Media Contact: Office of Media Relations [email protected] For Immediate Release FCC VOTES TO REQUIRE CABLE AND SATELLITE TV PRICING TRANSPARENCY New ‘All-In’ Pricing Rules Will Address Consumers’ Confusion on Hidden Fees in Cable and Satellite TV Billing
WASHINGTON, March 14, 2024—The Federal Communications Commission today adopted new rules requiring cable and satellite TV providers to specify the “all-in” price clearly and prominently for video programming service in their promotional materials and on subscribers’ bills. The FCC aims to eliminate the misleading practice of describing video programming costs as a tax, fee, or surcharge. This updated “all-in” pricing format allows consumers to make informed choices, including the ability to comparison shop among competitors and to compare programming costs against alternative programming providers, including streaming services. TV providers often use deceptive junk fees to hide the real price of their services. The FCC is putting an end to this form of price masking, increasing competition, and reducing confusion among consumers. These new rules require cable operators and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) providers to state the total cost of video programming service clearly and prominently, including broadcast retransmission consent, regional sports programming, and other programming-related fees, as a prominent single line item on subscribers’ bills and in promotional materials. The record demonstrates that charges and fees for video programming provided by cable and DBS providers are often obscured in misleading promotional materials and bills, which causes significant and costly confusion for consumers. These new rules continue a series of consumer-focused proposals to combat junk fees and support transparency for consumers. In addition to this “all-in” pricing, the Commission is preparing to upcoming launch of the mandatory Broadband Consumer Labels and has proposed to eliminate early termination fees from cable and satellite TV providers. Action by the Commission March 14, 2024 by Report and Order (FCC 24-29). Chairwoman Rosenworcel, Commissioners Starks and Gomez approving. Commissioners Carr and Simington dissenting. Chairwoman Rosenworcel, Commissioners Carr, Starks, and Simington issuing separate statements. MB Docket No. 23-203
In case you were wondering the Republicans on the FCC both dissent claiming that the FCC has no jurisdiction to ban lying because people being marketed too aren’t cable subscribers yet and therefore outside of the FCC’s purview. What a load of horse-hockey. Their next argument will be that the FCC has no right to regulate cable at all because the consumer hasn’t been screwed until they give the cable company their money at which point it’s too late.
As much of a free-market-enjoyer that I am, this is what you get when you vote Republican (or stay home).
Whatever it is It will only come down to costing companies with deep lobby pockets money and how the conservative new agencies are spinning it.
I’d like to see everything priced on the rim and out the door. Taxes, registration, fees, shipping all on the line. I’d like the price on the shelf/invoice/website/advertisement/cash register and bank statement to all match.
They charge your card for seemingly random groups of products so your order is split into strange Unrecognizable transaction amounts, and you can’t tell by looking them which order items the charges are for, and if your want to see, it’s buried deep in your account settings.
And then once a month they randomly sign you up for Prime “by mistake”. But don’t worry, since you caught it in time you’ll get a full refund in 5-7 business days.
The lobbying group for cable companies said that it would hurt their highly competitive market(I’m sure they weren’t able to type that without laughing) and it makes it harder for them to advertise one price since the cost of the sports and local bundles are regional (though they have no problems getting those prices correct on the bills.)
Umm uhhhh they’ll have to increase the total price to make up the difference in processing more numbers which will cause the employee budget to decrease hurting the local economy which means less taxes to fund fire department and your babies will burn in a fire caused by the unqualified cable tech they had to hire to offset the loss in profits.
Usually here it’s not a good thing because nothing is allowed to be good. Was the same on a lot of Reddit, too. Like, the upliftingnews subreddit comments were the worst for it.
“Child spends weekends collecting cans from the trash to save enough money to turn off the Orphan Crushing Machine for a day” is not uplifting news, and is most of what got posted there.
Somewhat true, but there were a lot of genuinely good “new development will do X” or “Millionaire sets up foundation for Y”. Those invariably were filled with top comments about “sure this will make food more affordable in X, but what about (mostly or totally unrelated bad thing)??” or “this is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t immediately solve all problems!!”, which were exhausting and useless. For a whole bunch of people, Nothing Can Ever Be Good.
You know, like a bunch of comments in this thread.
Haven’t had cable nor streaming services my entire life, and I’m 35. Though I do pay for YouTube Premium. Then again, I watch media reviewers and longform film and game essayists. And speedruns. I buy or pirate all my shows. I “own” a number of shows on Google Play, but the last several years has made me stop buying there too. Physical or piracy, baby.
