Several Arizona residents have reported receiving e-mail allegedly from Cox Communications requiring customers to update or upgrade their account, but in reality, the e-mail comes from a group of fraudsters trying to commit identity theft. The Pima County Sheriff’s Office has sent an open warning alerting cable customers in Arizona and beyond that if you receive an e-mail claiming you need to update or upgrade your account, disregard it, especially if it carries a deadline that warns your service will be disconnected if you don’t respond within a matter of days.

Customers who click on a link in the email will be taken to a phony Cox Communications website, where you will be prompted to provide your username, password and birth date. The sheriff’s office warns providing this information could start a series of criminal events that will not end well:

Why does this company need your birthdate? They want to steal from you. Do not provide any information to the purveyors of this scam.

Two vital pieces of information the fraudsters are always looking for are your date of birth and Social Security number. Anytime you are asked for this information over the phone in a call you did not initiate, or in an email from an unknown source, stop and ask, “Why?” Who wants to use this information?

If you receive requests that you have not initiated or you have not placed the call — a red flag should appear. Do not provide this information unless you know for a fact to whom you are speaking.

Your date of birth and/or Social Security number give the fraudsters have all the information they need to begin identity theft. The scammers can now open accounts in your name, make high-volume charges and ruin your credit. They are capable of doing this without your knowledge.

If they were to attack your established accounts first, your bank or credit card company may notify you of possible unauthorized activity. However, we have knowledge of unauthorized accounts operating for long periods of time while making large-dollar purchases. The scammers make minimal payments until the account is maxed out. Since the statement comes to a phony address established by them, the credit card company has to make a concerted effort to locate you because you no longer are making payments on this “zombie” account. When the company finally calls you, you are in shock! You had no knowledge of this account.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Office recommends consumers obtain a free credit report every four months by staggering requests for a free annual credit report from the three major credit reporting agencies. This will identify any new accounts you might be unaware of and prevent identity thieves from causing catastrophic damage to your credit score and reputation.

• EQUIFAX: P.O. Box 740241, Atlanta, GA. 30371, 1-888-766-0008.
• EXPERIAN: 701 Experian Pkwy. Allen, TX. 75013 1-888 EXPERIAN (397-3742)
• TRANSUNION: Fraud Victim Assistance Div., P.O. Box 679, Fullerton, CA. 92834-6790. 1-800-680-7289.

A yearly report including credit reports from all three agencies is also obtainable at no cost by calling 1-877-322-8228 or visiting www.annualcreditreport.com.

Charter Communications is taking a hard line against extending promotional pricing for Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks customers and Wall Street predicts a major exodus of customers as a result.

UBS analyst John Hodulik predicts Charter’s new ‘Just Say No to Discounts’-attitude will result in customers saying ‘Cancel’ and he estimates a massive loss of at least 75,000 Time Warner Cable television customers in the third quarter as a result, with many more to follow.

Charter Communications’ executives have ordered a hard line against giving existing customers discounts and perpetually renewing promotional pricing, a practice Time Warner Cable has continued since the days of the Great Recession to keep customers happy.

Time Warner Cable and to a lesser extent Bright House have learned antagonized, price-sensitive customers were increasingly serious about cutting cable’s TV cord for good when the cost becomes too high to justify. Time Warner Cable dealt with this problem by giving complaining customers better deals, often repeatedly. That mitigated the problem of customer loss, allowed the company to retain and grow cable television customers and even helped minimize the practice of promotion shopping common in competitive service areas.

For years, Time Warner and Bright House customers learned they could enroll in a year-long promotion with the cable operator and then switch to a year-long new customer promotion from AT&T U-verse or Verizon FiOS and then jump back to the cable company with a new promotion. In many cases, they even got a gift card worth up to $300 for their trouble. Charter Communications thinks their new “pro-consumer policies” of not charging rapacious equipment fees and sticking to “simplified” prices will delight customers enough to keep their loyalty. Good luck.

Licensed to print money

Wall Street doesn’t believe Charter’s reputation or their ‘New Deal’ for TWC and BH customers will be perceived as making things better, especially for cable television and its cost. As customers roll off promotions at Time Warner Cable, the bill shock of watching rates rise up to $65 a month will speak for itself. The higher the price hike, the more likely it will provoke a family discussion about dropping cable television service for good.

In Los Angeles and Texas, where Charter premiered its new “simplified pricing” for Time Warner Cable customers, the response has been underwhelming, with many customers deriding it as “simply a price hike.”

