Phillip "An Ex-Frontier Customer" Dampier

The other week while sitting in the dentist’s office waiting for my wallet to be drilled, I overheard a conversation at the reception desk over the latest effort by Frontier Communications to shoot itself in the proverbial foot.

“I decided to get rid of my phone line the other day and when I called Frontier to disconnect, I was told I would owe them more than $150 in disconnection fees for a contract I never knew I had with them,” opened the conversation.

“That happened to my sister as well, and she couldn’t believe it because nobody ever told her she was on a contract,” came the reply.

“I never knew I was either, and I told the representative they needed to show me where I signed up for anything like that or else I’m not paying it,” insisted the latest victim of Frontier’s phantom service contracts.

Within a minute or two, all had decided they were done doing business with the phone company that got its start more than 100 years ago as the well-regarded Rochester Telephone Corporation.  In 2012, there was no turning back after $150 “disconnect” penalties and other insults.  They were intent on being rid of Frontier once and for all.

With customer unfriendly policies like that, it comes as no surprise Frontier has been losing customers in the Rochester market for years, mostly to cell phone providers or Time Warner Cable — the latter which delivers more value and far superior broadband speed in western New York communities not served by Verizon FiOS.

Surprise... you're on a contract with a $150 cancellation penalty.

Twenty years ago, Rochester Telephone delivered excellent value, charging about half what then-NYNEX customers in Buffalo and Syracuse paid for telephone service. But as Frontier has increasingly disengaged from being an aggressive contender for telecommunications services in Rochester, people in this region of one million noticed, especially when Verizon’s fiber to the home service arrived in Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, and beyond.

What did Frontier offer? Not much. Frontier’s local general manager Ann Burr, who used to be in charge at Time Warner Cable locally, told local media Rochester didn’t need faster broadband speeds. That’s a fitting argument for a company that doesn’t deliver them and believes 3Mbps broadband is plenty fast enough.  If you don’t like it, feel free to leave, so long as you aren’t trapped with that long-term service contract you never knew you had. (The New York Attorney General’s office has already spanked Frontier once for the practice, forcing them to issue refunds, and judging from last week’s conversation, it appears the problem has not abated.)

The fact is, Frontier offers little compelling to the landline customers they have left.

Rochester’s experience with Frontier seems apropos when contemplating the phone company’s latest quarterly results, which one analyst called “ugly.” Having listened to at least a dozen of Frontier’s quarterly conference calls with investors over the past three years, there seems to be no shortage of promises of better days to come.  Frontier is among the few companies I have heard call customer losses of 5-11% every quarter “an improvement.”

As one investor put it, the management at Frontier should win an Academy Award for feigned optimism.

This week, the company announced first-quarter earnings fell 51% thanks to lower revenue earned from the dwindling number of residential and business customers. But better days are ahead, really.

Road to nowhere?

Frontier has spent the last year treating their “system conversion” for ex-Verizon territories as the telecom equivalent of the Holy Grail.  Once achieved, the company can do anything. The reorganization underway internally at the company is supposed to improve its lackluster customer service, generate more marketing opportunities, save the company money, and open the door to a new chapter of a unified Frontier family, with ex-Verizon and always-Frontier employees coming together to do things “the Frontier way.”

How much longer investors will stick around waiting for the promised land remains an open question. The stock has already achieved a 52-week low, and if the company cuts its dividend — the primary point of attraction for investors — it will drop much lower.

Frontier’s management decisions have effectively left the company between a rock (Wall Street) and a hard place (its dwindling customers).  Much of the company’s success is predicated on rural broadband/landline service, where the company expects to face little competition.  But Verizon, the company that sold them much of their inherited network, has a little surprise for them.  After selling off the “junk” (a deteriorating copper landline network they no longer care much about), the company’s wireless division is coming back to town to poach Frontier’s customers.

Verizon’s grand plan is to pitch two products:

1. Home Phone Connect: Verizon’s landline replacement works with the customer’s home phones over Verizon Wireless’ network. Customers can share minutes on an existing Verizon Wireless plan for $9.99 a month or get unlimited calling for $19.99 a month. It comes with most popular calling features included.
2. Verizon HomeFusion Broadband: Verizon Wireless has excess capacity in rural areas, especially on 4G LTE-equipped towers, so why not put it to use? While commanding a premium at $60 a month for just 10GB of usage, customers who value speed over money may tolerate that diamond price.  If Verizon finds a way to relax that usage limit and lower prices, it could present a real competitive threat to phone companies delivering lower end DSL service.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Home Phone Connect – Home Phone Transfer Verizon Wireless.flv[/flv]

Verizon Wireless introduces Home Phone Connect, a product designed to tell landline companies like Frontier to take a hike.  (2 minutes)

While Verizon isn’t likely to immediately grab major market share with either product, it foreshadows an intent to leverage their rural wireless network to remain a player, even in places where they have abandoned selling landline service.

