By Sandy Wells
KABC News
Time Warner Cable – which at one time was possibly the most consumer-loathed commercial entity in history – is gone, absorbed by Charter Communications and has been re-dubbed Spectrum. Los Angeles Times consumer reporter David Lazarus says he’s already getting emails from unhappy customers.
“Former Time Warner customers are getting their first Spectrum bills and many, many of them, at least according to the email I’m seeing, are seeing big jumps in their cable rates, 30 – 40 – 50 percent in some cases.”
So what gives?
“I talked to our friends at Spectrum and they said ‘No, no, no, don’t worry your pretty heads! It’s not like we’re raising everyone’s rates willy nilly. What you’re seeing is promotional Time Warner rates that are ending.”
But that’s not the whole story, says Lazarus.
“Yes, you’re old Time Warner plan is going to be grandfathered into Spectrum. As soon as whatever promotional rates you have are over they’re going to soar in price as an incentive to try and get you to transition over to a Spectrum bundle, and the Spectrum bundle, at least as far as I can tell, is almost uniformly going to be more expensive than what you were paying before.”
Adding insult to injury, the cable industry is not about to let their revenues dry up just because people are cutting their cable TV service and replacing it with streaming services. Lazarus says we can expect broadband rates to climb higher.
Lazarus was a guest on 790 KABC’s McIntyre in the Morning Show with Doug McIntyre and Terri-Rae Elmer.
