Downdetector shows a major service outage for Spectrum customers in Central Florida.

A widespread service outage affecting Spectrum customers in central Florida that began Sunday caused a crowd of 100-150 customers to turn out at a Spectrum office on Semoran Boulevard in Orlando this morning to switch cable boxes or cancel service.

Customers lost television service Sunday evening and the outage continues in many areas, leaving thousands without service for more than 14 hours. Orange County Public Schools spent this morning without internet service, also provided by Spectrum. The school district e-mailed parents:

“OCPS families, we want to make you aware that throughout our community the internet and networks are down throughout due to issues with Spectrum. This outage is impacting many of our schools. At this time, Spectrum cannot provide a timeframe for restoration of service. We want to make you aware that contacting schools may be limited due to the outages. We also want to assure you our digital classrooms are always prepared to adjust to such circumstances as they can use blended methods for learning so instruction can continue regardless of problems with the internet. Thank you for your support. We will update you as we get new information.”

Many customers are angry about what they perceive as a deterioration in service after Charter Communications acquired Bright House Networks.

“It seems like since Spectrum has taken over from Bright House, every time the wind blows, the cable and the boxes go out and you have to come down here and stand in a line to change a box. It’s a waste,” Spectrum customer George Roberts told WFTV.

Communities affected include: Orlando and surrounding suburbs, Cape Canaveral, Sanford, Daytona Beach, Sky Lake, Palm Coast, and beyond.

“The storms last night caused damage to operations impacting customers in the Central Florida region,” said Spectrum spokesperson Joe Durkin. “I won’t speculate on completion but as Spectrum engineers are working to restore full video services to our customers and as time goes on – some areas are coming back. We confirm there’s no internet outage at all that could still be affecting Orange County Public Schools.”

Spectrum, like most cable operators, will not issue a service outage credit unless customers specifically request one. The best way to do that is to login to Spectrum’s website and use online chat or call your local cable office and ask for a service outage credit.

WFTV in Orlando reports angry crowds gathered at a Orlando Spectrum cable store to switch boxes or cancel service because of a service outage impacting Central Florida. (2:08)

No TV for you until you sign here.

Charter Communications is asking owners of apartment complexes, nursing homes, independent living/assisted care residences, and hotel and motel owners to sign new agreements allowing Spectrum to lock owners into a 10-year contract that includes a provision allowing retroactive rate increases and a requirement to turn over personal information on every resident to the cable company.

A number of apartment complexes bundle “free cable TV” into the lease as a selling point for renters. Others pay a discounted rate that is part of a resident’s monthly rent payment or service fee. These agreements are part of the murky world of “bulk service contracts” for cable service, and disputes between a property owner and Spectrum can cause the loss of cable service for every resident without warning.

Most of the disputes involve apartment complexes, assisted-living facilities, and hotels/motels formerly served by Time Warner Cable. Most are still under relatively short-term contracts with Time Warner Cable, which was acquired in 2016 by Charter Communications. Good Shepherd Fairview Nursing Home in Binghamton, N.Y. and Good Shepherd Communities, a senior living center in Endwell, N.Y., are good examples.

Mike Keenan has been involved in long-term senior care for 30 years, and over that time he has negotiated hundreds of contracts. But as WICZ in Binghamton reports, nothing prepared him for dealing with Spectrum and Charter Communications.

Good Shepherd Village is a senior living center in Endwell, N.Y.

Charter is using its ongoing digital conversion program as a tool to force “bulk contract” holders to sign new agreements with Charter Communications, often replacing still-valid contracts with Time Warner Cable. Many are not happy about the new terms Charter is offering, particularly one that locks them in with Spectrum service for the next decade and another that allows the cable company to raise rates retroactively.

Those unwilling to sign new contracts have been threatened with service being shut off, usually as digital conversion and TV signal encryption reaches their area, which requires new equipment to keep watching. Those complex owners that still refuse to sign are required to share each tenant’s personal details and address with the cable company.

