As an Englishman, the consumer rights situation (or, uh, lack thereof) in the US boggles me regularly. It's not just the complete absence of consumer regulators ("we let the courts handle that") -- it's that even the courts have been neutered! The Supreme Court has basically ruled that consumer class action suits don't exist any more (https://www.fisherphillips.com/resources-alerts-supreme-cour...) -- everything can now be forced into binding arbitration.
This survey is from FairShake, whose whole schtick is that they can represent you in an arbitration proceeding so efficiently that you can actually afford to participate. They got written up in the NYT the other month: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-over...
The only reason I found out about this at all is that FairShake are a customer of ours (their whole dispute-resolution process runs on https://anvil.works), so I talked to them for our podcast (https://anvil.works/blog/podcast-fairshake). Even with the profanities edited out, I'm pretty sure you can hear the incredulity in my voice.
U.S. law professor here. Yeah, it's really embarrassing.
The bullshit story for why this is all the case is that it's priced into products and services---which are supposedly cheaper than they might otherwise be if companies had to fear massive liability and regulation.
The real story for why this is the case is the combination of (a) fake contract law, in which we pretend people agreed to things that they in no way could have agreed to---including all those arbitration agreements that strip away class action rights, (b) a federal system that lets Congress preempt state economic regulations, including consumer protection regulations,[1] and (c) most fundamentally, the point that Mancur Olson identified in Logic of Collective Action: narrow special interests with intense preferences are lots better at getting their wills achieved than diffuse general interests; in the U.S. political lobbying is basically unrestrained; big industries like telecom have just utterly captured legislatures and regulators at every level.
Thanks for speaking openly! Can I ask you for your opinion? I have come to believe that the justice system itself is the root of the problem, namely that it is so expensive and slow that it doesn't provide justice. Trials used to take days, and now they take months or years. They used to cost hundreds, now tens of thousands, or more. It is only within such a moribund system that lobbying can be successful! If trials were fast and cheap, people might still try to lobby, but the feedback loop would be fast and accurate.
Indirectly. This is kind of a complicated issue, so let me unpack it a bit.
First, it's absolutely true that litigation is super-expensive. But from the company end, that doesn't necessarily make a real difference---arbitration is fairly expensive too (though not as expensive as litigation), they're not likely to realize huge savings from shoving consumers into all the arbitration agreements.
Where costs really matter is from the consumer side, and it's intertwined with class actions. Arbitrations don't have class actions, real court does (in most states). So an arbitration clause is really a "no class actions" clause.
And, because of litigation costs, a "no class actions" clause is really really effective at keeping consumers out of court at all. Why? Because a huge number of consumer claims are for really small rip-offs.
For example, the phone company sneaks an extra 50 cents onto the bill of everyone every month for a fake tax that doesn't really exist, and in doing so dodges some rate regulation. No consumer in their right mind is going to incur the time and expense of suing (or arbitrating) individually for 50 cents a month. But the phone company, with millions and millions of customers, benefits hugely from this ripoff.
With a class action system, some entrepreneurial lawyer can bring suit and win those millions back on behalf of the class of ripped-off consumers. Now, those class actions are pretty controversial, because the ripped-off consumers never really see any direct benefit from those lawsuits. They usually get some bullshit coupon in the mail, while the lawyer and one or two plaintiffs (the "named plaintiffs" or "class representatives") walk away with a big payday.
But the point isn't to compensate the people who lost the 50 cents. The point is to hold out the threat of those stupid huge judgments against companies who would otherwise nickel-and-dime mass consumers to death. So when companies kill the class action, they know that they won't be held accountable in the courts for that kind of misconduct, and they can engage in small ripoffs with impunity. (Mostly less blatant than fake tax thing, because government regulators might pick up on that.)
Hi there, can I ask you a tangential question about this bit?
> fake contract law, in which we pretend people agreed to things that they in no way could have agreed to
I was wondering about exactly this a while ago, though in the context of traditional (offline) software license agreements, which I think present a more blatant case of this: Why is it that a contract in which a party doesn't even know they're a party is considered a valid contract in the first place? Shouldn't a contract be a "meeting of the minds"? What meeting is there when one side has no clue about it?
