S. Hrg. 114–409 

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND BILLING PRACTICES IN 

THE CABLE AND SATELLITE TELEVISION INDUSTRY 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 23, 2016 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/ 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

( 
CUSTOMER SERVICE AND BILLING PRACTICES IN THE 

CABLE AND SATELLITE TELEVISION INDUSTRY 
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

21–423 PDF 2016

S. Hrg. 114–409 

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND BILLING PRACTICES IN 

THE CABLE AND SATELLITE TELEVISION INDUSTRY 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 23, 2016 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin, Chairman 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

JONI ERNST, Iowa 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

CHRISTOPHER R. HIXON, Staff Director 

GABRIELLE A. BATKIN, Minority Staff Director 

JOHN P. KILVINGTON, Minority Deputy Staff Director 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk 

BENJAMIN C. GRAZDA, Hearing Clerk 

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio Chairman 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

BRIAN CALLANAN, Staff Director 

MARGARET DAUM, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Portman .............................................................................................. 1 

Senator McCaskill ............................................................................................ 4 

Senator Paul ..................................................................................................... 22 

Senator Lankford .............................................................................................. 25 

Prepared statements: 

Senator Portman .............................................................................................. 41 

Senator McCaskill ............................................................................................ 44 

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2016 

Tom Karinshak, Senior Vice President, Customer Service, Comcast Cable ....... 9 

John Keib, Former Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, 

Residential Services, Time Warner Cable Inc. .................................................. 11 

Kathleen ‘‘Kip’’ Mayo, Executive Vice President, Customer Operations, Charter Communications, Inc. .................................................................................... 12 

Rasesh Patel, Senior Vice President, Product Management, AT&T Entertainment Group (DirecTV) ......................................................................................... 14 

Kathleen Schneider, Senior Vice President, Operations, DISH Network, 

L.L.C. ..................................................................................................................... 16 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Karinshak Tom: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 49 

Keib, John: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 11 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 57 

Mayo, Kathleen ‘‘Kip’’: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 60 

Patel, Rasesh: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 67 

Schneider, Kathleen: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 16 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 73 

APPENDIX 

Charter bill referenced by Senator McCaskill ....................................................... 48 

Staff Report .............................................................................................................. 85 

Minority Staff Report .............................................................................................. 101 

Hearing Exhibits ...................................................................................................... 163 

Letter regarding correction from Mr. Patel ........................................................... 181 

Statement for the Record from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors .............................................................................. 183 

Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record 

Mr. Karinshak .................................................................................................. 185 

Ms. Mayo ........................................................................................................... 200 

Mr. Patel ........................................................................................................... 205 

Ms. Schneider ................................................................................................... 214 

(1) 

1The staff report appears in the Appendix on page 85. 

2The report issued by Senator McCaskill appears in the Appendix on page 101. 

OVERSIGHT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE 

CABLE AND SATELLITE TELEVISION 

INDUSTRY 

THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2016 

U.S. SENATE,

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in 

room SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Rob Portman, 

Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Portman, Paul, Lankford, Ayotte, McCaskill, 

Tester, Baldwin, and Heitkamp. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PORTMAN 

Senator PORTMAN. The Committee will come to order. 

We are here today to discuss a topic that affects just about every 

American family and often frustrates all of us as American families, and that is our cable or satellite TV service. For over a year 

now, Senator McCaskill and I have undertaken an investigation of 

the cable and satellite television industry. As many of you know, 

Senator McCaskill has been interested in this issue for many years, 

from her role on the Commerce Committee. She will talk about 

that. We both have a keen interest in making sure cable and satellite companies do right by their subscribers. 

The Subcommittee has reviewed literally thousands of documents 

and interviewed countless witnesses to learn more about the consumer practices of the five largest pay-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. 

Today’s hearing will focus on those companies’ billing and customer service practices. Our joint report1 outlines troubling findings about the practices of two cable companies that have consistently failed to provide refunds to customers who they know they 

have overcharged, including thousands of people in my home State 

of Ohio. I will talk about those findings in a moment. The second 

is a report issued by Senator McCaskill2 on a number of issues of 
2 

interest to consumers: how pay-TV companies disclose their prices, 

what these fees are for, and how they teach their employees to 

interact with and retain customers. 

And without objection, these reports will be made part of the 

record. 

During the course of the Subcommittee’s 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 often has a long list of charges on it. 

I have a bill here in front of me. It is a pretty complicated bill. A 

base charge for the TV package, maybe $10 extra per month for 

HBO, and equipment fees and surcharges for the set-top boxes that 

you rent. 

Given how many millions of people get television service from 

these companies, it is inevitable that from time to time a customer 

will wind up getting charged for something by mistake. That happens. The same thing, by the way, happens in the grocery store 

checkout line sometimes. It has happened to me. Mistakes happen—and we understand that. What matters in life is how you own 

up to your mistakes and make things right. What we discovered is 

that some cable and satellite companies are better at doing that 

than others. 

All of the companies before us have ways of identifying overcharges to customers or preventing them from happening in the 

first place. But what happens when they find out they have been 

overcharging someone for equipment the customer does not actually have? The first thing to do, of course, is take it off the customer’s bill going forward. All the companies before us know 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, their practice has been to just pocket the past overcharges. 

To understand the scale of this problem, we asked Time Warner 

Cable for specific numbers about overcharges in my home State of 

Ohio. Here is what we found: During the first 5 months of 2016, 

this year, Time Warner Cable overbilled up to 11,000 customers in 

Ohio, and those overcharges totaled over $100,000. Time Warner 

Cable further estimates that, throughout last year alone, 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, that is 

a ripoff of Ohio consumers, and I will be asking the company today 

how they are going to fix it. 

Specifically, when Time Warner Cable discovered the overcharges, it only dealt with the problem prospectively. It took erroneous charges off customers’ bills going forward, but did not provide any backward-looking refunds and did not even 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 its customers nation-
3 

wide an estimated $2 million for equipment charges in 2016 and, 

even after discovering these billing errors, will fail to do the work 

required to provide a full refund. We will talk about that. 

Time Warner Cable has recently been acquired, as I said, by 

Charter Communications. So I am hopeful the new company will 

work quickly to fix this problem. 

But Charter has had problems of its own. Until August 2015, the 

company did not run any systematic audits to reconcile its billing 

records with equipment records. That means overcharged customers could not even receive a prospective correction of their bill 

unless they spotted the problem themselves and contacted Charter. 

Just recently, Charter began taking steps to identify equipment 

overcharges currently on its system. But even though it has identified overcharges and removed erroneous charges from future bills 

since August 2015, until today, Charter has not provided any refunds or notice of the problem to consumers—just like Time Warner Cable. 

It does not have to be this way. Our investigation revealed that 

Comcast, DirecTV, and DISH have had better practices. Comcast 

and DirecTV provide automatic refunds or credits to customers who 

have been overcharged by their billing systems, while DISH’s billing system is designed and apparently has been successful in preventing any of these types of overcharges from occurring in the 

first place. So feasibility, in my view, is not a good excuse for failing to refund customers when they have been overcharged. 

We do have some good news to report today. As a result of our 

investigation, Charter and Time Warner Cable have taken steps to 

improve their practices. Time Warner performs a monthly audit to 

find overcharges. Going forward, the company will provide an automatic 1-month credit to all customers for each piece of overbilled 

equipment or service, and it will provide notice to overbilled customers so they can determine whether to request a credit or a refund. That is a good start. But it does not make all customers 

whole. Time Warner Cable has not yet committed to do anything 

for the 40,000 Ohio customers, for instance, who were overcharged 

last year. And we will get into that discussion later today. 

Charter has announced that starting today it will provide a 

1-year credit to all affected consumers. That, of course, goes further 

to make customers whole, but what would be better is simply to 

ensure that customers receive the full refunds that they are owed. 

Senator McCaskill’s report shows that Americans are often unhappy with their cable and satellite service. Questionable customer 

service techniques and confusion surrounding billing practices have 

led consumers to feel mistreated. I support her effort to get to the 

bottom of these issues, and I believe that the best solution to the 

problem of poor customer service is more competition in the payTV industry. Regulations have their place, but what is really needed is for consumers to have a more options—more competition in 

the market. If you do not like your television service provider, you 

should be able to choose a different provider that suits your needs 

and suits your preferences, and Senator McCaskill and I are both 

interested in continuing to examine how the industry can be improved to create more choice for consumers. 
4 

I want to thank Senator McCaskill for her hard work on this. 

She has always been a stalwart friend of consumers, as I said earlier. 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 her 

opening statement. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MCCASKILL 

Senator MCCASKILL. Thank you, and I want to thank you, Chairman Portman, for allowing me to pursue, along with you and your 

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 pay-TV. As you indicated, we have 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 its retention representatives of allowing customers to cancel without an argument. So we can already claim 

some small victory as a result of these investigations and this hearing today. And I think this 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 pay-TV provider. And this morning, 

for the first time, our Nation’s largest cable and satellite companies 

are testifying together before us about their customer service and 

billing practices. They are here because this Subcommittee has 

broad jurisdiction to investigate issues which affect the American 

people. I tried 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. And so I made a determination then that I was 

not going to give up and that we were going to stay on this, and 

I am really grateful, as I say, Chairman Portman, for your agreement to allow this investigation to go forward. 

The five companies here today 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 have made some gains in the last year, paid TV providers 

remain among the most disliked industries in America. This year, 

a survey of consumers found that more than 20 percent of the people who had interacted with TV providers reported having a bad 

experience during the previous 6 months, the highest level of any 

industry. 

So how did I 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 

was over 2 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 I am paying $10 that I do not have to? ’’ And the 

person on the other end of the line kind of said, ‘‘Yes, you are pay-
5 

ing $10, and you do not have to pay it.’’ And I said, ‘‘Well, were 

you going to tell me this?’’ And they said, ‘‘Well, no. You have to 

call in and ask.’’ That is exactly the kind of ‘‘hide the ball’’ that infuriates people. So if I had not called in and asked, that $10 could still be on my 

bill today based on the billing practices 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 I have consumed a lot of information about this. So I decided 2 days ago I would take another 

spin, because now I know a lot. Now I know the difference between 

a customer service representative and a retention specialist. Now 

I know what to say and how to say it. 

So 2 days ago, I called one of my providers, and on my website, 

McCaskill.Senate.gov, people can listen to the recording of this conversation. And, in fairness, because I do not think this is necessarily one company versus another, I am not going to talk about 

which company it is, nor will the recording. And I am not going to 

read here nor on the recording will I give all my personal information that I was asked to give when I called. But here is how the 

conversation went, the first part of it, until they got me to that 

magic retention 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 that was my husband’s name. And she asked what 

my relationship was to the account holder, and I said it was my 

husband. And then the woman said, ‘‘OK. And how can I help 

today?’’ 

I said, ‘‘I would like to have you remove—there is a fee on 

here—I am not sure how it got on here—for a protection plan. I do 

not 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 you are seeing a charge for the protection 

plan, and you would like to know what it is for.’’ 

I said, ‘‘No. I would like to take it off.’’ 

‘‘Oh, you would like to take it off?’’ 

‘‘Yes.’’ 

‘‘All right. But you are aware that basically the protection plan 

covers equipment upgrades every 2 years, and if you lose your 

equipment, then we will replace it for you at no charge.’’ 

I said, ‘‘Well, are you saying that the equipment I have in my 

house now is mine, or is it yours?’’ 

