Comments on news posted 2014-02-19 09:03:05: Users in our Time Warner Cable forum inform us they too are taking part in rate hike season festivities, the cable operator informing users that prices will be going up for many users starting March 1 for both cable TV and broadband services (not to .. ..
It appears that TWC is taking a below the line approach to fee increases rather that straight up increasing the "3 play" price they are always advertising. If you add modem and STB, outlet increases the typical person may see more than a $10 a month rate increase.
If you must keep cable, Tivo or Windows media center (very cheap) seem to be ways to invest and save money more than ever now. Keep in mind that both have upfront costs, but you own the equipment and can always sell it later, unlike the STB lease fee which is a total loss. For me my W7MC infrastructure is 3 years old and chugging along just fine. I haven't had to invest a dime in over 3 years.
And I know that they are always swapping the latest STB technology in place to justify the $10 a month fee, right?
charging an internet only customer a $2.25 TV fee? someone at TWCable is really dumb to call it that. they should have simply done a mild rate increase.
I wonder if this will be mentioned in the Aereo deliberations. my guess is if the courts rule in Aereo's favor, then all the cable companies will use that excuse to recover TV fees, since they pay for OTA retransmission while Aereo does not.
since Turbo speeds are not included in this price increase, this makes paying for more speed a better deal... now the price different between 15/1 to 20/2 is $7 instead of $10.
since Turbo speeds are not included in this price increase, this makes paying for more speed a better deal... now the price different between 15/1 to 20/2 is $7 instead of $10.
Turbo and the higher tiers are included in the increase. They just don't have to list them because of the way they word it.
Turbo is standard + $10 Extreme is standard +$20 Ultimate is standard +$50
i see... so all month to month people get the increase. only people locked in to some 12 month plan will be safe for a while.
UPDATE: I just got off the phone with TWCable and learned something interesting. even if you pay month to month, there may be an under laying rate guarantee for a 12 month duration on your account, even if you didn't contract for it. in my case, it seems i will be locked into the current standard rate (no $3 increase) until September 2014 even though I pay month to month.
Does the rate guarantee keep these fee hikes at bay as well. We have a guarantees price until 2015, but I'm afraid that they will sneak in a rate hike in the form of additional/raised fees.
As long as you sign up for some kind of "deal", it's good for a year if they tell you it's for a year. They don't raise the rates unless the year is up. But boy, watch out for that jump in fees the first month after your year of low rates is up.
I spoke with a TWC rep who assured me that my "locked in price" means I won't see these additional fees until my deal expires (in 2015). So cable stays for now. (It is still hanging by a very thin thread, though, with scissors at the ready.)
No. We've had the same service for awhile. Last change we had was to add whole home DVR a few years back (which we only did because they offered us an exceptional deal).
there may be an under laying rate guarantee for a 12 month duration on your account
TWC doesn't really have non-promotion pricing. Any time your 12 month promotion ends, you are automatically enrolled in a new 12 month promotion. They claim that they enroll you in the best one available, but that is not true.
I am sure you can get non-promotion pricing if you demand it, but the price will be crazy high if they offer it.
In the end, everyone on TWC has the price locked in for 12 months at a time. But it is not a contract so you can cancel at any time.
You can debate that, I had that fee (Comcast) and a TV tax as well and got them taken off my bill as well as a credit for the 2 months prior that I had paid it. If you complain enough and question charges they will come off.
The blurb to the side of the fee list, which wasn't reproduced in the article says "Your bill may now include a Broadcast TV fee, which defrays the increased costs imposed by broadcasters".
So it likely won't be applied to non-TV customers.
If there's going to be a consumer lawsuit, it had better be done quickly before the Comcast-TWC merger goes through. Comcast's TOS require "binding arbitration" unless one specifically opts out.