This is something that tons of people have written about---I'm not a contracts expert, so I don't want to opine too directly, but I will say that lots and lots and lots of people have criticized the idea that hidden contracts will be enforced. Some courts have enforced them, some courts have refused to enforce them, and the law is a little bit tangled and complex (hence why I won't speak to it with confidence).
Those people who defend the enforcement of such contracts basically think that (a) consumers generally know that there is some contract, and can always ask to see the details before they buy, or demand a refund if they see them and they're unacceptable, (b) there will probably be some broad based public policy or unconscionability constraints on contracts entered into like this---nobody in their right mind, for example, would enforce a software contract that says that when you install it you promise to turn over the entire contents of your bank account to Mark Zuckerberg, and (c) it would be blindingly difficult to disclose full complex contracts before every consumer transaction anyway.
As you can probably tell, however, I'm with the critics---I think such contracts are fundamentally bullshit. It has always seemed to me that the right answer is to enact a set of fair default terms in legislation, and then let companies provide real contracts, or lobby to change the default rules, if they're too burdensome.
- Congress, when it legislates within its constitutional domain of authority, has the power to override ("preempt") contrary state law---and most of the classic legal principles that we inherited from England, such as the rules of contract law and tort (personal injury, fraud, other kinds of civil wrongs) are matters of state law.
- when Congress enacted the Airline Deregulation Act, they chose to preempt state law having basically anything at all to do with how airlines ran their operations.
- The plaintiff in the case I linked had just been randomly kicked out of Northwest Airlines's frequent flier policy, lost all her status, etc. He sued, claiming that they cancelled his policy for dishonest, bad-faith reasons (to cut costs before the Delta merger).
- Even though the ToS of the frequent flier program essentially said "we can kick you out for any reason," state law added an "implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing," which required, essentially, that contracting parties not abuse terms like that in order to egregiously rip one another off---which is what the plaintiff alleged. The implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing is a pretty foundational contract law idea that lots of people think is fairly important.
- The Supreme Court interpreted Congress's intent in the airline deregulation act to include preempting the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, thus implying that all kinds of abusive airline behavior, if it was strictly within the written words of the airline contract, even if normal state contract law wouldn't enforce it, would be perfectly hunkry dory. Plaintiff loses.
You are correct that it has gotten worse since the arbitration decisions.
Also, if you think its hard to resolve something when you're a customer, wait till you see how they treat you if you aren't!
To wit: I spent months fighting with Comcast about a bill for an address that I never lived at, let alone during time in question. Sent them proof multiple times but they kept sending it to collections (and collections would claim I had to go through comcast).
I still remember when I mentioned how many debt collection laws they were violating... then the retorts, then hearing the fight leave his voice when i explained i have never been a customer of comcast and thus cannot be bound by their arbitration agreement.
Which brings up a huge reminder that these companies are only able to get away with these things because in most of the country if you want internet you will have to settle up with them sooner or later.
Thats the other thing I got from the conversations: Comcast doesn't seem to be selling off the debt. (Probabpy for reasons listed above.) Every collection agency claimed that they were 'contracted to collect' but did not own the debt.
As a result trying to prove it was identity theft was a kafkaesque nightmare that I never actually succeeded at. They only left me alone because I made it clear that I had sent them more than enough documents to prove it could not have been me, and every time they would call or send another letter I would tie up 1-2 hours of one or more phone reps time.
Sadly, all too much of modern life has become about wasting your own time, and money, to mitigate screwups made by completely unaccountable third parties.
I'd imagine if you're at that point you're just Kitboga-ing it and trying to fuck with them to make them suffer dollar-wise for the time you've lost while doing something more productive or entertaining in the background. At least that's how I'd do it.
Another specific couple of aspects of the US situation boggle me:
> The Supreme Court has basically ruled that consumer class action suits don't exist any more...
The Supreme Court ruling only applies under the current law and does nothing to prevent the law being changed. But for some reason, Americans (as a whole; I realise HN is probably different) act as if this situation is final and it cannot be fixed by Congress.
