Transcripts For CSPAN Cable Executives Testify On Customer Service And Billing Practices 20160625

Mr. Portman we are here today to discuss a topic that affects just about every american family. And often frustrates us as American Families and that is cable or satellite tv service. For over a year now, we have undertaken an investigation of the cable and television, Satellite Television industry. As many of you know, weve been issued in this interested in this issue. We have a keen interest in making of the Satellite Companies do the right thing by their subscribers. The subcommittee reviewed literally thousands of documents and interviews countless witnesses to learn more about the Consumer Practices of the 5 largest paid tv providers. This includes comcast, charter, Time Warner Cable, dish network and directv. Together these companies serve more than half of all american households and nearly three quarters of those who pay for television programming. Todays hearing will focus on the companies billing and Consumer Service practices. Our joint report outlines troubling findings from two companies that have consistently failed to provide refunds to customers who they know they have overcharged including , thousands people in ohio. Ill talk about those findings in a moment. The second is a report issued by senator mccaskill on a number of interests for consumers, how paid tv companies disclose prices sh what the fees are for and how they teach employees to interact with and retain customers. And without objection, these reports will be made part of the record. During the course of the subcommittees investigation, we discovered something about refunds that frankly i found hard to believe. As anyone with a cable or satellite subscription knows, when your bill arrives every month it has a long list of charges on it. I have a bill in front of me. It is a pretty complicated bill, a base charge for the tv package, maybe 10 for hbo, equipment fees, and surcharges for the set top boxes that you rent. Given how many millions of people get Television Service from these companies, its inevitable that from time to time a customer will wind up getting charged for something by mistake. That happens. Same thing, by the way, happened in the Grocery Store checkout line sometimes. Its happened to me. Mistakes happen. We understand that. What matters in life is how you own up to your mistakes and make things right. But we discovered is that some cable and Satellite Companies are better than that at doing that than others. All of the companies before us have ways of identifying overcharges to customers and preventing them from happening in the first place. But what happens when they find out theyve been overcharging someone for equipment that customer doesnt actually have . The first thing they do, of course, is take it off the customers bill Going Forward. All the companies before us know how to do that. But not all of them bother to go back and figure out when the overcharge started, calculate how much they owe the consumer and give them a refund. During the time period examined by the subcommittee, Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications who have just recently merged with each other made no effort , to trace equipment overcharges they identified and provide refunds to their customers. Instead, the practice has been to just pocket the past overcharges. To understand the scale of this problem, we asked for specific numbers about overcharges in ohio. Heres what we found. During the first five months of 2016 this year, Time Warner Cable overbilled up to 11,000 customers in ohio and those overcharges totaled over 100,000. They estimate that throughout last year it overbilled 40,000 , ohio customers with overcharges of more than 430,000. And rather than correct the mistake by refunding the overcharges, the company just kept the money. In my view, thats a ripoff of ohio consumers. Ill be asking the company today how theyre going to fix it. Specifically, when Time Warner Cable discovered the overcharges, it only dealt with the problem prospectively. It took erroneous charges off the bills Going Forward, they do not provide any back refunds and did not provide notice to customers so they could investigate the problem themselves. They just kept the money. Based on data provided to the subcommittee, Time Warner Cable will overbill the customers nationwide an estimated 2 million for equipment charges in even after discovering the 2016, billing errors. Theyll fail to do the work required to provide a full refund. Well talk about that. They have recently been acquired by Charter Communications so i hope they work to fix the problems. Charter this problems this problem. But, charter has had problems of their own. Up untilust august 2015, they did not that means they cannot receive the correction of the bill unless they saw the problem themselves and contacted charter. Recently, they started to take steps to see these overcharges in the system, but even though it is identified overcharges, removing the charges from future august 2015,ince until today charter has not provided any refunds or notice of the problems to the customers. Just like Time Warner Cable. It does not have to be this way. The investigation revealed that dish has had better practices. It provide automatic refunds to customers with an overcharge with their billing system. Tole this system is designed prevent any of these overcharges from occurring in the first place. So feasibility and my view is not a good excuse, as to village refund customers when they have been overcharged. We have good news to report. As a result of our investigation much better and Time Warner Cable have taken steps to improve practices. Time warner performs a monthly audit to find overcharges. Going forward, they will provide a one month credit to all customers for each piece of overbilled equipment or service and will provide notice to overbilled customers so they can determine whether to request a credit or refund. That is a good start. But it doesnt make all customers whole. Time warner cable is not yet committed to anything for the 40,000 ohio customers, for instance, who were overcharged last year. And well get into that discussion later today. Charter has announced they will provide a one year credit to all affected consumers. That, of course, goes further to make customers whole. But it would be better to simply ensure that customers receive the full refunds that theyre owed. The report Shows Americans are often unhappy with the cable and satellite service, questionable Customer Service techniques and confusion surrounding billing practices led consumers to feel mistreated. I support a effort to get to bottom of the issues and i feel the best solution to the problem of our poor Customer Service is more competition. If you dont like your Television Service provider, you should be able to provide a to choose a different provider, to suit your needs and preferences. Senator mccaskill and i are going to look into providing more choices for the consumers. I want to thank the senator for her work on this. She and her staff have worked with us in a professional and productive way to make today possible. With that i would like to turn to senator mccaskill for opening statements. Ms. Mccaskill thank you. I want to thank you for allowing me to pursue along with you and staff, this investigation. I think that we can feel great about the fact that just this investigation and hearing have caused good things to happen for consumers as it relates to paid tv. As you indicated, weve had a change just from the investigation both charter and , time warner agreed to issue credits for thousands of customers who were overbilled and comcast has provided Additional Guidance to the retension representative allowing customers to cancel without an argument. So we can already claim some small victory as a result of these investigations. And the syrian and i think this today. Is an important area for us to continue to look at. It is amazing to me when we began asking for input, the volume and passion of input we got from people about how they feel like they are mistreated by their paid tv provider. And this morning for the first time, our nations largest cable and Satellite Companies are testifying together before us about their service, Customer Service and billing practices. They are here because this subcommittee has broad jurisdiction to investigate issues when affect the american which affect the american people. I try to have this hearing as the chairman of the Consumer Protection subcommittee and i got no cooperation from any of these companies in connection with that hearing in the later months of 2014. So, i made a determination then that i wasnt going to give up. And that we were going to stay on this. And i am grateful for chairman portman and his agreement to let this go forward. They provide Video Services to more than half of all american households. They enable more than 71 million subscribers and their families to receive news, entertainment and other programming. And while we may love watching our shows, we do not love our cable and satellite bills. And we hate dealing with the cable and Satellite Companies. Although the Companies Made gains in the past year, paid tv providers are the most disliked industries in america. This year a survey of consumers found that more than 20 of the people who interacted with tv providers reported having a bad experience during the previous six months. The highest level of any industry. So how i did begin down this road . Well, it was with a personal experience. I called one of my providers and asked questions about my bill. And in the process of that conversation, i learned, this is over two years ago, that there was a 10 charge on my bill for a Certain Service that now was included in the basic package. And i said, well, so im paying 10 and i dont have to . And the person on the other end of the line kind of said, yeah. Youre paying 10 and you dont have to pay it. I said, well were you going to tell me this . And they said, well, no, you have to call in and ask. Thats exactly the kind of hide the ball that infuriates people. So if i hadnt called in and asked, that 10 could still be on my bill today. Based on the billing practices of the companys represented at of the Companies Represented at this hearing. So we have done a huge investigation and i have reviewed a lot of material and my staff has and ive consumed a lot of information about this. So i decided two days ago id take another spin. Now i know a lot. Now i know the difference between a Customer Service representative and a retension specialist. Now i know what to say and how to say it. So two days ago i called one of my providers. And im, on my website people on my website, people can listen to the recording of this conversation. And i am going to in fairness, because i dont think this is necessarily one Company Versus another. I am not going to talk about which company it is. And nor will the recording. And im not going to read here nor on the recording will i give , my personal information i was asked to give when i called. But heres how the conversation went. The first part of it until they got me to that magic retection specialist. Hello and thank you so much for calling. Can i have your name, please . My name is claire mccaskill. Can you spell that for me, please. I proceeded to spell it. I proceeded to give the representative my service address. I proceeded to give her the name on the account and say that was my husbands name. And she asked what my relationship was to the account holder. I said it was my husband. And then the woman says, ok. How can i help today . I said i would like to have you remove, theres a fee on here. Im not sure how it got on here for a Protection Plan. I dont recall buying that or being asked about it and i would like to have it removed. Now she wants to get my information about my account and my active credit card to make sure i am the person that i say i am, so she goes through what credit card i have on file. Then she says, all right. So you said youre seeing a charge for a Protection Plan and youd like to know what its for. I said, no, id like to take it off. Oh, youd like to take it off . Yes. Alright. But you are aware that Protection Plan covers equipment upgrade every two years and if you lose your equipment then well replace it for you at no charge. I said, well you are saying that equipment i have in my house now is mine or it is yours . Well, its ours. But if there are any issues say, for example, spildz or the or accidentally the cables are cut, we will replace it for you. I said but lets just say if , its your equipment and something goes wrong with it, dont you have to fix it anyway if i get the service im paying for . Since you own the equipment . Well, we, lets say if the remote fails or stops working, the Protection Plan on the account will fix that free of cost. I said, well what would that cost if the remote quit working, is your remote that you own, what would it cost to get it fixed without the Protection Plan . The woman says information on that is done in our Equipment Department so id like to you there for more information. I said, no, no, no, i dont want do that because if you do that, i have to wait and tell the story all over again. Find out why i cannot. 