also offers high speed Internet, and DVR.

            Bloggers/Users of DirecTV either love it or hate it. Honestly, there are more “hate it”s of the MSO than people who cannot live without it. Many people blogged about the billing problems with DirecTV. I can relate, because when my family had DirecTV, we got billed almost three times what we should have. My dad then spent hours on the phone trying to get reimbursed. After a struggle with the customer service, we ended up getting three months of TV free. Ultimately we changed to Dish Network though. There were also some problems voiced about the number of channels being received and complaints about the delayed DVRs. Users usually end up switching to a different service, and this can be aggravated by the slow moving customer service workers.  

            But there were pro DirecTV bloggers. One woman commented on the reliability of the satellite dish, saying it worked for her even in bad weather conditions. Installation for many people was simple and quick. Other people commented on the ease of DirecTV’s guides and the great quality of their HD channels. There are also the many sports packages for the NFL and NASCAR that create a lot of happy DirecTV fans.

            In the end, I think that the best MSO depends on the individual. If s/he likes more channels, or better service, they have to choose a system operator that accommodates that need. Much of the complaints have to do with how much money someone is willing to spend; some say DirecTV is cheap, some say it’s expensive. I say, you get what you pay for.

Cox Communications may need to update with the digital times

Image taken from Wikipedia.org

Cox Communications is the third-largest cable television provider in the United States and the ranked the fifth in the top worldwide MSOs, with just over 5 million subscribers.  This telecomm provider is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises and offer cable, internet and phone to its subscribers.  The company appears to have some very moral intentions around the communities they provide service for.  There are several communities in California with middle schools that have received grants for technology from Cox Communications.  A couple weeks ago, the company donated over 8,000 meals to the homeless and underserved in Orange County.  At the same time, at the San Diego headquarter, the company completed an alternative energy project.  Cox Communications seems to have a lot of their interest set on the community.  But that isn’t to say that it doesn’t have problems just like any other MSO.      

Comcast: The Good With The Bad

 

Comcast is the largest cable operator in the United States.  It provides     television, phone, and internet services  It distributes service in 39 States and Washington D.C..  The company also owns many cable networks, including The Golf Channel and Versus.  Two weeks ago (January 18, 2011) Comcast acquired NBC Universal after approval from the FCC.

My research on Comcast and it’s public opinion standing yielded what I had suspected: not many people like the main providers of their, TV, Internet, or Home Phone.  These companies have enacted extremely complex coverage plans that are full of hidden fees and charges.  The frustrating results of these plans create a lot of negative reviews on internet review sites, such as My3Cents and RateItAll.  I found that most of the review sites had a rating of approval for Comcast of around 25%.  I think that this number is a little bit high, because most people are more likely to post something on the internet when they are unhappy with something.  However, from reading other blogs, other companies are not faring much better in the public eye.  This research leads me to believe that most service in this field is substandard, and with Comcast being the most widely used company, it has the most negative reviews

DirecTV

The first thing I had to research was “what is a cable MSO”, which turns out to just be a fancy way of saying “cable company”. So, then I decided to choose DirecTV as the company I would research. DirecTV was launched in El Segundo, California June 17, 1994. It is now owned by The DirecTV Group who is controlled by Liberty Media. Liberty Media is a media conglomerate traded on the stock exchange through NASDAQ, controlled by chairmen John C. Malone. DirecTV today has over 18 million subscribers and generated roughly $17.25 billion in revenue at end of the year in 2007, no wonder Forbes ranked Mr. Malone 204^th of the “Top 400 Richest Americans” in 2006.

One of the main blogging topics I saw was about the billing problems. A lot of people said they have spent entire days on the phone with a customer service representative trying to get their free HD credit, Stars and Showtime credit, and their referral credit. One person even said that the billing process ruined their entire experience with DirecTV.  I can relate to the people who have spent hours on the phone with a customer service because my dad is always yelling on the phone to one of them for hours on end.

The other theme the blogs I read was the quality of DirecTV once they finally sorted out the problems. People loved the excellence of the  HD and NFL Sunday Ticket, which allows you to watch every football game playing on Sunday.  DirecTV has exclusive rights to sports packages for NFL Sunday Ticket and NASCAR Hot Pass, and a lot of people solely subscribe to DirecTV because of it and say that DirecTV would fall out if it was not for this.

But the most talked about subject that I found was money. It’s all about the Benjamins! It is strange that some people said that DirecTV cost them so much more money in comparison to other companies. Then other people said that DirecTV is the cheapest cable company they have had. People for the most part are not pleased with their DirecTV subscription.