The other thing that boggles me is that it's as if a service isn't cancelled until the company providing it agrees it is cancelled, and that's something their retention departments will resist doing. Where I live, the service is cancelled* when I've given notice of cancellation, whether the company wants to accept it or not. So I don't need to care about whether they'll try to put me off cancelling or not, or if they have a script or not. After I've told them, it's done; as long as I keep a record then any subsequent bills aren't my concern. But for some reason that I cannot fathom, a company not "accepting" notice of cancellation seems to be a problem in the US.
* subject to minimum terms or similar stipulations of course
> But for some reason, Americans (as a whole; I realise HN is probably different) act as if this situation is final and it cannot be fixed by Congress.
Yeah, I can't imagine why Americans don't have faith in the legislative process.
A lot of people like the situation as it is right now, with regard to binding arbitration. Some of those people are "in the pocket of big business," as it were; some see any limitation on the ability of government to "interfere" with commerce as a good thing; some do not think the courts are fair and would rather take their chances with a "competitive" arbitration system; some do not care because they don't see themselves as ever needing to go to court; some object to "big money lawyers who sue for any little thing."
It's not as slam-dunk as it seems. Though, I agree, mandatory binding arbitration ought to be banned, especially in these "contracts of adhesion" (also known as take-it-or-leave-it contracts) where the customer/person who does not put forth the contract is in a significantly reduced negotiating position, as is common in most business-to-consumer transactions.
I am particularly disappointed to see so many startups pitched on HackerNews, a group of startup founders and technology people who should know better, putting mandatory binding arbitration clauses in their user agreements. At least put in an opt-out, you disingenuous clods.
> Clearly no companies are interested in changing their ways, and why would they?
Entirely fair and I agree with you.
But if Chase, Capital One, T-Mobile, Shadow Game Server Rentals, and other large and small companies can slap an opt-out clause in their terms, why are HN startups so loathe to do so?
For fuck's sake there was a company selling a wifi-equipped PLANTER BOX that had a never-sufficiently-damned arbitration clause in their terms.
Opt out clauses are a red herring. I of course do them, but most people are not going to. By the way they're generally set up ("send self-written snail mail to this obscure address and we won't even respond"), it's clear they're meant to be merely a technicality that very few will ever notice or fulfill. If they were an actual part of a negotiated contract, they would be simply struck directly on the document before signing.
Tangentially, I do have to wonder about using web page inspector tools to modify terms presented to you, and then agreeing to the modified terms. Taking screen shots for documentation of course. At the very least, it seems like this should result in no contract being formed (since the counterparty has not signed). Which isn't really meaningful for your standard web service everything-disclaimed terms, but would matter if they tried to bind you with mandatory arbitration.
Most IT systems associate your acceptance with a particular document tracked in a database. It's really a tracker of "User pushed button in this time period." You making alterations would never manifest or be accommodated in the system; what you'd have to do is mail their legal department with a statement of interest with revisions which they'd have to adapt, which would have to filter back through Sales for adjustments in pricing.
Make no mistake, IT has enabled the most abusive form of contract entering known to Man. Frankly, I'd say it completely undermines the practice of entering into a contract, but as long as people let it skate due to the understanding they took could one day do the same thing; this is what we have.
The court friendly approach would be legislating a law that invalidates certain clauses, but leaves the low barrier to entry mechanism in place I'm fairly certain. Though I still have qualms on the whole astroglide lubricated nature of that medium of contract acceptance.
I know how the technical side works. But legally, what the company thinks you have signed isn't the final word.
Consider an analogous in-person situation of being presented with a one-signature agreement by a customer service rep. You can cross things out and sometimes the CSR will balk but often they will not. When they don't, it's likely because they're being lazy or succumbing to social pressure, as the customers usually do. So they accept the modified signed document, and pass it on to their back office or file it away.
The company would argue that the CSR is not empowered to make binding contracts on behalf of the company outside of the unilateral boilerplate. But you certainly haven't agreed to the bits you have crossed out before signing. The performance on both sides does show some kind of contract has been formed. But neither written document is straightforward evidence of the exact contract. I would suspect that few courts would find in your favor if you inserted unconscionable terms (eg company pays you $1MM). But when it's the company trying to push unconscionable terms (like making the words of the contract meaningless by removing your ability to take them to court), I could see it going either way.