99you to take off the 7 for the Protection Plan. Im not saying im not able to lettingoff, im just you know the benefits you get with the Protection Plan. I understand, i think i understand. I think frankly its a ripoff, you own the equipment, i think you have to fix the equipment you own the equipment and if you cant fix the equipment, i couldnt get the service and i would go to another provider so im asking will you disconnect pay thent want to 7. 99, i dont know how it got startedll, i think you putting it on my bill and i wasnt paying close enough attention. All right, she says, but if i actually have the Protection Plan taken off, there will be a disconnection fee. It would be a 10 disconnection quit paying the 7. 99 every month . Thats correct and its a onetime disconnection fee . Yes, its onetime. And what am i paying for . Paying for, she says . Am i paying for . For you to quit charging me the service, ive got to pay you 10 . Well, no, basically i think switchs time for me to carriers. If youre going to charge me 10 to quit charging me for think its time to switch carriers. Well, basically thats the policy so once i take charge, 10 protection it will be automatically on your account. So what youre saying is i want 7. 99 every month for the Protection Plan, youre 10 to doharge me that . You have no choice . No choice. You cant waive that . Thats correct. Discretion to waive the 10 . We do value your business but its a policy here. Once i take it off, there will be the 10 charge and theres nothing you can do about that, you do not have the option to waive and she says, no, i do not. Well, who could waive the 10 . She said, well, i would have to retentiono the specialist and im not really thathow it works in department. So then she switched me over to the Retention Specialist. Now, this is typical. Its typical. And more importantly, when she switched me to the Retention Specialist, i knew what to say. I knew to keep threatening that not give up, keep threatening i was leaving. And by the way, it was a long call. Even when we edited it to take out some of the things that are longer than, it was 15 minutes. And at the end of the call, i 7. 99 off. Get the i was told by the Retention Specialist i never should have 10 and by thee way, i got so mad and escalated, called in the business, the retention special lift gave me 10 off a month for 12 months. Looking at a screen that told them information about me including the fact that im a billsgood customer, my pretty high. I say this because i think this is what the industry may be doesnt completely understand in terms of the anger. We found that customers are charged a host of fees that are not included in advertised pricing, some of that are for programming used to be included in a customers video package. Manyso found that just as customers have long believed some of these fees like h. D. And d. V. R. Service fees arent a true reflection of the cost of the company of the service but based on the revenue goals of the company and the price that the customer is willing to stomach. Some of these fees are charging to old customers while new customers get the same services charge. Existing customers may not be informed of this. It when they finally figure out, they have to call and complain to get it taken off. We found that customers who help on their accounts faced agents whose job it is not just to solve the but, ins problems fact, to sell them additional services. At one cable company, even when the customer called in to ask about why their bill was going up, the company told them, quote, the price adjustment brings within an opportunity to upsell customers and these agents are compensated, in part, on their ability to sell you more. Decides to customer cancel the service, that i have to jump through more hoops. Hereugh all the companies today allow people to sign up for service or upgrade their themce online, none of provide customers an option to Cancel Service online without company to a representative. And if they call, they have to people, like the one i spoke to this week who are trained to prevent the customers hopefullyling and selling you more product. Even when customers dont say dont want to have this discussion, the agents are expected to ask questions about why the customer is canceling. Customers trying to save money by lowering their level of rude to often routed to the assume agent and should be prepared to negotiate aggressively. We found evidence that these companies train agents to question the customers decision channels and make offers in a topdown fashion so the repeatedly push and push and push to get the best deal. Found that two of the companies had failed to provide notice provide their with notice that they had been overcharged or refund of past overcharges. The chairman pointed out. Thousands of people in our states have been impacted by that. The numbers for missouri, time 4,234 missouried customers last year for a total 244,000 and charter estimates it is anally annually overcharged i total of each year. I want to acknowledge the cooperation we received from all the Companies Represented before us today, as well as acknowledge the commitments they have made thisg the process of investigation to improve Customer Service. Our investigation suggests there is a long way to go, as did my conversation with one of my providers two days ago. I thank the witnesses for their testimony and look forward to the opportunity to ask you questions. To ourrtman well go panel of witnesses. We appreciate you being here with us this morning. Karinshak, Senior Vice President of customer vice for capacity where comcast where he oversees all call center operations. With us john keib, president ,utive vice chief operating officer of Residential Services for Time Warner Cable. Charge of Customer Service, service delivery, technical support, marketing and sales. Kathleen mayo, responsible for Charter Communications Customer Care organization. Rasesh patel with at T Entertainment group, responsible product strategy and development for directv. Schneider,hleen Senior Vice President of operations for dish network where she oversees customer and slingr all dish tv subscribers nationwide and andges dishs call Centers Business process improvement operations. Appreciate yall being with us morning and look forward to your testimony. Its the custom of the subcommittee to swear in our time id so at this ask to you please stand and raise your right hand. Do you all swear that the testimony youre about to give before the subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . You, let the record reflect that each witness answered in the affirmative. Of your written statements will be made part of the record their entirety. I ask you to keep oral testimony to five minutes. Mr. Karinshak, wed like to hear from you first. Portman,shak chairman member mccaskill and subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to tohere today and i want thank your staff for the courtesies extended to us throughout the review. Why we are here. Comcast and the industry as a not always made Customer Service the priority it should have been. Our ability to address customers needs in a timely fashion has been an issue. Our bills havent always been simple to read and the range of choices and prices weve offered havent always provided customers with the options they want. I am sorry about that history. Tocomcast, we have committed our customers that we will change it and we are taking steps to do just that. Went to reaffirm that commitment to you all today and outline some of the actions we are taking. When i started this job, i made a decision to regularly spend time on the phones and in the stores with our employees and customers. That is the front line. That is the place where customer shaped. Out comcast are when you contact us to get new service, you want to speak with someone who listens to what you and who understands all of our product options. Pricent to know the full and you want time to change your mind if what you order isnt need. Y what you when you get bills from us, you want them to be easy to read and you dont want to see surprises or changes that you do not understand. A question orwith a problem or to tell us we made polite andyou want Responsive Service and you want the issue resolved the first all possible. And if you move out of our to chooseea or decide service other than ours, you want to be able to do so without delays and without hassle. We have listened to what you have said. Yesterday, i met with some of employees in a local store here in the d. C. Area and i took some calls customers andour i was heartened by what i experienced. I have submitted a longer the record and wont repeat much of it here but i want to tell you just a few of of our components efforts to improve our Customer Service and to provide a better Customer Experience. First, we are investing in additional training and new ournology for all of employees. We are committed to ensuring that when our customers speak to representatives, theyre speaking to representatives that have received comprehensive and training. On the technology side, weve rolled out a new cloudbased platform that gives Customer Service representatives a better holistic view of the customers account history so that keepmers dont need to repeating the same information when talking to somebody new. Reassessingre policies and fees and simplifying our bills to improve experience. Customer for example, we have eliminated change of service and other fees now allow customers to return equipment free of charge through our partnership with u. P. S. Offer all customers a 30day moneyback guarantee and in subcommittees concerns, weve reaffirmed in a policy statement to all of our specialists that we expect them to promptly facilitate a disconnect for a is not interested in answering questions. Third, we are giving all customers better access to products and services that work best for them. Weve listened to our customers and are developing new products that better suit their needs. We recently developed the cutting edge x1 platform which has completely and revamped our customers Entertainment Experience and we have expanded free ondemand programming to offer our customer more choices than ever before. And finally, we are measuring all of our employees on Customer Satisfaction. Our Compensation Plan for frontline employees is tied directly to the Customer Experience. In fact, the compensation for all company employees, including top executives, depends, in part, on these Customer Service scores, as well. Comcast will spend an incremental half billion dollars this year alone on improving the Customer Experience. As part of that initiative, we newcreating more than 5500 Customer Service jobs over the next three years including positions that weve already at our new call centers in albuquerque, new mexico, and in tucson, arizona. Having spent over six years in the army myself, im particularly proud of the fact that were looking to fill many these positions with our nations veterans and their families. We believe these and other steps weve taken to improve our are making arience real difference. Thank you, again, for the opportunity to testify and i am happy to answer any questions that you may have. Mr. Keib chairman portman, Ranking Member mccaskill, good morning. I am john keib. Opportunity tohe participate in this hearing. Time warner cable recently merged with charter bright houses and networks to form a new company. My role at Time Warner Cable completed the parties these transaction. Im no longer employed by Time Warner Cable or charter. Such, i am testifying