This. For people wanting to clean up their interface, if you select “block user” on any of those spammer posts, it removes them entirely leaving only real posters.
Cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association claimed that the commission’s “micromanagement of advertising in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace will force operators to either clutter their ads with confusing disclosures or leave pricing information out entirely.”
I would hope this would also apply to the live TV streaming services like Hulu+live tv, Fubo, YouTube TV, etc. I looked into some of them, and the added fees took the monthly bill from like $83 a month to over $100 a month, but you don’t know that unless you read the disclaimers since they advertised it at $83 a month.
Seems like it certainly needs to. I haven’t noticed any such added fees for the services I subscribe to. If true, that’s a good indication someone is seeking a competitive advantage by misleading potential customers, and good reason to act
This isn’t the worst offender I’ve seen, but it’s still bullshit. They should never be able to advertise it at $84.99 when there are $30.99 in required fees
Comcast calls me all the time trying to sell me on their Trojan horse streaming box or their cell service. I’m polite to the caller cause I know it’s just a gig for them but I always calmly tell them I only have Comcast as I have no other choice and I’d rather peel off my finger nails than give them any other business. It speaks to how bad things are that I’m dying for Verizon of all companies to come “save” me. Hyper-competitive, fucking lol.
wow. I’ve never received any spam calls from an ISP & have been using comcast internet since 2006. they’re a lot more reliable in my area than their competition (tried it, the DSL service was terribad, and wave broadband can suck a dick).
The shoe dropped on most of Verizon’s former territory. Basically anywhere they had DSL but didn’t want to lay fiber they sold off instead of even trying.
I was so happy when I was able to tell Comcast/Xfinity to suck toads after moving to an area with Google Fiber. Google may be a shit company, but I gotta admit I really love symmetrical gigabit service for $70/month.
Same! I’ve lived 3 different places in this city and this is the first one that had an independent fiber internet provider. It’s hilarious getting Comcast/Xfinity mailers advertising internet offers that are higher priced and slower than what I have.
And the thing about regulation like this is that it just resets the bar height for everyone. It’s not like this doesn’t apply to all competitors.
Unless we mean non-cable competition, i.e. streaming. Maybe that’s not under the jurisdiction of FCC? If not, though, then I have to wonder why this has to be an FCC thing in the first place. This is about truth in advertising, in general.
Isnt there like…only two cities in the whole country where cable companies actually have to compete with each other? (and consequently the customers see the lowest prices in the country… weird how that works?)
The proliferation of home cell internet and Starlink’s internet has had a nice downward pressure in many markets. Both are often surprisingly good, even for heavy internet users. They are something worth checking out in your area.
Edit: Note, if you look into satellite internet, Starlink is pretty much the only one that doesn’t suck. This is due to the satellites being in low earth orbit (fairly close) rather than way, way off in geostationary orbit.
Starlink is the disposable plastic of internet though. they are constantly losing satalites due to that low earth orbit, which are constantly being replaced.
also being owned by a raging right wing fucktard that turns them off and on to suit his political whims does nothing to endear me to the service
The former is more of a technical one. LEO has (some) air drag, so anything there is temporary; and you need them in LEO to not have pings measured in seconds. But, as you stated, the CEO is…fucktarded. I’ll fully agree there!
But, more importantly, that’s why I also mentioned cell networks. In the US, TMobile and Verizon home cell internet is competitive in quite a good percent of the country and worth looking into if you don’t like your current provider. TMobile’s is $50/mo, for example.
starlink internet is pretty amazing if your only other option is 3mpbs “broadband” (on a good day). most people dont really care about the political ideology of the person who leads the company, they just want to stream media.
most people dont really care about the political ideology of the person who leads the company
Do people know the political views of most company heads? Difficult to say if people care if they don’t know. If those political views clearly harm you (e.g. anti-gay sentiment in 2010’s) then most of those affected would care?
We can ignore politics but politics won’t ignore us, probably we aught to care what business do with the money we give them.
Nothing better than Verizon advertising $65 a month, which is already too much, then when you actually try to sign up it’s not just more; they straight up refuse to tell you what it will be (yes, I tried asking).
I know that’s not cable but they both play the same games. No, it’s not impossible for you to just tell a customer what you’re going to charge them.
I ended up actually signing up for visible (Verizon has the best service in my area). It’s Verizon, reselling their own service, for $45 with everything included. (That’s 50GB before they deprioritize you. There’s a $35 that’s less but still fine for most people.)
It seems like it is actually possible to include those fees in their price.