Here's my opinion about why it's a big deal:
- part of their expenses is due to the inefficiencies of their bloated bureaucracy.....I don't want to have to pay for that!
- part of their expenses is due to bad management decisions.....I don't want to have to pay for that!
- parts of their revenue losses is due to their terrible customer service, which causes people to leave.....I don't want to have to pay for that!
- part of their revenue losses are due to their terrible website, which again causes people to leave.....I don't want to have to pay for that!
- in spite of people leaving, many more are still signing up. Economies of scale say that their cost, PER CUSTOMER, should be dropping
- part of their expenses is money spent on introducing new products and services that many people don't want/need, in the hopes of attracting even more subscribers in the future.......I don't want to have to pay for that!
- the percentage increase they are trying to justify goes WAY above generally accepted cost of living increases
- part of their expenses is just a cash grab.....I don't want to have to pay for that!
- According to Bell, part of their expenses is borne by supporting customers who are on old programming plans. Guaranteed, the revenues from those obscene "access fees" is a lot more than the costs involved in programming their computers.
So, the majority of the reasons for increased fees is NOT based on increased value in services. Most of the increased revenues will only allow BEV to continue along its merry old way of screwing up, and charging us for it.
That's not right.
The problem is, it is generally NOT easy to switch carriers, without incurring additional costs. And don't tell me that doesn't BEV use this fact to continue chipping away at gouging its customers.
In most other areas of technology, costs are going way down......Why is BEV so different? Basically, they want current subscribers to pay for their mistakes, as well as paying for new technologies that will allow BEV to make even more money from future subscribers.
Yes, unfortunately this is true. However, you conveniently forget to mention that BEV has been granted a duopoly share, as far as satellite dishes are concerned. And, they only have to compete against ONE other cable provider, depending where you live. This is not my idea of free enterprise.
Give me totally free enterprise, and I guarantee that things would change. For example, if other companies were allowed to re-sell satellite dish services, like we currently do with cellphones, then we would have more competition. Imagine if another company was allowed to re-package BEV services, and provide other programming options. Then, we would maybe have more fairness. Right now, everything is tilted in favour of BEV!!
CRTC, are you listening??!!