today as a former Time Warner Cable also as a private citizen. My most recent position at Time Warner Cable was executive vice operatingand chief officer for Residential Services. I looked at, service delivery, Customer Care, and Sales Operations for the companys residential service. To the extent that questions arise as to the future of Time Warner Cable and charter,ul refer to kip mayo. We employed thousands of representatives and field technicians who we trained first and foremost to serve our customers. Let me acknowledge that we are issuesare of some of the discussed today. Those of you who live in a Time Warner Cable area have probably recent ad campaign in which we acknowledge and highlight Prior Service explaining there steps we are taking as a Company Historical short coming. That campaign is a culmination of efforts made during my time at Time Warner Cable toism prove our Customer Service performance in order to provide the best experience possible. Beginning in 2013 under an internal strategy, time warner embarked on an aggressive plan to improve Customer Service and took several steps towards that goal. We invested heavily in our network. We made several technology for broadband and video and initiated an ambitious Customer Service performance by investing in our employees. We sought to make service the differentiator and become the best Service Provider not just within telecom but within any industry. Our goal is to keep customers and we accomplish that by keeping them happy. Our Customer Service representatives to provide excellent care to our customers. Upon hiring our representatives receive 11 weeks of handson training as well as weekly ongoing training and coaching sessions with our supervisors. These coaching sessions allow representatives to learn from the actual calls they handle. Our focus on Customer Service difference, as more than four in five customers report they are satisfied with interaction with time warner and our survey suggests our customers are becoming increasingly satisfied. We made Great Strides in addressing customer issues more efficiently by improving phone Service Levels through enhanced training and better staffing, improving product and Service Performance and introducing appointment based callback allowing to call back Time Warner Cable at times that best work for them. As a result of these efforts, volume is down over the past three years the number of calls fielded by Service Representatives decreased by 12 million which is to better and more efficient Customer Service. One measure of improved customer onetouch known as resolution where the percentage of calls managed by a single agent. We achieve onetouch resolution nearly 90 of the calls we handle. Time warner cable began andoducing onehour service install windows and our technicians were on time 99 of the time. Significantly reduced by 1. 6 million the number of times cable technician needed to visit a customers home to handle a repair. Yet . E there no. Making such changes at a company feat andis no small the desired changes cannot all happen at once. Evidence suggests our efforts to pay off. In the latest American Consumer satisfaction report, time warner was ranked fourth best the Internet Provider up from the 13th position two years previously. Although we do not have enough time to fully execute our plan, i am proud of the early results and just as i am most proud of our technicians and customer agents who together are pursuing the mission of winning on service. Over, i am confident that tenets holds the same about prioritizing Customer Service. Anyok forward to answering questions you have today about Time Warner Cable and thank you for having me here today. Sen. Portman ms. Mayo . Ms. Mayo thank you, chairman Ranking Member mccaskill and members of the subcommittee. Toppreciate the opportunity testify here today. My name is Kathleen Mayo and im charters executive vice of Customer Operations. Im here to talk about the progress weve made improving the Customer Service at charter since the companys morebankruptcy and especially since the change of leadership in 2012. History,lt of its charters infrastructure was in serious need of capital investment. The companys financial charter hadant that underinvested in repairs which kept the product from performing reliably. At the same time, it tried to cut costs by outsourcing services of customer jobs overseas. In 2012 andw c. E. O. New leadership team, we instituted a new playbook for includedhat streamlining video products, adding value to those products fastestvering the minimum broadband speeds all at highly competitive prices with a improving Customer Service. Our efforts over the last four customerimprove service including insourcing customer and Field Service thousands ofeating american jobs. We have invested significantly in training our employees to be the needs of the customer. Since 2012, we have hired over employees, a 40 increase, and majority of those roles are manymer facing positions, brought back from overseas. Today nearly 90 of our customer on shore anddled in house and 95 of our inhome performed bys are charter technicians rather than by thirdparty contractors. Locating ourted to facilities in the communities we serve, most recently opening a 16 million stateoftheart Customer Operations center in missouri. Our transaction with Time Warner Cable, charter expects to hire 20,000 american will fillany of whom Customer Service jobs that are currently outsourced to call centers located in other countries. This approach has given us greater Quality Assurance with representatives interactions with customers. Our representatives engage in toversations with customers understand unique needs in order to properly assist them. We do not follow canned scripts. To improve the Customer Experience, we have also taken byps to simplify our bill eliminating common industry fees and expanded self service capabilities. As a result of these steps and the 7 billion we have invested in our network, Customer Service have declined 25 since 2013. Customers need assistance, we have been able to resolve the issue on the first call 80 of the time. Those High Quality Customer interaction are growing our Customer Base. Competitive environment, weve added more than one million customer relationships 2012. The beginning of growing our total Customer Base early despite having no termination fees to prevent customers from leaving us. Our churn is down. Our existing customers are staying with us longer and our Customer Satisfaction has 12 . Ved by we are pleased with our accomplishments to date and believe the results are to show but we also know that theres still much work to do in order to provide thecustomers with excellence and service they expect and deserve. Eliminate accidental overcharges for video equipment, charter instituted checks and balances to create controls in our order Entry Systems to ensure we get each order right. Our recent audit of equipment 99 rmined billing was accurate. Of boxesless than 1 where customers are overbilled. Is a High Accuracy rate, nothing to short of 100 acceptable. We are reconciling every account every day to ensure our billing is accurate. The process of notifying overcharged customers and we are issuing them a 12month credit. Conclusion, weve made significant investments to improve our network. Weve streamlined our products. Pricing andfied insourced thousands of jobs to strengthen the American Workforce and charter is working every day to improve and show customers we are committed to providing a superior Customer Service. Sen. Portman mr. Patel . Mr. Patel good morning, chairman portman, Ranking Member mccaskill and members of the submeat. I subcommittee. The opportunity to speak to you about our commitment to Customer Service. Of our brand is to offer customers the besT Entertainment experience through unique content offerings and good Customer Service and were proud of that but we need to get better and are working hard to do so. Tothat end, we need complement our great product. I think we have a phenomenal product that offers customers digital experience, sunday ticket, first to go to h. D. But sometimes the great product isnt complemented with Great Customer experience and it frustrates our customers so to 2012, i started a group that focused on being the customer inside the organization, reporting directly to the c. E. O. Goal was not just Customer Service. Our goal was to relook the entire business through the customers eyes, to conduct significant analysis on what goingy customers are through, and to be the internal voice of the customer in the that astion so decisions are being made and policies are being set, the isce of the customer represented. And to be a champion for the really see improvements all the way through and to that end, weve made a but weve got a so this is ago and very personal issue for me. C. E. O. To asked our really lead this organization and so im glad to be here today. Our commitment to serving customers and giving them more choices has never been stronger. We recently announced in march overthetopch services that will provide customers flexibility and choices and lower cost offerings to customer. It will essentially allow them our content distributed over the internet in a more simple Business Model and offering. Directv has ranked higher in Customer Satisfaction than cable for 16 years in a row but we recognize we need to raise the this ever evolving competitiveland scape with rising content costs. If customers are going to pay more for the service, they can, should and will expect more. Service is an essential component of our accordinglywe have devoted and will continue to devote significant resources awards our goal of delivering superior Customer Experience. I have been with the combined at t and directv company for 15 years in a number of different roles and as you introduced im currently Senior Vice President of Product Management but from 2012 until at ts 2015 acquisition of directv, i served as senior vice customer of experience. In that role, i led directvs enterprisewide customer centric effort to improve the experience across all customer touch points. Initiative began with a comprehensive evaluation of all and practices. We conducted Detailed Research on exactly what the customer was going through and we shared much that resource with the research with the subcommittee analysis onn Operational Data in order to prioritize our efforts to what customers. Portant to and weve invested hundreds of millions of dollars in that experience initiative which has produced real results for our customers. An annual 18ted million phone calls to our call centers over the last three demonstrates customers are experiencing fewer issues. Reduced over 300,000 Service Truck 300,000 fewer times someone has to take a day off work in order to meet with a technician. Reduced complaints by 44 and introduced a new simplified that clearly showed customers what the full retail price of their services were, the discount amount was and that was transparent every month about communicating when the discount expires. We made it a point on page one to proactive identify anything thats changed from the previous month. Directv also maintains a to proactively address billing errors and if we find an issue that is part of a continuously monitoring query, that will look for that problem Going Forward and its our proactively address billing errors and notify andomers we made an error reimburse affected customers and we even do so if that person is a customer with us. Well credit their account. But we have plenty of room for to that regard, at t and directv will spend more towardsbillion enhancing the Customer Service from 2016 to 2017. While we do take pride in the progress that weve made over the past three years, we know that Customer Satisfaction is a neverending journey and we can, do better. Need to in that regard, i sincerely welcome the committees input. Through this process, ive run across a couple of things i myself have discovered that will in ourhange organization. Were confident that as a combined company, we will enhance our ability to provide our customers with the Services Products and they deserve. I thank you for the opportunity today and look forward to answering your questions. Sen. Portman thank you, mr. Patel. Ms. Schneider . Ms. Schneider chairman portman, Ranking Member mccaskill and members of the subcommittee. Dishs three, founders decided consumers affordable an alternative to cable. We