Illinois needs to include cable TV in utility service oversights

So much time is spent on curbing utilities like gas and electricity in Illinois but the real problem is the skyrocketing costs of cable TV.

One of the worst in Illinois is Xfinity Comcast cable, which, for a typical household, can cost as much as $350 a month to have strong internet, a home phone and basic cable TV service.

My cable costs jumped more than $35 last month simply because Xfinity changed my contract (which I have had with them for more than two decades) asserting I suddenly was using too much data.

They threatened me saying that if I didn’t pay more each month $25 plus taxes, the excess data costs would be 10 times higher.

I spoke with them several times realizing that I have no control over their system, which has increased in costs more than 20 times since I first subscribed to their service.

Worse is I realized that I had no place to go to complain about Xfinity Comcast, except to my local government in Orland Park, which happens to be in an utter shambles anyway because of the incompetence of Orland Park’s uncaring and beleaguered Mayor Keith Pekau.

If this were a gas, water or electric company, I could complain to the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) or to the Citizens Utility Board.

But for some reason, Xfinity Comcast is allowed to set up special monetary agreements that benefit local governments. Pekau’s has made a financial mess in Orland Park and he’s not going to jeopardize what he receives from the cable company.

There’s no place to go.

Besides going to non-responsive local government officials, you could wade into the bloated bureaucracy of the Washington D.C. swamp of the Federal Communications Commission.

Many of our legislators like to rail against the gas companies, the water companies and the electric companies, doing little other than yelling. Those legislators just want cheap headlines but rarely do anything to bring about change.

Worse is that customers of the gas, water and electric companies force customers to pay the costs for the lawyers and lobbyists they hire to fight against consumer rights.

In February 2024, WTTW did a report on how “Illinoisans pay tens of millions of dollars each year to utilities to cover costs they accrue for lawyers, belonging to trade groups, making charitable contributions and purchasing advertisements meant to boost utilities’ public image.”

And, imagine this. Illinois is one of the few states that allow utilities to charge customers for charitable contributions.

Comcast has a huge lobbying operation in Illinois. With no real monitoring in place, it’s hard to get precise data, but back in 2014, Politico reported Comcast donated nearly $500,000 to local candidates to support their interests to turn their backs on the cable company’s outrageous abuses of customers and even more outrageous cost increases.

If it was $500,000 in 2014, you can bet they’re spending more than $1 million today.

We’ve all seen how the cable company monster has grown since the 1980s when it first began offering services. It cost $35 back then, and the selling point was that you pay the monthly subscription and you got all the movies for free. Nothing is free on Xfinity Comcast any more. 

We pay for the service and we pay for the movies and shows, including many of the old ones.

Today, not only do you pay $350 for cable TV “service” – and I use that word “service” with skepticism – but we are forced to pay for all these movie channels. Nothing is free.

If there ever was an industry that deserves more scrutiny, it is the cable TV industry.

Instead, our Governor “Daddy Warbucks” Pritzker spends all his time yelling about national policies and attacking Trump’s politics, hoping to deflect our attention away from his incompetence and lack of real public service.

But don’t waste your time writing to our congress members. Congressman Sean Casten, for example, puts out releases on every topic, except those that address the issues middle class Americans in his district need answered.

There are many free services out there and monthly premium channels to subscribe to, but cancelling Xfinity Comcast dooms our local TV broadcasts.

We should have known back in the 1980s that cable TV was a scam waiting to happen.

Read more on this at Hanania.com