Once a year, many Time Warner Cable subscribers receive a glossy mailer-newsletter combination telling you how wonderful Time Warner Cable is, and all of the exciting services and values they have to offer.  Somewhere towards the end of their mini-magazine, you learn that comes at a cost… an increasing one at that.  Yes, it’s annual rate hike time for North Carolina, and Triad area residents are receiving notification this week that Time Warner Cable is back for more of your money.

Regular Stop the Cap! reader Fish writes to inform us of the news, posted this evening on WXII-TV’s website.

“It’s lovely how they keep raising everybody’s rates and yet they’re making a crap load of money as it is and refuse to upgrade their services.  If only North State Communications would bring their fiber out to High Point residents faster, I’d tell Time Warner Cable to go screw themselves as fast as [Jamaican sprinter and a three-time Olympic gold medalist] Usain Bolt,” Fish writes.

WXII shares the details:

Customers who bundle Roadrunner high speed Internet, TV and phone services will see a 4.6 percent increase.

Those who purchase those services separately will see the cost go up 15 percent.

Roadrunner Lite service will increase by 12 percent and the cost for customers who have digital video recorders on additional televisions will increase 33 percent.

The company said the cost of programming — especially sports and network shows — is going up and it’s passing that cost along to customers.

Time Warner customers are not happy about the rate hike.

“It’s ridiculous,” Iris Womack said.

Womack said she has TV, Internet and phone bundled together.

Within hours of the news, comments flooded into WXII condemning the rate hike.

• “How can you tell the company cares nothing about customers? There is no option to pick and choose channels.”
• “Yes, I got my TWC bill yesterday and extra $5.00 was added to my Road Runner bill. Thanks for the notice TWC. We see how you do your business.”
• “We have enhanced basic cable, just the 72 channels, and were paying $63 a month. We fall in the 15% increase – that’s almost $10 a month more and we only watch maybe six of all these channels.”
• “The worst that our economy has been in years, TWC decides it’s time to gouge us?”
• “It is just pure GREED.”

Your Money = Their Money

Time Warner Cable has mailed letters to subscribers in its Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania division announcing that “with many of our fixed costs escalating, we are forced to adjust the prices of some of our services accordingly.”

That price adjustment takes Road Runner’s 7Mbps broadband service to $49.95 per month, if the subscriber also takes cable-TV service from Time Warner, according to one subscriber in Cleveland.  Another subscriber in Erie, Pennsylvania also noticed Road Runner Lite was also increasing in price to $24.95 per month with the rate change, effective November 24th.

A Canton, Ohio subscriber sent Stop the Cap! a copy of the letter their family received regarding the rate hike.

The company suggests customers might use the letter as a motivation to inquire about subscribing to even more services from Time Warner as part of a bundled package.

An Alliance, Ohio subscriber called the company’s rate increase pathetic, noting the division has some slow broadband speeds compared with other Road Runner service areas.

“With 768kbps upload speed, give us more then we will pay more,” he writes.

Time Warner's letter to customers in northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania (courtesy: kba4)