How to Stop the Erosion

Turning things around? Frontier contemplates licensing U-verse from AT&T

Even in a barely-competitive marketplace, companies must invest to keep up. But that investment annoys Wall Street, which can depress the stock (and the all-important dividend). But improved service retains customers (and may even win a few ex-customers back). So news that Frontier was considering licensing U-verse technology to upgrade their major markets is a logical first step to stop the bleeding. Frontier is irrelevant delivering broadband at speeds of 3Mbps at out the door prices that meet or exceed what the much-faster cable competition charges. U-verse would allow Frontier to deliver faster broadband (up to 24Mbps is plenty fast for a lot of consumers), build its own IPTV offering instead of relying on satellite dish reseller agreements, and maintain landline customers, assuming the company prices its bundle correctly.

While we are big proponents of fiber-to-the-home service, it is clear Frontier will never spend the money to deliver it, even to their largest service areas. They will prefer the cheaper route of fiber to the neighborhood, relying on existing copper infrastructure to connect individual homes to the service. It represents a reasonable first step.

Frontier also must continue aggressive investments in their broadband network in more rural areas. Some of the company’s regional backbones remain woefully congested, and the company just doesn’t deliver the speeds it markets on its website in too many areas.

High speed should really mean "high speed"

Jameson, a Stop the Cap! reader, is a good example. He signed up for “Frontier Max DSL” which claims it can deliver up to 6Mbps in his part of east-central Indiana.  He ended up with 1.6Mbps instead, in part of because Frontier’s records were inaccurate.

I called Frontier tech support after reading some stuff on Stop the Cap! and another site, learning that since I live under 5000 feet from the DSL termination point (the Frontier building down the road) that I shouldn’t have any problems getting their highest speeds. I got lucky and got a customer support agent who understood my problem, and a tech support guy who genuinely seemed concerned about my issue. The tech guy checked Frontier’s records and I was labeled as being 30,000 feet from the building, but I’m really only around 4200 feet away, and my speeds were provisioned at 1.6mbps down and around 450kbps up. He put in a support ticket to have my speeds automatically raised up to the max I’m paying for.

Jameson ended up with around 7Mbps — a little better than the advertised speed, but only because he thought to ask and reached the right people at Frontier to follow through.

Some of our readers in West Virginia are not so lucky, having the mediocre speeds they fought to receive reduced further when a technician suddenly remotely adjusts speed provisioning on customer equipment to reduce their maximum broadband speed.

Frontier’s DSL problems don’t just exist in rural areas. We experienced it first-hand in 2009 when the company advertised up to 10Mbps speeds in Rochester, and delivered 3.1Mbps to us instead.

Consumer Reports documents this is not an isolated problem, with only two-thirds of Frontier customers getting the broadband speeds they pay to receive. If and when a competitor does better, Frontier loses another customer.

Finally, Frontier must improve its customer service. The company is notorious for giving inconsistent answers to customer questions, doesn’t always follow through on commitments, and maintains far too many “gotcha” terms and conditions on contracts that leave customers exposed to unjustified early termination fees.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNET Verizon HomeFusion Broadband May 2012.flv[/flv]

CNET shows off the equipment used with Verizon’s new HomeFusion wireless broadband service.  (2 minutes)

CNN's Scare Stories on Wireless

As part of our ongoing coverage of the telecommunications industry, I talk with a variety of reporters in both Canada and the United States.  We have educated local newspapers, national wire services, local TV news, and even big national consumer magazines about the problems consumers have with the North American telecommunications industry.  Whether you are a wireless customer facing eroding usage caps and increasing prices, or a wired broadband customer now being slapped with Internet Overcharging schemes that monetize your usage, the truth about why your bill has gone up isn’t too hard to find, if you bother to look.

Unfortunately, CNN-Money just published a “week-long” series on the wireless mobile phone market that might as well have been written by the CTIA, the nation’s cell phone lobby.