launched in 1996 and were reinventingn Television Distribution and providing meaningful competition within the paidtv industry. Dish is the nations fourth provider withv about 14 million subscribers, employees and have with independent retailers. There are 146 retailers in ohio in missouri. We are proud that dish is the broadcastder of local channels in all 210 u. S. Media markets, ensuring that even the most rural customers receive the same highquality television as customers in urban areas. The issues well discuss in this hearing are complex but heres the simple truth for dish. Our success as a business depends on satisfied customers. We have spent the last two decades working to provide a firstrate entertainment in making our customers happy. See thesh customers value of our products and services, understand our bills, seamless installation of reliable products and responsive repairs and service changes. At dish, our sales, installation, Customer Service, billing, Product Development and programming teams are constantly working hand in hand to make these customer expectations. And weve received outside efforts,on for these including an aplus rating from the Better Business bureau. J. D. Power awards for Customer Satisfaction for four years running and a top ranking in categories by the american Customer Satisfaction index, including lowest customer complaints. We diligently track the latest points and adjust policy, procedures, training materials and offerings. We make sure agents have the necessary tools to match each with the best programming, technology and value for that customers needs. When a call comes in, our policy to resolve, prevent and promote. First, resolve the customers issue, prevent any future issues and only after that, promote the value of dish. We also keep innovating and coming up with the best technology to meet customer of tv anywhere, any time. Thats whats behind our award hopper,set top box, the and sling tv, our groundbreaking live tv internet streaming service. Were in a highly competitive business with major upfront acquiring eachin customer to the tune of 800 per subscriber at dish. Four years of having the customer for us to recoup vying fors and customers are often two to three telco or Satellite Companies. Usually one or more of those competitors is a company that, dish, can bundle tv offerings with broadband and phone service. The bundleof beating has to be keeping our customers satisfied with a quality of what were value of giving them. Unfortunately, dish cannot alone address two of the biggest overall customer complaints that we face. One, the high price of two, theng, and inability for our customers to select which channels they receive. Content Industry Needs to be a part of that conversation. Of rising paye television rates is the skyrocketing costs of acquiring programming content mostly due growingcasters ever demand for transmission consent fees. Huge price have increases leading to scores of withholding signals. Dish and other paidtv companies have called on congress and the to update outdated laws distributorsow tv negotiate content with broadcasters, and moderating paidtv prices and perhaps lowering them. I will end with this. While dish is proud of its Billing Service and practices, we are also committed to continued improvement and constantly ask ourselves what can we do better . We are not perfect. Do our bestakes but to fix the mistakes that happen and learn from them. We welcome the advice of the on ways that the Overall Service experience can be made better for subscribers. Thank you and i look forward to your questions. Sen. Portman thank you, ms. Schneider. Were going to have the opportunity to ask questions from the panel. We have sevenminute initial round questions and then five minutes for second round because we have a number of members here, im going to keep my initial questions shorter than be here untilll the end. And let me start if i could, by saying that i appreciate the testimony. We learned a lot, including issues that we may be following competitionms of and ensuring that people have let me zero in on providingof not refunds to customers. Beingib, i appreciate you here in your capacity as a with anyitizen, not particular company, yet we were in charge during the time period into, which is before Time Warner Cable merging with forward, someing of the time warner practices that dont provide customers to for chargesefund they shouldnt have incurred, particularly with regard to equipment. My question to you would be, when you look at the ohio customers in 2015 were charged 430,000 they charged. Have been theyre getting no refund for that. Even the first five months of ohio customers00 are being overbilled over 100,000. Mistakes happen. About that. I mentioned the checkout counter Grocery Store example of that where sometimes they make a they correct it and they dont say, were going to charge you less next time you come in. Say, you know, were going to make you good. So it seems to me that the looked intod have these overcharges, as other Companies Represented here have, thedetermined how long customer had been billed for these charges, simply to provide them a refund for that. Do you agree with that . Mr. Keib i think i agree with that. But if given the opportunity, i would like to give a quick the situation that were discussing and how we and refunds. S sen. Portman quickly, if you would. Mr. Keib i would like to bring not comeing that did up, i think, when we started, which is that were actually undercharging customers significantly more than were overcharging them. Thats what we found and our revenue part of Insurance Program and i think thats noteworthy in the context this discussion. 150mpany, we provide over million in credits a year to customers and a lot of those are with customerime Service Agents and many are done when we know the origination of and when weir date customersfy the exact impacted, we do provide notice and the exact amount of what the credits going to be. Several years ago we built out something called the Revenue Program and this Revenue Assurance Program was find thesegned to kinds of issues and over time we found these issues and what the Revenue Assurance Program found as it looks to tie out whether chargedpment is properly on these accounts is that of the 37 million pieces of activent that we have, on our network, a very small fraction were improperly billed. And on top of that, if you bring it down to the customer level, was about i think. 07 of customers with video equipment and. 03 of our modems. So as what i said earlier about winning on service, we take it very seriously and it doesnt 10,000 outer if its of 2. 5 million customers, that 10,000 or 11,000 is what weve get right and. Sen. Portman let me interrupt you for a second. Were talking about 40,000 customers in ohio alone in 2015 overcharged. About manyalking more thousands of that in other states represented around this panel. Easy to say, well, we under charged some people, we overcharged others, it nets out. For those 40,000 families. Not for the family thats getting overcharged. You shouldnt undercharge, either. You should have business care ofs that take that. Theressuggesting that any benefit to undercharging or overcharging. That if suggesting is youre overcharged and you find out about it, you out to make what othernd thats businesses do. I used the example of the checkout counter but its true withher businesses we deal every day. My question to you is really simple. Shouldnt you have, having those people, simply provided them and still youre not doing it because what youre give them aull month credit where it could be years of having equipment they for. Overcharged isnt that accurate . Mr. Keib it is not accurate to say theyve been overcharged for years. Sen. Portman how do you know that . I could take time to explain that in the Revenue Assurance Program we are looking of pieces ofs equipment and what were trying to figure out is whether the piece ofharge on that equipment ties to the actual equipment. Because of the amount of volume of equipment were turning over right now whether were upgrading modems, upgrading our actuallyquipment or going all digital and have been launching d. T. A. s, theres a transactional volume and what im told and what ive learned through the revenue that it isrocess is a mismatch is being driven when a customer is during this puttingon window equipment on account and taking off the account and matching that up to the Service Charge so what were doing is proactively every month running a report to find the discrepancies and thats why i say based on what team is thatom our i would i would venture to say that majority of those are within the and actual 30 to 45day span. Majority are the more recent but you dont know that it hasnt been years. Monthlyow doing this analysis which is a step forward, as i said, and i think this hearing has created improvements in Customer Service for you and for charter and based on what likeone has said, it looks youve look at processes and come up with suggestions and positive but youre still not providing people the money theyre owed. To ms. Mayo with my next round of questions because she is now at charter and charter is going to be responsible Going Forward for what time warners and charters Customer Service procedures are that, even hope though youve made an announcement today youre going to provide customers some you just simply do what you now have the data to be able to do which is to tell the represent and those on the panel, look, if you get overcharged, youll get a refund for it. Mccaskillto senator and other colleagues. Im cutting my time short with the hope we can get everyones in. Tions sen. Mccaskill hes saying that to send me a signal not to go over. , im going to get carried away. It appears to me from a distance Business Model that has grown up in paidtv is figure out a way to make the entry possible, figure out how to roll people off that as yourice as quickly can and then deal with their anger once they realize the price has gone up and by the call to cancel, make sure you train your Customer Service people really deal withw you somebody whos angry and the angrier they get, the more to get something from you or depending on who they get, how skilled the at holding ont is to them and handing them goodies, sometimes temporarily, down and hope you can hold on to them longer. So many things about this Business Model that are asking for customers to be upset. In yourf you advertisement to try to get Customers Put the same size on what theyre going to pay after the promotion as you price . The promotional do any of you do that . So all of you do the promotional then theres fine print. In fact, many of you dont even going tothe price is be after the Promotional Price, correct . Is that correct . Yes . Does anybody disagree with that . So the Promotional Price and is the beginning of the journey that america has with their paidtv providers. Ask about h. D. And other fees. Miss schneider, does dish anrently charge customers h. D. Fee . Newschneider for customers, we dont charge h. D. Fees. Sen. Mccaskill what about old customers . Ms. Schneider we have a small whenr of customers who they came into dish, they had a different pricing arrangement. H. D. Mers today, we include fees in the receiver fees that theyre paying for a new hopper equipment. There. Included for the subset of customers in earlier days of h. D. , we did not have that fee included in their havingr fees so theyre lower receiver fees and paying the h. D. Fee as an offset. Sen. Mccaskill i guess what im is dish no longer charges new customers h. D. But you h. D. , old customers correct . Ms. Schneider in essence, were charging both. Callsccaskill if someone in and asks to get the h. D. Fee get it waived . Ms. Schneider if they call in, yes, weve waive it. Sen. Mccaskill once again, hide the ball. If im smart enough to know to call dish and i have an h. D. Fee my bill, i call and ask for it to come off, youll take it you . Wont ms. Schneider agents will do customers. Ng term sen. Mccaskill how long do you have to be a customer before you have the magic to get the fee off . Ms. Schneider i dont know if theres a specific. Sen. Mccaskill this is what im talking about. Nobody knows how to get the best nobodyrom you guys, knows. Theres a secret sauce somewhere and i think it has to do with which islly mad bizarre to me. Lets go on to mr. Patel. An advancerge now Receiver Service fee, right . Mr. Patel thats correct. Took theskill you h. D. Thing off the bill and then put a brand new thing on the bill. How many of your customers do think have any idea what the advanced Receiver Service fee is for . Mr. Patel yes, senator, our intention was to really simplify the sales process and what we simplify thes number of decisions a customer had to make and we got it down to three which was you pick your programming package and the level of programming you pick dictates how much youre going to pay for the programming package. The second choice is, do you services orly basiced services and Service Provides a good h. D. Experience but doesnt include on demand. The advanced Service Provides 7anced services and its per room so as a part of the Customer Experience effort, we found that the number of choices had to make was extremely sen. Mccaskill you wanted to they the number of choices make but isnt it true that not all customers are charged the your company . Mr. Patel thats correct. Sen. Mccaskill how do i know ars fee . Get a lower if i call and ask you, will you lower my ars fee . Mr. Patel no. Sen. Mccaskill no . Mr. Patel its an apples and oranges comparison and let me explain why. Sen. Mccaskill quickly. Mr. Patel i will. Originallys fee was introduced, it was at a slightly higher price and weve lowered it. Lower itskill did you for everybody . Mr. Patel but the customers who came on board with the higher their firsted rooms equipment for free so theres other components of offer that were different is, its achallenge very competitive marketplace and marketing from a perspective change very quickly. Sen. Mccaskill i understand and customersme, understand that. Its like shifting sand. Let me talk about the secret by retention agents in this investigation, we determined that there are actually rates that retention agents are authorized to give neverers that are advertised. Does anybody disagree with that statement . So thats whats really frustrating. Talk specifically about time warner. To handle customers that want to lower the cost of the service, time warner provided its agents thema chart that showed how much to lower the price of the package each time someone objected. People actually had a script. Now if they get mad the first time, you can go down this much. If they get mad again, you can go down this much. Found out when we interviewed you that if they ask, they would tell the price the lowestffered was price available at that time even though there was a lower chart that they could still offer. And when we asked you about well, at that, moment that was the lowest price that agent could offer. The kind of stuff thats driving people through the wall. For customers to not be able to determine when they have reached the lowest price . A customer know when theyve gotten the best deal . To my call, i kept getting mad and i 120 back plus i got rid of the 7. 99. I never would have known to do hadnt done that investigation. Will you all make a commitment today to advertise the lowest price available . Any of you . Will you publish it on your lowest price available for your services . Any of you . Questions the next round. Sen. Portman senator paul . Thats paul one thing interesting about pricing is that if you go to a car dealer and say whats the lowest price can give me on the car, nobody in their right mind will publish that. The question is is there not. Tition or you can choose and thats the marketplace. And if youbeware dont like one of the choices, you simply choose another server. I think, though, that we need to put this particularly problem or particularly hearing in sort of context. The context of what kind of we have in our country. Anhave a 19 trillion debt, anemic academy growing at a point and a half. Areion dollars of people not getting jobs. Shortfall 7 trillion in Social Security and a 35 trillion shortfall in medicare. I dont think congress is having hearings on any of these. Apropose we ought to have full permanent hearing on Social Security that needs all of the time to address Social Security. Been here six years and theres not been one bill to the floor of the senate to address Entitlement Program that we all acknowledge is there so i think we do have important to face that we do need as a country. Were asked today to look at, though, the tactics of providers to see if theyre unfair, the bills are too complex. Are pointed to low Customer Satisfaction surveys. One things very clear, though, television providers, customer still exceeds that of congress. So im not sure really if wisdom inough congress that we can impart to people who actually have a than wepproval rating do. If we are to examine, though, thenizations that fail transparency test, we might want to start with government. Pentagon has never been audited. And we have to have defense but certainly we audit it. Theyve told us theyre too big and we say, oh, well. Thats been going on over a decade. The federal reserve, completely unaudited. Weve had very little cooperation in the senate saying need transparency in the government. Yes, we get frustrated calling consumer reps but at the same time we have big problems as a country, what do we do with the fed, the pentagon, the Consumer Protection bureau and congress. Congress uses bills that are not thousands of pages long filled with wonky technical jargon that is to the average reader. Congress uses highpressure touations to get people accept bills they dont like. Few members read the bills before they agree to them. And so i think maybe congress items. E one of our first unfortunately, you know, when you look at your government and youre unhappy with your you cant change your legislative provider. A lot of people probably would if they could. But when it comes to television or cable or satellite, you have choice. The satellite and cable industry in my state has a 4. 7 billion on kentucky. I think in the midst of unhappiness about things not ever perfect and nothings perfect, we realize you have a choice but we shouldnt lose the fact of what the Television Industry does for our states as far as jobs and and money for each of our states. Maybe we should be asking how their help them grow business. The only way to grow their business is by having better Consumer Service but maybe theres obstacles such as taxes or regulations that add cost to your bill, too. I look at my phone bill, i see a lot of government stuff on there. Couldthere are ways we make the bills less by actually removing government obstacles. The market forat Television Content has evolved rapidly through its own Technological Advancement and expanding Consumer Choices. Milton friedman once argued that the effective Television Industry or computer industry or mail delivery it, isy, you name competition. If theres an argument theres not competition, these can be serious problems. As long as theres competition, you have a choice. In bowlingoice green, two cable companies. Ive got two Satellite Companies. I can stream things. I have to have my son help me with that but i can stream things, as well. There is competition. Theres now more subscriptions you can get without a contract because its becoming very competitive. We have one Big Cable Company that was bankrupt. Hugeently there is not a amount theyre struggling to make enough profit. But i think its even come to the point now that we have simpler billing as a marketing tool. Some of the Different Companies here are marketing that they to try to getills business away from competitors who may not be doing as good a job. Think we need to put this hearing in perspective and not get too carried away. Frustrations. E everybody does in the modern world of trying to call and get through to these companies but have to realize first do no harm. Do we want to get involved with industry and do it to such an screw that ultimately we up something thats working very well in many instances and have hundredst we and hundreds of choices of channels. Maybe the house is not on fire. Maybe things can get better and will get better through for one, wantt i, to make sure we dont go too far in one direction. Thank you. Sen. Portman thank you, mr. Paul. As i said at the outset, competition is something were looking into because at least in ohio, we dont have the kind of competition id like to see. Got some numbers here indicating how there is lack of competition now but on the other hand we heard from some of you about how Competitive Forces have been helpful and some of you have raised some things that can be done in terms of providing a more level playing is more reale competition and i agree with you. Thats how you ultimately get better service. Langford . Senator langford thanks for hosting this hearing and the conversation thats here but as mentioned,l has theres a context to this. As i read through the notes and as we received this early this night, one late last of my first thoughts on the section on not getting an answer make ast time that you call, in Customer Service, i ourered how many times that Constituents Service folks and our staff have tried to Call Security oral multiple other agencies and we get anrk for months to answer to a question that should be a straightforward issue. A great deal within government right now that lacks in Customer Service, as well. Think that deserves a very public acknowledgment that all have a very long way to go in dealing with cable customer is the pot calling the kettle black as we work through this process. That, i have also had people call my office that have been incredibly frustrated by not getting attention with their Cable Provider. And they reached a point where called their Cable Provider so many times and got nonanswers they eventually called their senator who we called someone that we knew and they got attention. And it was the oddest thing for it takeink why does literally an act of someone in congress to try to get attention who has a billing problem, especially for senior our office. Call now, in the training one of the issues that i have is in the understandd i theres a lot of selling and theres a lot of work towards profit. That areat the people on the phone want to actually sell you a program is not shocking to me. Its much akin to saying im shocked theres gambling in casablanca, that there are people in a forprofit business trying to actually stay in product. And sell a i do have a concern often when we deal with senior adults that the billing sond the request that i would have is Customer Service upgrades youve made and all of aboutve made comments increased training and capabilities, would you please make sure youre paying attention to the fact that there are senior adults that are calling that have no idea about and haveing practice no idea about these packages and theyre being taken advantage of. And that is something intolerable in this process. Me ask you a couple of things, though. In the billing as it comes out a guesssomebody give me in the typical customer paying for cable services, what state,age of that is local and federal taxes that theyre also paying when they pay that monthly bill. Can someone give me a guess . I see lots of thinking. Pen and paper coming out. I could say at a minimum we franchisets called a fee which is around 5 , at a minimum. And theres other taxes fees on top of that. The reason why it might be a little bit difficult to give you variesxact numbers, it by state sometimes. Average 100 bill, i think 5 is a minimum number and off of thatrk number depending on the market for fees and passthrough fees things like that. Senator lankford anyone have a number . T i would guess at least 10 . Lankford state and local, federal taxes, a fee attached to it. I want to talk to a challenge with packaging and then to streaming. Have a conversation about streaming services and i know yall are experimenting with it now. At deal the cost of the actual content thats coming to you, theres an ongoing conversation about that, well, because as everyone complains about their cable bill, what i hear back typically is do you providers have any idea how much it costs in. X, y, z content coming where does that fit into the typical billing practice . Forecast trying to five years from now, when you talk about hardware, when you fiber being put in the ground and you talk about content, where does that rank . Do your analysis and youre looking at the threads, where does content fit into that . Ill take that, senator. Mr. Patel the content costs rising is a significant issue. I do not think consumers understand the dynamic in place. We talk about billing and fees, but a out of the last 11 years, the cost of the content has exceeded the pricing that we passed on to the consumers. We are in a difficult position. It is a challenging thing to do to price caps on pricing to a consumer. No matter how you identify it, it will be something that causes a negative reaction for customers. 