Comcast, The MSO Titan

Background

Comcast is one of the largest players in the cable, entertainment and communication industries. According to their website, Comcast has 22.9 million cable customers, 16.7 million high-speed internet customers and 8.4 million voice customers. They also employ about 107,0000 people nationwide.

Blogosphere

While Comcast is indeed a massive corporation and provides services to millions of Americans, this does not mean that those millions of Americans think very highly of Comcast. Comcast has earned the ire of its customers and regulators alike for several of its recent activities. From a customer service standpoint, one only need to google “Comcast blogs” to see the result: the second search result after the official Comcast blog is a blog lovingly titled Comcast Must Die. This is followed by other individual blog posts from blogs not dedicated solely to bashing Comcast, with such titles as “I hate Comcast…” ect.

For in-depth individual accounts of how customers have had bad customer service and be poorly treated by Comacast, The Consumerist blog provides a laundry list of options to choose from. Stories such as this, or this, this one as well, even this one, this one too, and many more clearly show that Comcast has its share of unhappy and unsatisfied customers.

To find positive buzz and good customer relation stories is significantly more difficult than those of individuals slamming the service. The fact that people are more likely to blog their grievances as opposed to their satisfactory experiences does, however, need to be taken into account.

There are even some websites entirely devoted to bashing Comcast. For a slightly more empirical view of the situation I direct readers to Customer Service Scoreboard to see how Comcast stacks up. I feel the results are self explanatory, so I won’t go into much detail other then to say it’s not pretty.

Net Neutrality

One issue in particular stands out enough to merit mentioning on its own: this is none other then Comcast’s assault of the principle of net neutrality. In 2007 it was discovered that Comcast was secretly traffic shaping its network and interfering with P2P traffic. While at first Comcast denied the claims they eventually admitted to doing so after empirical evidence surfaced. The FCC got involved and it eventually went to the courts. What is significant here in regards to customer opinion is that 1)the consumer response was almost universally negative. 2) not only was Comcast engaging in traffic-shaping, but was doing so secretly without informing its consumers and subsequently denying its practices as long as it could. This created a backlash against the corporation among many current subscribers and served to damage the company’s image.

The Bottom Line

What all this boils down to in the end is pretty simple: many current customers are unhappy with their current service and the way Comcast has acted in the past.

DirecTV

As of September 2010, DirecTV is the second highest multiple system operator (MSO) with 18,934,000 subscribers.  DirecTV began on June 17^th, 1994 and is now owned by The DirecTV Group.  That group is controlled by Liberty Media.  In addition to providing television services, DirecTV also offers high speed Internet, digital video recorder (DVR), and mobile applications that can control users’ DVR.

Users’ reactions towards DirecTV’s services are varied from users loving it to users hating it.  A forum from Viewpoints.com allows users to rate and review certain products.  For DirecTV, there is one reviewer who switched from Dish Network to DirecTV and loved it.  She said that the DVR feature was better because she was able to simultaneously record shows and wrote that DirecTV was a great satellite provider.  Another reviewer commented on the dependable service and the ease of installing a DirecTV satellite dish.  Since having her DirecTV, this user has not had any problems and stated that it is more dependable than cable TV.  She also mentioned that the satellite dish did not take up much space and the installation time took less than an hour.

On the other side of the spectrum, there have been many negative reviews about DirecTV.  In another forum discussing this MSO, users have had bad experiences with it.  One user said that DirecTV mislead him about the number of channels he would receive.  He was told that he would receive 67 channels but most of these channels were news or movie clips.  When he called to see if he could change his channels, they representative offered him another package that required him to pay more money.  Another user complained that he continually looses his TV reception due to snow.  When he called to have it fixed, he was advised to clean out the snow first.  Many users in Oregon, California, Washington, and New York have criticized the removal of FOX network due to the agreement between the two companies have expired.  These users want to switch to another service especially since they are missing their favorite shows and news programs.

Dish Network Blog #7

According to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Dish Network Corporation is the 3rd top MSO as of September 2010 with 14,289,000 subscribers. According to the Dish Network web site, in 1996 Dish network sent out its first broadcast and by 1997 the company reached its first one million users. In 1999 the company unveiled the world’s first and only 500 channel satellite television system and reached out to two million users in the same year. In more recent news, 2010 was a very big year for this company. In April DishNetwork becomes the first and only pay-TV provider to offer more than 200 HD channels. Later in the year the company announced its collaboration with Google to create Google TV. For a more detailed timeline:  http://www.dishnetwork.com/about/profile/history/default.aspx

I found many forums and blogs for people to post their opinions about Dish Network. Unfortunately I found that the most occurring kinds of comments about the company were negative ones. I found a site simply called “”Dish Network Reviews” which had people’s opinions on the pros and cons of the company. A very common complaint was that the customer service was less than satisfactory, and a common pro was that people found the system user friendly and easy to use. Another very common complaint was that the service started out very affordable, even cheap, and but that was very temporary. The deals soon wore off and the service seemed to get very expensive fast. However, the fact that most of the reviews about the company were negative made me think that it is the most dissatisfied customers that are more likely to blog about their bad experience. As a consumer I can say that I am much more vocal about something that I strongly dislike, instead of the other way around. This makes me wonder if there are  more good things that people are not posting.

