Consumers Not Satisfied With Cable, Internet Service, Survey Says

Consumers generally don't like their pay-TV or Internet service, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index's "ASCI Telecommunications and Information Report 2015" released Tuesday. Based on surveys of more than 70,000 consumers, the ASCI report looks at consumers' happiness with everything from their pay TV and Internet to phone service. Both pay-TV and Internet service received the lowest overall satisfaction rankings among the industries ASCI covers, with index scores of 63 each and with customer satisfaction for pay TV down 3.1 percent from the 2014 survey, while Internet was unchanged, the organization said. Among pay-TV providers, Verizon and its FiOS service was ranked highest, with an index score of 71, followed closely by AT&T's U-verse at 69 and satellite companies DirecTV and Dish, at 68 and 67, respectively. U-verse and FiOS were also the highest-ranked ISPs, with index scores of 69 and 68, respectively. Consumers' happiness with pay-TV service was down nearly across the board, as those surveyed gave lower rankings to everything from picture quality to understandability of bills, compared with 2014 numbers. The satisfaction with ISP service was more mixed, as consumers were happier with performance during peak hours but bearish on video streaming quality. Consumer satisfaction also was down 5.5 percent for wireline phone service and down 2.8 percent for wireless phone service, with Vonage and TracFone, respectively, garnering the highest consumer satisfaction rankings in those industries with Vonage rating 73 on the index and TracFone 77.