20052015, a group they grew over 100 . It is going three times the rate of any other goods or services. It is an issue. By i think it is exasperated the fact that agreements make you carry channels that the consumers do not have demand for and both of those things can create pressure and a structure that is not the best interest of the consumer. They have all raised the issue of competition. The ongoing conversation in the country is streaming content. Rather than actually purchasing from cable or providers, so you are doing both. Streaming content as a separate service with sling, is that correct . And through satellite. So, tell me about modeling for that and work through providing competition in that area for another completely different delivery device. The key thing for me, can people get content they choose to get in the medium they choose to get it in. So if theyre ticked off about the latest 3 6 fee per room for, theyhave to pay have another option to go to. The sling is our over the top product we have for streaming. It is a bit more modular in terms of what we can do to provide content, so where we have more bundling with our traditional product, sling is more modular. Intomers have more choice terms of having a basic package that is affordable and then adding you know, slimmer packages to it. Ms. Schneider it gives them more choice along those lines and so does that answer your question . It starts that. Sen. Lankford this is a longer conversation we can have that we dont have time for right now. I have to tell you, i along with every other american gets incredibly frustrated. Senator mccaskill did a good job of outlining a basic call on Customer Care. All of us get ticked off, but not only the length of time, but im concerned about senior adults in my state. And the potential for them to be taken advantage of in this process based on the complication, but also the difficulty theyve had even seniors who have called me saying i cant even disconnect my service or get an answer and they just want to say, no, but they are so incredibly kind and nice they cant seem to turn things off. And so that has to be addressed in the days ahead and it should be addressed in a way that honors the people that have been part of that and paying customers all along. Thank you. Baldwin . Ortman sen. Sen. Baldwin thank you. I wanted to start based on the senators last comment. We hear from constituents with enormous frustrations, but almost all of us have had our own frustrating experience. Were not strangers to this. I actually curious about your am own experiences with your own companies. And i wonder if you get paid tv from the company youre with now or formerly were with . Lets go across and let me know. Yes, senator i do. Sen. Baldwin john . That was way too informal. Senator, i subscribe to comcast service. Ok. Yes, i do. Im a dish customer. Sen. Baldwin ok. Do you call the same Service Number that any of us or our constituents to initiate the service or deal with problems or as current or former team members do you have an inside , number, colleague or somebody who tas care of that for you . Why dont you go ahead. Mr. Karinshak yes senator, i , have it as a normal paying customer. Myself and my team will also do calls into the system as well as normal customers. Sen. Baldwin i was impressed with your testimony you engaging in the different aspects of the business and sort of trying to figure out what the Customer Experiences. If you had an outage, you would go throughout 800 number or would you have an inside way of fixing it . Mr. Karinshak so, i could go through the 800 number. I also use my account app i do things online as well. Would experience calling in as a customer. I take calls from customers directly, too. Sen. Baldwin ok. What about you . All of our employees Time Warner Cable if theyre in our , footprint have time warner or used to have time warner. Mr. Keib in terms of service, if the individual account level, mine or my family or any relative that asks for help i , help, i would go through the normal channels. If there is an outage that is, you know, statewide or something happens on large scale and impacts me i would make sure that were on top of it. But not really out of a selfserving purpose. Sen. Baldwin how about you, ms. Mayo . Senator imam sorry , abnormal. I dont live on footprint for charter service. I actually subscribe to two different operators, comcast and cable vision. I use their services, i call their lines. I get support just like any other customer. Sen. Baldwin mr. Patel . Mr. Patel i as well have direct tv service and you know, generally well use the 800 number our customers use or online tools. And like tom, we also have access to being able to listen to calls and so will do that quite frequently to get a pulse of how the customers are being serviced. Ms. Schneider so, the same. If i have an issue i would call into our service as well. And i think a lot of us probably have the advantage of knowing if we have technical issues we know how to fix that ourselves. There are more self service than other customers. Sen. Baldwin back to the original point. I hear continuously from wisconsin residents sharing their frustration with paid tv, satellite and cable. One consistent complaint i have heard over the years is that tv providers will not let customers purchase their converter box and instead customers are forced to rent it, which costs them much more money over time. Also, i want to share a story from one constituent which has already been the issue has already been referenced in our hearing thus far, but the constituent complained that he was given a twomonth rate, but after a year his bill increased by more than 80. This additional 80 gave him no fact,service, and in three channels and music stations were removed. He said that at t told him he would have to pay for Computer Service in order to get his channels back. And ultimately hung up on him. My constituents also explains similar issues with dish and direct tv. With time warner and dish. Says, what can you and the senate do to make all providers sign a contract so they can be held to their words and finally remove all their false marketing . This is just a sample of what i hear from regularly. In light of senator mccaskills earlier question about how big is the price for the promotion versus how are you adequately explaining or are you adequately explaining to the customer whats going to happen ipn this happen in this twoyear promotion where the price goes up after the first year. In light of the concerns we hear over and over again. Id like to hear from the entire panel, what more are you doing to ensure that your companies arent promoting misleading pricing information and what are you doing to grapple with these pervasive billing issues. Why dont we go across the panel again. Senator it is , very important to make sure the customers understand exactly what theyre getting. We do offer a wide array of products and pricing. And so we have done additional things from a disclosure perspective to help with that. First, whether you order Service Online or with one of our employees, they are required to go through a full summary at the end of that interaction detailing all of your monthly recurring and nonrecurring charges. We also follow that up with an email, that we send to the customer at their preferred email address detailing the order and whats next as well. We also partner with a Company Called sunday sky that delivers a beer it that delivers a video for a new customer. And we back it up with our 30 day moneyback guarantee, as well. Sen. Baldwin thank you. Mr. Keib yeah, ill try not to be redundant with anything that tom mentioned. But what i would say is i think the most important thing is what the customer actually sees on the bill. And making sure that what we are charging for is clear. And i would say one of the more recent things we did was try to show the promotional discount in relation to the full rate. For example, if the full rate was 129, there would be a minus sign and then it comes to the summary price of what the actual bill is. So that that customer in any given month would be notified there is a higher rate and this is a promotion of x dollars. When we come up to that window for that time, they would see that actual discount go away. Or they would see it get reduced. Sen. Baldwin ms. Mayo. Ms. Mayo that is a good point. Those changes that have been made recently in an effort to be more transparent about billing to show the full charge and the discount the customer is getting. I agree with john, also, with tom, we, if youre dealing with a Customer Service rep, on the phone, a sales rep, and place your order, the sales rep will recap what you should see on the bill, any charges you will see for the first time. And we send an email confirming the bill and the appointment. Were working on improving that with more information. But we have the Core Infrastructure set up. If you go into our Charter Store you obviously get confirmation of what your order is. If you have a direct sales rep you get confirmation. But we are also getting confirmation on the website. Sen. Baldwin mr. Patel . To disclosee try terms at multiple touch points. On the initial call we implement a tool that essentially tells the customer and the agent what the required call components are relative to what the customer , ordered. What we found was, historically all of the generic terms were disclosed and the customer was losing attention. So getting what was relevant to the customer wasnt important. And we record all of our sales calls in our direct sales call centers. If a customer says i was told Something Else we make it a , point to pull back that record and hold agents accountable. Given toe essentially opportunities to not make a mistake when it comes to the terms and agreements with that offer. If they do that twice, the consequence is that they would lose their job. We try to hold the agents accountable, we have disclosures online, including a place where we spell out over the course of two years how your prices change. We send an email confirmation, we have a written customer agreement. And then the last thing, probably the most prominent, on the bill we made changes so that , from the initial bill you know exactly what the full price of the product is. What the discount amount is and we even show you that youre in month one of 12 of that discount. It changes every month. Its constant awareness for consumers that ive got two more , months left for this discount. When the bill does in fact change we spell it out for , customers on the front page. So weve tried to do as much as we can to disclose this to customers and also drive accountability and controls in the organization if and when mistakes are made. That dwin so i think ms. Schneider so i think that dish might be a little bit different in that we have an option for a two year price lock. So customers have a two year commitment to us and we can align pricing and do a price lock for them during the entire term of their contract with us. Initial contract. But in addition to that, so if they stay with us beyond that two year price lock, theyll likely experience you know price , changes to whatever the then kind of current pricing is. And so we follow form to similar to what other panelists talked about with respect to during the sales call, we do all of the disclosures, customers get an email that outlines all of the things they need to understand, including pricing terms with their new service. We do something with our new customers where we do either if they call in before 10 days or, either they contact us within 10 days if they dont well out , bound them and walk them through the things they need to know as a new customer with dish, including anything with pricing, and installation. We never want anybody to be surprised about what happens on their bill. We also do bill statement messages and other things along the lines that the panelists mentioned. So we really try to make an effort to make sure people understand the terms of their new agreement with us and they dont have any