‘‘Well, it is ours, but basically if there are any issues—say, for 

example, spills or accidentally the cables get cut, then we will replace that for you.’’ 

I said, ‘‘Well, yes, but let’s just say if it is your equipment and 

something goes wrong with it, don’t you have to fix it anyway if 
6 

I am going to be able to get the service I am paying for since you 

own the equipment?’’ 

‘‘Well, let’s say if the remote fails or stops working. The protection plan on the account will then fix that free of cost.’’ 

I said, ‘‘Well, what would that cost if the remote quit working? 

It is your remote that you own. What would it cost to get it fixed 

if I did not have the protection plan?’’ 

The woman says, ‘‘Well, information on that is actually done in 

our equipment department. So I would like to connect you there for 

more information.’’ 

I said, ‘‘No, no, no, no.’’ Because I knew better, right? ‘‘No, no, 

no, no. I do not want to do that because if you do that, I have to 

wait and tell the story all over again. I just want to find out why 

I cannot get you to take off the $7.99 for the protection plan.’’ 

‘‘I am not saying I am not able to take it off. I am just letting 

you know the benefits you get with the protection plan.’’ 

‘‘I understand. I think I understand. I think, frankly, it’s kind of 

a ripoff because you own all the equipment, and I think you have 

to fix the equipment since you own the equipment. And if you cannot fix the equipment, then I could not get the service, and then 

I would not pay for the service, and I would definitely go to another 

provider. So what I am asking is, will you just disconnect it? I do 

not want to pay the $7.99. I do not even know how it got on my 

bill. I think you just started putting it on my bill, and I was not 

paying close enough attention.’’ 

‘‘All right,’’ she says. ‘‘But if I actually have the protection plan 

taken off, there will be a $10 disconnection fee.’’ 

‘‘It would be a $10 disconnection fee for me to quit paying the 

$7.99 every month? ’’ 

‘‘That is correct.’’ 

‘‘And it is a one-time disconnection fee? ’’ 

‘‘Yes, it is one time.’’ 

‘‘And what am I paying for? ’’ 

‘‘Paying for?’’ she says. 

‘‘Yes, what am I paying for? For you to just quit charging me for 

the service, I have to pay you $10? ’’ 

‘‘Well, no. Basically’’—— 

And then I say, ‘‘I think what we ought to do probably, I think 

maybe now it is time for me to switch carriers. If you are going to 

charge me $10 to quit charging me for something I do not want 

anymore, I think it is time to switch carriers.’’ 

‘‘All right. Well, basically that is just the policy. So once I take 

off the protection plan charge, it will be automatically on your account.’’ 

‘‘OK. So what you are saying is if I want to cancel $7.99 that you 

have been getting every month for the protection plan, you are 

going to charge me $10 to do that? You have no choice? ’’ 

‘‘I have no choice.’’ 

‘‘You cannot waive that? ’’ 

‘‘It is policy. That is correct.’’ 

‘‘Do you have discretion to give me a one-time credit of $10 to 

do away with that? ’’ 

‘‘I am really sorry.’’ 
7 

‘‘I do not really think you want to lose me as a customer, do you, over $10? ’’ 

‘‘Well, we do value your business, but it is just the policy here. So once I take it off, then there will be the $10 charge.’’ 

‘‘And there is nothing you can do about that? You do not have 

the option to waive? ’’ 

And she says, ‘‘No, I do not.’’ 

So then, finally, I said, ‘‘Well, who could waive the $10? ’’ 

She says, ‘‘Well, I would have to give you to the retention specialist. And I am not really sure how it works in that department.’’ 

So then she switched me over to the retention specialist. 

Now, this is typical. And, more importantly, when she switched 

me to the retention specialist, I knew what to say. I knew to keep 

threatening that I was leaving, to keep threatening I was leaving, 

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 not personal, it was longer than 15 minutes, and 

at the end of the call, I managed to get the $7.99 off. I was told 

by the retention specialist I never should have been charged the 

$10. And, by the way, I got so mad and ‘‘escalated,’’ as it is called 

in the business, that the retention specialist ended up giving me 

$10 off a month for 12 months. 

Now, they were looking at a screen that told them all kinds of 

information about me, including the fact that I am a pretty good 

customer. My bill is pretty high. 

So I say this because I think this is what the industry maybe 

does not completely understand in terms of the anger. We found 

that customers are being charged a host of fees that are not included in advertising pricing, some of which are for programming 

that used to be included in a customer’s video package. 

We also found that just as many customers have long believed 

some of these fees, like high definition (HD) and the digital video 

recorder (DVR) service fees, are not really a true reflection of the 

cost to the company of the service but, rather, are based on the revenue goals of the company and the price a customer is willing to 

stomach. In fact, some of these fees are charged to old customers 

while new customers get the same services free of charge. Existing 

customers may not be informed of this. And when they finally figure it out, they have to call and complain to get it taken off. 

We found that customers who called for help on their accounts 

face agents whose job it is not just to solve the customer problems 

but, in 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, ‘‘[t]he price adjustment brings 

with it an opportunity to upsell customers.’’ And these agents are 

compensated, in part, on their ability to sell you more. 

Then if the customer decide they want to cancel their service, 

they have to jump through more hoops. Although all the companies 

here today allow people to sign up for service or upgrade their service online, none of them provide customers an option to cancel service online without speaking to a company representative. And if 

they call, they have to speak to salespeople, like the one I spoke 

to this week, who are trained to prevent the customers from canceling and hopefully selling you more product. Even when cus-
8 

tomers say they do not 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 service 

are often routed to the same agents and should be prepared to negotiate aggressively. We found evidence that these companies train 

their agents to question customers’ decisions to drop channels and 

make offers in a ‘‘top-down’’ fashion so the customer must repeatedly push and push and push to get the best deal. 

Finally, we found that two of the companies have failed to provide their customers with notice that they have been overcharged 

or refunded of past overcharges. As the Chairman pointed out, 

thousands of people in our States have been impacted by that. The 

numbers for Missouri, Time Warner overbilled 4,232 Missouri customers last year for a total of $44,152, and Charter estimates that 

it has annually overcharged approximately 5,897 Missouri customers a total of $494,000 each year. 

I want to acknowledge the cooperation we have received from all 

the companies represented before us today as well as acknowledge 

the commitments they have made during the process of this investigation to improve customer service. Unfortunately, our investigation suggests that there is a long way to go, as did my conversation 

with one of my providers just 2 days ago. 

I thank the witnesses for their testimony and look forward to the 

opportunity to ask you questions. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Senator McCaskill. 

We will now go to our panel of witnesses, and we appreciate you 

all being here. 

This morning we have with us Tom Karinshak. He is the Senior 

Vice President of Customer Service for Comcast where he oversees 

all call center operations and other customer service channels. 

We have with us John Keib. John is the former Executive Vice 

President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of residential services 

for Time Warner Cable where he was in charge of customer service, 

service delivery, technical support, marketing, and sales. 

We have Kathleen Mayo with us, who is the Executive Vice 

President of Customer Operations at Charter Communications, 

where she is responsible for Charter’s customer care organization. 

We have Rasesh Patel, who is the Senior Vice President of Product Management for AT&T Entertainment Group, where he is responsible for product strategy and development for DirecTV. 

We have Kathleen Schneider with us, who is Senior Vice President of operations for DISH Network, where she oversees customer 

service for all DISH and Sling TV subscribers nationwide and manages DISH’s call centers and business process improvement operations. 

Again, we appreciate you all being with us this morning, and we 

look forward to your testimony. It is the custom of the Subcommittee to swear in our witnesses, so at this time I would ask 

you all to please stand and raise your right hand. Do you all swear 

that the testimony you are about to give before this Subcommittee 

will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so 

help you, God? 

Mr. KARINSHAK. I do. 

Mr. KEIB. I do. 
9 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Karinshak appears in the Appendix on page 49. 

Ms. MAYO. I do. 

Mr. PATEL. I do. 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. I do. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you. Let the record reflect that each 

witness answered in the affirmative. 

All of your written statements will be made part of the record in 

their entirety. I would ask you to keep your oral testimony to 5 

minutes today. 

Mr. Karinshak, we would like to hear from you first. 

TESTIMONY OF TOM KARINSHAK,1 SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, 

CUSTOMER SERVICE, COMCAST CABLE 

Mr. KARINSHAK. Thank you. Chairman Portman, Ranking Member McCaskill, and Members of the Subcommittee, my name is 

Tom Karinshak, and I am the Senior Vice President of customer 

service at Comcast Cable. Thank you for the opportunity to be here 

today, and I also want to thank your staff for the courtesies extended to us throughout this review. 

I understand why we are here. Comcast and the industry as a 

whole have 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 have not always been simple 

to read, and the range of choices and prices we have offered have 

not always provided customers with the options they want. I am 

sorry about that history. 

At Comcast, we have committed to our customers that we will 

change it, and we are taking steps to do just that. I want to reaffirm that commitment to you all today and to outline some of the 

actions that 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 with 

our customers. That is the front line. That is the place where customer views about Comcast are shaped. When you contact us to get 

new service, you want to speak with someone who listens to what 

you say and who understands all of our product options. You want 

to know the full price, and you want time to change your mind if 

what you order is not exactly what you need. 

When you get bills from us, you want them to be easy to read, 

and you do not want to see surprises or changes that you do not 

understand. When you call with a question or a problem or to tell 

us we made a mistake, you want polite and responsive service. And 

you want the issue resolved the first time if at all possible. And if 

you move out of our service area or decide to choose 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 our front-line employees in a local store here in the D.C. 

area, and I took some calls directly from our customers, and I was 

heartened by what I experienced. 

I have submitted a longer statement for the record, and I will not 

repeat much of it here. But I do want to tell you just a few of the 
10 

key components of our efforts to improve our customer service and 

to provide a better customer experience. 

First, we are investing in additional training and new technology 

for all of our employees. We are committed to ensuring that when 

our customers speak to Comcast representatives, they are speaking 

to representatives that have received comprehensive and consistent 

training. 

On the technology side, we have rolled out a new cloud-based 

platform that gives customer service representatives a better, holistic view of the customer’s account history so that customers do not 

need to keep repeating the same information when talking to somebody new. 

Second, we are reassessing policies and fees and simplifying our 

bills to improve the overall customer experience. For example, we 

have eliminated change of service and other fees, and we now allow 

customers to return equipment free of charge through our partnership with the United Parcel Service (UPS). We offer all customers 

a 30-day money-back guarantee, and in response to the Subcommittee’s concerns, we have reaffirmed in a policy statement sent to all 

of our retention specialists that we expect them to promptly facilitate a disconnect for a customer who is not interested in answering 

questions. 

Third, we are giving all customers better access to products and 

services that work best for them. We have listened to our customers and are developing new products that better suit their 

needs. For example, we recently developed a cutting-edge X1 platform which has completely enhanced and revamped our customers’ 

entertainment experience. And we have expanded our free on-demand 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 front-line employees is now 

tied directly to the customer experience. In fact, the compensation 

for all company employees, including our company’s 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 are creating more than 5,500 new customer service jobs 

over the next 3 years, including positions that we have already 

filled at our new call centers in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in 

Tucson, Arizona. 

Having spent over 6 years in the Army myself, I am particularly 

proud of the fact that we are looking to fill many of these positions 

with our Nation’s veterans and their families. 