I think it is good to break out these fees to show customers what they are really paying for these channels they don't watch. Time to take it a step further, and break out all the substantial carriage fees. It is the only way to get enough consumer push back to change things up:
ESPN 8$ RSN for baseball team you don't watch $5 RSN for basketball team you don't watch $3 RSN for hocky team in another state that you haven't even heard of $2.50 Networks you can get for free OTA, that you only watch for your team's football game once a week anyway: $5
It should be broken out, but they shouldn't be additional charges. My monthly fees shouldn't be $59.99 + 12.50 in fees, it should be $72.49/month + tax like every other product
If you can't remove it from another service then they should be listed as one item. If it's listed individually, then customers should have the option to add/remove it individually.
The problem is the cable companies would like to sell them separately, but can't get the content providers to go along with it. So this is a good step in getting the providers to have to at least offer their stuff a la carte, with no forced basic coverage crap. A la carte from the content providers to the MSO would probably solve a lot of current cable bill problems.
Sports is a joke. It has taken over 1/4 of the TV fees on our cable bill.
Since sports is such a high revenue business and TV sales compete with stadium sales, all sports channel's should be on s separate package so everyone that does not watch sports can see their bills drop by $20 a month.
Agree. Somewhere, I ran across this, which is at least a tiny step in the right direction. Even then, or even with a cable card tuner for an HTPC, or Tivo, you usually (99% of cases I've heard of) have to RENT the card for a couple bucks a month.
This is a classic example of why this industry needs to be heavily regulated. Cable companies rank up there with lawyers as shysters and never to be trusted.
We're forced by one regulation to take the broadcast channels as part of the service and listed as part of basic cable then they tack on a BS fee? It's like buying a car and then adding a surcharge for a license plate frame.
It's time for local governments and federal authorities to prevent this behavior. If you subscribe to a sports tier, you get the sports channels without the "RSN Fee". Basic cable is just that - basic cable and shouldn't be permitted to add essentially duplicate charges. They complain they don't want a la carte pricing but they are essentially doing that without giving us the benefits of it.
Stick an antenna in them... they're done. Go Aereo!!!!
how in the hell are they charging for additional outlets.. wasnt that stopped by legislation many year ago...
i guess cutting the cable will be an option since my bill will be jumping $20... I can go back reading books...
increase in prices for shitty service.. still having studdering and pixilization after a tech came out and said "nothing wrong on our end, its this jumper cable"
Can we drop OTA channels from the BASIC package, use an antenna and avoid the fee?
I don't blame cable for this. I blame the regulations that allowed OTA content providers to charge re-transmission fees to cable, satellite, fiber and other systems. OTA content providers shouldn't be able to demand a fee from a system that includes it with other content for customer convenience. If the cable provider wants to pay OTA providers so they can replace local ads, I'm good with that but OTA should not be able to force a re-transmission fee on anyone capable of receiving the signal for free.
The "broadcast TV" fee is interesting for it's slime factor, but the real money gouge is the change to "The Guide" fee. Right now it's $.50 per account, under the new fee setup I've seen it range anywhere from $2.77 - $4.27 per outlet. That in effect increases the set top box fee by about $5 instead of the $1.25 listed. I imagine this will be on top of the $13 DVR service fee for DVR boxes.
the amount of video free for the taking on the internet is growing.. you do NOT have to pay $50+ to get access to 6 channels of content that most people watch-- the fact that millions of people do when there are alternatives speaks volumes to the laziness and complacency of the subscribership. subscription tv is NOT an essential.
Before these companies add enough bottom line fees to face some serious regulations.
It will be a long time before that happens. They have (paid) regulators in their pockets and these small increases are like death from 1000 cuts to most people.
We live in a free market. The cable companies are charging what the market will allow. And all the sheeple who keep paying into it keep this nonsense alive.
Until consumers walk, choice or no choice then they'll keep doing this. It will never stop.
We went from 1 channel down, 1 channel up, to 4 channels down, 1 up, to 4 down and 4 up. In really recent times, native IPv6 has been added. Is it worth +$3/mo.? Considering the tens or in some cases hundreds of megabits per second people in other regions are getting for less than half the cost per month....not really, it should in theory be less to begin with. Of course, this is not solely TWC's doing, it's the carriers too, Cogent, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Level 3, etc.