surprises. Sen. Baldwin thank you. Ok, i wouldtman like to get back to some of the questions we were talking about earlier. It have to do with people getting overcharged and companies knowing that they are overcharging and not giving refunds. I have a copy oaf af a bill here, from ohio, and it has over a dozen line items in it. One of the responses weve gotten from companies is people ought to look at their bills. So if youre being overcharged , you ought to be able to find that. First of all, i think it is very difficult to discover youre being overcharged. You dont know what the equipment is, you dont know what the correlation is. Look at one of these bills. Its pretty darn complicated. And part of it i guess, i would ask you that you thought that , time warner could have done better in terms of allowing 40,000 ohioans in 2015 were overcharged. Could have done a better job at dealing with that. You have come up today as i understand with a new policy proposal that charter, being the new company, is i guess going to implement, that there would be a one month credit regardless of how far back it goes. About howked earlier far back it went. Why not at least notify the customers, say weve overbilled you, overcharged you, look at your bill, tell us, you know, how long thats been. If you cant find out for them. At least give them the information and notification to be able to find it themselves. Have you thought about that, implementing that kind of notice procedure . Yes, as i mentioned earlier. I think we do as i said when we define the number of customers impacted, and it is not a dynamic number or constantly changing. Mr. Keib we provide notice that we overcharge and for how much. The example relating to equipment, because of the transactional nature and volume of equipment thats moving in or out, it is harder to determine. In our billing system and the way we run it to figure out the exact origin date of when those customers were impacted. But to your core question, as to should we notify or not, i think thats a natural progression of any Revenue Assurance Program. And i think in hindsight we should notify customers if theyre being overcharged. And Going Forward i would kick , that to kip because ultimately i think it falls in her decision making. Chairman portman what you said is significant. You think customers should be notified with regard to the equipment, particularly which you say is more complicated. I know youre no longer in a position to implement that. Ms. Mayo you are. Do you agree you ought to be notifying the customers so they know theyve been over charged. Again 40,000 customers last year just in ohio. , you know, and this is an issue that i know youre attempting to address today with your own proposal. Yours today as i understand it is youll give a one year credit to customers that have been over charged. For legacy customers, its one month. My second question to you is, now that youre in charge of both, the time warner legacy customers as well as your traditional charter customers why wouldnt you have the same , policy . Why would it be a month for one and a year for the other . Of course the policy id like to see is going back and giving them their full refund show less full refund, which, again, is what other companies have managed to do. You have this ability as i understand it through your new Audit Program to be able to understand what happened. If you could talk about the discrepancy and what the possibility would be of providing a real refund and talk about, if you could, the notion of notification. Ms. Mayo i want to be very clear that producing an accurate bill is our responsibility. And at charter, as i said my opening statements, even though we had a 99. 4 accuracy rate which seems high, its not high , enough. We do believe that 100 accuracy is the only acceptable solution. So through this discovery we were able to put in place a daily reconciliation were running every day and looking at every single customers account and looking at the box charges on the account and the number of boxes. If on any given day if the box charges exceeds the boxes, well remove the excess charge. This will assure 100 accuracy. Were going to implement the exact same thing at Time Warner Cable. As you know we closed on Time Warner Cable about five weeks ago. So, i am still getting my arms around it. Im still trying to understand the billing system and how they work. We all operate differently. The programmers are already working on the design of that reporting. Its a little bit more complicated for Time Warner Cable because of the way they package their services and some packages include a free set top box. And so it is sort of, it is not a billing error there. It is embedded in the service price. So we have already identified 11 exceptions that have to be configured into the reporting. Im going to need about 60 days to get it in motion. But we will do that. Then we will have 100 accuracy, not just with charter and Time Warner Cable, but with bright house as well. And i agree, i think we should notify customers. And the Information Center will be notifying our customers and giving them a 12 month credits through our reconciliation. Chairman portman you talk about 100 accuracy, quickly with regard to your legacy customers coming in. My understanding is time warner with regard to its correction of billing errors, aims for 80 . It has in the past. I understand that now they are part of your organization. Is that accurate . I would like to address that. I do not think that the aim is 80 . I think the aim is to try to get to 100 . Mr. Keib in the billing system that we have or we use in ohio, the fix we put on that account has, does not necessarily correctly impact customers that are in pending status. What that means is that, they have ordered service but havent been installed yet. One of the reasons we have that breakage is that when we apply that fix, it is not sticking on customers that have yet to be formally installed. So again, in terms of improvement, there is an opportunity to do that, but thats, i dont think its were aiming for 80. Thats what were getting based on the way our system is set up in the last several months. Chairman portman so you are , only able to correct 80 based on your system. Weve also learned Time Warner Cable uses Computer Software that routinely has failed, is it true in some months its been so difficult to fix the error Time Warner Cable simply doesnt correct any bills for that month . Mr. Keib if were talking about the equipment charge, what i can say based on my familiarity with this is that, if there was a 20 breakage you referenced earlier where the mackioro did not take where the macro did not take effect, the next time we would run it, it would capture the breakage and try to fix it. That fix would happen the next month. Chairman portman from my investigation i learned that in , may of this year, 2016, you didnt make corrections for that month because of the Computer Software issues. And youre saying you will go back and later fix that in this month . Mr. Keib i want to be clear im talking about the process. And the following months, if it doesnt fix that well rerun the same fix and i would have to verify for you the very specific customers you are referring fall into that bucket to make sure im being accurate. Chairman portman again, my concern is what charter is going to do Going Forward and making sure the customers are notified and made whole. And i appreciate again, that we , have made improvements based on todays announcements youve made in the context of this investigation, that you will provide some credits. But i hope Going Forward youll also provide that information to the customers so they can understand what the issue is and make them whole. Senator mccaskill. Sen. Mccaskill thank you, mr. Chairman. Im disappointed that senator paul left. I want to welcome him to oversight. Ive spent hundreds of hours in this Committee Room doing oversight of government. Of every part of government. I welcome him to the oversight of our military contract acquisition process. I have spent hours and hours and hours in many, many hearings not only on acquisition there and oversight there, but policy and procedures throughout our government. So im an oversight kid. And i think if were going to stop doing oversight because we are unpopular, we might as well put a sign on the door that says gone fishing. , i cant think of anything wed be doing oversight on that is, you know, not more popular than us. Were the least popular right now. But that doesnt change our obligation to address things our constituents care about. And i think you guys know constituents really care about their tv. And they care about how theyre treated and so im not about to apologize for caring about oversight in this area. Because its what i heard from the people i represent. And i am all in on oversight of government, believe me when somebody calls with a va complaint or Social Security complaint or a cable tv complaint, im on it. Im not going to apologize for it. I hope to see more of senator paul here. Frankly, most of these hearings we dont have very many people sitting out there. Its dry stuff. Its in the weeds. And i welcome his attendance as that many of those hearings those hearings in the future. I want to talk about the fees and taxes. Ive got a couple of charter bills in front of me. One more recent than the other. And i want to make sure i put this in the record, ms. Mayo. One bill, the total for tv services for Charter Cable , services is 158. 98. Theres a sales tax of 1. 25. And theres franchise fee of 8. 69. And then theres an Administration Fee of 0. 09. Ive added those up and that is 10. 03 on a bill of 158. 98. Another bill im looking at, the bill was 54. 99 for tv. 39. 98 for internet. And the taxes, fee and charges were 2. 28. But there is one item under taxes, fees and charges i want to spend some time on now. And that is the broadcast tv surcharge of 5. Thats the biggest item under taxes fee and charges. Now, if i get this bill and i am somebody that is not very educated, i am going to say, i cannot believe the government is charging me 5 extra for broadcast tv surcharge because its there with taxes. And then fast forward and just a few years ago what was introduced is now not only are , we getting broadcast tv charges but now were getting , rsn charges. Now what i want to make sure i understand here, this has been a decision by all of you, raise your hand if you did not you did not. You do not put any rsn or broadcast fees. Ish decided not d to do this. But the rest of you decided that he would Say Something that was in your feed, the basic programming fee for buying your service and you were going to put it in oofrthanother place on the bill and call it Something Else. And i would ask you why, can you tell me why all of you decided, isnt it true all of these were previously in your video charges . Mr. Karinshak yes. Mr. Keib yes. Mr. Keib yes. Ms. Mayo yes. Yes. Atel sen. Mccaskill all of these were in your video charges and then i believe, i dont know, two years ago, you began to decide well put those down there with the tax and surcharges. And some of them started out for a Regional Sports network, 1. 