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Charter Has Moved Millions of Customers To New -- And Often Higher -- Pricing (arstechnica.com)
After Charter closed the acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in May 2016, it moved 30 percent of the customers it acquired onto new pricing plans, resulting in many people paying higher prices. "Before the merger, Charter had about 6.8 million customers; afterward, Charter had 25.4 million customers in 41 states and became the second-largest U.S. cable company after Comcast," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Charter came up with new prices and packages, and many customers saw their bills rise when their previous discounts expired and they were switched to non-promotional pricing. Now, 30 percent of the ex-TWC and ex-Bright House customers are paying different -- and often higher -- prices. Charter CEO Thomas Rutledge provided the update in an earnings call last week (hat tip to FierceCable). According to a Seeking Alpha transcript, Rutledge said: "In June, we finished the rollout of our new pricing, packaging, and branding across our national footprint with the last launch of Spectrum in Hawaii. We now offer a simple, straightforward, high-value product using a consistent and uniform approach across our 50 million passings under one brand, Spectrum. The new product is succeeding with consumers across our footprint. In the second quarter, our customers and PSU [primary service unit] connects were higher year-over-year. And as of the end of the second quarter, 30 percent of Time Warner Cable and Bright House legacy customers were in our new pricing and packaging, up from 17 percent at the end of last quarter. In areas where we've had Spectrum in place for at least three quarters, 43 percent of our residential customers have Spectrum package products."
http://www.wdrb.com/story/3605...
There was a steady stream of traffic going into and out of the Spectrum cable office in St. Matthews Thursday afternoon. Sekou Davis had his arms full of electronic equipment, including a phone modem and a DVR box. He was turning it all in, and cutting the cord after more than 20 years with cable.
“For one, the cost of the service, and, two, just the quality,” said Davis.
Davis says Spectrum's latest change is the last straw. The company is encrypting, or scrambling, its signal in Louisville. It means customers must now have cable boxes for every TV set. They can no long plug cable-ready TV sets directly into a cable outlet.
To be fair, the boxes will be free, at least for a while.
Spectrum is offering customers two free boxes for two years, and five free years for customers on Medicaid. After that, it will cost $5.99 a month for each box.
Well isn't that generous of them.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The story itself is misleading. I wasn't in any promotional period and I saw my pricing raise by 40%. Even worse, when I called to find out the reason for it, I was on hold for 3 hours then gave up. Never called back. I just pay a shitton more and there's really nothing I can do about it since there isn't any other providers.