“The Spectrum Crunch” was supposed to be a sober and objective report about the state of congestion on America’s cell phone networks. Instead, the reporter decided industry press releases and lobbyist talking points were good enough to form the premise that America is deep in a cell phone crisis.

Sorry America, Your Airwaves Are Full

Part one of CNN’s special report is a laundry list of disaster predictions, explaining away rate increases and usage caps, and an industry-skewed view that the answer to the “crisis” is to give wireless carriers all the frequencies they want.

The spectrum crunch is not an inherently American problem, but its effects are magnified here, since the United States has an enormous population of connected users. This country serves more than twice as many customers per megahertz of spectrum as the next nearest spectrum-constrained nations, Japan and Mexico.

When spectrum runs short, service degrades sharply: calls get dropped and data speeds slow down.

That’s a nightmare scenario for the wireless carriers. To stave it off, they’re turning over rocks and searching the couch cushions for excess spectrum.

They have tried to limit customers’ data usage by putting caps in place, throttling speeds and raising prices. Carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, MetroPCS and Leap have been spending billions to make more efficient use of the spectrum they do hold and billions more to get their hands on new spectrum. And they have tried to merge with one another to consolidate resources.

The FCC has also been working to free up more spectrum for wireless operators. Congress reached a tentative deal last week, approving voluntary auctions that would let TV broadcasters’ spectrum licenses be repurposed for wireless broadband use.

[…] The bad news is that none of the fixes are quick, and all are expensive. For the situation to improve, carriers — and, therefore, their customers — will have to pay more.

The United States also covers more ground, with lots of wide open spaces where frequencies can be used and re-used without interference problems.  As AT&T keeps illustrating, how you run your business has a lot to do with the quality of your service, spectrum crisis or not.  AT&T customers in heavily-populated urban markets cope with dropped calls and slow data not because the company has run out of frequencies, but because AT&T has failed to appropriately invest in its own network.  AT&T’s problems are generally not shared by customers of other carriers.  Even T-Mobile, which has the least spectrum of all major carriers, does not share AT&T’s capacity issues.

CNN reporter David Goldman suggests mergers and consolidation have been a solution for ‘wireless shortages’ of the past.  But are mergers about consolidating resources or leveraging profits?

The spectrum war’s winners and losers

AT&T’s failed $39 billion bid for T-Mobile was largely aimed at getting its rival’s spectrum. The Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission killed the deal, saying it would be too damaging to wireless competition.

That put the entire industry on notice: The carriers will have to solve their problems without any blockbuster takeovers.

The regulators’ main concern was that the deal would take the ranks of national carriers down from four to three. That’s why experts now expect the big players to focus instead on acquiring smaller, low-cost carriers like MetroPCS and Leap Wireless. Their spectrum could relieve capacity issues in large metro areas, which are the places most crippled by the crunch.

Industry analysts also think that Sprint and T-Mobile could gain approval to merge, though that’s a bit like two drowning victims clinging together. Sprint is losing piles of money every quarter, while T-Mobile is hemorrhaging customers with contracts.

Another possibility is that several carriers could partner in a spectrum-sharing joint venture.

But the most likely scenario is that the carriers continue fighting each other to snap up the last remaining large swaths of high-quality spectrum.

Stephenson

The claim that AT&T sought the purchase of T-Mobile USA for spectrum acquisition falls apart when you examine the record.  For instance, during AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson’s presentation at the merger announcement, shareholders were told the buyout would deliver cost synergies and savings, would stabilize earnings from a more predictable mobile market (with T-Mobile’s ‘market disruptive’ pricing out of the way), and would allow the company to secure additional frequencies.  However, as Stop the Cap! reported back in August, documents released by the FCC showed AT&T unprepared to specify what T-Mobile spectrum it expected to acquire, much less how the company intended to use it.

The “problem” AT&T sought to solve, in the eyes of both the Justice Department and the FCC, was pesky competition from T-Mobile and the reduced profits AT&T endured as T-Mobile forced competitors to deliver better service at lower prices.

Even Goldman admits T-Mobile had the smallest inventory of wireless spectrum among the major carriers — scant reason for AT&T to court a merger for spectrum purposes.

The spectrum winners continue to be AT&T and Verizon, who have the largest inventory of favorable frequencies, and both continue to warehouse spectrum they are not using for anything.

Your Cell Phone Bill is Going Up

Has your mobile phone bill jumped this past year?

Get used to it.