David Lazarus, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, characterized the transition from TWC to Charter this way: “Meet the new cable company. Same as the old cable company.”

Culver City resident Jack Cohen provides good evidence of what happens when customers get their first bill from Charter, and it is higher than expected. Cohen received his first bill for $162, $22 more than his last Time Warner Cable bill of $140 a month, because his promotion with TWC expired. As a result, he canceled cable television after Charter wouldn’t budge on pricing. Cohen said “cancel” and never looked back. He now pays the new cable company $40 less than he gave Time Warner Cable, because he now only subscribes to broadband and phone service. Charter’s ‘simplified pricing’ cost the cable company more than the $22 extra they were originally seeking.

Lazarus learned when his own TWC promotional package expires in December, Charter had a great Christmas present waiting… for themselves. Lazarus’ $65 promotion will rise to $120 a month — almost double what he used to pay. But Charter also offered Lazarus a better deal he can refuse, a new Charter-Spectrum package of the same services for the low, low price of $85 a month — still a 30% rate hike.

In Texas, customers coming off promotions are learning first hand how Charter intends to motivate customers to abandon the Time Warner Cable packages Charter promised they could keep — by making them as unaffordable as possible and offering slightly less expensive Charter/Spectrum packages as an alternative.

“But it’s still $45 more than what I was paying Time Warner Cable for the same damn thing,” complained Ty Rogers to a Charter retention specialist, after his Time Warner Cable shot up once Charter took over. He is waiting for Google Fiber to arrive and then plans to cancel everything with Charter.

Charter’s billing practices also are dubbed the weirdest in the cable industry by The Consumerist, because Charter loves to hide taxes, surcharges, and fees by rolling them into other charges on the bill and cannot be accurately accounted for:

Charter breaks out federal, state, or local taxes and fees for some services (TV) but not for others (voice). Also, depending where you live and when you signed up for services, the taxes, fees, and surcharges that do appear may be listed under different sections of the bill or not at all.

While their procedure does result in many fewer line items for consumers, it does produce more confusing bills overall, and make it harder to compare against other providers in a truly apples-to-apples kind of way.

‘No, no, no,’ counters Charter/Spectrum to FierceCable.

“Our internet packages are competitively priced, but we offer faster starting speeds and don’t charge an additional modem lease fee on top of the cost of service (that is an additional $10 at legacy TWC),” Charter spokesman Justin Venech said. “That pricing is better and more attractive to customers. Our video packages are simpler and more robust. For example, our Spectrum Silver package includes over 175 channels plus premium channels HBO, Showtime and Cinemax while a comparable TWC package would have charged extra for premiums.  We don’t add on additional fees and taxes to our voice product that our competitors do, and our equipment pricing for video set-top boxes are much lower with Spectrum than our competitors or legacy TWC or BHN.  Our new Spectrum pricing is $4.99 for a receiver vs over $11 at legacy TWC.”

“That assumes, like every cable company always does, that we want HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax, don’t already own our own cable modem, and are not dancing in the streets over an even bigger television package filled with crap we don’t want,” said Rogers. “Charter also takes away Time Warner’s excellent long distance phone service, which let me call almost all of Europe without any toll charges or an extra cost calling package. I paid Time Warner $10 a month and could talk to someone in France all night long if I wanted. With Charter, it’s more for less.”

Rogers’ promotion included his DVR in the promotion, so comparing Charter’s $4.99 vs. TWC’s $11 for a DVR made no difference to him either.

“You can argue all day about the ‘value’ you are offering, but you can’t argue your way out of a bill that is $45 higher than last month,” Rogers complained.

Overall, the latest spate of cable mergers and AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV has been bad news for consumers, who face fewer competitive prospects and a new, harder line on promotional pricing. AT&T customers are discovering AT&T is more motivated to get U-verse TV customers to switch to DirecTV and less interested in providing discounts. The cable competition knows that, making fighting for a better deal much tougher if Charter’s only competitor in an area is AT&T. Cable operators also understand there is a built-in reluctance to switch to satellite by a significant percentage of their customers.

Charter’s pre-existing customers not a part of the TWC/BH merger are not too happy with Charter’s Spectrum offers either. At least 152,000 video customers said goodbye for good to the cable operator’s television packages.

Hodulik predicts there are more where that came from as the rest of the country gradually discovers what Charter has in store for them.

Frustration at Frontier Communications doesn’t stop with customers. Employees are also speaking out about the company’s inability to manage their growing acquisitions and offer good service to customers. Others are confused about major company priorities and initiatives that suddenly get dropped, and customer service representatives feel like they are cheating customers selling them products and services that are better in name only.

