Some common attitudes in our culture are pretty evident to anyone: Go out anywhere and strike up a conversation about mobile tech and the internet, and you'll discover most people love their devices, but have no love for the companies that provide service to them. This week, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index confirmed everyone's suspicions: we love our smartphones, but hate subscription TV and ISPs.

The ACSI conducts in depth surveys and analysis of consumer satisfaction with tech devices and services every year, and on Tuesday, the company released its annual measure of the communications industry. There are lots of interesting tidbits, but the overall message consumers are sending is that ISPs are bad and getting worse, while our smartphones (some in particular, but all in general) are getting better and more satisfying.

No Love for Pay TV

The largest companies in the ACSI survey -- those that commonly bundle TV service with internet -- did very poorly this year. Over the past year, the entire pay TV industry, including both satellite and cable providers, dipped over four percent in their overall ACSI score.

The "subscription television service" as an general industry, still remains at 65 percent -- which is at least a better approval rating than we give other giant, clunky, often non-functioning institutions in the country, like the U.S. Congress. But some providers drag the overall score lower than others: Charter, Comcast, and, especially, Time Warner Cable all dipped five percent or more over a year to a score that lazy college students might call "a gentleman's F."

Well actually, that's only if you're grading Time Warner Cable on a curve: 56 percent is usually considered a flat-out F.

It's interesting to note that these three companies, the worst of the not-so-great bunch, are the principle players in the Comcast/TWC merger (Charter was outmaneuvered by Comcast but will likely gain subscribers that Comcast is required to divest if the buy-out goes through).

...Neither for ISPs

When it comes to the internet service provider-side of these businesses, the industry in general isn't doing so great either. In fact, they're doing the worst they've ever done, according to customers.

"High prices, slow data transmission and unreliable service drag satisfaction to record lows, as customers have few alternatives beyond the largest Internet service providers," said the ASCI. "Customer satisfaction with ISPs drops 3.1% to 63, the lowest score in the Index."

And guess who's at the bottom of the record-low ISP ranking?

Big surprise: it's Charter, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable (in descending order). These same three companies dipped a lot in customer satisfaction this year, with TWC dropping double digits.

Based on its findings, ASCI itself suggests in its report that "a merger of [Comcast and Time Warner Cable] will likely create even worse levels of customer satisfaction, at least in the short term." So take it this way, Comcast and/or TWC customers -- at least it's not as bad right now as it could be very soon.

The satisfaction index for pay TV and ISPs measured things like overall data transfer speed and quality of video streaming (both of which improved this year), website satisfaction, range of available channels, service reliability, picture quality, performance during peak hours, minimal interruptions or service outages, and ease of understanding bills -- all benchmarks which dropped over the past year.

The worst score (and drop in score) in the individual benchmarks for TV and internet was call center satisfaction; that is, customer service. And it's well known that Comcast and TWC are the industry leaders in generating customer frustration.

We Love Our Devices Even More

The ASCI survey isn't all bad news: at least Americans are becoming increasingly happy with their mobile devices. In general, cellular telephones gained this year, with Samsung (and, wow, Blackberry) gaining the most in overall satisfaction.

While Apple slipped a bit overall, its two newest devices, the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c still ranked in the top individual phone ranking, just behind the Galaxy Note II.

Because Samsung and Apple both make up 65 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, notes ASCI, it's not surprising that all of the top 10 phones are from those two manufacturers.

Do you think these rankings are accurate? Let us know in the comments!

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