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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."
U.S. companies seem to be competing with each other to be more and more abusive.
everybody knows mergers increase innovation which lowers pricing while improving service. Charter told me so before they merged.
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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.
Clearly, the nature of cable conglomerates is chaotic evil, but it seems likely on the order of tomorrow's sunrise the same customers would've been subjected to rate increases at their original cable providers when their promotional discounts expired.
We're talking about an industry where the only sure method of getting discount rates involves switching providers. No one gets great rates staying with their current provider.
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> Charter came up with new prices and packages, and many customers saw their bills rise when their previous discounts expired
So, just like Comcast, then.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
many customers saw their bills rise when their previous discounts expired and they were switched to non-promotional pricing.
FFS, the whole point of promotional discounts is that your bill increases when the period is up!
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What? There is no competition? Impossible. Everyone knows that the market encourages competition and companies to work for the good of the people, not to collude in order to increase their own bottom line.
Barriers to entry? Listen, son, if you want to get ahead in the world, you need to pull yourself up by your boot straps, overcome the paid for barriers that other ISPs have put in place, and create a multi-million dollar infrastructure by hand. Go ahead, all you need is guts and determination!
(rides away on piles of money) AMERICAN DREAM!
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.
Merging is done to destroy competition where regulatory constraints prevent easy entry into a business. Municipalities are often the guilty party on preventing internet and cable competition - e.g. "can't cross our right of way", etc.