We believe these and other steps we have taken to improve our 

customer experience are making a real difference. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I am happy 

to answer any questions that you may have. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Karinshak. Mr. Keib. 
11 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Keib appears in the Appendix on page 57. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN KEIB,1 FORMER EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, RESIDENTIAL SERVICES, TIME WARNER CABLE INC. 

Mr. KEIB. Chairman Portman, Ranking Member McCaskill, other 

Members of the Subcommittee, good morning. My name is John 

Keib, and I am here today to testify on behalf of legacy Time Warner Cable. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this 

hearing. 

As you know, Time Warner Cable recently merged with Charter 

Communications and Bright House Networks to form a new company. My role at Time Warner Cable ended when the parties completed these transactions; I am no longer employed by Time Warner Cable or Charter. As such, I am testifying today as a former 

Time Warner Cable executive, but also as a private citizen. 

My most recent position at Time Warner Cable was Executive 

Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for residential services. 

In this role, I led the service delivery, customer care, marketing, 

and sales operations for the company’s residential service. To the 

extent that questions arise relating to the future of Time Warner 

Cable and Charter, I will defer to Charter’s witness, Kip Mayo. 

Legacy Time Warner Cable serves approximately 15 million customers receiving video, Internet, or telephone services in 29 States 

ranging from Maine to Hawaii. We employ thousands of customer 

service representatives and field technicians whom we train, first 

and foremost, to serve our customers. 

Let me begin by acknowledging that we are well aware of some 

of the issues that will be discussed by the Subcommittee today. 

Those of you who live in a Time Warner Cable area have probably 

seen our most recent ad campaign in which we acknowledge—indeed highlight—prior service challenges before explaining the steps 

we are taking as a company to address those historical shortcomings. 

That campaign is the culmination of efforts made, during my tenure at Time Warner Cable, to improve our customer service performance in order to provide the best customer experience possible. 

Beginning in 2013, under an internal strategy we called ‘‘Winning 

on Service,’’ Time Warner Cable embarked on an aggressive plan 

to improve its customer service and took several steps toward that 

goal. We invested heavily in our network. We made several technology augmentations for broadband and video. We also initiated 

an ambitious plan to reshape our customer service performance by 

investing in our greatest and most important asset—our employees. We sought to make service the differentiator and to become 

the best service provider not just within the telecom space, but 

within any industry. 

Our goal is to keep customers, and we accomplish that goal by 

keeping them happy. To do this, we train our customer service representatives to provide excellent care to our customers. Upon hiring, our representatives receive 11 weeks of hands-on training, as 

well as weekly ongoing training and coaching sessions with our supervisors. These coaching sessions allow our representatives to 

learn from the actual calls they handle. Our focus on customer 
12 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Mayo appears in the Appendix on page 60. 

service has made a difference, as more than four in five customers 

report they are satisfied with their interaction with Time Warner 

Cable. And our surveys suggest that our customers are becoming 

increasingly satisfied. 

We have made great strides in addressing customer issues more 

quickly and efficiently. We have done this by improving our phone 

service levels through enhanced training and better staffing, improving our product and service performance, and introducing appointment-based call-backs, which allow customers to schedule callbacks from Time Warner Cable at times that best work for them. 

As a result of these efforts, our total call volume is down. Over the 

past 3 years, the number of calls fielded by our customer service 

representatives decreased by 12 million, which is a testament to 

better and more efficient customer service. 

One measure of this improved customer service is known as ‘‘onetouch resolution’’—or the percentage of calls that are managed by 

a single agent. Recent internal reports show that we achieve onetouch resolution in nearly 94 percent of the calls we handle. 

In addition, Time Warner Cable began offering industry 1-hour 

service and install windows, and in the first quarter of this year, 

our technicians were on time for these appointments 99 percent of 

the time. We also significantly reduced by 1.6 million the number 

of times a Time Warner Cable technician needed to visit a customer’s home to handle a repair. 

Are we there yet? No. Making such changes at a company our 

size is no small feat, and the desired changes cannot all happen at 

once. Still, the evidence suggests that our efforts are starting to 

pay off. In the latest American Customer Satisfaction Report, Time 

Warner Cable was ranked the fourth-best Internet provider. That 

is up from the 13th position 2 years previously. 

Although we did not have enough time to fully execute our plan, 

I am proud of the early results just as I am most proud of our technicians and customer service agents who together are pursuing a 

single mission of winning on service. Moreover, I am very confident 

that Charter holds the same core tenets about prioritizing customer 

service and will continue to improve the customer service experience. 

I look forward to answering any questions you have today about 

Time Warner Cable, and I would like to thank you for having me 

here today. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Keib. Ms. Mayo. 

TESTIMONY OF KATHLEEN ‘‘KIP’’ MAYO,1 EXECUTIVE VICE 

PRESIDENT, CUSTOMER OPERATIONS, CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS, INC. 

Ms. MAYO. Thank you, Chairman Portman, Ranking Member 

McCaskill, and Members of the Subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify here today. My name is Kathleen Mayo, and I 

am Charter’s executive vice president of customer operations. 

I am here to talk about the significant progress we have made 

improving the customer experience at Charter since the company’s 
13 

2009 bankruptcy and more especially since its change of leadership 

in 2012. 

As a result of its history, Charter’s infrastructure was in serious 

need of capital investment. The company’s financial situation 

meant that Charter had underinvested in repairs, which kept the 

product from performing reliably. At the same time, it had tried to 

cut costs by outsourcing thousands of customer service jobs overseas. 

Since Tom Rutledge became the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 

2012 and brought in a new leadership team, we instituted a new 

playbook for success that included streamlining our video products, 

adding value to those products, and delivering the fastest minimum 

broadband speeds, all at highly competitive prices, with a focus on 

improving customer service. 

Our efforts over the last 3 or 4 years to improve customer service, have included insourcing customer and field service positions, 

which created thousands of American jobs. We have invested significantly in training our employees to be responsive to the needs 

of the customer. 

Since 2012, we have hired over 7,000 employees, a 40-percent increase, and the majority of those roles are customer-facing positions, many of which were brought back from overseas. To date, 

nearly 90 percent of our customer calls are handled onshore and 

in-house, and 95 percent of our in-home service visits are performed by Charter technicians rather than by third-party contractors. 

We are committed to locating our facilities in the communities 

we serve, most recently opening a $16 million state-of-the-art customer operations center in St. Ann, Missouri. 

As part of our transaction with Time Warner Cable, Charter expects to hire 20,000 American workers, many of whom will fill customer service jobs that are currently outsourced to call centers located in other countries. This approach has given us greater quality assurance in our representatives’ interactions with customers. 

Our representatives engage in conversations with our customers to 

understand their unique needs in order to properly assist them. We 

do not follow canned scripts. 

To improve the customer experience, we also have taken steps to 

simplify our bill by eliminating common industry fees, and we have 

expanded self-service capabilities. As a result of these steps and 

the $7 billion we have invested in our network, customer service 

calls have declined 25 percent since 2013. When our customers do 

need assistance, we have been able to resolve their issue on the 

first call 80 percent of the time. 

Those high-quality customer interactions are growing our customer base. In a very competitive environment, we have added 

more than 1 million customer relationships since the beginning of 

2012, growing our total customer base by 18 percent, despite having no early 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 improved by 12 percent. 

We are pleased with our accomplishments to date and believe the 

results are beginning to show. But we also know that there is still 
14 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Patel appears in the Appendix on page 67. 

much work to do in order to provide our customers with the excellence in service that they expect and that they deserve. 

To eliminate accidental overcharges for video equipment, Charter 

instituted checks and balances that create controls in our order 

entry systems to ensure we get each order right. Our recent audit 

of video equipment determined our billing was 99.4 percent accurate. Out of 11 million boxes, we found approximately 63,000 

boxes—less than 1 percent—where customers were overbilled. 

While 99.4 percent is a high accuracy rate, it remains unacceptable. No accuracy rate short of 100 percent is acceptable. As a result, we are reconciling every single account every single day to ensure our billing is accurate. We are in the process of notifying overcharged customers, and we are issuing them a 12-month credit. 

In conclusion, we have made significant investments to improve 

our network, we have streamlined our products, we have simplified 

our pricing, and we have insourced thousands of jobs to strengthen 

our American workforce. At Charter, we are continuing to work 

every day to improve and show our customers that we are committed to providing superior customer service. 

Thank you. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Mayo. Mr. Patel. 

TESTIMONY OF RASESH PATEL,1 SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, 

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, AT&T ENTERTAINMENT GROUP 

(DIRECTV) 

Mr. PATEL. Good morning, Chairman Portman, Ranking Member 

McCaskill, and Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Rasesh 

Patel, and I appreciate this opportunity to speak with you, on behalf of AT&T and DIRECTV, about our commitment to customer 

service. The hallmark of our brand has been to offer customers the 

very best entertainment experience through our technology, unique 

content offerings, and good customer service, and we are proud of 

that heritage. But we need to get better, and we are working hard 

to do so. 

To that end, we need to complement our great product. I think 

we have a phenomenal product that offers customers the first digital experience, Sunday Ticket, first to go to HD. But sometimes 

that great product is not complemented with great customer experience, and it frustrates our customers. And so to that end, in 2012, 

I started a group that focused on being champions for the customer 

inside the organization, reporting directly to the CEO. And our goal 

was not just customer service. Our goal was to relook at the entire 

business through the customer’s eyes, to conduct a significant 

amount of analysis on what exactly customers are going through, 

and to be the internal voice of the customer in the organization so 

that as decisions are being made and as policies are being set, the 

voice of the customer is represented, and to be a champion for the 

change and really see improvements all the way through. To that 

end, we have made a lot of progress, but we have a long way to 

go. 

And so this is a very personal issue for me. I asked our CEO to 

really lead this organization, so I am glad to be here today. 
15 

Our commitment to serving customers and giving them more 

value and choices has never been stronger. We recently announced 

in March plans to launch over-the-top services that will provide 

customers flexibility and increase choices in lower-cost offerings to 

customers. It will essentially allow them to enjoy our content distributed over the Internet in a much more simple business model 

and offering. 

DirecTV has ranked higher in customer satisfaction than cable 

for 16 years in a row, but we recognize that we need to raise the 

bar in this ever-evolving competitive landscape, given rising content costs. If customers are going to pay more for the service, they 

can, should, and will expect more. We believe service is an essential component of our success and we have, accordingly, devoted 

and will continue to devote significant resources toward our goal of 

delivering a 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 noted Mr. 

Chairman, I am currently Senior Vice President of Product Management, but from 2012 until AT&T’s 2015 acquisition of DirecTV, 

I served as Senior Vice President of Customer Experience. In that 

role, I led DirecTV’s proactive, enterprise-wide, customer-centric effort to improve the experience across all customer touch points. 

The initiative began with a comprehensive evaluation of all our 

policies and practices. We conducted detailed research on exactly 

what the customer was going through, and we have shared much 

of that research with the Subcommittee. We did an analysis on 

operational data in order to really prioritize our efforts to what was 

most important to customers. 

We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in that customer experience initiative, which has produced real results for our 

customers. We have eliminated 18 million phone calls per year to 

our call centers over the last 3 years, which demonstrates customers are experiencing fewer issues. We have reduced over 

300,000 service truck rolls per year, which I also look at as 300,000 

fewer times someone has to take a day off of work in order to meet 

a service technician. 

We have reduced complaints to our Complaint Resolution Center 

by 44 percent, and we introduced a new simplified bill that clearly 

showed customers what the full retail price of their services was, 

what the discount amount was, and was very transparent every 

month about communicating when that discount expires. 