I'm fairly sure this may fail muster as the only reason the one signature contract by the company to you is generally well tolerated is because it is unequivocally clear what your "consideration", (or what you get out of the arrangement) is in fact, and that by your acceptance, you state you are satisfied. In the case of software, that being access to the software itself in the form intended by the writer of the boilerplate contract.
It is not so clear that when you unilaterally cross things out, screenshot that altered document, then click accept that those terms are then binding on the counterparty since they have not had the opportunity to also stipulate or modify their terms (define their consideration) in light of your changes.
Legally speaking, there is nothing wrong with asking for different terms from the boilerplate, but economically and practically there is. It does single you out as a desirable client to fire.
In the end, it's not the legal construct of a contract that is the problem. It's that the market has widely deemed it acceptable to only automate or implement the first stage of it.
To offer an illustration of what should actually be done software-wise (super-ideal case);
You offer a short demo of the core value add, get passed the courtship phase and down to brass tacks. You are offered the boilerplate agreement with an option to accept as is, decline, or accept with modifications. Upon accepting with modifications, you are given a text entry box, and a helpful DSL to reference clauses you wish to change or strike. You utilize that, and click a confirmation button to send a message to a legally authorized representative of the vendor, who then formulates their consideration, and presents it back to you, repeat until everyone is happy.
Then you open the software and do your thing.
It should be quite evident why no one (given the economic optimization function) has converged on that solution.
It's way easier to just put enough in to defend you as a company in the boilerplate and rely on most people being unconditional to actual challenge your term offerings. That works absurdly well, and until it doesn't, I don't see a great opportunity for migration from the status quo to that. You might get slow adoption of that ideal workflow, but it will have to be paired with a better bottom line for service providers, otherwise they won't even bother to offer the actually legally complete communication channel as a first-class process.
> But for some reason, Americans (as a whole; I realise HN is probably different) act as if this situation is final and it cannot be fixed by Congress.
Because Congress has, essentially, been gridlocked for many years now.
That is also the reason why the Supreme Court has gotten so utterly important over the same time frame, because real fundamental change in politics only happen in the courts these days.
It's a bit too easy for large corporations to exercise control over Congress, so we (Americans) have little faith that they'll execute on pro-consumer legislation.
The US has a common law system, like the UK. However, arbitration panels cannot set precedent and do not issue opinions. That means the law is perpetually frozen in place. So, we really have a civil law system with none of the mechanisms that make those systems function properly.
There are obviously bigger problems with arbitration, but this one is often overlooked.
Awesome point. I keep thinking about this and want to yell at all law professors in the country (who I think have more influence than they recognize): what the hell are you going to be teaching in 20 years? Only cases before AT&T v. Concepcion?
It is worth noting that a lot of the function of consumer protection is also handled by state authorities, the feds aren't the only authority that people have to lean on. State attorney generals are usually elected so they tend to focus heavily on consumer protection issues.
Because those who don't want it give lots of money to politicians who then train their audience that it's bad, 'job killing', and 'big government' even though it benefits them.
I'm not sure consumer protections are the reason people dislike CA. CA just has an enormous number of laws. If you pass enough laws you're bound to have a few dumb/misguided ones along with a lot of good ones.
I’ve personally spoke to people that hate CA because of their environmental protection laws (since it apparently makes polluting products unavailable in other states too), as well as business owners that don’t like the non compete bans and employee protections.
The hate for stupid laws in CA is stuff like CEQA which is ostensibly about protecting the environment, but really used as a blackmail tool for residents to block more environmentally friendly apartment buildings they don't like to protect their city subsidized parking and in the end causes housing to cost more than it should.
Or the useless "anything could cause cancer" labels that get slapped on everything so everybody just ignores them.
Or the classic prop 13 which helps fuel housing affordability.
Or AB5 which will get rid of a lot of gig economy jobs outright and needed 100s of profession exceptions to not destroy even more people from getting employed.
But this is so limited. AGs can only take on a few cases per year, and they’re politically selected (what will get most press and least criticism). And the state law can be waived (or effectively waived through arbitration clause).
AGs get a lot of stuff done without taking on a case, though. Many companies will straighten up after receiving a nastygram from an AG. Maybe not so much for megacorps, but those are usually the higher profile cases that you mention.
