To quote the great Vinnie Barbarino, "This is weid, Mr. Kotta."

The pay TV side of U-verse, abandoned as a service for sale to new customers by AT&T back in April 2020, then packaged in a spinoff to private equity, is beloved by a loyal core group of legacy customers.

At least that's the narrative put forth by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which has ranked U-verse TV No. 1 in the pay TV category for four straight years. 

Also read: How Screwed Up Is the U.S. Pay TV Biz? U-verse TV, Which AT&T Doesn’t Even Sell Anymore, Ranks No. 1 in Customer Satisfaction

The ACSI Telecommunications Study 2022-2023 is based on interviews with 22,061 telecom customers, chosen at random and contacted via email between April 2022 and March 2023.

According to the ACSI, based on factors including picture quality, range of channels and customer service, U-verse just keeps getting better, improving its overall score from 73 in 2022 to 78 in the most recent study. 

This is puzzling for numerous reasons. It's not like the spun off DirecTV is lovingly curating U-verse TV these days. To the contrary. The private-equity-backed spinoff wants to move away from launching TV satellites and AT&T's legacy in general, and put its dwindling customer base on DirecTV Stream.

We suspect anybody whose still paying a U-verse bill isn’t all that hard to please in a consumer survey. And the ACSI seems to agree with us. 

“Those that do remain tend to be more satisfied and loyal, which boosts customer satisfaction for the subscription TV industry overall," said says Forrest Morgeson, assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University and director of research emeritus at the ACSI.

Verizon Fios TV — decidedly an afterthought itself within the bowels of its corporate parent — finished second, improving its overall score from 71 in 2022 to 74 this year. 

At the bottom were video offerings from cable companies Comcast, Cox Communications, Mediacom Communications, Charter Communications and Altice USA. 

Here’s another ACSI oddity — T-Mobile’s fixed wireless access service ranks No. 1 among nonfiber ISPs, but Verizon’s FWA product doesn’t even show up in the rankings. 

We suspect the ASCI didn’t break out Verizon's nascent FWA service from its other home wireline internet service. 

Finally, the most volatile area of measurement for the ASCI seems to be virtual MVPDs, where YouTube TV and DirecTV have recently slipped and Hulu Plus Live TV has ascended. 

While streaming offered consumers something new to watch while quarantined their homes because of the pandemic, a year later, customers' satisfaction with subscription VOD has slid a bit, according to a new study.

The American Customers Satisfaction Index Telecommunications Study for 2020-21 found satisfaction with video streaming services at 74%, down 2.6% from the previous survey.

Also Read: Streaming Services Buying Promos Programmatically, Says MediaRadar

The biggest services, including Netflix and Disney Plus took some of the biggest hits. Disney Plus had the highest satisfaction score, at 78%, but that was down 3%. Netflix and Hulu were among the services tied for fourth place with an index of 75. Netflix was down 4% and Hulu 3% lower.

Gainers included Twitch, HBO and HBO Max, Vudu, Showtime and Sling TV.

Consumers gave lower scores to the quality of original programming on the streaming services, the variety of shows, the number of movies and the number of shows.

Also Read: Streaming Services Adding Reality Content, Reelgood Finds

“With folks resigned to stay at home for the better part of a year and a half, the heavy strain on telecommunications was inevitable,” said David VanAmburg, managing director at the ACSI. “The large consumption of bandwidth for internet services and countless hours spent streaming videos and movies were sure to impact satisfaction. And it turns out that streaming has taken the biggest hit of all.”

Even at their lower level, streaming services had higher satisfaction indexes than pay TV services. Pay TV customers had a satisfaction index of 65, up 1.6% from the prior study.

The highest scores went to U-Verse, Verizon Fios, DirecTV, Dish Network and Xfinity.

The study found the highest level of satisfaction among cord-shavers, consumers who reduced their spending on TV but still have both pay TV and streaming services. Those consumers had an index of 76%. Cord-cutters, those who once had pay TV but now have only streaming, had a 73% index and cord-nevers were at 72%.

The ACSI Telecommunications Study 2020-2021 is based on interviews with 37,907 customers, chosen at random and contacted via email between April 1, 2020, and March 29, 2021.