39 a month and theyre up to as high as 5, 6 a month. Did you inform your customersout your customers that he would be taking something out of what they were normally paying for and giving it especially line lineving it a special item. Can somebody give me a good excuse as to why that you to keepnd was going that from being the future billing model. Mr. Patel i would like to explain our process. Were a nationally priced product. Because we have a national service, broadcast channels are available nationally and we include those in our package. Regional sports, however, varies significantly market to market. And essentially whats been happening is in the particular market, a content company may decide to buy the content rights for a sporting team. And i will use la and the dodgers as an example. Theyll pay an outrageous amount for those rights, create a new channel, and effectively try to, you know, force carry that channel in a market. And so for us the choice on , Regional Sports became in a market like new york where you have lots of teams and consumers in new york get access to all of those regional channels versus a market in st. Louis where the cost is one third of what the new york costs are, what we do know what to do with pass on all of the cost to all consumers. This was a way to are,he costs where they where the content was available and where the customers were benefitting. And as we did that, in a third of the country, we dont charge because the rates for havent been struck and havent escalated. So thats included in our base packaging. But many markets where they were 4x and there are significant charges, we didnt want to levy those on customers that dont benefit to put the fee in do not benefit. To put this the in context in , all of our markets the fee is less than 50 of our underlying costs for our market. We didnt do that for broadcast fees because broadcast channels are available nationally. Dont theyill belong up above . Dont they belong with your part of the bill . Arent they, in fact, programming costs . They are not taxes. They are not something that, this is something thats part of, why are they being put in this category to give the consumer the impression that this is something the government is doing to them. Mr. Patel i think on our bill it is under other charges. That is a very assessment. That is something we will go through. Sen. Mccaskill so why did some of you put it with taxes . Senator, so we did put the broadcast surcharge in the charges and fees section. Ms. Mayo we do not charge rsn at charter. We did that not to try to make it a government issue fee or charge, but its nondiscretionary. We did not if we put it in the video section, the concern that the customer would be calling and saying i dont want that, id rather not have that. Sen. Mccaskill hbo is in that section. Remove hbo,ey can but not the basic product. Sen. Mccaskill maybe you should remove the whole category. Nondiscretionary extra programming. Then people would begin getting angry about the amount of money thats being thrown around in sports right now thats causing these prices to go so high, which is the subject of hopefully another look at what you all are going through in terms of Shifting Sands in terms of your programming costs. I get thats another component of this. What about for comcast . Why does that fee go down in a section that makes customers think its a tax. Mr. Keib senator, we agree with you around the importance of the disclosure. We did notice our customers and do not include it mr. Karinshak we do not include it in the area of taxes or any government mandated fees or surcharges. Sen. Mccaskill that is terrific. I have another question and then a bunch for the record. I know that you all in the past have reviewed complaint data to determine the percentage of customers who stated that a quoted representative them the wrong price, sometimes as high as 30 for certain complaint types. Did you take on an analysis to determine whether the customer was right in connection with that . Senator, we do look at our complaints data and saw the opportunity to improve our disclosures for some of the things i referenced before around implementing the order summary for every point of sale, being able to send the email as well as the video bill and reinforcing the 30day moneyback guarantee. That was one input we looked at and ultimately making those changes. Sen. Mccaskill no one has had a chance to address, does anybody want to address before i close, and i will have a bunch of questions for the record. Does anybody want to address the practice of charging someone to remove an optional product from your bill . I can answer that. We do not charge for removal of any services other than warranty service. The reason that thats in place is essentially to prevent gaming. A lot of times a consumer requires Free Services or a free upgrade, which is a part of our Protection Plan program. They can get an equipment upgrade every two years. We were trying to prevent a consumer getting that benefit and then the very next month removing the service. So thats the only service through which sen. Mccaskill that was a problem . Somebody would get an equipment upgrade and quit . That makes no sense. Why would you go through the trouble of dealing with you guys to get an equipment upgrade and then quit the next month . Thats not logical. Mr. Patel the point is the equipment upgrade are, as you transition from Standard Service to hd, customers normally would have to pay for that equipment upgrade. One of the benefits of the plan is that in up to four rooms in your home, youre able to get that equipment upgrade free every two years. I think what we were trying to solve is what you mentioned. Before if an existing customer , wanted to upgrade, they had to call their provider, haggle and threaten to leave and maybe then would get that upgrade as a complimentary service. And so we made this a part of our program where every two years you can refresh your experience in up to four rooms. Sen. Mccaskill im not aware of that. Youre one of my providers. I have never heard that i get free upgrades every two years. It is i didnt get any of that information when i tried to change that. So i think theres a disconnect between what you believe is going on in the field and what is actually going on in the field. Anybody else want to give me a reason why you charge someone to quit paying you something . Senator, if i can . Ms. Mayo so we dont charge any kind of change of service fee for upgrades or downgrades. And we do not charge any kind of early termination fee. So we know that we have to win our customers business every single day because they could walk out the door. Those are fees that were not e use. Red with and we do not sen. Mccaskill i think dish charges to get rid of the protection also. You guys charge . Ms. Schneider it is true. We have a 30 removal fee. Its a very similar situation to the one that was just described where if a customer, so what we normally charge somebody is 95. If a customer is on the Protection Plan, they pay a greatly reduced rate for that. So they pay 10. If you add the protection, you can add it the day you need it. So if you call and you have an issue, and you require a truck roll, you can add the plan and all that what we ask folks to do is keep it for six months. Sen. Mccaskill i see. That makes sense. I just wanted to say for the record that your regulatory fees fees are put rsn in other charges and credits, which include other charges like regulatory recovery fees. So im not sure its really clear thats something you guys are charging for that. Inside the box i recommended. Its on the website. I recommend the Committee Joint report to all of anybody who buys paytv. Youll learn a lot. And i want to thank all of you for cooperating in the investigation. I really want to thank the chairman for his patients with me. Cop. E good cop, bad he is definitely the good cop. [laughter] chairman portman again, it has been very productive over the last year doing this investigation. I think we have seen here today some practices that you specifically will undertake in , which youre going to improve the Customer Experience and Customer Service. I dont think it goes far enough in terms of providing actual refunds to customers who have been overbilled. I understand some have been underbilled and some have been overbilled. That doesnt help a family thats been overbilled. It is not fair. With regard to your testimony, theres also some other Customer Service policy changes you all are considering based on this hearing and our investigation. Thats appreciated. On the rsn fee, this is for people who are not familiar with this, this is a Regional Sports network fee that youre charging. Cnn on the bill separately, its if you wanted to. But my concern about it is that it does appear in some bills with some of the companies in a place where it looks like its a government fee. I would hold up this bill from ohio, which is the bill that it i get. My wife and i get. Taxes, fees and surcharges. It has franchise fees, state sales taxes, regulatory fee, universal service fund, recovery fee, and then it has broadcast tv and sports programming, which is where the rsn it. Is. And i do not think that is the right place for it, because people view it as a mandatory government the fee. So i would ask, are you aware of that . And with regard to your legacy time warner customers, understand you dont charge it separately, but with regard to your new customers, do you plan to keep this in the category of fees and other government charges or to have this in a more honest display where its either by itself or other fees . Ms. Mayo i aware of it now. Am and yes, our attention is to are in tension our intention is to overlay with Time Warner Cable. We dont charge an rsn fee so hopefully thats something that will be removed entire isly from entirely from the bill. Chairman portman i appreciate the fact that we have been able to talk about some of these very specific issues that i hear from my constituents about and you hear from your customers about. I appreciate the fact everybody has been very candid today in talking about this. Let me also mention that with regard to the oversight responsibilities here to the earlier comments made, this subcommittee has done a significant oversight of exactly what senator paul was talking about. In other words, looking at government and looking at our economy, which is disappointingly weak. Looking at government spending. Specifically we have had a series of hearings on issues like tax reform. Which goes directly to economic growth. We have had hearings on the Affordable Care act and. Paperof the waste and tax taxpayer loss. And we have done some great work on that. We have also looked into other issues like labor trafficking and hhs and how they allowed kids to get into the hands of traffickers. Government oversight there. Next month we will be combatting looking at the ways to combat isis propaganda and locking at looking at our government response to that, so those of you who follow what we do, that will be something well be looking at next week. Certainly a topical issue and one that everybody is concerned about is how do you stop this isis propaganda from taking more and more of our impressionable young people and radicalizing them. And we will also look at the opiate abuse issue. This is the Prescription Drug epidemic across the country and issues we think that the subcommittee can provide additional insight on. We have done tough, significant, important oversight and will continue to. And again, i appreciate the witnesses coming here today and the fact that this process, not just the hearing today, but the investigation has improved some of your individual practices as it relates to the people that we represent. I want to thank senator mccaskill for her work. This is not her first time dealing with this issue. Im not on the commerce committee, but shes done a lot of work on this issue and focusing on consumers there. As we move forward, were going to continue to look at the industry and look at this issue of Consumer Choice and kpe competition. Ultimately, that is the answer, to give people a range of choices. We talked about the risk of competition but theres also , concerns about having more competition. I think innovation is going to be allowed to flourish and new products will come to market. So well be looking at some of those barriers to that. And well also be looking at other issues that might have come up today. Ill have some additional questions for the record. I appreciate the prompt responses you have given us to previous questions and specifically to the companies here today. I thank you for your willingness to cooperate with us in this investigation. Again, what i think has been a positive hearing to have an honest hearing of some of the concerns on the consumer side. The hearing will remain open for 15 days for additional comments or questions by any of the members. And with that, this hearing is adjourned. [chatter] on American History tv on cspan3, tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on lectures in history by the end of the 1880s, you have a dramatic upsurge, at tremendous surge a tremendous surge in veterans organizations, membership in organizations, and in the statutes that they create. University of georgia professor Scott Nesbitt discusses the ongoing debate on memorials and monuments and how many were the result of campaigns by southern women during the reconstruction era and into the late 19th century. Sunday morning at 10 00 on road to the white house rewind. Said,1976, mr. Carter trust me. And a lot of people did. And now many of those people are out of work. Biggestrnative to the in history. It reagan