New Bill Tries To Ban Obnoxious Hidden Fees On Broadband, TV

from the ill-communication dept

For years we've talked about how the broadband and cable industry has perfected the use of utterly bogus fees to jack up subscriber bills, a dash of financial creativity it adopted from the banking and airline industries. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate -- then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. These companies will then brag repeatedly about how they haven't raised rates yet this year, when that's almost never actually the case.

Despite this gamesmanship occurring for the better part of two decades, nobody ever seems particularly interested in doing much about it. The government tends to see this as little more than creative financing, and when efforts to rein in this bad behavior (which is really false advertising) do pop up, they tend to go nowhere, given this industry's immense lobbying power.

The latest case in point: US Rep. Anna Eshoo last week quietly introduced a bill that would require broadband and cable TV providers to include all charges in their advertised price. Eshoo explains the proposal as such in her announcement:

"Customers deserve to know exactly what they’re paying for when it comes to monthly cable and Internet service bills. Today, they’re sold a service for one price, only to be blindsided by higher bills at the end of the month from tacked on ‘service’ or ‘administrative’ fees,” Rep. Eshoo said. “These ‘below-the-line’ fees add up to hundreds of millions of dollars each year for cable and Internet service providers at the expense of consumers who have little to no option than to pay up. The TRUE Fees Act is commonsense legislation that brings transparency to consumers and empowers them when it comes to phone, cable and Internet fees."

Of course this bill is never going to pass this current Congressional body, which tends to go out of its way to protect these companies from anything even vaguely resembling accountability. The industry is likely to pull out all the stops, given the billions that are made annually from such bogus fees, and because the bill also prohibits forced arbitration clauses when cable TV or broadband providers make billing mistakes.

Again, this problem is rampant. CenturyLink has been charging its broadband customers an "internet cost recovery fee," which the company's website insists "helps defray costs associated with building and maintaining CenturyLink's High-Speed Internet broadband network" (that's what your full bill is supposed to be for). Comcast and other cable companies have similarly begun charging users a "broadcast TV fee," which simply takes a portion of the costs of programming, and hides it below the line. The names differ but the goal's the same: falsely advertise one rate, then charge consumers a higher price.

And again, efforts to do something about it always get killed thanks to industry lobbying and corruption. The FCC tried to at least mandate transparency as part of its now-dead 2015 net neutrality rules, which current FCC boss Ajit Pai dismantled for, you know, freedom or whatever. Of course you wouldn't need legislation like this if there were more competition in the telecom sector letting consumers vote with their wallets, but given Pai and other industry BFFs don't want to fix that specific problem either, being quietly, covertly ripped off will remain the law of the land for the foreseeable future.

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Filed Under: anna eshoo, broadband, cable, hidden fees, pricing, truth in advertising, tv