We made it a point on page 1 of that bill to proactively identify 

anything that has changed from the previous month so customers 

do not have to hunt for that information. 

DirecTV also maintains a dedicated team to proactively identify 

and address billing errors, and it is a continually learning process. 

If we find an issue that becomes part of a continuously monitoring 

inquiry, we will look for that problem going forward. It is our policy 

to proactively address billing errors, to notify customers that we 

made an error, and to reimburse affected customers. And we even 

do so if that person is no longer a customer with us. We will go 

back and credit their account. 

But we are not done yet. We have plenty of room for improvement, and in that regard, AT&T and DirecTV will spend more than 
16 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Schneider appears in the Appendix on page 73. 

$1 billion toward enhancing the customer experience from 2016 to 

2017. While we do take pride in the progress that we have made 

over the past 3 years, we know that customer satisfaction is a 

never-ending journey, and we can, should, and need to do better. 

In that regard, I sincerely welcome the Committee’s input. 

Through this process, I have run across a couple of things that I 

myself have discovered that will drive change in our organization. 

And we are confident that as a combined company we will further 

enhance our ability to provide our customers with the very best 

products and services that they deserve. 

So I thank you for the opportunity to appear here today, and I 

look forward to answering your questions. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Patel. Ms. Schneider. 

TESTIMONY OF KATHLEEN SCHNEIDER,1 SENIOR VICE 

PRESIDENT, OPERATIONS, DISH NETWORK, L.L.C. 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. Chairman Portman, Ranking Member 

McCaskill, and Members of the Subcommittee, my name is Kathy 

Schneider, and I am the Senior Vice President of operations for 

DISH Network. 

In the 1980s, DISH’s three founders decided that consumers 

should have an affordable alternative to cable. We launched our 

service in 1996 and were successful in reinventing television distribution and providing meaningful competition within the pay-TV 

industry. DISH is now the Nation’s fourth-largest pay-TV provider 

with about 14 million subscribers. We have 18,000 employees, plus 

relationships with over 6,000 independent retailers, most of which 

are small businesses providing community storefront operations for 

our customers. There are 146 of these retailers in Ohio and 167 in 

Missouri. 

We are proud that DISH is the only provider of local broadcast 

channels in all 210 U.S. media markets, ensuring that even the 

most rural customers receive the same high-quality television as 

customers in more urban areas. 

For DISH’s customer service, the issues we will discuss in this 

hearing are complex, but here is 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 first-rate entertainment experience and making our customers happy. Happy customers understand and see the value of our products and services, 

understand our bills, receive a seamless installation of reliable 

products, and receive 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 sure we satisfy these customer expectations. 

And we have received some outside recognition for these efforts, including an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), 

J.D. Power awards for customer satisfaction for 4 years running, 

and a top ranking in several categories by the American Customer 

Satisfaction Index, including Lowest Customer Complaints. 

We diligently track the latest customer pain points and adjust 

our policies, procedures, training materials, and subscriber offer-
17 

ings. We make sure our agents have the necessary tools to match 

each customer with the best programming, technology, and value 

for that customer’s needs. 

When a call comes in, our policy is to resolve, prevent, and promote. First, resolve the customer’s issue, then 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 demand for TV anywhere, anytime. That is what 

is behind our award-winning set-top box, the Hopper, and also 

Sling TV, our groundbreaking live TV Internet streaming service. 

We are in a highly competitive business with major up-front costs involved in acquiring each customer to the tune of $800 per 

subscriber at DISH. It takes us 4 years of having the customer for 

us to recoup those costs, and vying for our customers are often two 

to three other cable, telco, or satellite companies. Usually, one or 

more of those competitors is a company that, unlike DISH, can 

bundle its TV offerings with broadband and phone service. DISH’s 

way of beating the bundle has to be keeping our customers satisfied with the quality of our service and value of what we are giving 

them. 

Unfortunately, DISH cannot alone address two of the biggest 

overall customer complaints that we face: one, the high price of 

programming; and, two, the inability for our customers to select 

which channels they receive. The content industry needs to be a 

part of that conversation. 

The main source of rising pay television rates is the skyrocketing 

costs of acquiring programming content, mostly due to the broadcasters’ ever-growing demands for retransmission consent fees. Programmers have inflicted huge price increases leading to scores of 

channel blackouts when they withhold their signals and put consumers in the middle of their negotiations with us. 

DISH and other pay-TV companies have called on Congress and 

the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to update the outdated laws that govern how TV distributors negotiate for content 

with broadcasters. Reform would go a long way in stopping blackouts, addressing the anti-consumer effects of forced channel bundling, and moderating pay-TV prices and perhaps even lowering 

them. 

I will end with this: While DISH is proud of its customer service 

and billing practices, we are also committed to continued improvement and constantly ask ourselves what can we do better. We are 

not perfect. We make mistakes. But we do our best to fix the mistakes that happen and learn from them. We welcome the advice of 

the Subcommittee on ways that the overall service experience can 

be made better for our subscribers. 

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Schneider. I appreciate it. 

We are going to have the opportunity to ask questions from the 

panel. We have a 7-minute initial round of questions, and then we 

will do 5 minutes for the second round. Because we have a number 

of Members here, I am going to keep my initial questions shorter 

than that because I will be here until the end. 

Let me start, if I could, by saying that I really appreciate the testimony. We learned a lot, including on some issues that we may be 
18 

following up on, as I said earlier, in terms of competition and ensuring that people have choices. But let me zero in on this issue 

of not providing refunds to customers. 

Mr. Keib, I appreciate your being here. I know you are here really in your capacity as a private sector individual now, not with any 

particular company but as a private citizen. And yet you were in 

charge during this time period that we looked into, which was before Warner Cable had merged with Charter, and even going forward, some of the Time Warner practices that do not provide customers to get a full refund for charges they should not have incurred, particularly with regard to equipment. 

So I guess my question to you would be, when you look at the 

data, 40,000 Ohio customers in 2015 were charged 430,000 bucks 

they should not have been charged, they are getting no refund for 

that. Even the first 5 months of this year, 11,000 Ohio customers 

are being overbilled over 100,000 bucks. Mistakes happen. We 

talked about that. And I mentioned, the checkout counter at the 

grocery store example of that where sometimes they make a mistake, but then they correct it. And they do not say, ‘‘We are going 

to charge you less next time you come in.’’ They say, ‘‘We are going 

to make you good.’’ 

So it seems to me that the company could have looked into these 

overcharges, as other companies represented here have, and determined, how long the customer had been billed for these charges 

and simply to provide them a refund for that. Do you agree with 

that? 

Mr. KEIB. I think I agree with that. But I would, if given the opportunity, like to give a quick overview of the situation that we are 

discussing and how we handle credits and refunds. 

Senator PORTMAN. Yes, quickly, if you would. 

Mr. KEIB. Sure. Well, first of all, I would like to bring up something that did not come up, I think, when we started, which is that 

we are actually undercharging customers significantly more than 

we are overcharging them. At least that is what we found and submitted as part of our revenue assurance program. And I do think 

that is noteworthy in the context of this discussion. 

Second, as a company, we provide over $150 million in credits a 

year to customers, and a lot of those credits are done in real time 

with our customer service agents, and many of them are done when 

we know the origination of the actual air date. And when we can 

quantify the exact customers impacted, we absolutely do provide 

notice, and we do provide the exact amount of what the actual 

credit is going to be. 

Several years ago, we built out something we called a revenue 

assurance program, and this revenue assurance program, as I 

think you may have mentioned, was really designed to find these 

kind of issues. And over time we found these issues, and what the 

revenue assurance program found as it looks to tie out whether our 

equipment is being charged properly on the accounts is that of the 

37 million pieces of equipment that we have active on our network, 

a very small fraction were being improperly billed. 

And on top of that, if you bring it down to the customer level, 

it was about, I think, 0.07 percent of customers with video equipment had an issue and 0.03 percent of our modems. 
19 

So what I said earlier about winning on service, we take it very 

seriously. And it does not really matter if it is 10,000 out of 2.5 million customers. That 10,000 or 11,000 is what we have to get right. 

Senator PORTMAN. Let me interrupt you, if I could, just for a second. We are talking about 40,000 customers in Ohio alone in 2015 

who were overcharged. 

Mr. KEIB. I apologize. 

Senator PORTMAN. Forty thousand in Ohio alone, so you are talking about many more thousands of that in other States represented 

around this panel. And it is easy to say, well, we undercharged 

some people, we overcharged others, it all kind of nets out. Not for 

those 40,000 families. Not for the family that is getting overcharged. I mean, you should not undercharge either. You should 

have business practices that take care of that. I am not suggesting 

that there is any benefit to undercharging or overcharging. What 

I am suggesting is that if you are overcharged and you find out 

about it, you ought to make them good. And that is what other 

businesses do. I used the example of the checkout counter, but it 

is true in other businesses that you and I deal with every day. 

So my question to you is really simple: Shouldn’t you have, having identified those people, simply provided them—and, still, you 

are not doing it because what you are saying is you are going to 

give them a month credit where it could be years of having equipment that they were overcharged for? Isn’t that accurate? 

Mr. KEIB. It is not accurate to say that they have been overcharged for years, and I will just—— 

Senator PORTMAN. How do you know that? 

Mr. KEIB. If I could just take time to explain that in the revenue 

assurance program, we are looking for mismatches of pieces of 

equipment, and what we are trying to figure out is whether the 

service charge on that piece of equipment ties to the actual equipment. Because of the amount of volume of equipment we are turning over right now, whether we are upgrading our modems, upgrading our set-top equipment, or actually going all digital and 

have been launching DTAs, there is a lot of transactional volume. 

And what I am told and what I have learned through the revenue 

assurance process is that the mismatch is being driven when a customer is, during this transition window, putting equipment on account and taking it off the account and matching that up to the actual service charge. 

So what we are doing is proactively every month running a report to find those discrepancies, and that is why I say based on 

what I have heard from our team is that I would venture to say 

that the majority of those are more recent and within the actual 

30-to 45-day span. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. A majority are more recent, but you do 

not know that it has not been years. You are now doing this 

monthly analysis, which is a step forward, as I said, and I do think 

this hearing has created some improvements in customer service 

both for you and for Charter, and based on what others have said, 

it sounds like all of you have looked at your processes and come 

up with some new suggestions. So that is positive. 

But, still, you are not providing people the money that they are 

owed even though you know that they deserve a refund. We will 
20 

get back into this with more specificity. I want to move 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 Warner’s and Charter’s customer service procedures are. But 

I would hope that even though you have made an announcement 

today you are going to provide customers some relief, that you just 

simply do what you now have the data to be able to do, which is 

to tell the people I represent and people that are represented by 

people on this panel, look, if you get overcharged, you are going to 

get a refund for it, just as you would in other businesses. 

With that, I will turn to my colleague Senator McCaskill and 

then to other colleagues here. Again, I am cutting my time short 

with the hope that we can get everybody’s questions in. 

Senator MCCASKILL. He is saying that because he is trying to 

send me a signal that I cannot go over. He knows me really well. 

He know that I am going to get carried away. 

It appears to me from a distance that the business model that 

has grown up in pay-TV is, figure out a way to make the entry 

price as low as possible, figure out how to roll people off that entry 

price as quickly as you can, and then deal with their anger once 

they realize the price has gone up. And, by the way, if they call 

to cancel, make sure you train your customer service people really 

well in how you deal with somebody who is angry, and the angrier 

they get, the more likely they are to get something from you; or depending on who they get, how skilled the retention agent is in holding on to them and handing them goodies, sometimes temporarily, 

to calm them down and hope that you can hold on to them longer. 