Despite being marginalized by their respective operators, AT&T U-verse and Verizon Fios continue to lead the U.S. pay TV sector in the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) telecommunications service rankings. 

AT&T is no longer marketing U-verse to new customers. And it reported 897,000 lost pay TV subscribers between DirecTV and U-verse in the first quarter (it didn’t break out customer metrics between the two fast deteriorating platforms). AT&T is now throwing its marketing muscle behind its new IP-based linear pay TV platform, AT&T TV, as well as new kitchen-sink SVOD service HBO Max.

Also read: AT&T Stops Selling U-verse TV

Still, on the ASCI’s 0-100 point scale, U-verse actually led major U.S. pay TV providers for a second straight year, ticking up one point to a 70 score. That tied perennial rankings leader Verizon’s Fios, which shed another 84,000 customers in Q1, but saw its ASCI score tick up two points.

Verizon is now marketing third-party OTT video services, including YouTube TV and Disney Plus, to push its Fios wireline internet product. 

Also read: Verizon’s Video Strategy: Everything You Need to Know About the Wireless Giant’s Tortured TV History

Fios (up three points to a 73 score) and U-verse (68) were also the highest scoring wireline broadband services in the latest ASCI telecom report. And they also led in more drilled down rankings including in-home Wi-Fi and VOD services.

Notably, in the pay TV rankings, it’s was the fastest declining services that scored best in customer satisfaction, according to ASCI. Dish Network, which lost another 132,000 customers in the first quarter, ranked third with a 65 score (down two points), followed by the fast falling DirecTV (down two points to 64). 

Also notable: The two satellite TV services were the only pay TV platforms to see their scores decline. Comcast’s Xfinity service saw a six-point, 11% jump to a 63 score, showing the biggest improvement. 

Evaluating specific pay TV metrics, such as picture quality, customer service and mobile app performance, ASCI scores were roughly flat with last year for U.S. pay TV operators. 

In addition to bundled telecom services, the ASCI rankings also include video streaming services. This year’s rankings were led by a new entry, Disney Plus, which scored an 80 out of the gate, edging Netflix, which declined one point to a 78 score.

The ranking’s other new entry, Apple TV Plus, finished in the middle of the pack with a 74 score. (HBO Max is too new to be ranked.)

The biggest decliners were virtual MVPDs Sling TV, which dropped three points to finish near the bottom of the rankings with a 71 score, and AT&T TV Now, which also dropped three points to a 72.

Services were ranking on factors such as mobile app quality, library depth and call center satisfaction. 

Consumers are more satisfied with video streaming services such as Netflix and PlayStation Vue than they are with traditional TV services — and by a wide margin — according to a new report from The American Customer Satisfaction Index.

This year’s version of the ACSI Telecommunications Report, based on data from interviews with about 250,000 consumers, found that overall customer satisfaction with subscription TV services fell 3.1% to a score of 62 (out of a possible 100), an 11-year low.

By comparison, video streaming services, which included a mix of subscription and free VOD services and OTT TV offerings, pulled in a score of 75, getting high marks for ease of understanding of bills, ease of use of on-screen menus and guides and overall performance and reliability. Areas that need work are access to current TV shows and new movie titles. Netflix, PS Vue and Twitch led the group with a score of 78. Other examples: YouTube Red/Premium (76); Amazon Prime Video and Hulu (75); CBS All Access (74); HBO Now and Starz (72); Sling TV (71); and DirecTV Now (70).

Among traditional pay TV services, AT&T U-verse TV topped the charts in 2018 with a score of 70, followed by Verizon Fios TV (68), and Dish Network (67) and DirecTV satellite TV (64). Optimum (Altice USA) was the highest-scoring cable operator with a 62, down from 66 in 2017. Pay TV picture quality got high marks. Call-center satisfaction fell to the bottom.

The disparity in customer satisfaction comes as people continue to defect to lower-cost online video services alongside OTT experiences that have “fundamentally changed buyer expectations,” ACSI said. “OTT operators have raised the bar by providing greater personalization, lower prices, more mobility — and much better customer service.”