Americans Hate ISPs Almost As Much As They Hate Gas Stations, Survey Finds - Sla...
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/06/26/2052234/americans-hate-isps-almost-as-much-as-they-hate-gas-stations-survey-finds
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On a satisfaction scale of 1 to 100, ISPs earned a lackluster 68, which consists of fiber's 75-point and non-fiber's 66-point satisfaction scores combined. The ACSI used customers' input on a number of experiential data points, from choosing a plan to actually using their home Wi-Fi networks, to calculate both scores and combine them based on usage. Although fiber customers found their internet to be relatively reliable and their bills easy to understand, earning an 80 in both categories, non-fiber customers weren't as impressed at 72 and 75, respectively. Unsurprisingly, both fiber and non-fiber customers enjoyed reaching out to their providers' customer service teams the least out of 14 total data points.
There was only one industry that ranked lower than ISPs. As much as Americans generally dislike the way ISPs manage hardware, pricing, customer service, outages, and more, they dislike gas stations even more, giving the category a measly score of 65. While the ACSI doesn't share respondents' reasoning (it's a telecommunications study, after all), it's easy to see why consumers might not enjoy spending obscene money to fill their tanks at dusty roadside stops.
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I don't get it. It takes 5 minutes to fill up, and you can grab a snack or light groceries if you need to (granted at high prices) that might postpone a trip to the supermarket.-
gas stations are very up front about the price and they compete in most areas.
ISP's?in some areas you have no choice and the price??? you have to wait for bill to see what all of their hidden fees are like.
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That wasn't my experience when doing a short road trip in the US - the price was something x.9 cents per gallon (like really - that 1 cent less than a and then there's some tax added on top of that - and they don't even trust their customers enough to fill up then pay inside like you do in any other normal country (for example, Japan, Australia, UK, France, Germany or Italy - all of which I have bought fuel in) - apparently the norm is to pay inside or at the pump first before filling up.
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You used to be able to fill up and then pay back in the 80s. I guess too many people drove off without paying, plus you can easily just pay at the pump with a credit card so it seems like a trivial thing to complain about. Also, I'm pretty sure the price stated at the pump already includes tax so I'm not sure what you're talking about. And seriously, you're complaining that the price was something like $2.99 and 9/10 a gallon? Is there nothing else more trivial to complain about?
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Yes, almost everything in the US cost more than the signs said, with the exception of liquor and gasoline. I suppose no coincidence that they have higher taxes than most goods?
Actually, when I was driving there (a while back), the gasoline actually cost *less* than the pump price. All the gas stations displayed the same price, but some had another sign saying "10c/gallon off for everyone". Why not just post a lower price? Is it some weird form of collusion?
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They started the pay before pumping here in BC after a kid got dragged to death trying to stop some gas thieves. Seems the gas stations would deduct gas thefts from the workers wages, motivating workers to try to stop gas thieves.
Gas stations were likely happy with the legislation as it applies to all and does cut down on the theft.
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High prices for sundries and cost of gas aside, the dislike of gas stations is probably due to the generally mundane, routine nature of the whole experience (unless you visit a Bucee's or similar) and the fact you can nearly always be assured to run into at least several of the following that make the experience unenjoyable:
- Slow pumps
- Pumps that have a broken latch such that you have to hold it down the whole time
- People who park and block the pumps to go inside and shop
- Receipt printers that don't -
I've complained about gas prices, but I've never hated on a gas station. Not once. I actually stopped complaining about gas prices after filling up a car with gas in Germany. We've never hit that price anywhere I've lived in the US. And before you bring it up, I said anywhere I've lived and I've never lived on the west coast nor Hawaii.
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I hate the gas stations where the pumps are broken and the working pumps dispense with the flow of a cocktail straw.
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Probably a "planted meme." Say something obvious, like that ISPs suck, but make an offhand reference to how terrible/godawful/irredeemable that bastard who's running for some office is. I've never heard of this source, so I'm inclined to that interpretation.