Now, there are so many things about this business model that 

are asking for customers to be upset. Do any of you in your advertisements to try to get customers put the same size pricing on what 

they are going to pay after the promotion as you do for the promotional price? Do any of you do that? 

[No response.] 

So all of you do the promotional price, and then there is fine 

print. In fact, many of you do not even put what the price is going 

to be after the promotional price, correct? Is that correct? Yes? 

Does anybody disagree with that? 

[No response.] 

So the promotional price and transparency is the beginning of 

the journey that America has with their pay-TV providers. 

Let me ask about HD and other fees. Ms. Schneider, does DISH 

currently charge customers an HD fee? 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. So for new customers, we no longer charge HD 

fees. 

Senator MCCASKILL. So you do not charge HD fees for new customers. What about old customers? 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. So we have a small number of customers who, 

when they came into DISH, they had sort of different pricing arrangements. So for customers today, we include HD fees in the receiver fees that they are paying for new Hopper equipment, so it 

is included there. For the subset of customers in earlier days of 

HD, we did not have that fee included in the receiver fees. So they 

are having lower receiver fees and then paying that HD fee as an 

offset. 
21 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. So I guess what I am saying is, DISH 

no longer charges new customers HD, but you charge old customers 

HD, correct? 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. Well, in essence, we are charging both. They are 

just kind of in different—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. But isn’t it true if someone calls in and asks 

to have their HD fee waived, they get it waived? 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. If they call in, yes, we will waive it. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. So, once again, hide the ball. So if I am 

smart enough to know to call DISH, if I have an HD fee on my bill, 

if I am smart enough to call and ask for it to come off, you are 

going to take it off, aren’t you? 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. Agents will do that for longer-term customers. 

These are long-term customers for us, and so—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. So how long do you have to be a customer 

before you have the magic knock to get the fee taken off? 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. I do not know that there is a specific time that 

we have there. It is—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. See, this is exactly what I am talking about. 

Nobody knows how to get the best price from you guys. Nobody 

knows. There is a secret sauce somewhere, and I think it has to 

do with being really mad, which is really bizarre to me. 

All right. Let us go on to Mr. Patel. You all charge now an advanced receiver service fee, right? 

Mr. PATEL. That is correct. 

Senator MCCASKILL. So you took the HD thing off the bill, and 

then you put a brand-new thing on the bill. Now, how many of your 

customers do you 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 tried to do is simplify the 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 you are going to pay for 

the programming package. The second choice is, do you want basic 

services or advanced services? Basic services provide a good HD experience but do not include DVR, On Demand, and other things. 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK. 

Mr. PATEL. That is what that advanced service fee is. It provides 

the more advanced services. Then it is $7 per room. 

As a part of the customer experience effort, we found that the 

number of choices customers had to make was extremely complex 

and wanted—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. OK, so you wanted to lower the number of 

choices they make, but isn’t it true that not all customers are 

charged the same advanced receiver service (ARS) fee in your company? 

Mr. PATEL. That is correct. 

Senator MCCASKILL. And so how do I know whether I get a lower 

ARS fee? Do I have to call and ask you? If I call and ask you, will 

you lower my ARS fee? 

Mr. PATEL. No, and it is—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. No? 
22 

Mr. PATEL. It is kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison, and 

let me explain why. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Quickly, if you would. 

Mr. PATEL. I will. So when the ARS fee was originally introduced, it was at a slightly higher price, and we have lowered it. 

But—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. Did you lower it for everybody? 

Mr. PATEL. But the customers who came on board with the higher price received their first room’s equipment for free. There are 

other components of their offer that were different, and so the challenge is that it is a very competitive marketplace, and the offers 

from a marketing perspective change very quickly. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I understand that, believe me, and customers understand that. It is like shifting sand. 

OK. Let me talk about the secret rates offered by retention 

agents. In this investigation, we determined that there are actually 

rates that retention agents are authorized to give their customers 

that are never advertised. Does anybody disagree with that statement? 

[No response.] 

So that is what is really frustrating. Let me talk specifically 

about Time Warner. To handle customers that want to lower the 

cost of the service, Time Warner provided its agents with a chart 

that showed them how much to lower the price of a package each 

time someone objected. So the 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. And then we found out, 

when we interviewed you, that if they asked, they would tell the 

price they just offered was the lowest price available at that time 

even though there was a lower price on the chart that they could 

still offer. And when we asked you about that, you said, ‘‘Well, at 

that moment that was the lowest price that agent could offer.’’ 

That is the kind of stuff that is driving people through the wall. 

Is it fair for customers to not be able to determine when they have 

reached the lowest price? How does a customer know when they 

have gotten the best deal? You can listen to my call. I kept getting 

mad, and I eventually got 120 bucks back, plus I got rid of the 

$7.99. I never would have known to do that if we had not done this 

investigation. 

So will you all make a commitment today to advertise the lowest 

price available? Any of you? 

[No response.] 

Will you publish it on your website, the lowest price available for 

your services? Any of you? 

[No response.] 

I will have more questions the next round. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Senator McCaskill. Senator Paul. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PAUL 

Senator PAUL. One thing that is interesting about pricing is that 

if you go to a car dealer and you say, ‘‘What is the lowest price you 

will give me on the car?’’ nobody in their right mind is going to 

publish that. So the question is: Is there competition or not? It 

looks like there are a lot of choices and you can choose, and they 
23 

have various ways of presenting themselves to try to entice you. 

But that is the marketplace. It is buyer beware, and as long as you 

have choices, if you do not like one of the choices, you do not like 

their service, you simply in America choose another server. 

I think, though, that we need to put this particular problem or 

this particular hearing in sort of a context, the context of what 

kind of problems we have in our country. We have a $19 trillion 

debt. We have an anemic economy that is growing at a point and 

a half. Millions of people are not getting jobs because we are not 

growing at a historic rate. We have a $7 trillion shortfall in Social Security and a 435 trillion shortfall in Medicare. But I do not think Congress is having 

hearings on any of these. I propose we ought to have a full permanent hearing on Social Security that meets all of the time just to 

address Social Security. I have been here 6 years, and there has 

not been one bill to the floor of the Senate to address the entitlement problem, the looming entitlement problem that we all acknowledge is there. So I think we do have important problems that 

we do need to face as a country. 

We are asked today to look at the tactics of television providers 

to see if they are unfair, their bills are too complex. We have pointed to low customer satisfaction surveys. Well, one thing is very 

clear, though. Television providers’ customer satisfaction still exceeds that of Congress. So I am not sure really if there is enough 

wisdom in Congress that we can impart to people who actually 

have a higher approval rating than we do. 

If we were to examine, though, organizations that fail the transparency test, we might want to start with government. The Pentagon has never been audited. It is enormous, it is this behemoth. 

And we have to have defense, but certainly we should audit it. 

They have told us they are too big to be audited, and we just say, 

‘‘Oh, well.’’ That has been going on for over a decade. 

The Federal Reserve, completely unaudited. We cannot get an 

audit through. We have had very little cooperation in the Senate 

from people saying, ‘‘Yes, we need transparency in government. I 

mean, sure, this is an important problem, and it is frustrating. I 

have been there. I have been on the phone with people. In our 

household, we get frustrated calling consumer reps. But at the 

same time, we have big problems as a country. We have to figure 

out what are we going to do with the Fed, the Pentagon, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and really Congress. 

Congress uses bills that are hundreds if not thousands of pages 

long, filled with wonky, technical jargon that is unapproachable to 

the average reader. Congress uses high-pressure situations to get 

people to accept bills they do not like. Few members actually read 

the bills before they agree to them. And, so I think maybe Congress 

might be one of our first items. 

Unfortunately, when you look at your government, you are unhappy with your government, you cannot 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 a choice. 

The satellite and cable industry in my State has a $4.7 billion 

impact on Kentucky. I think in the midst of unhappiness about 

things not being perfect—and nothing is ever perfect. We realize 
24 

you have a choice, but we should not lose sight of the fact of what 

the television industry does for our States as far as jobs and occupations and money for each of our States. 

Maybe we should be asking, How can we help them grow their 

business? The only way they grow their business is by having better consumer service, but maybe there are obstacles such as taxes 

or regulations that add costs to your bill, too. 

I know that when I look at my phone bill, I see a lot of government stuff on there, and so maybe there are ways that we could 

make the bills less by actually removing government obstacles. 

The fact is that the market for television content has evolved 

quite rapidly through its own technological advancement and expanding consumer choices. Milton Friedman once argued that the 

essence of an effective television industry, an effective telephone industry, an effective computer industry, or an effective mail delivery 

industry, you name it, is competition. If there is an argument that 

there is not competition, then these can be really serious problems. 

As long as there is competition—and there appears to be vibrant 

competition—you have a choice. 

I have a choice in Bowling Green of two cable companies. I have 

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. There are now more subscriptions that you can get without a contract because it is becoming very competitive. We have 

one big cable company that was bankrupt. Apparently, there is not 

a huge amount, they are struggling to make enough profit. 

But, anyway, I think it has even come to the point now that we 

have simpler billing as a marketing tool. Some of the different companies here are actually marketing that they have simpler bills to 

try to get business away from their competitors who may not be 

doing as good a job. 

So, I do not know, I just think we need to put this hearing in 

perspective and not get too carried away. I have the same frustrations—I mean, everybody does in the modern world—of trying to 

call and get through to these companies. But we have to realize, 

first, do no harm. Do we want to get involved with an industry and 

do it to such an extent that ultimately we screw up something that 

is actually working very well in many instances and acknowledge 

that, look, we have hundreds and hundreds of choices of channels, 

maybe the house is not on fire. Maybe things can get better and 

will get better through competition. But I for one want to make 

sure we do not go too far in one direction. 

Thank you. 

Senator PORTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Paul. And as I said at the 

outset, competition is something we are looking into because at 

least in my home State of Ohio, we do not have the kind of competition I would like to see. I have some numbers here indicating 

how there is a 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 even 

raised some things that could be done in terms of providing a more 

level playing field so there is more real competition. And I agree 

with you. That is how you ultimately get better service. Senator 

Lankford. 
25 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANKFORD 

Senator LANKFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for 

hosting this hearing and the conversation that is here, but as Senator Paul has mentioned as well, there is a context of this. As I 

read through the notes and as we received this early this morning 

and late last night, one of my first thoughts on the section on not 

getting an answer the first time that you make a call in customer 

service, I wondered how many times that our constituent service 

folks on our staff have tried to call the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) or Social Security or multiple other agencies and 

we will work for months to get an answer to a question that should 

be a straightforward issue. So there is a great deal within government right now that lacks in customer service as well, and I think 

that deserves a very public acknowledgment that all of us have a 

very long way to go, and dealing with cable customer service is the 

pot calling the kettle black as we work through this process. 

Saying all 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 they called their cable 

provider so many times and got non-answers that they eventually 

called their Senator, who we called someone that we knew, and 

they eventually got attention. And it was the oddest thing for me 

to think, Why does it take literally an act of someone in Congress 

to try to get attention on someone who has a billing problem, especially for senior adults that call our office? 

Now, in the training—and one of the issues that I have is in the 

training, and I understand there is a lot of selling and there is a 

lot of work toward profit. Saying that the people that are on the 

phone want to actually sell you a program is not shocking to me. 