And disputes with ISPs are nearly the ideal use case for class action suits: a large group of people being harmed, but the individual harms are relatively small, and individually pursuing a case is usually too costly or complicated to be worth it.
ISPs are a bit of a special case in America, because they lobby effectively for favorable local regulation. In other industries, it suffices to threaten a bad Yelp review if it even takes that. The worst experiences I’ve had were with Hertz, Visa, and an ISP (the latter two are monopolies). We need better consumer protections and monopoly busting, but these are low on my list of improvements.
The sad truth is that the United States has a severe access to justice problem. Most people don't know which regulator to contact, and the process requires a certain amount of time, effort, and knowledge that's out of reach of most people.
Time+effort = money. Knowledge = lawyers = also money.
The US system is based on the notion that anyone worth listening too will have ready access to lawyers. Those who cannot afford lawyers have little voice. "Let the courts handle" means "rich people only".
I went to a well funded school in a highly educated district with a constituency that consistently voted for every bill to raise funding for public schools. We had a single required credit for civics. That’s barely enough time to brush the surface of the four levels of independent government we had.
Opportunity cost was the driving factor. Much of the constituency voiced a desire for more courses in STEM or arts, not civics.
That makes sense. I can see the push for more/better STEM education, and the arts are always battling for funding as one of the first things cut on tight budgets.
I would hazard a guess that the children that attended your well-funded school have managed to assimilate an above-average amount of practical civics knowledge, in spite of minimal coverage in school, perhaps thanks to their families and social network generally. Public education in affluent districts seems to act as more of a starting point than the whole thing.
I think a lot of poorer people don't have the outside support to succeed to the same extent when there are gaps in their official curriculum. The demands on the districts they attend are greater, with a smaller tax base.
Some folks see expansion of schools power and budgets as ideologically wrong, or just oppose the taxes. Others dispute the material taught. Either way, persistent outside pressures toward austerity (along with testing performance mandates and some other issues) have helped keep our baseline education from being adequate for everyone's needs, or from achieving a standard that compares very well internationally.
Most of the referendums I am referencing were bonds for narrowly defined capital projects... not frivolous raises for themselves, if that's what you're insinuating. It was a well run district.
Just playing West Wing every time would likely be a massive improvement over the current civics classes.
The focus is very much on largely irrelevant facts from the 18th and 19th century and not on modern civics. Students understanding don’t care as a result.
If the bar were applied evenly, it would at least be worth a discussion. As it stands, it's as easy as Postmates for the rich, a huge struggle for the middle class, and effectively impossible for the poor.
Because they can't. Most places have a single choice for for ISP, so they can charge what they like and treat customers in a way that minimizes cost. Telecom is a usually a regional monopoly or duopoly, and they act accordingly.
Yes, it does. How likely do you think that is, with everyone whipped into a furious culture war all the time, and regulators captured?
I hate being a pessimist all the time, but in my memory, I see little precedent to suggest an optimistic long view is the right one.
The US proletariat is anything but class conscious. It will self-sabotage any revolutionary movement long before it concerns itself with it's true oppressors. The propaganda machine that keeps 1/3 of the country simping for capital will deflate any organized opposition as it has largely been programmed to do.
First step is changing the perception of the disaffected, about 90% of the population. There is no culture war for the 90%. Only class war. 'Culture' is a dog whistle for the camps we've been trained to align with.
Politicians trade campaign cash for law & services, every moment of every day. Voters don't think much about it because news orgs aren't very interested in covering bribery.
Regarding conflict of interest: There's nearly zero discussion about where campaign finds finally end up. Those billions are firehosed to the parent corps of news orgs, in the form of campaign ad buys.
To restate the above, politicians are funding the news orgs that cover their campaigns.
My ISP (Hotwire) randomly added a $1 monthly fee for mailing a statement and took multiple months to stop charging the fee after I complained and they kept promising to refund the most recent month or two but I'd have to call back and complain again after a month just to try to get justice.
The customer service reps would literally tell me they could only authorize a $1 refund. $2 was "too much" and required all kinds of manager approval and there was never a manager available...