Demand for wireless data services is soaring, forcing carriers to invest massively to keep up. They have two main options: Upgrade their network technology or acquire more wireless spectrum to give them more bandwidth.

“Massively” is in the eye of the beholder.  Verizon outspent AT&T on network upgrades and continues to enjoy enormous returns on that investment.  Most major cell companies spend billions on network improvements, but also earn tens of billions from their customers.  Yet in the midst of the “spectrum crisis,” AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told investors revenue was up — way up:

“We’ll expand wireless and consolidated margins. We’ll achieve mid-single-digit EPS growth or better. Cash generation continues to look very strong again next year. And given the operational momentum we have in the business, all of this appears very achievable and probably at the conservative end of our expectations.”

AT&T’s chief financial officer John J. Stephens put a spotlight on it:

In 2011, 76% of our revenues came from wireless and wireline data and managed services. That’s up from 68% or more than $10 billion from just 2 years ago. And revenues from these areas grew about $7 billion last year or more than 7% for 2011. We’re confident this mix shift will continue. In fact, in 2012 we expect consolidated revenues to continue to grow, thanks to strength in these growth drivers with little expected lift from the economy.

[…] We also continue to bring more subscribers onto our network with tiered data plans, more than 22 million at the end of the quarter, with most choosing the higher-priced plan. As more of our base moves to tiered plans and as data use increases, we expect our compelling [average revenue per subscriber] growth story to continue.

That’s a story AT&T has avoided sharing with customers, because more than a few might take exception that the past year’s rate increases have more to do with the company’s “compelling growth story” than a spectrum shortage.

CNN could have reported this themselves, had they bothered to look beyond the press releases and talking points from the wireless industry. The reporter even conflated recent increases in early termination fees as part of the “spectrum shortage.”

Readers have to glean the real story by reading between the lines.  Here is an example:

As Suraj Shetty, Cisco’s marketing chief, puts it: “Data caps are curbing the top 1% of users, but not the top 20%.”

For carriers, finding the sweet spot is a delicate balancing act. Heavy data consumption is costly for them. On the flip side, smartphone users, who are typically required to buy pricey monthly data plans, are their most lucrative customers.

The ideal customer is someone with a smartphone they use sparingly.

That reality could eventually be reflected in your monthly bill. All four of the major carriers declined to comment about their future pricing strategies, but analysts expect them to start experimenting with new “pay for what you consume” approaches.

The real agenda is finding customers who buy the most service and use it the least.  Usage caps and throttles don’t even work, if one believes Mr. Shetty.  Curbing one percent of your heaviest users does little to curtail congestion when the top 20% remain within plan limits and create an even greater strain on the network.

It’s another hallmark of Internet Overcharging — monetizing broadband usage while using “congestion” as an excuse.  If a customer uses 10GB on an unlimited usage plan or 10GB on a limited use plan, the impact on the network is precisely the same.  Only the profit-taking is different.

There Are Solutions

Only in the last part of the series does CNN’s reporter discover there are some practical solutions to the spectrum crunch.  They include:

• Splitting cell phone traffic to reduce tower load.  Adding additional towers is one solution, but not all have to be huge, unsightly monstrosities.  In parts of Canada and Europe, new “micro-cells” on top of traditional power poles or buildings can reduce tower load, especially in urban areas.  These units, which can fit in the palm of your hand, are especially good at serving fixed location users, such as those sitting at home, work, or in a shopping center.  They don’t create eyesores, are relatively inexpensive, and are effective.
• Allocation of spectrum.  The FCC is working on making additional wireless spectrum available.  Some carriers are cooperating to alleviate capacity issues, share towers, and collaborate on new tower planning.
• Consider Wi-Fi.  AT&T found offloading traffic to Wi-Fi and even home-based “femtocells” — mini in-home cell towers have effectively reduced demand on their wireless 3G/4G networks.  There is still room to expand.

[flv width=”576″ height=”344″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNN Solutions to the spectrum crunch 2-2012.flv[/flv]

Alcatel-Lucent has a solution to the capacity crunch — a microcell cube that can be attached to a building or phone pole.  (3 minutes)

Now all prepaid and contract-free.

Clearwire customers are being informed the wireless broadband provider is consolidating service plans in a move the company hopes will simplify what’s on offer.  Following on the heels of Leap Wireless’ Cricket, which launched simplified pricing last year, Clearwire will now market prepaid, no-contract broadband to new customers effective today.