I also found a blog that someone wrote comparing Direct tv, Dish Network, and Comcast, as well as invited other people to share their opinions about the companies. This man who created the blog gave Dish Network a C as a grade. He also cited other people’s blogs as being only 65% positive, 42% gave only one star out of five and only 12% gave five starts out of five. http://cyfairrealestate.com/2010/09/the-great-debate-comcast-vs-directv-vs-dish-network-vs-entouch/

Comcast

After reading this prompt for this blog, I found myself in a dilemma. I had no idea where to look for online discussions, forums or blogs about Comcast or where I could find costumers discussion ideas, problems or issues with this company. So the first place I went for information was of course Wikipedia. There I found that Comcast has the most subscribers in the United States. It has 49.7% of the market share. Time Warner is trailing it with 19.4% of the Market share.

After this I ventured onto Google to see if it could direct me to a better site. At first I found a small blog. I found that many customers were concerned with how Comcast was taking over the television providers and much more. There were also complaints about how there should be up front fees and very clear services. Many people seemed overwhelmed with what Comcast offers and may want to downgrade programs. Yet there has been a mostly good review of costumer service. I had also found Comcast’s own personal blog. This blog kept the community updated on most of the recent endeavors that Comcast was trying to overtake or thinking of overtaking. There were also posts from A-listed customers raving about how Comcast is helping the overall community and has created jobs around the country. The following article caught my attention though. It was not a blog or a discussion, it was about how Comcast has been monitoring twitter, blogs, and other online sites to get feedback and provide faster customer service, or so they claimed. There were stories of people complaining online about Comcast and then the next day they would receive a call or someone would show up to fix the problem. I thought this was especially interesting because it brought up the idea of privacy and if this is right of Comcast and the brilliance of this action. Comcast is using they’re own media and modern day modes of communication to go above and beyond the normal customer service. But the question that keeps appearing in my head is, is this right of Comcast to be watching their costumes and what does this mean if a giant company can effect our lives so closely?

Charter Communications

Charter Communications is the number six largest MSO in terms of the number of subscribers with 4,653,000; according to ncta.com.  Charter offers a bundle package that includes internet, cable, and phone service all on one bill.  After researching a few different forums I found that people have mixed feelings about charter as a whole, but ultimately do not like the package for one reason.  This reason is because if one piece of the package fails to operate, everything fails to operate.  One subscriber to Charter chose to go with DirecTV for cable, but stayed with Charter phone and internet.

blog no. 7

Comcast Corporation, the U.S.’s largest Multiple System Operator (MSO), or company that owns multiple telecommunications systems that offers communications services, boasted over 22 million basic video subscribers in 2010, according to the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA). The company provides cable, internet and telephone service in the United States through a subdivision called Xfinity. Comcast’s competitors include: DirecTV (over 18 million subscribers), Dish Network Corporation (over 14 million subscribers), Time Warner Cable, Inc. (over 12 million subscribers).

So why do so many people prefer Comcast over its competitors? What sets them apart? Let’s take a look at Comcast versus DirecTV, its top competitor. According to Comcast’s website, they offer more On Demand and HD choices than DirecTV, and offer the fastest internet speeds and 24/7 live customer support, which DirecTV does not. Being that these are all Comcast’s claims, let’s see what each company’s customers have to say.

I noticed a couple of trends in the different blogs and forums that discuss these competing companies. One trend had to do with customer care. Despite boasting 24/7 live customer support, many of Comcast’s customers are thoroughly dissatisfied with the service they receive. In fact, 5,470 people voted on the question, “Which one makes you want to impale yourself on your old rabbit ear antenna? Which company is worse?” A whopping 83.51% said Comcast was the worse company with regard to consumer care, while only 16.49% said that DirecTV was. While this may seem like a trivial online survey, I believe that customer care is a very important aspect of a company. Then what is it about Comcast that makes them number one? I think their key to success lies within their wide variety of services. DirecTV only offers television and audio services, while Comcast offers the triple play (high-speed internet access, television, and telephone services, all over one broadband connection). So, although the customer service may not be up to par, Comcast does make it easier on their customers by offering the whole gamut of goodies, instead of requiring them go to other companies for their other needs. Despite being more expensive than their competitors as well, sometimes it’s worth paying the price for convenience.