It is much akin to saying I am shocked there is gambling in Casablanca, that there are people that are in a for-profit business are 

trying to actually stay in business and sell a product. 

I do have a concern often when we deal with people that are senior adults that do not understand the billing. So the request that 

I would have is whatever customer service upgrades that you have 

made—and all of you have made comments about increased training and capabilities—would you please make sure that you are paying attention to the fact that there are senior adults that are calling that have no idea about this billing practice and have no idea 

of all these packages, and they are being taken advantage of? And 

that is something intolerable in this process. 

Let me ask a couple of things, though. In the billing as it comes 

out itself, somebody give me a guess. In the typical customer paying for cable services, what percentage of that is State, local, and 

Federal taxes that they are also paying when they pay that monthly bill? Can somebody give me a guess? 

I see lots of thinking. Pen and paper is coming out. 

Mr. KEIB. I could say that at a minimum we charge what is 

called a franchise fee, which is around 5 percent, at a minimum. 

And then there are other taxes and fees on top of that. The reason 

why it might be a little bit difficult to give you those exact numbers, it varies by State sometimes. 

Senator LANKFORD. Sure it does. Right. 
26 

Mr. KEIB. So on an average $100 bill, I think 5 percent is a minimum number. And then I think you could work off of that number, 

depending on the market for fees and passthrough fees and things 

like that. 

Senator LANKFORD. Does anybody have a different number besides 5 percent there? 

Ms. MAYO. I would guess at least 10 percent. 

Senator LANKFORD. OK, at least 10 percent being State, local, 

and Federal taxes, some sort of fee that is attached to it. 

I want to talk about an ongoing challenge that we have with 

packaging, and then I also want to get to streaming, and so we are 

going to have a conversation coming about some of the streaming 

services that I know you all are also experimenting with a great 

deal right now. 

The cost of the actual content that is coming to you, there is an 

ongoing conversation about that as well, because as everyone complains about their cable bill, what I hear back typically from cable 

providers is, ‘‘Do you have any idea how much it costs for XYZ content coming in?’’ Where does that fit into the typical billing practice? And as you all are actually trying to forecast, let us say, 5 

years from now when you talk about hardware, when you talk 

about fiber being put in the ground, and you talk about content, 

where does that rank? When you do your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threat (SWOT) analysis and you are 

looking at the threats, where does content fit into that? 

Mr. PATEL. I will take that, Senator. 

Senator LANKFORD. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PATEL. Content costs rising is a really significant issue, and 

I do not think consumers truly understand the dynamic that is in 

place. We talked a lot about pricing, billing, and fees. But, for us, 

for 8 out of the last 11 years, the cost of the content has actually 

exceeded the pricing that we have passed on to the consumer. And 

so we are in a difficult position. It is a very challenging thing to 

do to pass on pricing to a consumer. No matter how you notify it, 

it is going to be something that causes a negative reaction from 

customers. 

From 2005 to 2015, content costs grew 95 percent, and to put 

that into perspective, it is growing at three times the rate of any 

other goods or services. And so I think it is an issue. I think it is 

exacerbated by the fact that the agreements require you to carry 

a lot of channels that consumers do not have demand for. And both 

of those things I think create pressure and create sort of a structure that is not in the best interest of the consumer. 

Senator LANKFORD. So going back to Senator Paul’s conversation—and Senator Portman and Senator McCaskill have all raised 

this issue about competition—the ongoing conversation in the country right now is about just streaming content rather than actually 

buying from cable or buying from other satellite providers. You all 

are doing both, where you are actually streaming content as a separate service with Sling—is that correct?—and then also through 

satellite. So tell me about modeling for that and trying to work 

through providing competition in that area for another completely 

different delivery device, because the key thing for me is can people 

get content that they choose to get in the medium that they choose 
27 

to get it in, so if they are ticked off about the latest $3 to $6 fee 

per room that they have to pay for, they have some other option 

to be able to go to. 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. Yes, so Sling is our over-the-top product that we 

have for streaming. Sling is a bit more modular in terms of what 

we can do to provide content. So where we have a bit more bundling with our traditional product, Sling is a bit more modular in 

that customers have more choice in terms of having a basic package that is really affordable and then adding, slimmer packages to 

it so it gives them more choice along those lines. Does that answer 

your question? 

Senator LANKFORD. It starts that. This is a longer conversation 

that we can have that we do not have time for right now. I do have 

to tell you I, along with every other American, get incredibly frustrated. Senator McCaskill did a great job of outlining a basic call 

on customer care. All of us get ticked off at that, not only the 

length of time but the frustration with it. But I am especially 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 they have had, even seniors that have called 

me saying, ‘‘I cannot even disconnect my service or get an answer,’’ 

and they just want to say no, but they are so incredibly kind and 

nice, they cannot seem to turn things off. And so that has to be addressed in the days ahead and should be addressed in a way that 

actually honors the people that have been a part of that service 

and paying customers all along. So thank you. 

Senator PORTMAN. Senator Baldwin. 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you. 

I wanted to start based on Senator Lankford’s last comment. We 

certainly hear from our constituents with enormous frustrations, 

but almost all of us, I assume, have had our own frustrating experience. We are not strangers to this. 

I am actually curious about your own experiences with your own 

companies, and I wonder if you get pay-TV from the company that 

you are with now or formerly were with. Why don’t you go across 

and let me know? 

Mr. KARINSHAK. Yes, Senator, I do. 

Senator BALDWIN. John. 

Mr. KEIB. Yes. 

Senator BALDWIN. Sorry. That was way too informal. Mr. Keib. 

Ms. Mayo. 

Ms. MAYO. Senator, I subscribe to Comcast service. 

Senator BALDWIN. OK. 

Mr. PATEL. Yes, I do. 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. I am a DISH customer. 

Senator BALDWIN. OK. Do you call the same service number that 

any of us or our constituents would if there is, to initiate the service or to deal with problems? Or as current or former team members, do you have an inside number, a colleague or somebody who 

takes care of that for you? Why don’t you go ahead, Mr. Karinshak? 

Mr. KARINSHAK. Yes, Senator, I have it as a normal paying customer, and myself and my team will also do calls into our system 

as well as normal customers. 
28 

Senator BALDWIN. Yes, I was impressed in your testimony that 

you talk about you are sort of engaging in the different aspects of 

the business and sort of trying to figure out what the customer experience is. If you had an outage, you would just go through the 

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, so I do some things online as well to be able to 

see the outage, when it would be cleared, but would experience it 

calling in as a customer. 

Senator BALDWIN. OK. 

Mr. KARINSHAK. And I take calls from customers directly, too. 

Senator BALDWIN. OK. What about you, Mr. Keib? 

Mr. KEIB. All of our employees within Time Warner Cable, if 

they are in our footprint, have Time Warner or used to have Time 

Warner. And in terms of service, at the individual account level, either mine or my family or any relative that asks for help, I would 

go through the normal channels. If there is an outage that is, statewide or something that happens on a large scale and it impacts me, 

I would make sure that we are on top of it but not really out of 

a self-serving, purpose. 

Senator BALDWIN. How about you, Ms. Mayo? 

Ms. MAYO. I am sorry, Senator. I am a little bit abnormal. I do 

not live on footprint for Charter service, so I actually subscribe to 

two different cable operators. One is Comcast and the other one is 

Cablevision. 

Senator BALDWIN. OK. 

Ms. MAYO. So I use their services. I call their lines. I get support 

just like any other customer. 

Senator BALDWIN. OK. Mr. Patel? 

Mr. PATEL. I have DirecTV service and generally will use the 800 

number, the same 800 number our customers use, or our online 

tools. Like Tom, we also have access to being able to listen to calls, 

and so we will do that quite frequently to get a pulse of how the 

customer is being serviced. 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. So the same. If I have an issue, I would call in 

to 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 trouble-shoot those things ourselves. So there is probably a lot 

more self-service with the folks up on the panel than other customers. 

Senator BALDWIN. Well, back to the original point. I hear continuously from Wisconsin residents sharing their frustration with 

pay-TV, satellite and cable. One consistent complaint that 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. 

I also 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 explained that he was given a 2-year 

monthly rate for TV and phone by AT&T, but after a year his bill 

increased by more than $80 without his consent. This additional 

$80 gave him no added service, and, in fact, at that point three 

channels and music stations were removed. He said that AT&T 

told him that he would have to pay for computer service in order 
29 

to get his channels back and ultimately hung up on him. My constituent also explained similar billing issues with both Time Warner and DISH. 

He ended his letter with this plea, and I quote: ‘‘Senator Baldwin, I hear these complaints from everyone. What can you and the 

Senate do to make all providers sign a contract so that they can 

be held to their words and finally remove all their false marketing?’’ 

Now, this is just a sample of what I hear regularly, but in light 

of Senator McCaskill’s 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 what is going to happen 

in this 2-year promotion where the price goes up after the first 

year, in light of these concerns that we hear over and over again, 

I would like to hear from the entire panel what more are you doing 

to ensure that your companies are not promoting misleading pricing information? And what are you doing to grapple with these pervasive billing issues? Why don’t we go across the panel once again? 

Mr. KARINSHAK. Senator, it is very important to make sure the 

customers understand exactly what they are getting. We do offer 

a wide array of products and a wide array of pricing, and so we 

have done some additional things from a disclosure perspective to 

help with that. 

First, whether you order our 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 

exactly the order and what is next as well, for example, things like 

the technician coming to their house. 

We also partner with a company called SundaySky to deliver a 

video that is a personalized tutorial for any changes they make to 

their package or for a new customer. And we also back it up with 

our 30-day money-back guarantee as well. 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you. 

Mr. KEIB. Yes, I will 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. So, for example, if the 

full rate was, say, $129, there would be a minus sign listing clearly 

what the actual discount amount was, let us say it was $40 or $20, 

and then it comes to a summary price of what that actual bill is 

so that that customer in any given month would be notified that 

there is actually a higher rate there and that this is a promotion 

of X dollars. And then when we come up on that window at that 

time, be it 12 months or whatever the expiration of that window 

is for that core service, they would see that actual discount go 

away. Or if it was a 2-year roll, as someone alluded to earlier, they 

would see it get reduced. 

Senator BALDWIN. Ms. Mayo. 

Ms. MAYO. That is a good point, and that was part of changes 

that Charter made recently in an effort to be more transparent 
30 

about billing to show the full charge and then the discount that the 

customer is getting. So I agree with John, also with Tom. If you 

are dealing with a customer service rep on the phone, a sales rep, 

and you place your order, the sales rep will recap exactly what you 

should expect on your bill for and exactly any charges that you 

would see on your bill the first time. We also send an email to the 

customer confirming the bill. We are working on improving that 

with more information, but we have the core infrastructure set up. 

If you go into a Charter store, you obviously get confirmation of 

what your order is. If you have a direct conservation with a sales 

rep, you are getting confirmation of what your order is. But on our 

website, you will get an email, and with that, too, we are improving 

the content associated with the confirmation that comes from the 

website. 

Senator BALDWIN. Mr. Patel. 

Mr. PATEL. We try to disclose the terms at multiple touch points 

on the initial sales call, we have implemented 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 

is historically all the generic terms were disclosed and the customers were kind of losing attention. And so communicating the 

fewer things that were more relevant to the customer was important. 