“Spectrum had taken the position that even though we had a contract in force until December 2018 that we needed to sign a new contract immediately,” said Keenan, president and CEO of Good Shepherd Communities. “If not, they threatened that we would lose service at our Good Shepherd Fairview in Binghamton location and our Good Shepherd Villages at our Endwell location.”

Charter was true to its word. Efforts to negotiate obtaining digital adapters or set-top boxes under the old Time Warner Cable contract failed and with no warning, all 161 nursing home residents at Good Shepherd Fairview lost their cable television on Feb. 27. Two weeks later, 264 residents at Good Shepherd Village — the senior living center — also lost their television and internet service.

The loss was devastating to residents, especially at the nursing home.

“Many of the residents are frail, some of them may be bedridden and their TV means everything to them,” Keenan said.

Keenan’s contract with Time Warner Cable was still valid, and its terms made it clear as long as Good Shepherd kept their payments current, they were owed service that Charter ultimately took away from hundreds of residents.

Apartment complex owners around the country are reviewing new contracts from Charter Communications and many are dropping “free cable TV” after decades of offering the service as an amenity included in the rent. Many who are ending their contracts believe a growing number of tenants neither need or want traditional cable service.

The deal-breaker for many is Charter’s insistence on offering a bulk discount only if the entire building signs up for service, which means owners will have to pay out-of-pocket for Spectrum service in vacant units or in apartments where the tenant has service with another provider.

WICZ in Binghamton, N.Y. reports Charter Communications used nursing home residents as pawns to force the hand of a nursing home manager to sign a new Spectrum contract, even though the current one with Time Warner Cable has not expired. (3:11)

Keenan

“Let’s say you’re paying for Spectrum” – the brand name for Charter’s service – “for 100 percent of the units,” attorney Tara Snow, a partner at Novitt, Sahr & Snow, told Habitat. “You may have 90 or 95 percent of the apartments signing up, but you always have some units that don’t.”

That leaves someone on the hook, either tenants or the property owner, to pay for cable service that nobody is watching. Under Time Warner Cable just a few years ago, the cable company would pay a co-op, condo association, or apartment owner an upfront cash bonus and ongoing “revenue-share fees” for getting a majority of residents — but not all — to sign up for service. It also allowed the company to market holdouts door to door.

No such luck with Charter, which wants to be paid for every unit no matter who is at home. For property owners staying loyal to Spectrum, some are absorbing the extra costs while others pass them on to tenants as part of their rent or monthly maintenance/service surcharges. A few are trying cost sharing arrangements that divide up the total bill equally among all tenants. But as younger renters move in and increasingly show no interest in cable television, the dwindling number who have cable are paying more and more to cover those that don’t.

“People are cord-cutting,” says Brian Scally, vice president of Garthchester Realty, a management firm. “Most people who still want cable want to select their own cable/internet/telephone provider.”

Of the 64 properties he manages, Scally told Habitat fewer than a dozen have signed up for a bulk rate, and those deals were signed years ago.

“I haven’t brought anybody new to bulk rate,” he says.

The other deal breaker for many is Spectrum’s 10-year contract, which locks owners in with a cable company a lot of tenants despise.

As a result, a growing number of apartment complexes and condos are terminating their bulk cable contracts as they expire, and have no intention of renewing under Charter’s draconian terms. Affected tenants are informed the “free” cable television they were receiving is ending and they should make individual arrangements with Spectrum to maintain service going forward.

Hotel and motel owners are also finding fault with Charter Communications, and some are taking their disputes to the Federal Communications Commission.

Yvonne Peach, who owns the Historic Coronado Motor Hotel in Yuma, Ariz., says dealing with Charter has been a nightmare since the merger.

After Charter converted commercial Time Warner Cable and Bright House customers to Spectrum plans and pricing, she lost service to all of her motel rooms for more than a week.

Historic Coronado Motor Hotel – Yuma, Ariz. (Image courtesy of owner)

“When they did the change over we didn’t have any cable TV in the hotel for 12 days,” Peach told KYMA-TV.

Spectrum advised her best solution would be to install leased set-top boxes in the hotel’s 126 rooms, a solution she claims caused even more problems. It seems Spectrum’s equipment doesn’t appreciate Yuma’s southwest Arizona heat, and the boxes regularly fail when air conditioning is switched off in unoccupied rooms.

“We’ve had over 100 of them replaced probably in the last I don’t how many months,” she said. “It’s a box that if the room isn’t rented every night it becomes deactivated.”

Those paying to stay in the motel are not happy to reach their rooms and find the television isn’t working either.

“We’ve lost thousands of dollars with people that would move out because of no TV in their room,” Peach said. “It comes and it will say dial an 800 number or something. But you know the guest. They are paying a certain amount for the room and they’re not going to call.”

KYMA-TV in Yuma, Ariz. reports Charter told this hotel owner her cable boxes were not working because they are not being kept air-conditioned. (2:29)

Spectrum ignores her complaints, she claims, transferring her from call center to call center in search of a solution. She finally took her complaint to the FCC, something she does not think should be required after paying the company $1,600 a month for cable television.

In response, Spectrum blamed the lack of air conditioning for its box failures, in addition to the “relocation of the digital adapters by hotel staff, which are dedicated to a particular room on the account.”

In other words, if you move equipment between hotel rooms, Spectrum claims that equipment will deauthorize. Spectrum effectively wants motel guests placed in rooms where their cable equipment is still functioning, preferably where air conditioning is left running.

“If you’ve been driving all day and you get in your pajamas and you’re ready for bed and you’re watching TV and the TV doesn’t work, do you want to move to another room without complaining? No, nobody does,” said Peach.

In upstate New York, heat isn’t a significant problem, but having a bulk account representative in Rochester, 2.5 hours away by car from Binghamton is. The representative did not understand Binghamton and Endwell are two different communities about seven miles apart.

“This whole thing could have been avoided,” Keenan said. He called the New York Public Service Commission to complain and within a day multiple Spectrum trucks arrived loaded with set-top boxes — one per residence, potentially finally resolving the dispute, but not the bad feelings that emerged as a result.

“Time Warner Cable was saying ‘we need our customers,’” Keenan said. “The experience I have had with Spectrum is Spectrum is saying ‘you need me.’”

WICZ-TV follows up the next day with this report explaining why it is important to stay wary of cable companies offering long contracts. (1:09)

(Photo courtesy of: Chattanooga Fire Dept.)

One month after country music legend Dolly Parton raised nearly $9 million dollars to support fire victims through her “Smoky Mountains Rise: A Benefit for the My People Fund” telethon, Gatlinburg, Tenn. homeowners report in contrast to that generosity, they are being harassed with huge cable bills and collections calls from Charter Communications.

Stephanie and Donald Isakson’s three-story vacation cabin at Chalet Village North is now a driveway leading to a still-standing chimney and a big pile of ashes and debris. Stephanie told Knoxville’s News-Sentinel she called “everyone that we could think of” to turn off now-useless services. She said firms such as DirecTV “couldn’t have been any nicer,” offering discounts that left DirecTV owing the Isaksons $1.09.

Charter/Spectrum was the lone exception.

“They sent us a bill for the next billing period after I called to cancel, and they say if we’re going to cancel, we owe the box or they’re going to charge us for the equipment,” Stephanie said. “We were told that if we dig through the rubble and found parts of the equipment, we could bring it in as proof. Otherwise, we couldn’t prove that the equipment was in the cabin at the time of the fire, and would be charged 100 percent for all Charter equipment.”

Charter, like many cable companies, usually demands reimbursement for lost/unreturned equipment, even after natural disasters like the wildland fire that hit the region Nov. 28. Companies tell customers to file a claim with their insurance carrier to assure reimbursement, and if a customer lacks coverage, they are usually personally responsible for the charges, which can easily exceed $300. Renters are usually the most exposed to unreturned equipment charges because many lack personal insurance coverage, mistakenly assuming the property owner’s insurance will cover a renter’s property damaged in a fire. Renters, like homeowners, must buy their own insurance policies to protect personal property. The good news is that renter’s insurance is usually affordable, often available for about $100 a year.

While Charter is preoccupied with its cable equipment, many affected homeowners remain in emotional distress and have larger priorities than picking through ashes looking for remnants of Charter’s cable modems and set-top boxes.

“There’s some people out there who don’t have anything left, and the last thing they need to worry about is Charter coming after them for cable boxes,” local resident Michael Luciano told the newspaper.

Luciano’s personal Christmas gift from Charter was a Dec. 25 cable bill for $626.89 — $207.30 in advance for TV and internet service from the first month of 2017, and $419.59 for his past-due balance, which he says includes $212.29 for the month of December, during which he had no service. Luciano is among several area residents whose homes survived the fire, but Charter’s infrastructure in the area did not. Large parts of the area, including Luciano’s home, remain without service to this day. To prevent fire from spreading, some homeowners contact fire barrier suppliers. In fact, you can visit the link to get more info about them.

When customers refused to pay for service they did not receive, Charter responded with “harassing” automated and live collection calls up to eight times a day for some customers.

Charter’s behavior in the aftermath of the fire has been criticized in the area’s media but the company downplayed the reports as isolated incidents and a company spokesperson said the cable operator sympathizes with people affected by the fire, some of them Charter employees.

Patti Michel, director of communications for Charter Communications South Region, told the Knoxville daily it is not Charter policy to bill for service that cannot be provided or to charge for lost or damaged equipment in natural disasters. She urged customers to call 1-888-GET-CHARTER to talk about their problems with Charter.

“Callers may not have specified that their houses burned down [to a Charter representative],” offered Michel.

A post-fire set top box still largely intact.

In Pigeon Forge, Beau MacLellan said that calling Charter about the fire didn’t make any difference, and the result was repeated automated calls requesting the return of the company’s cable equipment, now incinerated.

The company has also been criticized for showing little sympathy for affected residents that occupy their cabins and homes only part-time during the year.

Alecia Hasselbeck, who lives in New Orleans and rents out a cabin two streets down from Luciano’s home, was told by Charter she had to make a 640-mile trip to her cabin in Tennessee to pick up her cable router and set-top boxes and drop them off in person at a nearby Charter office, even through her cabin was undamaged and service was on the verge of being restored within the next few days.

As has been so often the case when these types of stories appear in the media, an embarrassed provider quickly tries to make amends to soften the impact of bad publicity. Charter was no exception. Last week the News-Sentinel reported many of the customers quoted in an earlier story began receiving “mysterious checks” from Charter.

“Maybe it’s a way to say, ‘Sorry for asking you to dig ashes out of your burned-down home,'” Isakson speculated after receiving a “refund” check last week for $116.49. Other customers are also getting unexplained checks.

The Knoxville newspaper reported Kristi Buccholz, whose cabin near the Isaksons’ also burned, said she was “set off” when she received a collections letter from Spectrum after the fire. She gave a Charter manager a piece of her mind.

“I said, ‘Have you heard about the wildfires?'” she said, “And (the manager) said, ‘Yes I have.’ I said, ‘You’re harassing me and other people here about the equipment. … I would love to give you the 52-inch TV and the house it was attached to, but I can’t. I’m fine, but there are people who are not fine, and you are adding to the stress.”

Buccholz’s outstanding bill was canceled and last week she received a check for $75 with no explanation.

“I don’t know what it was for,” Buccholz said. “I just deposited it in the bank.”

Could this be Comcast’s next target?

As Wall Street continues contemplating mom and dad at the FCC and Department of Justice calling off Comcast’s elopement with Time Warner Cable, some analysts believe Comcast will have to spend the money now burning a hole in its pocket on something.