You won't get any kudos for your comment but you are right especially in under developed neglected by the telco markets.
My Mother lives in an area that the best she can get from at&t is 3 Mbps ADSL2 Uverse yet she has TWC utimate at 50/5 Mbps internet IPv6 and hundreds of HDTV channels.
Everybody (Directv, dish, uverse et all) are raising prices so if people can't afford it just cut the cord.
I cut my broadcast basic service two months ago as I realized I had not been using it. I am close enough to New York City to get excellent OTA reception and I was using that all the time to get a few OTA channels not on OTA. When Cablevision raised their internet service price $10/month, I cut the TV service and my bill is now lower than it had been with TV service!
Frankly, I spend more time watching reruns of old 70's shows that enjoyed as kid on Netflix (Banacek, Columbo, Quincy, Emergency, McMillan and Wife). Plus I am watching the early episodes of Fraser that I missed when they were originally on. I have enough content to keep me entertained for the foreseeable future without OTA.
Turning in my 2 cable boxes and 1 dvr because of the price increase. Keeping internet for now....Reading the cable bill is getting alittle like reading the old phone bills(Need and accountant to figure those out)...Possibly going back to Windstream in the near future....Glad I have my Roku...
Just make sure you have the lowest price possible for your internet. If they are charging more than is advertised on their website, make them change it.
How is it "sneakily" buried if they explicitly call it out as a "Broadcast TV" fee?
Isn't that itemizing it? Something that has been asked of cable companies before. Itemize the channels we're paying for so we know what each is directly costing us?
And now they do that, and it's sneaky? I don't get how that's sneaky in the least.
I have been cutting the cable for the last 15 years and the phone for one year. I now watch TV and make phone calls trough Time Warner internet which is the only service I subscribe to.
At first I felt great about it I thought I was being smarter only to realize that they find always new fees to increase my internet which is all I have.
No matter what they always win and obviously I don't have a choice because in my area there is only Verizon dsl they charge the same money and give you lower speed.
I hope the Comcast/ Time Warner deal won't be approved. but I fear that the people who are supposed to make a decision are in the same bed with the companies they have to regulate.
Cable companies raise rates because they have a monopoly in their territories, but a broadcast TV fee? Not only should cable not have to pay to retransmit what antenna users get for free, but they should charge for that service, and then reduce subscriber rates. Cable companies are helping the broadcaster deliver the messages of its advertisers to a wider audience such as those in fringe areas where TV antennas are not reliable. That is valuable, and not for just chump change.
Cable has gotten so far away from the Community Antenna Television co-ops that created it, it is now a parasite, not a public service. Broadcasters have also gone to seed since the FCC stopped requiring them to perform public service in order to keep their licenses to use the public airwaves free of charge. They are all crooks.
crock. In my experience virtually all of the features advertised by TWC are imaginary.
"Hundreds" (or is it "thousands"?) of cable channels? Sure, *numerically,* by a simple count -- my cable guide goes from 1 to over 1900. But after the latest "upgrade," from about the 75th channel up, a great many channels are simply repetitions of the channels below them. In practice I *may* have between *one* and *two* hundred channels, if I'm lucky.
"Crystal clear" HDTV? Not at my house, and most especially not while the DVR is running. The Grammys looked positively *pixelated,* especially the CBS logo in the bottom right corner which looked like it had been approximated by a Lego model, all steppy instead of smooth. If they try to blame upstream providers, I can also add that Time Warner's own *local* news channel looks just as bad. With a brand-new $2k+ Sony TV, I should be able to read the smallest text TWC overlays onto the picture -- and if I can't, then who can, and why should TWC bother? Just to make it *look like* they're broadcasting in HD and the problem is at *my* end, probably.
"High speed" internet is a crock in the USA as a whole; we're something like 27th in the world in Internet speeds, even counting Verizon FIOS; so I don't have high expectations -- but that doesn't mean I'm *happy* about it.
So how do we start a grassroots organization to combat these behaviors en masse?