No. 2, we record all of our sales calls in our direct sales call centers. And so if a customer ever says, ‘‘I was told something else,’’ 

we make it a point to be able to pull that record and hold agents 

accountable. Agents are essentially given two opportunities to not 

make a mistake when it comes to the terms and agreements with 

the offer. If they do that twice, the consequence is they would lose 

their job. And so we try to hold the agents accountable. We have 

disclosures online, including a place where we spell out over the 

course of 2 years how your prices change. We send an email confirmation. We have a written customer agreement. 

And then the last thing, and I think probably the most prominent, is 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 you are in Month 

1 of 12 of that discount. And it changes every month, providing a 

constant awareness for consumers that I have 2 more months left 

for this discount. When the bill does, in fact, change, we spell it out 

for customers on the front page. 

And so, we have tried to do as much as we can to disclose this 

to customers and to also drive accountability and controls in the organization if and when mistakes are made. 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. So I think DISH might be a little bit different 

in that we have an option for a 2-year price lock, so customers have 

a 2-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, if they stay with us beyond 

that 2-year price lock, they will likely experience some price 

changes, so whatever the then-current pricing is. And so we follow 

form, kind of 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 that they need 
31 

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 they—either they contact us within 10 

days, or if they do not, we will outbound them and walk them 

through all of the things that they need to know as a new customer 

with DISH, including anything with pricing, installation, other 

things. We never want anybody to be surprised by anything that 

happens on their bill, and we also do the bill statement messages 

and things along those lines that other panelists talked about. 

So we really do try to make an effort to make sure people understand the terms of their new agreement with us and that they do 

not have any surprises. 

Senator BALDWIN. Thank you. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. I would like to get back to some of the 

questions that we were talking about earlier that have to do with 

people getting overcharged and then companies knowing that they 

are being overcharged and not getting the refunds. 

First of all, with regard to the bills, I have a copy of a bill here. 

It happens to be from Ohio. It happens to be a bill that has over 

a dozen line items in it. One of the responses that we have gotten 

from companies is that people ought to look at their bills, so if you 

are being overcharged, you ought to be able to find that. 

First of all, I think it is very difficult to discover that you are 

being overcharged if you do not know what the equipment is, you 

do not know what the correlation is between the charge and the 

equipment. But, second, look at one of these bills. It is pretty darn 

complicated. And part of what I guess I would ask you, Mr. 

Keib—and I appreciated your answer earlier that you thought that, 

Time Warner could have done better in terms of allowing, say, 

these 40,000 Ohioans who 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 be a 1- 

month credit regardless of how far back it goes. We talked earlier 

about whether you would know how far back it went. 

I guess one question I would have for you, and to Ms. Mayo as 

well, is: Why not at least notify the customer, say, ‘‘Hey, look, we 

have overbilled you, we have overcharged you. Look at your bill. 

Tell us how long that has been’’—if you cannot find out for them, 

at least give them the information, the notification to be able to 

find it themselves. Have you thought about that, implementing 

that kind of a notice procedure? 

Mr. KEIB. Yes, and as I mentioned earlier, I think that we 

do—as I said, when we define the number of customers impacted— 

and it is not a dynamic number or constantly changing, like the 

equipment example we discussed earlier. We do provide notice that 

we overcharged and for how much. 

The example relating to equipment, because of the transactional 

nature and the volume of equipment that is moving in or out, it 

is a little bit 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 

that is a natural progression of any revenue assurance program, 
32 

and I think that in hindsight we should notify customers if they 

were being overcharged. And as for what we do going forward, I 

would kick that to Kip because ultimately I think it falls in her decisionmaking. 

Senator PORTMAN. Yes, well, I think what you just said is significant. You think that customers should be notified, and with regard 

to the equipment particularly, which you say is more complicated. 

And I know you are no longer in a position to implement that, but, 

Ms. Mayo, you are. So we have kicked it to you. Maybe two questions for you. One is do you agree with Mr. Keib that one of the 

things you ought to be doing now is at least notifying these customers so that they know they have been overcharged? Again, 

40,000 customers last year, over 11,000 customer, just in Ohio, and 

this is an issue that I know you are attempting to address today 

with your own proposal. Yours today, as I understand it, is that 

you will give a 1-year credit to customers who have been overcharged. For Time Warner legacy customers, I understand it is 1 

month. 

And so my second question to you is: Now that you are in charge 

of both, the Time Warner legacy customers as well as your traditional Charter customers, why wouldn’t you have the same policy? 

Why would it be a month for one and a year for the other? Of 

course, the policy I would like to see is going back and giving them 

their full refund, which, again, is what other companies have managed to do. You now have this ability, as I understand it, through 

your new audit program to be able to understand what happened. 

But if you could talk about that discrepancy and talk about what 

the possibility would be of actually providing a real refund to make 

everybody whole, and then also talk about, if you could, this notion 

of notification? 

Ms. MAYO. Sure. So I want to be very clear that producing an 

accurate bill is our responsibility. It is not the customer’s responsibility to find a mistake. It is our responsibility to produce an accurate bill. And at Charter, as I said in my opening statement, even 

though we had a 99.4 percent accuracy rate, which seems high, it 

is not high enough. And we do believe that 100 percent accuracy 

is the only acceptable solution. 

So after this was discovered, we were able to put in place a daily 

reconciliation process that we are running every single day and 

looking at every single customer’s account and looking at the box 

charges on the account and the number of boxes. And on any given 

day if the box charges exceed the boxes, we will remove the excess 

box charge. This will assure 100 percent accuracy in charging settop boxes. We are going to implement the exact same thing at Time 

Warner Cable. 

Now, as you know, we closed on Time Warner Cable just about 

5 weeks ago, so I am still getting my arms around it. I am still trying to understand the billing systems and how they work, because 

we all operate our billing systems differently. But the programmers 

are already working on the design of that reporting. It is a little 

bit more complicated for Time Warner Cable because of the way 

they package their services. Some of their packages include a free 

set-top box, and so, in some instances it is not a billing error that 

there is no charge there because it is embedded in the service price. 
33 

So we have already identified 11 exceptions that have to be configured into this reporting. I am probably going to need about 60 

days to get it in motion. But we will do that, and then we will have 

100 percent accuracy not just with Charter and Time Warner Cable 

but Bright House as well. 

Relative to notification of customers, I agree with you, I think we 

should notify customers. There is no question about that. And as 

you had mentioned, Senator, we will be notifying our customers 

and giving them a 12-month credit for any overcharges discovered 

through our reconciliation. 

Senator PORTMAN. You talked about 100 percent accuracy. Just 

quickly, with regard to, again, your legacy customers coming in, my 

understanding is Time Warner, with regard to its correction of billing errors, aims for 80 percent, has in the past, understanding they 

are now part of your organization. Is that accurate? 

Mr. KEIB. I would like to address that. I do not think the aim 

is 80 percent. I think that the aim is to try to get to 100 percent. 

In the billing system that we have or we use in Ohio, the fix that 

we put on that account does not necessarily correctly impact customers that are in pending status. And what that would mean is 

that they have ordered service, but they have not been installed 

yet. So one of the reasons we have that breakage is that when we 

apply that fix, it is not sticking on customers who have yet to be 

formally installed. 

So, again, in terms of process improvement, there is an opportunity to do that, but I do not think it is that we are aiming for 

80. I think that is what we are getting based on the way our system is set up in the last several months. 

Senator PORTMAN. So you are only able to correct 80 percent 

based on your system. We have also learned that Time Warner 

Cable uses computer software that is known as Macro that routinely has failed. Is it true that in some months it has been so difficult to fix the error that Time Warner Cable simply does not correct any bills for that month? 

Mr. KEIB. If we are talking about the equipment charge, what I 

can say based on my familiarity with this is that if there was a 

20-percent breakage that you referenced earlier that did not— 

where the, quote-unquote, Macro did not take effect, that the next 

time we run that report again, it would indeed capture that breakage and try to fix it. That fix would happen the next month. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. From our investigation, we learned that 

in May of this year, 2016, you did not make corrections for that 

month because of the computer software issues. And you are saying 

you will go back and later fix that in this month and succeeding 

months? 

Mr. KEIB. I want to be very clear that I am talking about the 

process, and the following month, if it did not fix that, we will 

rerun the same fix. And I would have to verify for you that the 

very specific customers that you are referring to fall into that bucket to make sure I am being accurate. 

Senator PORTMAN. OK. Again, my concern is what Charter is 

going to do going forward and making sure these customers are 

both notified and made whole. And I appreciate again that we have 

made improvements, and based on today’s announcements that you 
34 

1The bill referenced by Senator McCaskill appears in the Appendix on page 48. 

have made in the context of this investigation, that you are going 

to provide some credits. But I hope going forward that you will also 

provide that information so the customers can understand what the 

issue is and make them whole. Senator McCaskill. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am disappointed that Senator Paul left because I want to welcome him to 

oversight. I have 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 contracting acquisition 

process. I have spent hours and hours and hours in many hearings, 

not only on acquisition there and oversight there, but policy and 

procedures throughout our government. So I am an oversight kid, 

and I think if we are going to stop doing oversight because we are 

unpopular, we might as well put a sign on the door that says, 

‘‘Gone Fishing,’’ because I cannot think of anything we would be 

doing oversight on that is, not more popular than us. I mean, we 

are the least popular right now. But that does not 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 they are treated. 

And so I am not about to apologize for caring about oversight in 

this area because it is what I have heard from the people I represent. And I am all in on oversight of government, and believe me, 

when somebody calls with a VA complaint or somebody calls with 

a Social Security complaint or somebody calls with a cable TV complaint, I am on it. And I am not going to apologize for it, and I hope 

to see more of Senator Paul here. Frankly, at most of these hearings, we do not have very many people sitting out there. It is pretty 

dry stuff. It is in the weeds. And I welcome his attendance at many 

of those hearings in the future. 

I want to talk a little bit about the fees and taxes. I have a couple of Charter bills in front of me, one more recent than the other, 

and I just want to make sure I put this in the record,1 Ms. Mayo, 

because one bill, the total for TV services, for Charter cable services, is $158.98. And there is a sales tax of $1.25, and there is a 

franchise fee of $8.69. And then there is an FCC administration fee 

of 9 cents. So I have added those up, and that is $10.03 on a bill 

of $158.98. 

On another bill I am looking at, the bill was $54.99 for TV, 

$39.98 for Internet, and the taxes, fees, and charges were $2.28. 

But there is one item under taxes, fees, and charges that I want 

to spend some time on now, and that is, the broadcast TV surcharge of $5. That is the biggest item under taxes, fees, and 

charges. 

Now, if I get this bill and I am somebody who is not really educated, I am going, ‘‘I cannot believe the government is charging me 

$5 extra for broadcast TV surcharge, because it is right 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 we are getting Regional Sport Network (RSN) charges. 
35 

Now, what I want to make sure I understand here is that this 

has been a decision, I believe by all of you—raise your hand if you 

did not—that you would take—OK, DISH did not. You did not put 

any RSN or broadcast surcharge fees in. OK. So DISH decided not 

to do this, but the rest of you decided that you were going to take 

something that was in the basic programming fee for buying your 

service, and you were going to put it in another place on the bill 

and call it something else. 

I would ask you, can you tell me why all of you decided—isn’t 

it true that all of these were previously in your video charges? Mr. 

Karinshak. 

Mr. KARINSHAK. Yes, Senator. 

Senator MCCASKILL. And Mr. Keib. 

Mr. KEIB. Yes. 

Senator MCCASKILL. And Ms. Mayo. 

Ms. MAYO. Yes. 

