Slashdot Mirror
Charter Files For "Prearranged Bankruptcy"
jamie points out news that Charter Communications filed for "prearranged" Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday, primarily to reorganize some of the $21.7 billion in debt it has accrued. Quoting:
"The St. Louis-based company seeks to emerge from bankruptcy as early as the end of summer and doesn't plan on selling any of its assets to competitors. After Chapter 11, interest costs at Charter, which has never posted a profit since going public in 1999 due to massive debt interest payments, will be cut in half to $830 million a year. The filing restructures about $8 billion of debt at Charter, which is controlled by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, but leaves about $13 billion of debt on its books. Allen will control 35 percent of the votes in the reorganized company. In the bankruptcy, Allen's 51 percent equity stake in the cable operator will be wiped out, along with shares of other stockholders. Allen also holds some debt and preferred stock."
How much free mney do they need? $25 billion? Heck, let's be safe and give them 10x that... $250 billion.
How can a company be allowed to get 13 BILLION into debt!
Hell, some people were lucky if they even got shitty service. My grandmother's really getting into the whole technology thing with gusto, and was after HDTV and high-speed internet. Guess what? Charter did not offer either option to her entire town (a close-in, well-established suburb of Dallas). In fact, they had no plans to EVER offer either one in "that market" as they put it. Suddenly I realized why so very, very many houses around there had sprung up satellite dishes.
She even went up to the Charter office, and the girl that she talked to there actually said she was telling customers to get satellite. So that's what my grandmother did. She'd been a Charter customer literally since they became available in her area, even before they ever went public. Decades. Not anymore. She's a happy DirecTV customer now, with all her HDTV and her DVR. Loving it.
She got AT&T DSL too, not the greatest choice but it's pleased her.
Looking around at all the other dishes in the area (a lot of them are DISH network, I notice, which is owned by AT&T, so probably a lot of DSL customers too), it's not at all hard to see that Charter is hemorrhaging customers in that market, and I have little doubt that it is by far not the only place where they're making such stupid, asinine decisions that are forcing customers to leave them in order to get the service they clearly want.
I know a lot of comments here are going to be about their horrible customer service, unreliable network problems, etc. I know cause I've heard a lot of friends' (in St. Louis, where I live) horror stories. Maybe I'm the only customer that has been pleased with their services. Calling customer service has always been surprisingly pleasant and my issues resolved impressively quickly.
AT&T's U-verse just became available in my area (when I moved here cable was the only option for high-speed internet, DSL didn't reach this far) but I really do not want to deal with the pain of switching my TV, DVR, internet and phone over to a different company. I already give AT&T too much money each month for my cell phone.
Charter has done good by me (so far), they're a local company and I hope they come out of this stronger. Options and competition are a good thing for the kinds of services they offer.
The more companies that drop out of a particular market, the more the remaining companies will try to screw you.
Look for a massive hike in price at Comcast in the coming months. Either a price hike, tightening of the bandwidth cap, both, or something else that shows how important competition is.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?