Comcast, Time Warner Cable Bring Up Rear In Cable Customer Satisfaction

Comcast and Time Warner Cable may be two of the largest cable and Internet providers in the country, but they’re also the two worst, according to the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Though the overall ACSI score for the subscription TV industry enjoyed a bit of a bump, from 66 in 2012 to 68 this year, that is still not high enough to get these companies out of the doldrums, leaving only newspapers and Internet service providers (most of whom are also cable companies) with a worse industry index score.

For the second year in a row, Verizon FiOS came out on top of the rankings, with a score of 73, down one point from the previous year. DirecTV enjoyed a huge 4-point bump from 2012, increasing its score to 72, while the score for AT&T U-Verse increased by three points to 71.

The biggest improvement over 2012 came from Charter, which had come in dead last in 2012 with a score of 59. This year, its score increased by 5 points, allowing it to leapfrog Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Comcast actually improved its score from 61 to 63, while TWC saw the biggest drop on the ACSI survey, going from 63 down to 60 in a single year.

Industry-wide, customers were reasonably happy with picture quality, ease-of-use, and signal reliability. In fact, the only customer experience category in which the subscription TV industry scored poor marks was “call center satisfaction,” which had a score of 70 — four points below the average score of 74 for all industries.

For the first time, ACSI looked at customer satisfaction with Internet service providers, and… the top and bottom scorers are very similar to what we saw in the subscription TV rankings, with Verizon FiOS the top scorer (71), while Time Warner Cable (63) and Comcast (62) brought up the rear.

And once again, call center satisfaction in this industry was dismal, with a low, low score of 65 — a full nine points below the ACSI average of 74.

So, basically, this all but confirms that next year’s Worst Company In America bracket will once again be chock full of cable and Internet providers.

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