A Spectrum customer faces $75 in fees for leaving an old credit card on his Spectrum account.

Reddit reader “u/round-disk” reported that credit card ‘lost’ in April. That is where the trouble started.

“At some point between when my old number stopped working and my new card arrived, Spectrum tried to do an Auto Pay charge. It failed,” the reader reports. “I received a voicemail about it, and a few days later I got my new card and updated the payment info. All is well, or so I thought.”

When Spectrum’s May bill arrived, the cable company charged the reader $59.99 for the next month of service, and just under $75 in fees for last month’s payment mishap. A $49.99 fee for “Credit Card Payment Rejection or Denial” and a $25 charge for a “Return Item Fee” turned a $60 cable bill into $134.98.

Normally, companies are not penalized for declined credit card transactions, but Spectrum is ready to charge you plenty for their inconvenience.

“I have paid my bill on time and in full every single month for over four years. This is what I get?” the reader asks. “Spectrum is literally any without exaggeration the only company I have ever personally dealt with who has ever presented a fee of any kind on a failed credit card charge.”

Attempts to reach customer service meant at least 40-minute hold times, so the matter remains unresolved, at least for now.

Both the NY City Public Advocate and the state’s Attorney General’s office are investigating.

Updated 5/14 (2:45pm EDT): Updated to reflect investigations by authorities in New York.

Brindisi, as he appeared in an ad slamming Charter Spectrum in the summer of 2018.

Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.) today introduced a bill in Congress to force cable operators fined by a state telecommunications regulator to publicly reveal the actual performance of their internet services, subscriber counts, and a complete price listing including all fees and surcharges.

The Transparency for Cable Consumers Act comes in response to New York’s experiences with Charter Communications, which was fined for failing to meet its commitments under a 2016 merger agreement allowing Charter to acquire Time Warner Cable. Brindisi made the cable company’s performance a core issue in his 2018 campaign, brazenly buying commercial time on Spectrum cable systems for 30-second ads slamming the cable company.

“I’ve heard from thousands of Upstate New Yorkers who are sick and tired of dealing with frequent rate hikes, poor customer service, and failed promises,” said Brindisi. “This is more than just an inconvenience. For families on fixed incomes, an unexpected rate hike could wreck their budget. And for people in rural communities, crawling internet speeds can take away their connection to jobs, health care, information, and important online services. When a company enters into an agreement, it should be required to hold up its part of the bargain.  We can’t keep giving these companies a free pass. If we don’t hold them accountable, nothing will change.”

Brindisi has bristled over the New York State Public Service Commission’s decision to repeatedly extend the deadline given to Charter to file an orderly exit plan winding down its cable operations in the state. The most recent extension was approved on Wednesday, now giving Charter Communications until April 5, 2019 to appeal the Commission’s decision and until May 9, 2019 to file its six-month exit plan.

Brindisi complains Spectrum is being allowed to linger even as consumers continue to contact his office with complaints about frequent rate hikes, slow internet speeds, and poor customer service. His December 2018 letter to the PSC asking the Commission to stop giving Charter additional time extensions has gone unanswered, according to Brindisi.

Brindisi’s bill attempts to walk a fine line around the federal government’s wholesale deregulation of the cable industry. Various deregulation measures stripped federal, state, and local officials of most of their powers to oversee the internet and Voice over IP telephone service. Cable television remains subject to some local oversight and regulation, but not in all areas. Many states also have so-called “state franchise” laws in place, which gives blanket authority for cable operators to offer cable television in the state without seeking a separate agreement with each community.

The Transparency for Cable Consumers Act, would require a cable or internet company to disclose information about its operations if it is fined by a state regulator:

• The number of cable and broadband internet customers in each county;
• The average cable bill and broadband internet bill amounts in each county;
• A full accounting of all fees charged customers in each county; and
• The average broadband internet speeds delivered in each county.

Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.) appeared on the House floor this afternoon to introduce the Transparency for Cable Consumers Act. (1:18)

Despite the growing impact of cord-cutting, Comcast is following companies like Charter Spectrum by cutting back customer retention discounts that savvy subscribers negotiate to keep their cable bill reasonable. Despite losing more than 344,000 cable television customers in 2018, almost twice as many as it lost in 2017, Comcast has lost interest in cutting prices to keep customers.

Traditionally, customers using the word “cancel” with a customer service representative would quickly be offered deeply discounted service if they agreed to stay. Customers willing to stand their ground in tough negotiations with the cable company could win promotional pricing indefinitely, often saving several hundred dollars a year without losing channels or services. In 2016, after Charter Communications completed its merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, Charter CEO Thomas Rutledge vowed to impose “pricing discipline” on Time Warner Cable’s “Turkish bazaar of promotional deals” after Charter took control of the company.

Rutledge called out the ‘madness’ of offering customers fire sale prices on internet and television service at a MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit in May 2017.

“Time Warner wanted to make a video number, and there were data packages that cost less if you took video than if you didn’t,” Rutledge said. “And a lot of those were churning out. And a lot of them were basic-only. So on the margin, at the end – in the last year, I think they were selling 40% of their connects as basic-only. [TWC had] 90,000 different promotional offers, many of them deeply discounted and piled on top of each other.”

Rutledge said Time Warner Cable represented the worst of an industry practice that gave unprecedented power to customers to get what they wanted, at least for awhile.

“You’d call in, bargain … And so there’s a lot of that out there. And they’re also exploding packages. Meaning, at the end of the term, they go back to full price,” Rutledge complained.

Rutledge called an end to negotiations by offering customers the opportunity of keeping their current package, but gradually raising it to a price that was often higher than Spectrum’s own non-negotiable packages and pricing. Regardless of what package a customer chose, it was a win for Charter because regular pricing ensured the company was making money either way.

Comcast has apparently been won over by Rutledge’s message to the industry and is now gradually moving in a similar direction.

Strauss

Matt Strauss, executive vice president of XFINITY Services, told Business Insider Comcast will now attempt to keep and win back its cord-cutting customers not by discounting prices, but by creating much smaller cable TV packages with fewer channels — a practice known as slimming down packages into “skinny bundles.” Comcast also plans to stop pushing customers into its “best value” triple-play packages of television, phone, and internet services, understanding many customers have no interest in some of those services.

“Our strategy is very focused on segmentation and getting more sophisticated in putting together the right video offering for the right customer at the right time in their life,” Strauss said, not by offering deep discounts on bloated packages (including a landline or hundreds of unwanted TV channels) that would reduce profitability.

Charter is already offering an ultra-slim, a-la-carte local TV package combining Music Choice with the customer’s pick of 10 national cable channels for $21.99 a month. The package is targeted to those with internet-only service and is accessed through a Roku set-top box. DVR service is available, if a customer was willing to pay a steep DVR service and box rental fee.

Comcast’s new strategy will market internet packages that include the added-cost option of a super-slim TV package of local channels and a handful of cable networks.

Strauss disagrees with some industry pundits who have suggested cable companies are planning to abandon selling cable television altogether in favor of internet-only service.

“We continue to be very bullish on video, but you’re just going to see us be more focused on how we go to market with video,” Strauss said.

Spectrum customers in western New York are reporting overdraft charges and missing funds from their checking accounts that trace back to double-charging by Charter Communications for cable service.

WIVB-TV Buffalo reports Olean resident Michelle La Voie was stunned when an unauthorized debit showed up in her credit union checking account, which appeared to be a double-bill from Spectrum.

The second charge, a duplicate of the $161 payment she made manually, appeared as a “pending charge” on her electronic statement — a charge she did not authorize and a hold on her checking account funds her credit union could not release unless Charter canceled the transaction.

When La Voie called Spectrum’s billing department, she was told it was a computer glitch.

“They informed me that it was a known issue, that payments that had been made on the 19th and the 20th [of August] there was a computer glitch, and there were people being double-charged,” La Voie told WIVB News.

The “glitch” is in fact an “authorization hold” — one that we are experiencing with our August Spectrum bill payment here at Stop the Cap! 

If a customer pays using a debit or credit card, a vendor like Spectrum can place a temporary “hold” on funds. Often, this hold is the full amount of the transaction, which will temporarily make those funds unavailable for withdrawal until either the company and your bank or credit card “settles” the transaction and transfers the funds, or the hold expires, usually after 5-8 days.

In this case, Spectrum or its credit card processor failed to clear the hold after the transaction was settled, meaning affected customers have twice the amount of their cable bill unavailable in their account until the pending charge expires in about a week.

Customers can check to see if this glitch is affecting their account by logging on and looking for something like this:

Pending Charges

Aug 19 2018  TWC * TIME WARNER CABLE   $151.40

Activity Since Last Statement

Aug 28 2018  TWC * TIME WARNER CABLE  $151.40

The presence of both the “pending charge” and the “settled” charge found under current account activity is unusual, because the pending charge should have been canceled at the same time funds were transferred to pay Charter Communications (d/b/a Time Warner Cable). Instead, $151.40 was withdrawn and sent to Charter while an additional $151.40 is remains unavailable for withdrawal because of the authorization hold not being removed. By September 1st, that pending charge will likely expire. But until then, Spectrum has effectively kept $151.40 of your money hostage.

This can become a problem for customers who keep a low balance in their checking account and expect those funds to be immediately available to pay bills or make a cash withdrawal. Because of the extended hold, customers could unintentionally overdraw their checking account, leading to overdraft fees or an automatic draw from a line of credit, if one is attached to your checking account. La Voie had enough money in her account to avoid an overdraft, but she was concerned about those who don’t.

“I asked are you planning to tell customers this so that they can make sure that they are not overdrawn, or having payments declined?  They said no, we don’t have any plans to notify customers,” La Voie said.

In fact, one of her co-workers did incur overdraft fees because of this problem. Her credit union removed the overdraft fees as a courtesy, but not all banks are likely to be that understanding.

Customers can protect themselves by considering using autopay with a credit card, where authorization holds only affect your available credit line, not money in your checking account. For most credit card transactions, the temporary hold has no material impact, and few even notice the hold. But authorization holds can temporarily put a credit card into an overlimit condition if a customer keeps their card nearly “maxed out,” and exceeding your credit limit will damage your credit score and risk your good standing with the credit card issuer.

WIVB in Buffalo reports some customers in western New York are being “double-billed” for Spectrum cable service. (2:06)

Some Spectrum customers are getting nasty surprises in their latest cable bills.

For some customers, it has been one year or more since Spectrum introduced new plans and pricing for former Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable customers and one year since the company implemented all-digital cable television upgrades that require customers to place equipment on every television wired for cable in the home.

Many customers received “free” equipment as part of the digital upgrades, but may have forgotten that promotion only lasted one year. That is also the length of Spectrum’s various ‘new customer’ and ‘retention’ promotions. When the year is up, your bill goes up — sometimes dramatically.

In Cleveland, Ohio some customers are finding bills increasing $18-30 a month or more, sometimes increasing more than once as rate promotions and free set-top equipment deals end at different times in the year.

It is not unusual to find customers paying $180-225 or more a month for Spectrum’s “triple play” package of television, phone, and internet service, after promotions end. A significant percentage of customers still holding legacy Time Warner Cable and Bright House plans are finding those packages increasing in price as well. In comparison, new customers with a triple play package generally pay between $100-120 a month, depending on equipment.

Some of the rate changes Spectrum imposed over the last 12 months include:

• Equipment rate increases (usually around $1.00 a month per box)
• New “Secure Connection Fee”: $1.00/mo per box – Spectrum claims this fee covers “those measures Spectrum employs to manage and secure the connection between Spectrum’s system and the Spectrum receiver and other devices Subscriber uses to access Spectrum’s services.”
• Broadcast TV Surcharge rate increases
• Internet service rate increases

Although Spectrum has reportedly become more amenable to offering retention deals to customers threatening to leave, the best deals are still for new customers. Some have dropped Spectrum service and signed up again under the name of another household member to secure a better deal. Others will have to wait 30 days after ending service before one is qualified for a new customer deal once again.

WKYC in Cleveland reports some Spectrum customers are upset about sudden bill changes. (2:34)