Three employees this month provided unsolicited letters asking Stop the Cap! to publicize the problems at Frontier because their managers are not listening and they want corporate management to step in and make necessary changes.

“Sally” (we have chosen pseudonyms to protect the authors’ identities) is a customer service representative at a major Frontier call center in Florida. She is saddened by the company’s “Wells Fargo” culture — pushing customers to buy products and services they don’t need just to make their sales numbers.

“Frontier has been pushing us hard to sell customers on our Frontier Secure suite of products, which adds anything from $5 to $25 to your bill and is supposed to protect you from identity theft, damaged devices, viruses, and provide technical support for your electronics,” Sally tells Stop the Cap! “Unfortunately, it sounds much better than it actually is because there are so many exclusions and restrictions. I’ve heard complaints from customers who bought into the program thinking it would protect their home computer, but then after a lightning strike did its damage, it turns out Frontier doesn’t cover “home-made” computers which means anything other than a computer you buy in a store and never upgrade.”

Sally recounts stories about her managers pushing Frontier Secure at every opportunity, because the profits that come from providing services many customers will never use are astounding.

Frontier has a plain jane blog.

“They even push us to sell virus protection on tablets and smartphones like the iPhone, which is generally ridiculous,” Sally wrote. “What is horrifying to me is that the people most likely to say yes to our sales pitches are our elderly customers who have simple landlines and we’re not even sure they have a computer to protect. But they like the identity protection, which is supposed to monitor your credit and cancel your credit cards if your identity is stolen. What we don’t tell you is you can do most of that yourself for free and if you call a bank to report identify theft, they can notify every bank to either put a hold on your credit or reissue new cards. It costs nothing.”

Sally says Frontier’s “Premium Technical Support” often relies on employees Googling for instruction manuals and then reading them back to customers. That service starts at $12.99 a month.

“Instead of selling people better internet access or more reliable phone service, we’ve gone into gimmicks and it’s embarrassing,” reports Sally.

“Jim” is a former Verizon senior technician who is now working for Frontier Communications in Texas. He says he spends several hours a day navigating confusion between Verizon’s long-standing processes for managing network issues and his new supervisors who are dealing with Frontier’s completely different corporate culture.

“If you ever wondered why it takes so long to get something done with Frontier, I can tell you — it’s the bureaucracy and a culture clash between the two companies,” writes Jim. “Working for Verizon’s wireline division was already stressful over the years because they were not investing very much in wired services and we’d learn to manage that by hoarding things and trying to keep issues as local as possible, but Frontier is a giant headache. When a customer needs something from us, often we cannot give the customer a good estimate of when he or she will get what they need because we don’t know ourselves. But we are told to ‘be optimistic’ or ‘be vague’ which is why there are a lot of broken deadlines or disappointments. They never tell us to lie, but we cannot level with customers either because many will bolt to Time Warner Cable or Charter if we told them the God honest truth. We have business and residential customers promised certain broadband performance by sales that we cannot give them because they are not FiOS-enabled. If you were promised 75Mbps and got 6Mbps, you’d start shopping around, too.”

Jim writes the cutover between Verizon and Frontier would have gone much smoother if the company culture of “not in my job description” was not so pervasive.

Who cares if the fine print is in English.

“Frontier was given old data from Verizon because we haven’t spent serious money on certifying the accuracy of our databases in years and nobody bothered to verify it before acting on it, and that is why a lot of customers lost their service,” writes Jim. “Verizon is at fault here too because when you work at a giant company like this you learn the company culture is to know your job responsibilities and don’t exceed them. Frontier people seem to be more flexible to a point, but they are also real good at avoiding getting caught holding the bag when something goes wrong, so important tasks or ongoing problems can be neglected because nobody wants to get the blame or feel like they are exposed when management shows up wondering why things aren’t working right.”

“It can be a career and promotion death sentence to be someone willing to stick their neck out and solve problems if your manager or their manager doesn’t like what you’ve done, actually helped create the problem you are trying to solve, or if you are perceived as ‘too negative.'”

Paul, a Frontier Communications employee in the mid-Atlantic region, echoes Jim’s concerns that managers don’t really appreciate hearing criticism. Paul is one of the many workers tasked with keeping Frontier’s website and e-commerce functions up and running. A former Verizon worker, Paul has been shocked by the ineptness of management that has resulted in some serious embarrassments at Frontier.

Frontier’s website is unique among significantly sized telecom companies because one cannot actually place an online order for service or even provide accurate speed and pricing information because the company gave up on trying to make sure those features were reliable. Paul reports managers were warned about the functionality problems but refused to listen.

“[They tell] employees to take ownership of issues, yet when we try to do that very thing we are overruled and our opinions are discounted at every turn,” writes Paul. “Prior to the very first rollout of [Frontier’s redesigned] website I informed [management] that the site had severe performance issues, but was told […] I needed to keep my opinions to myself and the vice president decided to launch the site anyway.”

As a result, Frontier’s website crashed and remained offline and/or disabled for a week, reports Paul.

Another satisfied customer in Texas?

Out of the blue “priorities” also suddenly arise that require workers to scramble, with less than excellent results. One day, managers told the software team there was an urgent need to launch Spanish language functionality for the website. But because of the rush, employees not well-versed in the language produced a Spanish-language website that has been derided by customers for its frequent use of “Spanglish” and lack of professionalism.

“They pushed Spanish language very hard and told us that it HAD to be in production before the April 1st cutover with Verizon because of the high frequency of Verizon customers that were used to this feature,” writes Paul. “Once we put it out there, every time there is an issue with Spanish on our site they tell us that it’s only one percent of traffic so they aren’t all the that concerned with it. Then when there is an issue with it they ask us why we didn’t test it. But they refused to give us the needed time to test it because they just wanted to push it out the door and move on to the next project.”

Paul also echoes what Sally in Florida is concerned about — a lack of integrity in Frontier’s marketing department.

“I have never worked for a more unethical company and I used to work for Verizon so that is saying something,” writes Paul. “[Frontier charges] customers for ‘Digital Phone Service,’ but it’s really just copper facilities. They call it “Digital” because it is working out of a digital switch. They change verbiage to make something sound better than what it really is. They say we have a 100% U.S.-based company but then hire IT folks overseas to do some of the work. They spend more money on sponsoring football teams than they do upgrading equipment and infrastructure.”

Charter Communications is wasting no time looking for increased shareholder value by slashing jobs in states where regulators placed few, if any conditions on the acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

The Charlotte Agenda reports North Carolina-based Time Warner Cable employees are just starting to feel the pain of the multi-billion corporate cable merger, with the elimination of 258 jobs in Time Warner Cable’s accounting department in Charlotte. Nearly 20% of the workforce, including 70 senior accountants, 45 staff accountants, 44 accounting supervisors or managers, and an even larger number of finance analysts and accounts payable specialists will be collecting unemployment starting Nov. 1 and extending through the second quarter of 2017.

Company officials claim affected employees can seek employment with Charter Communications at other office locations around the country.

North Carolina regulators effectively rubber-stamped the acquisition of Time Warner Cable in granting its approval. The only condition Charter Communications has to meet is notifying North Carolina’s Department of State Commerce at least 30 days before those unlucky employees are out of a job.

Time Warner’s Enhanced DVR works fine, but those avoiding TWC equipment run into DRM problems.

If you’re accustomed to using Time Warner Cable’s DVR box, you probably don’t realize how heavy-handed Time Warner Cable can be with copy protection, but as set-top box alternatives proliferate, more customers are encountering the frustration of digital rights restrictions.

For several years, customers using alternatives to Time Warner’s set-top boxes or who wanted to store their DVR recordings on another hard drive quickly discovered the cable operator heavily enforces copy protection mechanisms designed to thwart digital archival copies of programs recorded from cable television.

Copy Control Information (CCI) is an invisible flag sent in digital television signals that is designed to give control to copyright owners over how their shows can be duplicated. Since at least 2007, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks customers have been frustrated if they use their own DVR or devices like TiVo. When customers attempt to copy their recorded shows to other devices or playback units in their home, the CCI flag often stops the copy cold.

ZatzNotFunny has covered this issue for years, noting Time Warner Cable, Bright House, and Cox have been particularly unfriendly to third-party set-top boxes like TiVo.

Among cable operators, the most common flags are Copy Freely and Copy Once. Many cable operators set their basic cable network CCI flags to “copy freely,” while premium pay movie channels like HBO are set to “copy once” — primarily to allow time-shifting devices like a DVR to record the show. Once your DVR has a copy of a show with a restricted flag, it cannot be copied again.

