An annual customer experience survey of 10,000 US consumers has rated broadband service and pay-TV as the least-liked industries, with Comcast being the lowest-rated company among the Internet and TV providers.

"Of the 20 industries covered in the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings, TV service and Internet service providers tied with healthcare providers for the lowest average ratings," the Temkin Group said yesterday. "These industries have been at the bottom of the ratings for the past four years, and their scores hit an all-time low this year. The poster child for poor customer experience in these industries—Comcast—was not only the lowest-scoring TV service and Internet service provider, but was also one of the lowest-scoring companies in the entire Ratings. It ranked 289th overall out of 294 companies for its TV service and ranked 284th overall for its Internet service."

The free report can be downloaded here. The ISP and pay-TV industries ranked just below auto dealers, airlines, major appliance vendors, and rental car agencies.

The only businesses that ranked lower than Comcast's TV service were Dollar Rent a Car, the Health Net insurance company, and Fujitsu's appliance business.

Temkin said it scores companies and industries on a scale of up to 100 percent, based on customers' experience of whether they can get the services they want (the "success" category), how easy or difficult it is to work with a company ("effort"), and how customers feel about the interactions ("emotion").

"Internet and TV service providers are awful to consumers. The lack of competition continues to fuel this bad experience epidemic," researcher Bruce Temkin said. Internet and TV providers got average ratings of 47 percent, tied with health plans. Those three industries had worse ratings than last year, though that isn't unusual as all 20 industries declined in the Temkin ratings this year.

Six of the 10 pay-TV providers rated by Temkin got "very poor" scores, below 50 percent, including Bright House Networks (49 percent), Charter (48 percent), Verizon (47 percent), Time Warner Cable (46 percent), AT&T (43 percent), and Comcast (37 percent).

Among eight ISPs rated, four got very poor ratings: Time Warner Cable (48 percent), Charter (48 percent), Cablevision (47 percent), and Comcast (40 percent).

Comcast has been promising to fix its customer service for a few years, but subscribers polled by Temkin say they haven't seen any improvement. Comcast posted the lowest "emotion" scores out of all 294 companies, with a 23 percent rating in TV service and 27 percent in Internet service.

Oddly, AOL—yes, AOL—received the highest score among Internet service providers, with a rating of 55 percent. But scores below 60 percent are considered "poor" by Temkin. Out of 294 companies in the survey, AOL ranked 199th.

DirecTV (now owned by AT&T) led all TV providers with a rating of 57 percent and an overall rank of 182nd.

Supermarket chains and fast food chains were the highest-rated industries, with scores above 70 percent, followed by retailers, parcel delivery services, and banks, which ranked between 67 and 69 percent.

Besides Internet and TV providers, several other types of tech companies were analyzed. Computer and tablet makers, wireless carriers, and software firms all got ratings of slightly below 60 percent.

The highest rated company out of the 294 was the Publix supermarket chain, which posted a score of 81 percent. Supermarkets took six of the top 11 places, while Amazon's retail business tied for #9 with a 76 percent score.

The Temkin ratings for Comcast and TV and Internet providers in general are similar to those found in other surveys. Comcast routinely posts some of the worst customer satisfaction scores in the lowest-rated industry measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).

Other research by the YouGov BrandIndex says Comcast has significantly improved its customer satisfaction score in the past year but that it "still falls significantly short of the satisfaction levels of the sector average."