Cable or satellite, people displeased

0 Comments | Philadelphia Inquirer, The, May, 2007 | by Miriam Hill Inquirer Staff Writer

A business bromide says the customer is king. But that idea seems not to hold for the cable and satellite TV industry, where companies can rake in profits while treating customers more like serfs than royalty, according to a new University of Michigan survey released today.

Cable and satellite companies scored a 62 out of 100 on this year's University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index. That's down 1.6 percent from a year ago, and the lowest for any industry in the yearly survey of 80,000 consumers.

The airline industry had the second-lowest score at 63, a 3.1 percent decline.

Comcast Corp., which is based in Philadelphia, saw its cable TV score fall 6.7 percent to 56. DirecTV, a...