Charter Communications and its Spectrum cable brand have been telling their broadband customers for months that rates for TV, Internet and phone service won’t change now that Charter owns Bright House Networks.
7 Months Ago
6 Months Ago
3 Months Ago
"As you know, we’ve said from the beginning that Bright House legacy customers aren’t going to see any change in their service or price package," Charter spokesman Joe Durkin said just last week.
A growing number of customers have a word for that assertion: hogwash.
More than two dozen Spectrum customers have told the Tampa Bay Times that their rates are being raised significantly even as the company maintains publicly that bills will be unchanged. Most say that Spectrum is tying the rate increase to the expiration of "promotional," discounted rates they got under Bright House, something customers who were with Bright House 10 or 15 years find hard to believe.
The price hikes vary, though some customer’s rates are rising close to 20 percent, according to interviews and billing documents examined by the Times.
"What promotional offer?" said Tampa retiree Ed Boyle, 71, a Bright House customer for more than a decade who received a Jan. 13 letter saying his bill for TV, Internet and phone was going up $10 a month. "I was a Bright House customer since forever and forever. I don’t know of any promotion I ever had."
Previous coverage: Bright House customers: You now belong to Spectrum for cable TV, phone and Internet service
Durkin said a majority of the more than a million Bright House customers Charter inherited when it purchased the company in May were under promotional offers.
"Bright House Networks routinely offered customers promotional pricing, sometimes year after year," said Durkin, noting Spectrum prices are competitive nationally, "Spectrum takes a different approach."
Those Bright House promotions, he said, often went to both new and existing customers.
Asked if some customers might think it deceptive that the company said prices would remain the same when tens of thousands would actually be seeing significant increases, Durkin said, "I don’t know how. When a promotional offer or period is accepted, it’s for a specific period. Once the promotional period ends, the price rises."
Bonnie Swan, 79, of Tarpon Springs, who said she was a customer of Bright House or its predecessors since 1990, said she isn’t buying that and can’t recall ever being told she had a promotional package under Bright House.
Her bill went from $157.55 in November to January’s $182.70, a 16 percent increase. The high cost, she said, forced her to reduce her TV channel lineup to make her bill more affordable.
"It’s hard to live with something that isn’t just," Swan said. "They said they weren’t going to change anything. Well, they have. What they did is just so blatant. I think they counted on people just not paying attention to their bills."
Bob Darrow, 67, a Tarpon Springs retiree who signed up for Bright House in 2015, said his rate is going up 12 percent to $178.28. He said Frontier Communications service is unavailable where in lives, so he’s stuck with Charter.
Darrow said he recalled being offered no promotion, and Bright House did not offer customers contracts.
"It’s price gouging," he said. "They’re a monopoly in this area. So they figure they can just jack up prices whenever they want. It’s ridiculous."
Related coverage: Spectrum to automatically refund controversial $9.99 wifi activation fee
Customers also are reporting difficulty dealing with Charter customer service as they receive different answers and explanations from different reps, sowing considerable confusion. That was a common refrain as well when Frontier Communications acquired Verizon’s TV, Internet and landline phone business last year.
Durkin said the company tries to ensure representatives give accurate information.
Not having a contract is a double-edged sword for customers. While the can drop their service whenever they want to move to another cable company, Spectrum is under no legal obligation to not raise their rates.
"I think it’s bait and switch," said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a California-based consumer advocacy group. "But unfortunately, there’s no authority in most states to slap Charter’s wrists or put on the handcuffs. What we see with Charter is that they want to squeeze money out of anything they can."
Contact William R. Levesque at levesque@tampabay.com. Follow @Times_Levesque.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
