Community Chat

[manhattan1950]

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@Mz iMac wrote:

Negotiate w/the supervisor.  They are the ones w/the "lowering bill" powers not the CR.

Negotiate w/the Retention Department if the above will not budge.

Getting your bill lowered depends on many factors....

Valuable customer?  - never and/or rarely late paying bill(s)

How many years you have been a customer?

Are you a senior?  All cable companies have senior/disabled discounts (some advertised, most don't.)  Some even have special plans for low income.........You MUST ask about them on your own.  None will volunteer the info.

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NONE of those suggestions you made work with SPECTRUM.

[manhattan1950]

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@HerRoyaLioness wrote:

Spectrum would not negotiate with me at all. Their prices went so much higher when it switched to them from Time Warner.  They were awful and several times I got told things that were not true more than a few times that caused issues for me. It was not a smooth transition for them or me.

After a year of this I finally switched to AT&T U-verse.  Spectrum called with offers, but still not near my price range, still very expensive.

When I was trying to negotiate at the time, if I dropped my phone off the bundled plan, it would have cost me $50/mo MORE - go figure that one out!

Forgot to add that if they lower the bill or give you a better price, some service is usually taken away for that to happen.  I experienced that a couple times until there was nothing left to take away.

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That's EXACTLY what happened to me.

[qvcaddition]

@PINKdogWOOD

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@PINKdogWOOD wrote:

It's possible they threatened to drop spectrum altogether. I know people who've done this in the past with their providers and immediately got better rates.

Usually though better rates mean a one-year plan and then the rates increase as they always do when the 'special' runs out. This practice by any given cable co provider happens all the time - this I know to be true.

I negotiate with them every year and get the same bill give or take a few dollars .  I ask for the LOYALTY dept. I tell them I can go else where and. get the same thing as the year before.  You have to be stern, but nice. Good luck.

[debcakes]

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@Catty2 wrote:

I have Cox for cable and internet.  Last month I went into one of their stores to pick up an upgraded modem they were giving their customers.  At that time I asked the person who waited on me how I could save money on my bill.  It was $157/month.  He said he could lower it to about $125/month for the next year.  When I got my next bill it was $112/month.  I didn't threaten to cancel, just asked how I could save some money.  That's $45/month lower than I was paying.   

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I have Cox in AZ and Spectrum in WI. Cox is so much better all around and much cheaper. Consider yourself lucky.

[NYC Susan]

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@kivah wrote:

Don't tell them that ur cancelling - usually won't work. Just call back several more times - and speak to different people - and ask that ur bill be lowered. They're taught to ignore customer complaints --- but u have to be aggressive.

A neighbor once called one of the cable companies and said: I guess u care more about NEW customers than Long-Term customers. Then he reduced her bill.

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That's not true.  I call every year and tell them that I want to cancel.  And it absolutely works! 

I ask for the Retention Department, and I always get good results.  It doesn't come easy, so I'm very prepared.  I keep track of outages throughout the year, I research rates for other companies, etc.  So when they ask why I want to cancel, I have a list of very good reasons.  I always say that I absolutely will not pay the new rate, and I repeat that several times.  

I dread doing it.  But it's worth the time and aggravation.  I've read a lot about this, and most companies aren't open to reducing rates unless you say that you want to cancel service.  Doing as you said - calling back over and over and talking to different people - can be a big waste of time because the Retention Dept people are the only ones truly invested in lowering rates in order to keep customers from leaving.

[Jordan2]

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@Jordan2 wrote:

I was inspired by this thread to try and get Spectrum to lower my cable bill. I have called many times to get Spectrum to lower my bill to no avail. So I called this afternoon, spoke to someone in the billing department, she couldn't help me but she  transferred me to another department. I spoke to a very nice male customer service rep, told him what I was looking for, to my surprise he said let's see what we can do! Long story short I'm keeping all my same services, he was able to knock  $30 (for one year) off the bill ( this phone call did take a long time, he also had to get it okayed by someone higher up). I thanked him and told him how helpful and appreciated he was. I guess it doesn't hurt to try and also goes to show you all the previous reps I spoke to who said they couldn't do anything just didn't care.