Broadband Reports has been talking with Clearwire after forum members began noticing changes on some dealer websites that eliminated 3G coverage and dropped postpaid bundles of voice and data plans.  Earlier today, the company confirmed it was getting rid of contracts, early termination fees, rental fees for devices, and activation fees.  New customers will be asked to purchase their own mobile broadband device which will work exclusively on Clearwire’s own 4G WiMax network.  You can purchase plans that work by the day, week, or month.

The most popular anticipated plan will offer “unlimited” 4G wireless broadband for $50 a month.

Gone is the bundled Sprint 3G voice option and the annoying early termination fees customers howled about when Clearwire’s advertised coverage didn’t live up to expectations.  Although Clearwire continues to pitch “unlimited mobile broadband,” their notorious speed throttles will remain for “congested cell sites.”  Customers have dropped the service over significant throttling issues in some areas, which reduce speeds to near dial-up in some cases.

Broadband Reports speculates Clearwire wants to be in the wholesale broadband business, and slowly exit the retail business that has earned them the scorn (and threatened legal action) of some of their customers.

Existing customers will be able to keep their existing plans, at least for now.

Company-owned store or third party reseller?

Customers who see the logo of their favorite wireless phone company on a storefront might do better to look a little closer to determine if they are doing business with a company-owned store, or a third-party reseller.  A Bakersfield, Calif., man quickly learned the difference when he bought a mobile broadband service plan from Go Wireless that Verizon says no longer exists.

Allan Fox found out the hard way when his first bill arrived with a steep overlimit fee attached, and without the broadband plan he signed up for.

Fox purchased the discontinued plan from Go Wireless, a third party reseller of Verizon Wireless services.  Fox thought he was purchasing a 3GB plan for $35, with a two-year service contract.  Verizon thought otherwise, and so began weeks of a runaround between Fox, Go Wireless, and Verizon.

It turned out that Verizon no longer offered the plan Fox bought from what he thought was Verizon Wireless itself.  Go Wireless is one of several independent third party companies that resell Verizon Wireless service, often with their own terms and conditions that include early termination fees owed not just to Verizon, but also to Go Wireless.

Go Wireless’ retail stores prominently feature Verizon Wireless’ logo, with their own logo appearing in reduced size, next to a message indicating they were a “premium retailer.”  That presumably sounds better than “third party reseller.”

After several attempts to straighten out the mess, Fox wanted to cancel his contract and just move on.  But then he discovered Go Wireless would charge him a $175 early cancellation fee, even though Fox’s predicament was their fault.  That’s when Fox called a local television newscast for help.

Wirefly is a major online reseller of Verizon Wireless

KBAK-TV news waded into the middle of the dispute that had gone on for nearly six weeks.  Verizon Wireless told the station it was willing to cancel Fox’s service penalty-free, but since Fox purchased the phone from a third-party reseller, and not from a company-owned store, Go Wireless would have to credit their own cancel fee.  Go Wireless, experiencing some turnover in local management, finally agreed to waive the fee, but only after the TV station got involved.

Customers must be careful when purchasing phones or signing contracts with third party sellers — both online and in traditional stores.  Most company-owned stores display their respective carrier logos and nothing else.  Words that usually provide a clue you are dealing with a reseller include: “authorized retailer,” “authorized dealer,” “Service provided by: (name of third party company),” “authorized agent,” and a dead giveaway is a signed contract with anyone other than the cell phone company you are using for service.

Third party resellers make their money on generous commissions earned when a customer signs a new contract or renews an existing one.  That commission can be forfeit if a customer returns the phone or cancels service early, which is why third party dealers protect themselves with their own contracts that include early termination or cancellation penalties owed to them, not the wireless provider.  Some customers can find themselves exposed to $500 or more in total cancellation penalty fees owed between the wireless phone company and the reseller.

So why do people purchase phones from these resellers?  Convenience and savings.

In smaller communities, company-owned stores may be few in number (or non-existent), and in-person help can be a godsend for customers who need to figure out their phone or obtain a warranty replacement.  Online, resellers like Amazon.com, Newegg, Wirefly, and others often charge substantially less than wireless carriers charge themselves for phones.  That savings can often be more than $100.  But these resellers are not for those who are unsure about the phone they want (or the provider).  Returning a phone or canceling service means dealing with two parties — the carrier and the reseller, to end service.  The cost of doing so can be very steep, so always read the terms and conditions before buying.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KBAK Bakersfield Man has Internet billing trouble 9-26-11.mp4[/flv]

KBAK-TV’s Investigation Bakersfield unit helped a local man untangle a major billing mess that began when he was sold a mobile broadband plan that no longer existed.  (3 minutes)

Big cable companies are targeting their non-customers, and those current customers who refuse to sign up for triple-play bundles, with some of the most aggressively-priced promotions in years.  The two largest, Comcast/Xfinity and Time Warner Cable, have been sending out letters offering dirt cheap $20 Internet service or cable television packages that include DVR service, a second set top box, and hundreds of digital cable channels for $49.99 a month for two years.

Comcast

Comcast promotions vary in different markets, depending on who their competitors are.  The best pricing goes to new customers, as a recent promotion sent to suspected DSL customers in their service areas illustrates.

(click to enlarge)

The cable company is pitching 12 months of Xfinity Performance (typically around 12Mbps) for $19.99 a month for the first year for new customers only.  Some customers report they can cancel penalty-free at the end of the first year, while others are told Comcast is actually pitching a two-year contract where the price of the service increases to $34.99 a month during the second year (a early cancellation fee pro-rated to less than $50 applies in some areas if you cancel early).  This pricing applies to standalone service, which makes it aggressively priced.  Most cable providers charge a higher price for Internet-only service.  Some customers also report a $25 or more installation fee applies (and in some areas an in-person install is required for new customers).  We’ve heard from some readers that successfully qualified for the promotion under the name of a spouse if they have had Comcast service previously.  Otherwise, Comcast usually requires customers to be without service for 90 days before they are considered “new customers.”

Customers can try calling 1-877-508-5492 to request this offer: $19.99/Month for 1 year with no additional service required (Code at bottom of letter: LTP79376-0014).

If that number does not work from your calling area, other numbers to try include: 1-877-298-0903 (CA, TX), 1-877-508-5492 (CA, WV), 1-877-494-9166 in NJ (currently pitching 6-month version of this promotion without contract.)

If 12Mbps is not fast enough, ask the representative what promotional pricing exists for faster speeds.  Some customers scored 35Mbps service for $10 more per month.

A separate ongoing promotion from Comcast offers Blast Internet service at 25Mbps+ on similar terms.  But pricing varies wildly in different markets.  Customers in California were able to purchase this promotion for as little as $19.99 a month with a year-long contract, while customers in Chicago were asked to pay $39 for essentially the same service.

Comcast’s promotions list runs several pages, so if you are shot down asking for these promotions, ask about other current offers or hang up and try calling again and asking to speak with someone else.  Your results may vary depending on the representative you speak with.  Remember Comcast’s 250GB usage cap applies to all residential service plans.

Time Warner Cable

In addition to regular Road Runner standalone Internet service promotions that deliver Standard Service speeds for $29-35 a month for a year, Time Warner has been getting very aggressive trying to win back cord-cutters and those who have left for a competing pay television provider.  The cable company has mailed letters to non-cable TV customers in the northeast pitching substantial discounts on cable TV service price-locked (but no commitment term for you) for two years and includes free DVR equipment, DVR service, and a second set top box with digital cable TV for $49.99 a month.  They’ll even credit back the cost of any early termination fees charged by another provider over the course of the first year of service.

(click to enlarge)

The promotion is intended primarily for customers who already receive service from another provider, but new customers can call 1-855-364-7797 and ask for the offer without the competing provider early termination fee rebate.  If you do receive service from another provider, there are various requirements and steps to follow to qualify for up to $200 in termination fee credits.  Visit SwitchtoTWC or call them to learn the details.

Neither of these promotions work for existing Time Warner Cable customers.  If you already subscribe, discounts will be offered when you threaten to cancel service.  Retention deals from Time Warner Cable can be as aggressively priced as new customer promotions.  We have found retention offers made during the initial call to request a service disconnection are often not very aggressive.  Most representatives try and pare back your package before starting to offer retention pricing (which gradually gets better the more times you reply, “is that the best you can offer?”)

Our best recommendation is to call and request to cancel service 2-3 weeks from today and wait for a Time Warner Cable retention specialist to call you (answer those mystery caller ID calls — it could be Time Warner).  The reps that call you directly often deliver the most aggressive retention deals.  If nobody does reach out to you, call Time Warner yourself a few days before the disconnect is scheduled and ask them to make you an offer to rescind your disconnect request.  You may find some serious savings taking this approach.  If not, you still have time to rescind your disconnect request on your own before the plug gets pulled.