Senator MCCASKILL. And Mr. Patel. 

Mr. PATEL. Yes. 

Senator MCCASKILL. So all of these were in your video charges. 

And then I believe—I do not know, was it 2 years ago—you just 

decided, ‘‘We will put those down there with the taxes and the surcharges.’’ And some of them started out for Regional Sports Networks, $1.39 a month, and now they are up to as high as $5 or $6 

a month. 

Did you inform your customers that you were taking something 

out of what they were normally paying for in their video package 

and giving it a special line item? And can somebody give me a good 

excuse as to why that happened? And what is going to keep that 

from being the future billing model? 

Mr. PATEL. Yes, Senator, I would like to explain our decision 

process. We are a nationally priced product, and so because we 

have a national service, broadcast channels are available nationally, and we include those in our package. 

Regional pricing, regional sports, however, vary significantly 

market to market. Essentially what has 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 L.A. and the Dodgers 

as an example, and they will pay an outrageous amount for those 

rights, create a new channel, and effectively try to force-carry that 

channel in a market. 

And so for us, the choice on Regional Sports resulted from being 

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 in a market like St. Louis where the costs are one-third to 

one-fourth of what the New York costs are. What we did not want 

to do was to essentially pass on all of the costs to all consumers. 

To us, carving out RSNs was a way to essentially put the costs 

where the content was available and where the customers were 

benefiting. And as we did that, in a third of the country, we do not 

charge RSNs because the rates for RSNs have not—these deals 

have not been struck—and they have not escalated. So that is included in our base packaging. But in markets where rates are four 

times what they were a few years ago and there are significant 
36 

charges, we did not want to levy those on customers who do not 

benefit from the programming. 

To put the fee in context, in all of our markets, the RSN fee is 

less than 50 percent of our underlying cost for RSN in that market. 

And so that was our decision process because we are nationally 

priced product. We did not do that for broadcast fees because 

broadcast channels are available nationally. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Don’t they belong up above, though? Don’t 

they belong with your part of the bill? Aren’t they, in fact, programming costs? They are not taxes. They are not something that 

you—I mean, this is something that is part—I mean, 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. Yes, I think in our bill it was in other charges, but 

that is a fair observation, and maybe that is something we will go 

back—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. Why did the rest of you put this down with 

taxes as opposed to putting it up with your programming costs? 

Ms. MAYO. Senator, we did put the broadcast surcharge in the 

charges and fees section. We do not charge an RSN at Charter. 

And we did that not to try to make it look like it was a government-issued fee or charge, but it is nondiscretionary. If we put it 

in the video section, the concern was the customer would then be 

calling and saying, ‘‘I do not want that. I would rather not have 

that.’’ 

Senator MCCASKILL. Well, HBO is in that section, and they do 

not have to have that. 

Ms. MAYO. No, they could remove the HBO product but not the 

broadcast basic product. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Then maybe you should create a whole category, nondiscretionary extra programming, and maybe then people 

would begin getting angry about the amount of money that is being 

thrown around in sports right now that is 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 that is another component of this. 

What about for Comcast? Why does that fee go down in a section 

that makes customers think it is a tax? 

Mr. KARINSHAK. Senator, we agree with you around the importance of the disclosure. We did notice our customers, and we do not 

include it in the area with taxes or any government-mandated fees 

or surcharges. 

Senator MCCASKILL. That is terrific. I will just have one other 

question, and then I have a bunch for the record. 

I know that you all in the past, Mr. Karinshak, have reviewed 

complaint data to determine the percentage of customers who stated that a Comcast representative quoted them the wrong price. In 

some cases this was as high as 30 percent for certain complaint 

types. Did you take on an analysis to determine whether the customer was right in connection with that? 

Mr. KARINSHAK. Senator, we do look at our complaints data, and 

we still have the opportunity to improve our disclosures for some 

of the things I had referenced before around implementing the 

order summary at the end of every point-of-sale interaction, for 
37 

being able to go through and send the email, as well as on the 

video bill, and reinforcing the 30-day money-back guarantee. That 

was one input that we looked at in ultimately making those 

changes. 

Senator MCCASKILL. No one has had a chance to address this. 

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? Mr. Patel. 

Mr. PATEL. I can answer that. 

Senator MCCASKILL. That would be a good one for you to take. 

Mr. PATEL. We do not charge for removal of any services other 

than warranty service, and the reason that that is in place is essentially to prevent gaming. A lot of times when 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 2 

years. What we were trying to prevent is a consumer getting that 

benefit and then the very next month removing the service. And so 

that is the only service through which— 

Senator MCCASKILL. And that was a problem? Somebody would 

get an equipment upgrade and then the next month quit? 

Mr. PATEL. Yes, you know, so one of the—I mean—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. That makes no sense. 

Mr. PATEL. Well, no. What we—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. Why would you go through the trouble of 

dealing with you guys to get an equipment upgrade, get somebody 

out there to change your box or whatever, and then quit the next 

month. That is not logical. 

Mr. PATEL. No. The point is the equipment upgrades. As you 

transition from standard service to HD or now HD to ultra-HD, 

customers normally would have to pay for that equipment upgrade. 

And one of the benefits of the protection plan is that in up to four 

rooms within your home you are able to get that equipment upgrade free every 2 years. The thing that we were trying to solve 

is the very one that you mentioned, which is, before, if an existing 

customer wanted to upgrade, they had to call their provider, haggle, maybe threaten to leave, and maybe then they would get that 

upgrade as a complimentary service. So we made this a part of our 

protection plan program where every 2 years you can refresh your 

experience in up to four rooms—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. I am just telling you, I—— 

Mr. PATEL. And, you know, it just—— 

Senator MCCASKILL. I am not aware of that, and you are one of 

my providers, and I have never heard that I get free upgrades 

every 2 years. And I did not get any of that information when I 

tried to change that. So I think there is 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? 

Ms. MAYO. Senator, if I can, we do not charge any kind of 

change-of-service fee for upgrades or downgrades at Charter. 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 be-
38 

cause they could walk out the door any day. Those are fees that 

we are not enamored with and we do not use. 

Senator MCCASKILL. Anybody else want to talk about—I think 

DISH charges to get rid of the protection also. You guys charge. 

Ms. SCHNEIDER. It is true. We have a $3 removal fee, and it is 

a very similar situation to the one that Rasesh just described 

where if the customer—so what we normally charge somebody for 

a truck roll is $95. If a customer is on the protection plan, they pay 

a greatly reduced rate for that. So they will pay $10. The protection 

plan is unique for us because you can add it the day that you need 

it, right? So if you call us and you have an issue and you require 

a truck roll, you can add the protection plan. It is $8. And what 

we ask folks to do is keep it for 6 months. 

Senator MCCASKILL. I see. That makes sense. I just wanted to 

say for the record that your regulatory—your RSN fees are put in 

other charges and credits, which include other charges like regulatory recovery fees. So I am not sure it is really clear that that 

is something you guys are charging for that. 

‘‘Inside the Box,’’ I recommend it. It is on the website, 

McCaskill.Senate.gov. I recommend the Subcommittee joint report 

to anybody who buys pay-TV. You will 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 patience with me. He is very patient 

with me. We are good cop/bad cop, and he is definitely the good 

cop. [Laughter.] 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, again, it has been very productive over 

the last year during this investigation, and I think we have seen 

here today, one, some practices that you have specifically undertaken which are going to help improve the customer experience and 

customer service. I do not think it goes far enough, as we talked 

about, in terms of providing actual refunds to customers who have 

been overbilled. I understand some have been underbilled, some 

have been overbilled, but that does not help the family that has 

been overbilled, and it is not fair. 

With regard to your testimony generally, though, it sounds like 

there are also some other customer service policy changes you all 

are considering based on this hearing and our investigation, and 

that is appreciated. 

On the RSN fee, I would just say this is, again, for people who 

are not familiar with, it is the Regional Sports Network fee that 

you are charging. You choose to put it on the bill separately. You 

could put Cable News Network (CNN) on the bill separately 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 it 

is a government fee, and I would again hold up this bill from Ohio, 

which is, the bill that I get, my wife, Jane, and I get, and it says, 

‘‘taxes, fees, and surcharges,’’ and it has franchise fees, State sales 

taxes, FCC regulatory fee, FCC regulatory fee voice, Universal 

Service Fund, regulatory recovery fee, Ohio TRS recovery fee, and 

then it has broadcast TV and sports programming, which is where 

the RSN is. And I do not think that is the right place for it because 

then people view that that that is a mandatory government fee like 

the other ones. 
39 

So I would ask you, Ms. Mayo, are you aware of that? And with 

regard to your legacy Time Warner customers, I understand you do 

not charge it separately, but with regard to your new customers 

you are now taking on, do you plan to keep this in the category of 

fees and other government charges or to have this in a more, I 

think, honest display where it is either by itself or with other fees? 

Ms. MAYO. So I am aware of it now, and, yes, our intention is 

to overlay Charter’s business practices with Time Warner Cable, 

and we do not charge an RSN fee, so hopefully that will be something that will be removed entirely from the bill. 

Senator PORTMAN. Well, again, 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, and I appreciate the fact that everybody has been very candid today in talking about this. 

Let me also mention, because Senator McCaskill mentioned it, 

that with regard to the oversight responsibilities here, to the earlier comments made, this Subcommittee has done significant oversight of exactly what Senator Paul was talking about—in other 

words, looking at government, looking at our economy, which is, 

disappointingly weak, looking at government spending. Specifically, 

we have had a series of investigations and hearings on issues like 

tax reform, which goes directly to economic growth. We have had 

hearings on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and a lot of the waste 

and taxpayer loss specifically that relates to the co-ops, and we 

have done some great work on that. 

We have also, though, looked into other issues like labor trafficking and the Health and Human Services (HHS) and how they 

allowed kids to get into the hands of traffickers, certainly government oversight there. 

Next month, we will be combating—looking at ways to combat Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) propaganda and, again, looking 

at our government response to that. For those of you following 

what we do, that will be something we will be looking at next 

week, certainly a topical issue and one that everybody is very concerned about: How do you stop this ISIS propaganda from taking 

more and more of our impressionable young people who feel alienated and radicalizing them. 

Then we are also going to look at this opioid abuse issue, which 

is at epidemic levels. This is the heroin and prescription drug epidemic around the country and some specific issues that we think 

this Subcommittee can provide some additional insights on. So we 

have done tough, significant, important oversight, and we will continue to. 

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 again for her work on this 

issue over the years. This is not, as you can tell, her first time dealing with this issue. I am not on the Commerce Committee, but she 

has done a lot of work on this issue and focusing on consumers 

there. And as we move forward, again, we are going to continue to 

look at the industry and look at this issue of consumer choice and 
40 

competition. I do think ultimately that is the answer, is to give people a range of choices. We have talked today about there is competition, but there are also some concerns about having more competition. 

I think innovation is going to be allowed to flourish and new 

products are going to come to market, and consumers are going to 

be better off when there is competition. So we will be looking at 

some of those barriers to that. And we will also be looking at other 

issues that might have come up today. 

I will have some additional questions for the record. 

I appreciate the prompt responses you have given us to previous 

questions. And specifically to the companies who are here today, I 

thank you for your willingness to cooperate with us in this investigation and, again, what I think has been a positive hearing to 

have an honest airing of some of the concerns on the consumer 

side. 

The hearing record will remain open for 15 days for any additional comments or questions by any of the Subcommittee members, and with that, this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:03 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
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