Telecom bundles can lead to billing problems

Like many subscribers to telecom services, I recently bundled my Internet, phone, and television services with a single provider, my cable company. And like many people, I was motivated mostly by cost. I'm saving at least $30 a month with my new bundle over the combined bills for the three services from three different providers that I had been paying.

But my transition to single-company service turned into a billing nightmare. That, too, is also a common experience, or so it seems from your comments on this blog and from the experiences of respondents to our new survey of telecom service (available to subscribers), carried out by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. The rate on my first bill was higher than I'd agreed to. When I called, the company rep offered to correct it, and even extend the rate for longer than the agreed time.

Trouble is, with a heads up so brief I all but missed it, she then sent me to "third-party verification" for a two-year lock-in contract, complete with a $150 cancellation fee—not what I expected, given that I'd chosen cable in part because it was contractless, and because I wanted the option to switch to bundled fiber-optic service from a phone company when it reaches my upper Manhattan neighborhood (which will be later this year, I'm assured, though I was told it might arrive last year, too).

Having passed on the contract, it took two more lengthy calls before a supervisor finally, if a bit grumpily, said: I'm going to make you happy. And he did, by trimming another $20 off the original monthly rate I'd been battling to get restored. So now I'm saving $50 a month by bundling my services.

Common in some respects, my experience may be atypical in at least one way. Our new survey actually found that subscribers to cable-company bundles had fewer problems with billing and other support issues than did those who subscribe to fiber-based bundles from phone companies or those that feature satellite-TV service. That may be because cable has longer experience with offering multiple services.

Of course, customer service isn't the only—or even the most important—determinant of how satisfied you may be with your new service bundle. The best illustration of that: Verizon FiOS was among the better providers for performance on all three services (TV, phone and Internet) but was well below par for support for its bundling of those services.

Why the apparent disconnect? Among other factors, it could be that survey respondents who experienced support problems did so early in their bundling arrangements and, as in my case, those snafus were eventually sorted out—perhaps sometimes even with the sort of sweetener I received.

Our bottom line: Choose a provider mostly by user satisfaction and performance, but keep customer service in mind, too. You can get more detail in our Ratings of bundled services, available to subscribers.

—Paul Reynolds