The Fair Play Policy already attempts to pair serial abusers of disconnect and timeouts together and limits how often they can start new games.
The rating system shouldn't be messed with, in the manner mentioned. The idea behind the ratings is to assist with pairing players of similar strengths. Causing a higher rating loss to such players would just make their later games more lopsided and give their opponents harder games than they may have had otherwise.
The most popular article/discussion about this topic was from over 2 years. I thought I'd repost it. I wanted to write about it again today because my last opponent was a real [removed -- VP]. He disconnected when he got into a losing situation, and reconnected every 30-40 seconds. Every time he did this, the "disconnection" timer would reset. I had to sit, and wait, the entire length of the match because some other user was spiteful.
Why hasn't Chess.com addressed the issue of disconnections properly? Whatever they are doing, obviously isn't/hasn't worked. That silly message we all receive after someone dc's doesn't do anything. Users still run into their opponent's leaving matches if they winning (I believe this happens primarily in lower rated games). There's 100 things that Chess.com could easily implement to curve this issue. At least in casual play. I think the online tournaments might want to be addressed differently.
-Post/add a frequent message for users to resign. If a specific player is dc'ing from a match often, send them a "friendly" reminder to resign, instead of d/c. "If you're in what feels like an impossible situation, try resigning instead of leaving the game. This way you can analyze the game and learn from everyone's mistakes."
-Implement a system similar to popular online games. MOBA's use systems that severely punish user's that leave. They are known as "leavers". After leaving one match, they can only pair up with other "leavers" for a minimum of 1-2 games. Chess.com could make users obtain a leaver status in whatever category they are playing and add additional "leaver" matches, accordingly. Example, bullet category "leavers" need 5+ games with other leavers (or against bots), standard need 1-2 games.
-Double the loss of their rating. Additionally, players that leave games in MOBA's have what is called their "MMR(their overall player rating)", drastically affected. Say that you need 5 wins to promote to a new division, leaving a match, instead of finishing it, would set you back 3 games. As opposed to just losing 1 game.
These strategies don't even need to be implemented on the 1st or 2nd offense, they could even reset after a month, but they ought to be implemented.
Yes people can disconnect on phone's and tablets, or even at home on a computer. It really shouldn't matter if someone actually leaves or not. It's a bad experience for the single player that does have a good connection and wants to play. We all know the risk of playing on our phones and have bad reception.
A hard system like that, I think, would easily fix the problem. Some MOBA's, teams can vote to resign. Other games, you have to finish it out. Either way, it is SO SIMPLE to just resign, I wish Chess.com would fix this issue for the sake of casual players/gamers. =/