Why do utility providers see customers as enemies to be crushed?

Our broadband slowed down about six weeks ago, after a period of several weeks where the service kept dropping out. It has remained slow ever since. On Thursday, after eventually losing patience, I did some speed tests and discovered that we’re achieving an upload speed of less than 1Mb.

That’s almost 75% less than we were getting six months ago, when I last did a speed-test. Under I Mb! In the middle of London! That’s less than we were getting five years ago. My brother, in the wilds of Dumfries & Galloway, averages 5.5Mb from the same ISP.

Girding my loins, I phoned BT, and spoke to some charming Indians, who finally admitted that my readings were correct, and that the speed did seem a bit low. But, they explained, the local exchange had probably lowering the bandwidth to maintain a continuous service: surely I could understand that? Yes, I could just about grasp the concept, I said, but what I would prefer to receive is the service I’m actually paying for – BT’s own website tells me I should be averaging 12 Mbs. After going through the usual requests to take my computer onto the roof and wrap the connecting cable round the external phone line, having made sure that every other electrical appliance in West London was switched off, they said they’d be sending an engineer round to “help increase my broadband speed”. I did try to tell them all they needed to do was to make some adjustments at the local exchange, as they’ve done on the three occasions this has happened in the past, but they insisted.

I’m sure anyone reading this will have had similar – and worse – experiences.

My question is this: why do we seem to be permanently trapped in an abusive relationship with so many companies which provide what I think we can all agree are now the necessities of modern life? Why do these organisations – many based on the nationalised behemoths that made life so horrible in the 1970s - seem to imagine that the best way to achieve long-term profitability is to try to get away with providing their customers with as little as possible? Why does any interaction with train companies, utility providers and financial institutions feel like you’re standing a Soho street corner, being rooked by a very large gang of incompetent crooks in a traditional three-card game? (The main difference being, of course, that it’s far easier to walk away from a three-card game.)

For instance, my bank (and yours) invariably lowers the interest on any variable rate deposit account you take out with them - without telling you. That’s exactly what BT has done to our bandwidth.  

Are they proud of themselves? Do the individuals who make up these organisations like to be treated in this fashion by other companies?

Why do these companies act as if we’re the enemy, and they’re at war with us. Their weapons are confusion, obfuscation, misdirection and concealment. Have you looked at a BT bill recently? I have a degree in Philosophy from a leading university, so I have had to read Hegel and Wittgenstein without bursting into tears, and my marbles appear to be largely intact – but I’m buggered if I can understand a broadband + phone bill from our country’s leading purveyor of telecommunication services.They must make them that way on purpose.

The main aim of these companies – their main war goal - is to deliver as little as possible for as much money as possible while, thanks solely to inertia, losing as few customers as possible. Their main strategy is to wear us down relentlessly, to make us lose the will to fight through boredom and confusion. Their tactics are to bombard us with useless information, while relevant information is treated as Top Secret: to move the battle onto the internet, where we’ll squander our energy hacking through thickets of  FAQs and “More information” links and menus that take you back to where you started and futile online “chats”: to set up a line of pleasant, patient foreigners to soak up the punishment in order to protect their elite forces: and to make the “changeover” process whereby we select a different - and possibly less autistic -  enemy to battle against as arduous and wearying and mystifying as possible.

The one thing I’m certain of is that, ultimately, we will lose, and they will win. Deep down, we know the alternatives will prove just as crappy – because, unlike America, we have no race memory of a Golden Age when it all just worked and the companies who underpinned our daily existence were on our side (except for banking - I can remember once being a valued customer rather than a “mark”).

I’m sure it doesn’t have to be this way, but given that the politicians and the regulators seem unwilling to make a difference, and given that these monstrous monopolists don’t seem to give a monkey’s, it’s difficult to see any reason for things to improve – unless we convince customer-focussed companies who understand the modern world and are untainted by a public sector past (e.g. Sky, Amazon and Apple) to take over. They’re not perfect, God knows – but they really could not be worse!