I recently had it out with my ISP which concluded after I filed a BBB complaint after exhausting several other avenues.
But the issue I have is irritatingly not avoidable by switching carriers: The Chicago Cubs have levied a tax on all cable and satellite TV customers in the Chicagoland area.
The Marquee Sports Network costs every Chicago area resident a new $7 a month cost, every cable provider has agreed to it, and Sinclair Broadcasting makes it a contract term that customers cannot opt out of this new channel and massive fee.
It'd be like if HBO Max rolled out by signing everyone up, billing everyone, and making it impossible to cancel.
I got my ISP to grant me a credit for the next year or so, but it seems like a government action is the only long-term way to escape.
My "bundle" may include 100+ channels for under $100, for one, and Marquee is $7 for a single channel. Which is to say, it's exceptional in how extremely overpriced Marquee is. It's billed at the level of a premium movie channel like HBO, which is generally optional.
And a key problem is that most bundled channels are part of the price I agreed to when I signed up for service, whereas Marquee functions as an additional tax the Chicago Cubs can decide to charge me over and above the price I agreed to pay with my cable provider.
I am actively on week five of trying to make Cox realize they have a problem in their network. One of my clients in Gilbert Arizona sees intermittent packet loss outbound, making their service basically unusable. Cox both acknowledges that there is nothing wrong with the layer 2 DOCSIS circuit between our modem and their head node, and that there is loss within their network.
I was a Verizon FIOS customer when they turned all their stuff over to Frontier. I had bought a good amount of movies in their on-demand store. They just took them away. No recourse, no refund. It was highly frustrating. And calling them meant a long hold time.
My ISP decided >$100/mo. for 20mbit fiber was too much. They decided to put us into a new 10mbit fiber plan (for the same price), in an overt effort to get us to shell out even more for a faster connection (up to gigabit).
The trouble is, I'm in a very remote area, so my ISP is free to bully me all they want. They make the rules, and I have to live with it, because satellite (with data caps) is not a viable alternative.
It's beyond frustrating to deal with a 10mbit connection when I know it would cost my ISP practically nothing to give me gigabit instead.
I submit that most people don’t know when they are wronged by their ISP. The advertisement they should have been shown got replaced by something else, they got silently downgraded in video quality for that movie they watched, they got their DNS query hijacked and sent to a different site where it could be monetized, etc....
When you are sufficiently ignorant of what is being done to you on a regular basis, it’s easy to commit all sorts of crimes against you.
It's a shame "net neutrality" was co-opted by hostile corporate interests, because the original vision outlined in Tim Wu's 2003 paper was pro-consumer and likely would have led to a much better internet if ever pursued.
I regret not saying "net neutrality" as the reason for cancellation when I cancelled my Xfinity last week. I instead said "Unusable upstream bandwidth when 3-4 people are doing remote work/learning". We just got municipal fiber and it's committed to Net Neutrality, and gigabit up and down.
Aside: They spent several minutes up front establishing rapport (I kid you not "You sound like such a nice person!") then when I said I was calling to cancel service he turned it into a personal slight ("I thought we were friends, why would you do that!").
Reminds me of this snippet of an hour-long call to cancel service. “You don’t want something that works?”; “So you’re not interested in the fastest internet in the country?”; “I’m really ashamed to see you go to something that can’t give you what we can!”; “What is it about this other internet provider???”
I'm concerned about FairShake's data. Their conclusion may be correct. Based on my experience with ISPs in the United States, I am inclined to believe them. But I just can't overlook this.
They start the article with this:
> We recently set out to discover which ISP was the most-hated in every U.S. state
...and a link to their "The Most Hated Internet Service Providers in Every US State" article[0].
I live in Iowa so I scrolled down to see what our most-hated provider would be. I was fairly confident I already knew the answer: Mediacom. Their article said Cox.
If you're a fellow Iowan, you should be scratching your head. Cox only serves three cities in Iowa[1][2]: Carter Lake, Council Bluffs, and Crescent. Only one of those cities even makes it into the top 50 Iowa cities by population (Council Bluffs at #10)[3]. If you compare the coverage map on BroadbandNow for Cox[4] with the one for Mediacom[5] or even CenturyLink[6], it isn't even close.
