Comcast, one of America’s most-hated brands, has seen a tiny improvement this year. According to FCC complaint data obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer, complaints about Comcast’s internet fell 43 percent between May 2016 and May 2017.
But at the same time, far more people were complaining about internet rather than cable this year. Everyone says that cable TV is still alive in the age of cord cutting, but the complaints say otherwise.
According to data FOIAd by the Philadelphia Inquirer, between “November 2014 and early May, consumers lodged 61 percent more complaints about their Comcast internet services than they did for their TV services, 41,760 internet complaints compared with 25,865 TV complaints. ”
Unsurprisingly, the biggest source of complaints was billing, with over 21,000 individual complaints lodged with the FCC. Lack of availability — the service not working! — was second, with internet speed only coming in third place.
Comcast executives told the Inquirer they were happy that 99 percent of customers hadn’t had to lodge a complaint in the last year.
Overall, the data showed a distinct shift from complaints about cable to complaints about internet. The shift may echo a difference in how people are using devices in the home: cable is older and has, to the greatest part, already been worked out. Home internet is getting increasingly stressed year by year, as increasing numbers of devices are being added to a home network. Comcast execs told the Inquirer that Wi-Fi interference — often caused by the saturation of Wi-Fi devices in an area — is a large part of the problem.
