Have you ever contacted the FCC?

What info are you referring to?

It’s not so much the information they gave (as our ISP already has that), it’s more the fact that they basically tossed it all over to the ISP to take care of with us personally.

Sounds like a customer service problem. You can get an alternative ISP. Let your ISP know that you will take your business elsewhere if they don’t fix the problem.

I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking that the FCC is mostly an oversight agency. They don’t fix the problems themselves, they hand it off to their “managers” to fix, in this case your ISP provider.
I’m impressed you were able to contact the FCC and that they actually took action. I’d probably be jumping to fix the problem if was your ISP provider and I got a call from God to fix the shit!

So was it fixed?

Seems like a bit of an odd move for a regulatory agency.

No….we have been having problems with our ISP for years and it has just gotten worse and worse. We are going to switch providers.

I wouldn’t expect the FCC to fix a problem with a ISP.

I don’t think the TC’s intent was to get the FCC to fix a problem, but rather to lodge a complaint about an ongoing problem, that the ISP has yet to correct, with the body in charge of regulating the ISP.

@Darth_Algar yep, that is correct

Got it now but I still wondr what else they would do besides informing the ISP.

I think you can make a complaint and make it clear you don’t want to be contacted, or make it anonymously, but with most complaints, the intent is to fix the problem and any company or government service would need your information to do that.

Contacting you seems like a good first step to addressing your complaint. I’m not sure what else they would do as a better option initially.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding?

So what did your ISP provider have to say?

@janbb “Got it now but I still wondr what else they would do besides informing the ISP”

I’ve always been of the understanding that the FCC would keep a log of complaints against a particular company and if a certain threshold of complaints about a given issue with a given company was met then the FCC would look into the matter.

What the TC describes seems a bit like calling the police about, say, a noise complaint against a neighbor and the police contacting the neighbor and giving them the details of who called in the complaint.

You are contacting the wrong agency.
ISPs are under the responsibilities of the PUC.

@Darth_Algar Understand what you are saying but just curious, what do you mean by calling the OP a “TC”? That’s not a term I’m familiar with.

@filmfann

ISPs, like all telecommunications companies, are under the authority of the Federal Communications Commission. The states may place additional regulations on them, but they are absolutely under the FCC’s jurisdiction (particularly if they engage in their services across state lines (as most telecom companies do)).

@Darth_Algar A recent lawsuit resulted in dsl service being declared a utility, and under the watchful eye of the PUC.
Back when I worked for Ma Bell and her offspring, we would often get pressured by the PUC regarding service issues. I never heard from the FCC.

ISPs may be a utility (as are telephone companies) but they’re still telecommunications and still under the purview of the FCC (as are telephone companies). A cursory glance at the FCC’s website should have it clear that ISPs are under the federal jurisdiction of the FCC.

Public utility commissions are state agencies, and concern all utilities – from telephone to gas/electric, and so on. In terms of authority they can vary from state to state. Some state PUCs have regulatory authority. Some only provide oversight with no real authority. The FCC is a federal agency that regulates the telecommunications industry whether it’s a utility (telephone and internet service providers) or not (television/radio broadcasters).

@Darth_Algar Can you answer my question please? It’s a side question but I am just curious, not snarky at all.

Worth noting that FCC lays out their process for complaints on their website

It reads in part:

Serving the Complaint
When all required information has been gathered, the FCC sends your complaint to the service provider.

Service Provider Response
The provider is required to respond in writing to the complaint within 30 days of receipt of the complaint. The Provider must copy you on the response.

They are required to contact you.

They also have a page outlining issues outside the jurisdiction of the FCC so maybe we can put that to rest? It seems to completely depend on what the complaint was about, but the FCC with take the complaint and forward it in most cases.

I guess it’s just another term for OP, @janbb. But I can’t figure out what words it may represent.

TC = “thread creator”. This is like the only forum I’ve ever come across where no one seems to know that term.

And at any rate none of us here have actually addressed the Thread Creator’s actual question, so I bow out rather than furthering this non-answering.

Well, now we know. Everybody has to learn everything at some point. You didn’t know either until some one explained it to you.

Hostile.

I’ve never contacted the FCC, but have contacted the BBB, the attorney general, and do web work for a government agency that does oversight of public facilities. I also worked on the customer service side of ISPs and other web services for years.

So I was interested in what customer/consumer expectations on something like this would be.

Usually when the question here is a simple yes/no, the details will provide a better guide as to what’s being asked.

To the OP, from working on the other side of these sorts of things, the ISP is basically required to get a resolution of some sort now. You can cancel, ask for the moon, or get your problem fixed and they basically need to work it out to some sort of end. I only mention it because they probably have an internal team that specializes in this sort of thing and they will keep calling/writing/mailing for longer than usual. It won’t just be one or two calls.

Good luck with it, I genuinely hope it works out to be worth all the trouble that came before.