Patrick Fallon/Bloomberg

Americans dislike cable companies more than any other industry in the nation — and that loathing is often laser-focused on some of the biggest names in the business.

According to a survey of more than 14,000 customers released on Tuesday by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, customers’ satisfaction with subscription TV services — this includes cable and satellite TV companies — has fallen by 3.1% from last year, to a score of 63 out of 100. This means that the industry (along with Internet service providers) is the most disliked in the nation. “Customers expect a lot more than what the companies deliver,” says ACSI managing director David VanAmburg — who notes that these companies have “what seems to be endemic poor customer service.”

Consumers say the thing they most dislike about their cable company — hold please! — is the call center, followed by troubles using the website and their ability to keep service interruptions and outages at a minimum. And when you combine that with higher prices — data from research firm NPD Group found that the average pay-TV bill (basic and premium channels bundled with broadband) rose from $104.63 last year to $109.23 this year — it means that consumers are steaming mad at their cable companies. “This is the real clincher for consumers: Every year rates go up and service does not seem to be getting better,” says VanAmburg.

None of the subscription television services score that high in terms of customer satisfaction, but some have very low scores. Indeed, the worst scores of all belong to Time Warner Cable US:TWC which ties with Mediacom Communications, with a score of 51 out of 100. (Incidentally, these findings mirror those from a Consumer Reports survey of 25,370 consumers released last week, which found that TV consumers gave Mediacom the lowest rankings and Time Warner Cable the second lowest, though the difference in the two scores was not statistically meaningful). Time Warner Cable also snagged the bottom spot last year — and its scores still fell 9% from last year to this year.

A spokesmen from Time Warner Cable notes that the company in 2014 made “significant investments” to improve network reliability, that their technicians now arrive in the one-hour appointment windows 97% of the time, and that the company now offers better services, including mobile TV viewing through their app and 20,000 OnDemand choices.

“By almost any measure, we are a much better company today,” he states.

A spokesman for Mediacom says that company has been “working very hard to improve the customer experience” and that it was one of the very first cable companies to introduce 30-minute and night and weekend appointment windows. He also points out that “Mediacom is at a disadvantage to almost every other company included in the survey” thanks to the fact that “our systems are so scattered around the country that national broadcast advertising is not an option for us like it is for AT&T, DirecTV, Dish and others.”

Company Score (out of 100) % change from 2014 Verizon Communication (FiOS) 71 4% AT&T (U-verse) 69 0% DIRECTV 68 -1% DISH Network 67 0% Cablevision Systems 67 N/A All other subscription TV companies 66 0% Bright House Networks 65 N/A Charter Communications 63 5% Cox Communications 62 -2% Suddenlink Communications 57 N/A Comcast 54 -10% Mediacom Communications 51 NA Time Warner Cable 51 -9% Average across companies 63 -3.1%

This rising dissatisfaction with subscription TV services — as well as viable alternatives to cable like Netflix NFLX, -0.58% and Hulu — may explain why consumers are ditching cable in droves. The number of cable subscribers fell from 102.7 million in 2013 to 101.7 million in 2014, according to research firm IBISWorld — and the firm predicts that the companies will lose subscribers at the rate of about one million a year for the next several years.

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