Comcast and other ISPs objected to a requirement that ISPs “list all recurring monthly fees” including “all charges that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government.” They complained that the rule will force them “to display the pass-through of fees imposed by federal, state, or local government agencies on the consumer broadband label.”
As we’ve previously written, ISPs could simplify billing and comply with the new broadband-labeling rules by including all costs in their advertised rates. That would give potential customers a clearer idea of how much they have to pay each month and save ISPs the trouble of listing every charge that they currently choose to break out separately.
Rejecting the broadband industry’s request, the FCC order yesterday said:
[W]e affirm our requirement that providers display all monthly fees with respect to broadband service on the label to provide consumers with clear and accurate information about the cost of their broadband service. We thus decline providers’ request that they not disclose those fees or that they instead display an “up to” price for certain fees they choose to pass through to consumers.
Specifically, “providers must itemize the fees they add to base monthly prices, including fees related to government programs they choose to ‘pass through’ to consumers, such as fees related to universal service or regulatory fees,” the FCC said.
The FCC was ordered by Congress to implement broadband-label rules. The FCC is requiring ISPs to display the labels to consumers at the point of sale and include information such as the monthly price, additional fees, introductory rates, data caps, charges for data overages, and performance metrics. The FCC rules aren’t in force yet because they are subject to a federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review under the US Paperwork Reduction Act.
We’re scamming our customers so much, we can’t keep track of all the ways we’re doing it.
Imagine the size of their codebases. Imagine the amount of things that can be added automatically following a flag set by a manual human review or audit. Imagine the canary branches and the internationalization and the regional offers and the legacy contracts. They may be looking at months just to be able to definitively list all the possible ways they may in theory fuck over their customers
The FCC may as well start fining them now
Until recently I was a Verizon Wireless customer. Their website is a complete mess. Typos everywhere and I would encounter exceptions every visit. Many times I would encounter loops in their flows and never be able to complete a task. I very frequently had to call in so that a supervisor could just force through what I needed.
And that’s just the front end.
I completely agree with you, the back-end billing and other processing is probably a nightmare. From professional experience I can say it can either be quite manageable, or nigh impossible, to make small changes like this depending on how shitty the foundation is.
I think the ISPs are overdue for a complete overhaul but they can’t/won’t because there is no market or regulatory pressure to spend the money. They literally don’t care how shitty their services are.
They know exactly how shitty their services are, they pay people to use them to make sure that they’re still shitty enough
I’ve found that building rules systems that are accessible by middle managers of various departments to be good at keeping the inevitable complexity of business logic away from the codebase itself, as well as in one place.
Before:
After: