Readers: Please find our 2015 Guide to Getting a Better Deal from Time Warner Cable here. You will find the latest negotiating strategies and deal information in that updated article. 

Time Warner Cable just won’t let you say goodbye, if they can help it.

A year ago, your editor fought for a better deal from the cable company that has served him since the 1980s.  With a tough economy and downsizing, paying a cable bill that was approaching $175 a month in early 2011 for ‘all their best’ was simply no longer an option.  Time Warner Cable’s customer retentions office responded with a promotion that slashed the bill to just $88.44 for Turbo Internet, cable-TV, and unlimited “digital phone” service with nationwide calling.  Incidental charges included leasing a whole house DVR ($7.04), a second cable box ($6.84), $1 for “digital programming” and $0.34 for the remote control.

When the cable operator introduced DOCSIS 3 broadband speed upgrades, an additional $20 a month brought 30/5Mbps speeds.  The total — $123.66 (before taxes and fees).  That’s a whole lot less for a great deal more service.

When the promotion ended in February, the rate shot back up to $160, but $7.95 of that was for a year of Showtime at a special promotional price.  Showtime was destined for the cancel corner anyway (we didn’t watch more than two hours of anything on Showtime in the last year), but even without it, the rate increase was on the steep side.

So we complained.

Unlike last year, which resulted in considerable confusion and arguing back and forth with different representatives to find the best deal, this year we let Time Warner’s social media representatives do the hard work for us.  Within 24 hours, our rate for all of the same services, plus a special promotion that includes HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and The Movie Channel at no additional charge, brought the bill down even lower than we managed last year: $102.33 a month for a year.  That includes the 30/5Mbps Road Runner Extreme, Whole House DVR, and one extra cable box.  It doesn’t include taxes and fees, which typically add another $6.50 to the bill.

The whole process was painless, and you can follow in our footsteps if you have a Twitter account:

Step One: Tweet Time Warner (Note the Twitter address has changed from @twcablehelp to @TWC_help):

The key phrase in whatever Tweet you send is to include: @TWC_help, which brings you to their social media customer service representatives.  I also “followed” @TWC_help so I could see how active they were.  During business hours, you should expect to see a reply like this within the hour:

For those new to Twitter, “DM” refers to a “direct message” — a private Tweet seen only by the intended recipient.  I finally found the menu option that allows me to send a “direct message” on Twitter’s page for Time Warner Cable:

Note the red box around the option on the top right.  By clicking that you will see a drop down menu that includes an option to “Direct Message” TWC_help.  You will want to include your Time Warner Cable account number (as seen on your bill) and include your contact phone number.

Within 24-48 hours, a senior retentions specialist should call you to negotiate a better offer for your service.  Make sure you answer those unfamiliar caller ID calls!  But before they call, visit Time Warner Cable’s website and note any currently running new customer promotions.  Also check to see if the competition is offering anything even lower.  Those prices are typically the starting point for your negotiations, and the company should have little trouble meeting them.  However, customers with a poor payment record or past due account may discover the company less willing to negotiate.  Bring account balances current before negotiating for a lower rate.

Some Time Warner Cable territories offer “price protection agreements” or term contracts that lock customers into 1-2 years of service.  Negotiating around these contracts can be difficult to impossible.

An alternative contact method is to direct e-mail Time Warner at: [email protected] (don’t forget the “.” in twcable.help).

The total time spent this year on finding a better deal that will save us $58 a month — $696 a year — about five minutes, far less than the time it took to write this article.  Give it a try and let us know in the comments what kind of deals you can negotiate.

While incumbent phone and cable operators often try to directly block community broadband projects, sometimes politics and special insider interests also get in the way.  One of our loyal readers shared a piece with us published in Fierce Telecom that outlines the trouble spots:

Gov. Bobby Jindal Blows It for Louisiana; Wife’s Foundation Heavily Supported By AT&T

Jindal's wife's charity is a recipient of AT&T money.

The U.S. Dept. of Commerce awarded $80.5 million to help drain Louisiana’s broadband swamp with a new statewide fiber network linking the most rural and poor areas of the state, including schools, libraries, hospitals, and universities.  Users could have obtained service from 10Mbps-1Gbps, but not if Jindal had his way.  He preferred AT&T (and the state’s cable operators) handle everything the same way they have traditionally handled telecommunications in the state — service in big cities and next to nothing everywhere else.  In addition to directly supporting the governor, AT&T contributes substantially to a charitable foundation founded by Jindal’s wife.

Jindal never openly blocked the project.  Instead, his administration “dithered and bickered” over the fiber network and ran the clock out.  Last October, the Commerce Department revoked the grant, leaving Louisiana’s Broadband Alliance with little more than a plan they’ll never be able to implement as long as Jindal occupies the governor’s office.  Stop the Cap! covered the mess back in November.

Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell:

“We want to know what the heck happened; we’re the only ones in the country that dropped the ball,” Campbell said. “I meet with people in every parish, and the number one priority by far is high-speed Internet, and how do you lose $80 million coming from the federal government to do that. How do you drop the ball, and if they did drop the ball was it because someone whispered in their ears, ‘it’s going interfere with big companies?’”

AT&T-Backed Astroturf Operation Scandalizes the Mayor’s Office and Ruins A High Tech Training Program

Marks

As Stop the Cap! wrote last fall, a scandal involving AT&T and the mayor of the state capital of Florida ultimately cost the city of Tallahassee a $1.6 million dollar federal broadband grant to expand Internet access to the urban poor and train disadvantaged citizens to navigate the online world.

Mayor John Marks never bothered to inform the city he had a direct conflict of interest with the group he strongly advocated as a participant in the grant project. The Alliance for Digital Equality (ADE) is little more than an AT&T astroturf effort — a front group that did almost nothing to bring Internet access to anyone. Mayor Marks was a paid adviser.

After the media got involved, the mayor’s office hoped the whole project would just go away. And it did, along with the $1.6 million.

Wisconsin Republicans <Heart> AT&T, Even When It Means Forfeiting $23 Million for Better Broadband

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is a close friend of AT&T.  So close, when the phone company was threatened with the loss of revenue earned from the institutional broadband network it leases to the state, Walker and his Republican colleagues intervened, literally turning away $23 million in government stimulus funding.  Walker alone has accepted more than $20,000 in campaign contributions from AT&T.  Stop the Cap! covered this story in detail in February 2011.

Governor Walker (R-AT&T)

The decision to return the money had a direct impact on 380 Wisconsin communities, 385 libraries, 82 schools, and countless public safety offices across the state.  Namely, being stuck with AT&T’s outdated and expensive network the state leases in successive five year contracts.  Since broadband stimulus funding requires the construction of networks designed to last 20 years, not five, Walker’s insistence on sticking with AT&T made the stimulus funding off-limits.  But what are friends for?

AT&T has historically had no trouble getting its phone calls returned by Republican state lawmakers, who have cheered most of AT&T’s proposed legislation through the state legislature.  Today, Wisconsin takes a “hands off” approach with the state’s cable and phone companies, passed a statewide franchising bill that stripped oversight away from local communities, and AT&T’s landline network faces little scrutiny in the state, especially in rural communities.

The state university is now attempting to bypass Walker with its own $37 million project, but it will never serve Wisconsin consumers.  The institutional network will target schools, hospitals and first responders.

As Fierce Telecom notes, other communities could face the loss of their stimulus funding if they do not get busy building the projects they promised.  The Rural Utilities Service, part of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, has put several projects on notice they could forfeit broadband stimulus funding if they fail to meet project deadlines.

Angelakis

Comcast says it admires Time Warner Cable for risking subscriber wrath over plans to introduce usage-based billing Time Warner says will be optional for customers in southern Texas.  But Comcast admits it is not brave enough to try similar pricing schemes themselves, fearing a customer backlash.

“We have a very high customer satisfaction rating and we don’t really want to rock the boat on [our broadband product],” Comcast chief financial officer Michael Angelakis told an audience Tuesday at a Wall Street bank-sponsored media and telecom conference in San Francisco. “I give them credit for trying different things, [but] we have real momentum in that business and the goal is to keep it.”

Comcast was a spectator of the consumer and political backlash against Time Warner Cable when it last experimented with usage pricing in April 2009.  Within two weeks, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt shelved the plan under pressure from both customers and lawmakers.

Now Time Warner Cable wants to reintroduce the concept as an option for customers of a new “Internet Essentials” discounted broadband tier that would include a $5 monthly discount if customers kept usage under 5GB per month.

Some veterans of the 2009 battle suspect Time Warner is trying to slowly slip usage pricing past customers waiting to fight its return by first suggesting it is only an option, but later herding broadband customers into usage based plans by substantially raising the price of flat rate service.

“Looks like a trial run the company could easily expand to all of their Internet customers,” shares Stop the Cap! reader Jeff in San Antonio, Tex., one of the cities that will participate in the upcoming usage-based plan. “I have a hard time believing Time Warner is going through all the effort developing usage meters and billing support for usage pricing just to market a handful of customers a $5 discount.”

Jeff, who helped fend off the cable company’s original Internet Overcharging experiment in 2009, suspects Time Warner’s earlier attempt to market a “flat rate” broadband option at $150 a month could still be a blueprint for how the company could push customers out of their unlimited plans.

“They can claim they want to keep unlimited Internet, but have remained silent about how much they will charge for it,” Jeff says. “We need something in writing that this company will not gouge customers with the fine print going forward.”

Stop the Cap! posed several similar questions to Time Warner Cable’s Jeff Simmermon, director of digital communications, through the cable company’s blog.  The company, to date, has offered no response.