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If I had to list companies I hate dealing with, it'd be:
1. My landlord.
2. Government services (DMV, permit office, USPS, etc.)
3. Banks (mostly due to inconvenient hours, bullshit fees, and long waits).
4. Walmart.
5. Shipping companies.
6. Car dealers.
7. Cable companies.
8. Wireless companies.
9. Pharmacies (just because they're so damn slow).
10. Google. (They'd be further up on this list except for the fact that they basically have no customer service, and when something goes wrong you just have to make peace-
Be a google cloud customer and Google will move way up your list.
Oracle would be on my list, except I know their reputation well enough to promptly move off of anything they buy. Oracle pricing: "How much do you have? Add 10%"
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I got Google Fiber a few years ago. It works fine and I greatly prefer not talking to them than having to deal with the bozos that AT&T and Spectrum throw at you.
And what is this crap about the gas station? I have a Tesla now, but I was never annoyed by the gas station. One of the most straightforward interactions one can have. Except for no interaction at all.
Is this one of those AI articles one of the other posts was talking about? -
No Amazon?
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I don't get it either. Why the hate for gas stations?
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by jm007 ( 746228 ) on Monday June 26, 2023 @07:07PM (#63635090)
in all my years I've never heard of anybody saying anything like "I hate gas stations"
at worst, they bemoan the prices but that's a market thing, not a gas station thing; I find them quite convenient and it would suck if I had to find another way to fill my tank
stupid poll meant to make somebody, somewhere... some money; don't really know if the poll is stupid, or maybe the editorializing / spin, or maybe all of it
I can only hope I didn't help in that regard
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I hate gas stations.
Fortunately, I haven't had to use one in many years. So much better to charge at home.
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Sounds rough. Glad I'm not so sensitive.
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Yeah, nobody else sells electric cars
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Ah, yes, the 2023 version of the "I don't own a TV" slashdot commenter...
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Comparing "industries" is an odd undertaking from the outset.
If I could fix one industry in the USA, it would definitely be healthcare. Literally a couple grand per month in insurance premiums and still cannot schedule a doctor's appointment within the next 6 months.
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For real. People don't hate the healthcare industry enough, even though it's literally robbing people of their entire life's accumulated wealth.
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They hate the healthcare "system", mainly the insurance companies and the byzantine billing and care denial, and the total lack of providers (eg. you never see a doctor). If you don't hate it yet, just wait until you are old.
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As a former lead for an non-cable and non-phone company ISP, it is dumb consumerism that ruined this!
1.) You would work with big companies more than small, duped by advertising or crammed by telco reps.
2.) Lacked knowledge that most cable companies were faux ISP walled garden bait and switch options with invasive layer 7 injections you got ripped off on
3.) You squandered expensive bandwidth on Netflix before CDN options like Akamai would have kept the littler ISP able to handle your watching binge items onl
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My first thought as I read the title was "...do we hate gas stations?"
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I hate gas stations.
I live in Oregon where someone (well up until last week) had to pump your gas for you.
So you hand them your card to put in the machine (and probably take a copy of with their phone while they are at it).
Also these people are the bottom of the barrel. Some are ok, but in my experience, many are psychologically damaged in some way and got the job because no one else would take it.Going electric was the best thing. No more trips to the loonies at the gas station to steal my credit card deta
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As soon as such a thing is available to me, I'll sign up. Alas, there is no such service available to me despite living in the 50th most populous city in the country, in the middle of the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the US.
Something. something, lack of competition...
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Assuming you're talking about Houston since it is the 4th largest metropolitan area in the US... The best I can get here is Xfinity 1 gbps / 42 mbps and no cap for like $110 a month.
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No, I'm in DFW. Houston I think is the 4th largest city. But DFW is the 4th largest metropolitan statistical area. Houston/Woodlands/Sugarland area is 5th.
There are some places around that can get symmetrical fiber, but my area of Arlington isn't one of them.
Supposedly the city signed a deal to roll out fiber to the whole city, but it's been something like 3 years since the "groundbreaking" and I haven't heard a peep of an update from the city, or the company they are working with to do the rollout.