Digital Rights Management policies are part of the nation’s struggle between Hollywood-inspired copy protection and the public’s right to make and store recordings of programming for their own personal use. Some telecom companies like Verizon and Comcast have come down more in favor of consumers, while Time Warner Cable and Bright House (which have traditionally shared engineering practices and programming contracts for at least a decade) are far more responsive to Hollywood. The result for subscribers with $200 cable bills is endless frustration, especially if they choose not to use the pricey set-top boxes and DVRs supplied by the TWC or Bright House.

CableCARD and TiVo users, as well as those relying on Extenders for Windows Media Center like the Xbox 360 are often stymied by CCI flags, especially when a consumer tries to watch a show in one room and finish it in another using Multi-Room Viewing features.

ZatzNotFunny rates TWC, Bright House and Cox as unfriendly to alternative set-top boxes like TiVo. (Image: ZatzNotFunny)

Wikipedia supplies insight into the available CCI options cable operators can choose to use for cable television channels:

• 0x00 – Copy freely – Content is not copy protected.
• 0x01 – Copy No More – A copy of the content has already occurred and no more copies are permitted.†
• 0x02 – Copy Once – One recording can be made, but it cannot be copied to another device.†
• 0x03 – Copy Never – the content can be recorded and viewed for 90 minutes after transmission, and is not transferable.†
• 0x04 – Content is Copy Once for digital output, but would have Macrovision 7 Day Unlimited restriction applied on the analog outputs. This affects content viewed either on an HDTV with component cabling or on a standard definition TV. It also affects content saved to VCR or DVD when the recorder is connected to an analog output on the DVR.†
• 0x07 – Content is Copy Never for digital content (deleted after 90 minutes) and Macrovision 7 day/24 hour for content recorded from analog channels. Content cannot be transferred via TiVoToGo transfers or MRV, and cannot be saved to VCR or DVD.†

† – Any live stream with a CCI flag set higher than 0x00 is to be encrypted or protected in a way that only trusted platforms that will obey the flag (Such as Microsoft’s PlayReady system used in Windows Media center) can access it.

A Time Warner Cable customer known as MachineShedFred noticed this problem first hand and wrote about it in a complaint to Time Warner Cable back in March, and Stop the Cap! reader Chris N. pointed us to this ongoing issue:

The only software that allows me to use the CableCARD hardware that you officially support and distribute is Windows Media Center, which Microsoft is no longer developing, and is no longer distributing.  All other DVR software available for every platform will not work, as they cannot decrypt the video stream due to the abuse of the CCI flag.

No other cable company in the US abuses the CCI flag in this manner, and every other cable subscriber in the US that isn’t on Time Warner has a wide choice of solutions for enjoying their service better than we can as your subscribers.  Why are you restricting the choices of your subscribers for no reason?  It’s clearly not contractual from the media networks, as they would have pushed for the same stipulations with at least one of your competitors.  Yet, anyone outside of TWC’s monopoly can use any other software they want.

When even Comcast allows their subscribers more subscriber-friendly choices, you know you’re doing it wrong.  Please revisit this ridiculous policy and cease the overuse of the CopyOnce CCI flag that unduly burdens your subscribers by forcing them to replace perfectly good hardware, or replace YOU.

Some believed this problem could eventually resolve itself with Charter Communications’ buyout of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Would Charter bring their own policies to affected TWC/BH customers, or will Charter customers soon have to contend with the CCI CopyOnce flag loved by Time Warner Cable as well.

An official complaint to the FCC brought a cryptic non-answer answer from William Wesselman, Time Warner Cable’s regulatory compliance counsel. Wesselman implied the liberal use of the CCI  CopyOnce flag was the result of restrictions in contracts with major programmers, which seems unlikely because other cable operators — larger and smaller — have successfully navigated around this issue. Wesselman’s answer implies as Time Warner Cable and Bright House are brought into the Charter hegemony, “the policies of the two companies will ultimately become the same.”

Of course, he never defines which policy Charter, TWC and BH customers across the country will eventually get by sometime in 2017.

Mr. Wesselman’s full response:

At this time, TWC and Charter continue to integrate their two systems into one. Both TWC and Charter, like other distributors of multichannel video programming, negotiate the distribution rights for the content it carries independently with individual rights holders. These bilateral commercial negotiations take into consideration many different factors, include the content protection and digital rights management requirements of the rights holder; applicable law, license and regulations; and the interests of subscribers. Each of these commercial negotiations, and the terms of the agreements that result, are unique to the specific distributor and programmer involved. As the integration of the two companies continues, Mr. X will notice that the policies of the two companies will ultimately become the same based on our agreements.