Community Chat

[Jordan2]

I went to get my hair done today, and the woman who shampoos my hair knows I have Spectrum. She told me she read that Spectrum is no longer going to be able to do business in New York State. I looked online and sure enough she was correct. They have 2 months to arrange another provider to take over their 2 million customers ( I really won't miss them). I really don't know exactly why they're being kicked out, something about them not living up to promises they made and they have gotten a lot of consumer complaints. I am wondering what will become of us 2 million consumers?

[corita]

     Though Time Warner was not one of my favorites, I have had more trouble with my Spectrum cable boxes than I like. 

     I have to call Spectrum at least once every month to get my boxes updated!  Something is always going out or just not connecting. The last time, the cable was out for almost two days.  I made them give me a refund for that time lost.  I would say they have not lived up to their promises in this area.....

[shoekitty]

@Jordan2

They did that in our town about 15 years ago.  When the contract came up they kicked Falcon cable out of town.  They were horrible.  They never answered their phone.  When they were  questioned at City Council meeting, found out they had 3 lines to take all calls.  They also had promised to update equipment and there were frequent outages.  

People were so outraged at the bad service they were calling the city and council members and mayor.  Cable tv is governed by the city you live in.  I don't think satellite is under contract as strictly as cable networks. Could be wrong.  I haven't worked with our city in years, so out of touch with details

verizon sold us to Frontier, 2 years ago, which without a doubt is the worst phone service in the history of this town

[butterfly123]

Virtually no one likes their cable company, so it’s hard to imagine many tears were shed in New York this weekend over the news that Charter Communications might get kicked out of the state.

In an unusual move, the state’s Public Service Commission voted to revoke approval for Charter’s merger with New York-based Time Warner Cable, meaning Charter is effectively banned from doing business in New York, where it operates under the Spectrum brand. As justification for its decision, the commission said Charter has failed to meet its commitments under the merger, notably its promise to provide better service to underserved areas.

“Charter’s repeated failures to serve New Yorkers and honor its commitments are well documented and are only getting worse,” John B. Rhodes, chair of the commission, said in a statement.

That’s all well and good, but what about the more than 2 million customers who rely on Spectrum for their cable, internet, or phone service? Isn’t throwing out the provider tantamount to throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater?

I reached out to the commission for clarification about what Spectrum customers can expect, and a spokesman refereed me to the order issued on Friday. In a nutshell, the commission has ordered Charter to come up with a plan for its own replacement. Per the order, the company has 60 days to file an action plan, telling the commission how, exactly, it will ensure a smooth transition to a successor provider or providers. In the meantime, Charter is required to to keep providing service and keep carrying its obligations under state law—all while ensuring that its existing customers experience no interruption in service during the transition.

That’s a lot to ask of a company that, according to the commission’s own findings, has already failed so stupendously at doing what it’s supposed to do. In his statement, Rhodes says Charter has shown “brazenly disrespectful behavior toward New York State and its customers,” and yet customers are now expected to trust that same company to oversee a smooth and orderly transition to a new provider?

Either way, it feels like customers are losing on this one, but then, welcome to the cable business. Charter, for its part, plans to fight last week’s order, so it’s likely that nothing will change in the short term. In a statement, the company disputed the argument that it hasn’t met its obligations, suggesting instead that the commission’s decision was politically motivated.

[pigletsmom]

I'll be curious to see where this ends up. I think there are some politics at play here to be honest. This hard core move is completely out of the norm for the PSC.

Not expanding fast enough doesn't seem worthy of this banishment. There have been gas and electric sompanies in the state that have had major problems and none of them have been told to get out.

[Johnnyeager]

I doubt this will ever come to fruition, but in any event the PSC Order is for parent company Charter to find a new buyer and sell Spectrum, not shut it down.   If this does happen, you just have a new parent owner.  Somebody will want 2 million new custormers.

[Nataliesgramma]

I had DirecTV and my service was wonderful....but the bill was OUTRAGEOUS.

 I changed over to Spectrum when my contract was over and saved  $150.00....

I agree that Spectrum is alot of aggrevation....but we are slowly but surely going over to streaming our TV shows and movies......as soon as we get more used to it...Spectrum goes out the door too.

[Lipstickdiva]

I live in Ohio and have Spectrum. They are a complete mess.  Yes they definitely lied when they talked about offering so much more for a lot less than TimeWarner.  That is not the case at all.  We were still under an old TimeWarner plan. When our bill went up to over $200.00 a month, we contacted the company to try and get a cheaper price.  We saved about $70.00 a month but we also had to drop to a different package with a lot less channels.  We were finally able to get rid of our landline and we got rid of our cable box on our bedroom tv so that accounted for some of the savings.

Our upstairs tv is a ROKU tv and at least 3 times a week the Spectrum app is down so we cannot watch that tv.  It is so frustrating.  Everytime our tv won't connect I go to a page on-line about Spectrum outages and see that there is yet another outage. 

Over the last couple of weeks everything has been totally down for hours, twice, the most recent being this past Tuesday.  Of course unless you call they will not automatically issue any credit for the lost time.  And who wants the hassle of trying to speak with someone there?      

[Hooty]

We have all three services with Spectrum, and have been totally satisfied with them  .....  phone, cable TV, and Internet!  I live in the South, so maybe our systems here are better!

[IAmAWinner]

@butterfly123  I thought you wrote this post but I see you copied it from the internet and dropped it here.  I had to search and see if this was real.  I'm not mad at you though, you informed me first hand and I get my internet (only) from Spectrum and I live in NYC!!  LOL.  Thanks much!