“Given the strength of Comcast’s balance sheet and an insatiable appetite for acquisitions, we do not believe Comcast would be content with its existing portfolio (no different than after they failed in their 2004 attempt to buy Disney),” wrote Richard Greenfield from BTIG Research.

Greenfield has grown increasingly pessimistic about the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal since realizing regulators were not going to follow the usual procedure of rubber-stamping approval with mild, short-term conditions to appease politicians. As President Barack Obama highlights telecommunications public policy in his second term, the cable industry (and broadband in particular) has come under unprecedented scrutiny and visibility in the press.

This winter, the FCC redefined broadband speed to mean a connection offering at least 25Mbps. That virtually eliminates DSL as a meaningful competitor, and would hand a combined Comcast/Time Warner Cable over 55% of broadband homes in the United States. The FCC’s approval of Net Neutrality and regulating broadband as a public utility led the audience in attendance to give a standing ovation to Chairman Thomas Wheeler and the two Democratic commissioners voting in favor of the policy change. The public sentiment is clearly against industry deregulation and unfettered deal-making, particularly when it involves Comcast, one of the most-loathed corporations in America.

Greenfield

Greenfield notes momentum is on the side of consumer groups fighting for Net Neutrality, oversight, and an end to cable industry consolidation.

Assuming Comcast’s deal with Time Warner Cable fails, what can Comcast spend its money on without running into a regulator buzzsaw?

Comcast could easily continue a mergers and acquisitions strategy if it avoids attempting to dramatically increase its cable footprint. For instance, Comcast could still choose to sell some of its less important cable systems to Charter Communications — already part of the proposed Time Warner Cable transaction — and make up that subscriber loss by acquiring Cablevision, which provides service in the important suburban New York City market. Of course, the Dolan family is notorious for not selling to anyone, and a considerable number of extended family members are employed as executives in the company.

Cable operators have returned to a strategy of hedging their content costs by spending billions to acquire content producers and sports teams in hopes of moderating their price demands. In the 1980s and early 1990s, large cable operators insisted on owning a piece of nearly every cable network shown on their systems. Today, having an ownership stake in the cable networks one negotiates with at contract renewal time is a helpful advantage.

Comcast has several attractive acquisition targets Greenfield believes it can consider:

• Time Warner (Entertainment): Not affiliated with Time Warner Cable, owning Time Warner (Entertainment) would gain Comcast important cable networks like TNT, HBO, and the Warner Bros. studio.
• Netflix: Acquiring one of the best assets cord cutters have might prove difficult with regulators in Washington, but buying the ultimate TV Everywhere experience could deliver a digital platform that puts Comcast’s own online content portal to shame. The deal would also come with the talent that made Netflix an international success. If Comcast were to acquire Netflix, it would combine a superior streaming platform with an enormous content library.
• Acquire online video content sites and producers: Linear live television continues to be challenged by an array of on-demand content and video clips from various websites like Vice — videos that could be further monetized by matching Comcast’s advertising sales team with online media.
• Next generation online video set-top box manufacturers: The traditional cable box is dead to a lot of subscribers who prefer the simplicity (and price) of Roku and other similar alternatives. Current cable boxes are huge, expensive, and simply lack the creative imagination of the competition. If Comcast can’t beat Roku, it could buy it.
• Buy Sprint or T-Mobile: Greenfield believes Comcast lacks a wireless component in its product lineup as consumers increasingly move towards portable devices. Comcast would be financially foolish to build a network from the ground up, so acquiring an existing one makes more sense. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are likely out of reach, but Sprint and T-Mobile are not. Both carriers’ parent companies seem ready to sell, if the price is right. Of the two, Sprint might be willing to sell first. Sprint’s owner — Japan’s Softbank — has discovered the United States is a huge country that can swallow up endless amounts of investment and still leave it saddled with a second-rate network.

Greenfield is only speculating and there are no indications Comcast is seriously considering a next move should the Time Warner Cable deal be killed in Washington. But it does signal Wall Street does expect Comcast to do something.