I've lived in many cities across Iowa and everywhere I've been people hated Mediacom. CenturyLink get the silver medal, but Mediacom is hands down the most hated ISP in Iowa thanks to their awful customer service, unreliable connections, anti-competitive practices, and high prices for what would barely pass as acceptable in other parts of the world. I didn't even know we had Cox and I doubt most other Iowans do either!
I want to believe FairShake's story because it lines up with my perceptions of ISPs in the United States, but I just can't put any faith in their data if it's that unrepresentative. How can most Iowans hate Cox if the overwhelming majority of them can't even get their service?
> From those two data sources, we were able to get a pretty good idea of which ISP company customers in each state received the most complaints.
Just by comparing the sheer scale of service, there is no way Cox has more customer complaints than Mediacom in Iowa. Carter Lake, Council Bluffs, and Crescent have a combined population of about 67k or approximately 2% of the state.
I don't think competition is the primary issue here. There are numerous examples of ISPs committing outright fraud with no punishment. Lying about speeds, stealing money from customers by adding fake charges, and so on.
Competition doesn't work in a market where you can't get information about the options because people are lying cheating and stealing.
This strikes me as a failure of the regulators and justice department on not stopping false advertising, punishing fraud, and generally enabling access to justice.
I think competition is the root of the issue. With good competition you will see a lot of these issues be greatly reduced. Again, this depends on what you expect the regulator's job and your trust in its ability to do that job correctly.
I think the parent commenter leans that even if you had the regulators stepping in more, they simply couldn't do it enough to make probability_of_getting_caught * fine_of_getting_caught > money_made_defrauding_customers (which based on the latest level of corporate scandals like VW emissions and privacy related tech scandals seems to be true, regulators just can't keep up or penalize harsh enough)
With competition, you always have someone enforcing your behavior... the other guy, who will happily step in and take market share when you falter with customers.
The solutions to fines not being enough is really simple (provided we assume a functional justice department). Put people knowingly involved in committing fraud in jail.
Edit: but frankly if the law was regularly enforced I expect fines would be enough here.
Well, yes, but also its very hard (time-consuming, low conviction rate, and expensive to the wrong party - taxpayers) to get jail time for people. It creates a really weird sub-ecosystem of paying to be unaware etc. inside a corporation.
I hear you on the fines, but probably the purest form is to allow deregulation for competition but regulate to protect consumer safety (a balance if you will)
I don't think the problem is that ISP market is a monopoly or even an oligopoly. I think the problem is that it has successfully formed a cartel[0]. Breaking up ISPs would just create more members of the same cartel.
There are many ISPs who could compete with one another, but have an unwritten agreement to not compete. Competition drives lower margins, which just aren't worth it when you consider the upfront investment to start building out networks in a competitor's neighborhood - especially since the competitor is likely to retaliate by doing the same in your neighborhood. It is more cost effective for them to milk everything they can from the regions they currently dominate.
Whatever the solution looks like, I think it will have to actively incentivize ISPs to compete for each other's customers instead of just adding more ISPs to the market.
Running wires costs a shit ton of money. How are more isps covering their own little islands of service going to make any difference here?
Last mile service is a natural monopoly, no amount of pounding the table will fix that. The only reason cable and phone people even compete with each other in the space is because they didn't originally and still try not to.
The federal government grants enormous subsidies to offset the cost of it costing a shit ton of money. Recently Verizon actually told them giving them more money wouldn't help speed up roll-out. They still got the money.
So it's pretty clear that we're paying for it through our taxes, and being billed for it at exorbitant prices.
Municipal-level ISPs make so much sense but, of course, face huge challenges by both established corporate interests and the kind of people who don't believe the government is capable of doing anything.
This survey is from FairShake, whose whole schtick is that they can represent you in an arbitration proceeding so efficiently that you can actually afford to participate. They got written up in the NYT the other month: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-over...
The only reason I found out about this at all is that FairShake are a customer of ours (their whole dispute-resolution process runs on https://anvil.works), so I talked to them for our podcast (https://anvil.works/blog/podcast-fairshake). Even with the profanities edited out, I'm pretty sure you can hear the incredulity in my voice.