What if the cable guy waited for you?

Jasmin Aline Persch • E-mail

Imagine the cable guy waiting for you at your doorstep rather than surrendering to a day of house arrest for your setup. Imagine getting customer support on the line as easily as you could your mama. Better yet, imagine never needing to ring your cable company because your service just worked 24/7.

A new regulation could bring this fantasy cable service closer to reality. The Federal Communications Commission approved a rule last month that opens the door for competition among video services. And the commission plans to go further, with new regulations that will rein in the giant cable companies, according to reports over the weekend. That promises change in an industry that's long had its way with customers.

"The FCC, at least, is taking one step in the right direction," says Claes Fornell, a business professor at the University of Michigan.

The regulation bans exclusive agreements between cable companies and apartment buildings. That could switch up the game for people living in multiunit dwellings, about 25 million households, from a landlord-selected service provider — to let the best video service win. This new competition could push prices down and boost customer care as companies vie for business, experts say.

That could spare some cable customers from unnecessary tantrums. Enter 75-year-old Mona Shaw of Bristow, Va.

She waited all day for a no-show cable guy, who waltzed in two days late and left before finishing the installation. Frustrated, she and her husband, Don, headed to the local Comcast office — and waited two hours for a manager before learning he went home for the day. Enraged, the churchgoing woman returned to the office with a hammer.

"I smashed a keyboard, knocked over a monitor ... and I went to hit the telephone," Shaw said. "I figured, 'Hey, my telephone is screwed up, so is yours.'"

Although an extreme case, she isn't alone in her frustration with cable companies, which have become the poster children for poor customer service. Long waits, puffed-up prices and spotty service combined to give the cable and satellite TV industry the worst customer-satisfaction rating of any industry, according to a May report by the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Despite being disgruntled, customers tend to stick with their cable providers because they face slim or no pickings — or they don’t want to deal with switching video services.

“If they don’t have a choice, they have no power,” Fornell says. “They can complain as much as they want to no avail.”

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