Best I c
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My bad, I see they consider Dallas/Ft Worth the 4th biggest
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While that may be a great deal to someone who needs those kind of speeds, I hate the one-size-fits-all approach. I'd happily take half a gigabit at half the price.
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I've had ISPs that I hate. Plenty of them. But my current ISP, Google Fiber, love 'em.
I'm not generally a fan of Google, but Google Fiber is on point. A real public v4 IP, a/56 on the v6 side. They don't block shit. I could run an SMTP server on 25/tcp if I wanted. It's also a full 1000 Mbit up and down. Crazy reliable. It's the ISP I dreamed of for decades.
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On the whole, I agree. And the bill is straight-forward. I did have an odd problem Sunday morning though, where many/most websites (including Google's) failed to load, or partially loaded and stalled out. Speedtest was fine, and SSH worked fine, and I could tunnel my browsers through to a remote system, and web worked fine that way.
Which makes me wonder... are they doing some kind of transparent proxy on HTTP/HTTPS that was having trouble? That would be... not so fine.
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I'm in the same situation with my fiber Internet. The only thing that keeps from from doing it is the scourge that is the email black hole lists. Those should be outlawed as illegal interference with business relationships. Those are the main reasons I rent a cheap server rather than partitioning off a chunk of my gigabit to a separate subnet.
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Gassing up may be an inconvenience, but the only real thing to hate about the experience is the price being passed along from the oil industry. Now if it's a contest of hating Comcast vs. Chevron / Exxon-Mobil / Royal Dutch Shell / etc., that's an epic battle for an American's hatred
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ISPs and Gas Stations are some old shit that we're saddled with because they're making money and that means they have power
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The power is only in your mind. I have needs. They fill them. Anything else is paranoid delusions. And just for arguments' sake, lets say they do have some power. That power was given to them by the government which we elected, supposedly. So any power they do have is self inflicted.
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Today I learned that Americans hate ISPs and gas stations.
My only problems with ISPs is how they keep playing games with the prices. Jack it up and then offer me a "special discount" for a year to keep me as a customer.
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I live in the SF Bay Area, specifically in one of the first two areas to get cable Internet in the US (@home). Since @home's deployment here in the late '90s, the only infrastructure upgrades PacBell/AT&T have deployed is AT&T's project 'Pronto' FTTN initiated in 1999 to compete with cable. The Feds gave AT&T money to upgrade Internet access for schools, which resulted in the most minimal fibre deployment in my area to each of the individual schools. They were kind enough to offer fibre Internet
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I most go to the ones that are also actual restaurants and convenience stores. They're not expensive, they are super clean, everything works, etc. And they also have the cheapest gas prices. Even the decent ones that are "just gas stations" with only maybe coffee and twinkies. Pretty much everywhere is a lot nicer than your average gas station from the old days. (I've been driving -- a lot -- for 45 years.)
I have lived a few places where I hated my ISP, and it was always when they were cable companies. When
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The same dumbasses that put in a 20 year-old WRT-54G Linksys all the way across a 3000 square foot house are the same ones that are going to bitch about the ISP when their speed test results while they've got six kids streaming (trying to) high def. video on 10Mbps connections.
yeah, ask me what I do for a living...
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and I don't know anyone who hates gasoline stations.
And while I dislike Comcast and don't trust them not to jack up prices on me, I don't hate them.
And I absolutely love T-Mobile. Fixed price. Good service. Easy setup. No holes drilled in my walls.
I'm pretty sure Verizon is about as good.Comcast jacked me up to $95 a month. I called and said, "I'm on a fixed income, can you help me out here?" They said, "nope".
I went to T-Mobile. After 5 months, Comcast contacts me and offers me $10 more than T-Mo -
Local gas station just jumped from 3.04 to 3.19 today, for no reason.
AT&T updated my fiber gateway today, took away using a space in an SSID and disabled my connections. Had to rename the SSIDs and reconnect everything.
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