Comcast cable monopoly threatens to create more ‘A**hole Browns'
Comcast cable clearly got the wrong Richard Brown. Although I haven’t gone by Ricardo in years, I am known as “A**hole” just about every other day.
The renowned user-friendly and consumer-centric Comcast cable empire has yet again made a stunningly awesome customer service faux pas when it sent out a bill to Ricardo and Lisa Brown of Spokane, Wash., renaming Ricardo to the perhaps apt “A**hole Brown,” reportedly a response to him canceling his Comcast service.
Is Ricardo an a**hole? I don’t know. Comcast seems to have a track record of turning perfectly normal people into raving lunatics, with customer service goons trained to psychologically beat down all callers.
It was in the latter half of last year that one man recorded his entire customer service call as he was incredulously brow-beaten for 20 minutes over a request to end his high-speed Internet service.
All of these stories become particularly newsworthy as the cable giant continues its bid to merge with Time Warner, a marriage that for all intents and purposes creates a cable monopoly in the United States by cornering the market in just about all of the most populous cities and regions in the country.
The combined company would blanket the East Coast and large sections of the Midwest, mostly notably controlling widespread areas of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago, southern and central Florida, Atlanta and Houston.
In California the coverage is more sparse, but the concentration is significant in pockets, with near domination in San Francisco, Seattle and a chunk of Los Angeles.
What that means in potential numbers is, the Time Warner-Comcast Organized Crime Syndicate would have control of 70 million households, or almost one-third of the country.
That’s a lot of chances to P.O. a lot of customers, creating whole communities of A*hole Browns, Shhead Smiths, Sonofa**** Sandovals, Mutha******* Mendozas and all manner in between of frothing, angry customers fed up with poor customer service, but more important, a lack of choices that leaves consumers no options but bad ones in their respective communities.
We’ll certainly be one of those regions on the bad end of the deal. Time Warner is the only game in town, compared with slower satellite options and what has proven to be spotty and sluggish DSL at times.
Admittedly, I have had some decent dealings with Time Warner in recent weeks, but not before I called five or six times and showed up at the office four times to get one issue resolved.
At that moment, I was certainly the A**hole Brown the cable customer service world was referring to, but if some of the predictions of this monopoly come true, I won’t be the only one.
Our president, during his State of the Union Address, brought up the issue of net neutrality, and his administration’s commitment to keep a free and unhindered Internet in place where digital innovation flourishes, driving the economy and the future of pioneering scientific efforts.
Yet as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Justice Department buy time in deciding whether to allow the merger to go through, Comcast has been dipping its toe in the pool of restrictive bandwidth for consumers/Internet users and those who provide commercial and educational content on the Web.
Granted, it’s common for customers to have to pay for levels of service, much like we do with our cellphones, cable, satellite packages, and yes, newspapers.
However, Comcast has announced its intention to further test limiting access to businesses’ upload capacity based on what they can afford. A Netflix and Amazon, for instance, would have the highest level of service because it can afford it, but Comcast would also be able to give itself preferential treatment and unlimited access for its content companies like NBCUniversal, creating an imbalance in itself.
Smaller websites that serve a niche commercial function, or are educational or public service based, wouldn’t get nearly the same access, benefits and might even be priced out altogether.
A captive audience of A**hole Browns will be the least of our worries in a Comcast-Time Warner idiocracy. If monopolies are bad for business and antithetical to so-called American capitalism, this one threatens the promise of net neutrality, too.
And geez, the customer service issue: will bigger mean better? That’s doubtful. Ricardo Brown, I feel you, brother — and that’s coming from the real A**hole Brown.
On the Web (for reference):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/29/comcast-asshole-brown_n_6568238.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/comcasts-lobbying-machine-faces-test-in-washington-1421983983
This column originally appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Jan. 30, 2015.