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Maybe it's bad form to quote yourself , but I wanted to give an update. The CS rep quoted me a price that was $30 less than I pay now, I thought great. I then get an email from Spectrum notifying me of the changes, my bill is only $15 less! I call Spectrum's CS and I speak with a woman. She doesn't understand how he could have quoted me that price ( like I'm lying which I'm not). She then goes on to explain ( not well) that because he changed some codes the internet I'm getting went up in price! She says she can't do anything about it, I can pull out one of my cable boxes to save $10 ( I don't want to). So on one hand they give, with the other hand they take. I guess I'll have to settle for the $15 instead of the $30 I was promised.

[qbetzforreal]

We were able to get Directv through the loyalty department to lower our bill twice.  The third time was not the charm, Directv aka ATT refused to budge.  We said goodbye and switched to antennea tv.

It depends on the rep whether or not they'll play ball.

[Spurt]

@CherryHugs  @LisaMofSLC  @hayseed00

What's funny when Time Warner became Spectrum they announced no more pricing games and what's listed as their price is the final offer---No more negotiating if you call to complain about the price or call to cancel....

A friend contacted them and that's the stand they took with her....."That's our price" (a take it or leave it attitude) , but when my sister called they negotiated a lower price for her.....Either business must be bad in certain parts of the country, so now they play "let's make a deal"..OR ...some of their Reps/Supervisors didn't get the memo....

I'm glad I'm with an independent cable company that always promises to beat Spectrum in price, but they are only available in certain areas in the local vicinity....

[Spurt]

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@vermint wrote:

What I'm sick of is paying for so many channels we don't watch! We have DISH Flexpack, and then a few add-on packages (no premium channels at all). The Flexpack is the least expensive package, but there are still a number of channels we never watch (Hispanic - we don't speak Spanish, Kid-oriented - we don't have children, etc.) 

I wish we could just pick and choose--we might not be paying that much less, but at least we'd be watching what we pay for!

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@vermint

What you are saying seems logical, why are we paying for channels we dont plan to watch....I was watching a show on a business channel and they discussed this. But you are paying less for these channels.  The programmers put together a package of different tiers of channels as an incentive and give a price break. If consumers picked and chose what channels they wanted, it would actually end up costing the customer more. Ther's the technology involved to customize the lineup.  Also, for example, say you like a particular channel but a lot other customers don't, so less subscribers is going to raise the price of that channel.....in the end, customizing channel lineup would cost more.....

Even if someone is a cable chord cutter they have to end up getting several services to get the channels they used to have with cable---Sling, Hulu, Netflix, Roku, Amazon, etc etc....and if you want to cut cable but keep sports channels you gotta pay extra. And even with top internet speeds there are complaints about streaming---freezing and pixelating.. And in the end, if folks are willing to admit it, they are missing some channels they used to have by chord cutting...Its all about making do versus what someone is willing to pay for.......

My gripe is fees, taxes, surcharges....in my area these add an extra $52 a month to my bill....No one has answered me if chord cutters still pay these ....

[Spurt]

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@vermint wrote:

@itsmagic For years we had AT&T phone & internet service at our office. We were paying over $600 month for 4 or 5 phone lines & internet. We switched to Comcast and got all that PLUS basic cable TV (which we don't use, but it's included) for about $300 a month! HALF!

Once we switched we were inundated with offers from AT&T...why couldn't they just give us the lower rates to begin with. 

We really shouldn't have to ask these companies for lower rates...loyal customers should just get them. We had AT&T for 30 years!

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@vermint

Yes, I totally agree, why do just new customers get all the breaks, their should be a "loyalty discount" for long time customers!