The last remaining parts of the country formerly served by Time Warner Cable are rebranding as Charter/Spectrum today, with the introduction of new service plans in upstate New York, western Massachusetts, Maine, and parts of the Carolinas.

“Redefining what a cable company can be,” as Charter Communications promotes to its customers, is a tall order for a cable company that is often loathed by its customers. Our readers have reached out to us all day to suggest, at least so far, Spectrum is the same old cable company, just with a new name.

“If I switch away from my Time Warner Cable plan to adopt a Spectrum plan, my bill will increase $40 a month,” complained Rochester, N.Y. resident June Patterson. “Even the customer service person I talked to said it would be crazy for me to switch plans.”

A customer in Albany, N.Y., reported their bill would increase by $30 a month. Another in Silver Creek, N.Y., claimed a $40 rate rise by switching to a Charter/Spectrum plan.

“I pay $92.06 now for Starter TV and Ultimate Internet in the Ithaca area,” shared another customer on DSL Reports. “After going through two operators, the second one is telling me my price will go up to $125.”

That’s a rate increase of $32.94 a month — $395.28 more a year.

Customers are encountering new plans for television service, but many areas only receive one advertised broadband speed option: 60Mbps. In fact, most areas can also buy 100Mbps service, but it’s very expensive at around $100 a month with a $200 setup fee. Customers have to call to change plans to get either speed. Some customers in former Time Warner Cable Maxx areas have better luck getting the setup fee waived than those living in areas Time Warner Cable never had a chance to upgrade.

In Idaho, The Spokesman Review’s D.F. Oliveria reports Charter/Spectrum is even worse than what Time Warner Cable offered before:

Our new internet service provider, Spectrum (Charter Communications), the company that “merged” with Time Warner’s local cable, has come under increasing fire lately. Many consumers have been calling me about poor customer service, very slow and/or inconsistent internet speeds, higher monthly prices and no printed material available to consumers regarding offerings.

“Since the merger, my bill went up $20 a month and speeds have slowed significantly,” shared ‘Nic’ in northern Idaho. “It’s ridiculous.”

WFTS in Tampa reports former Bright House customers can expect steep rate increases from Charter/Spectrum. (3:21)

In former Bright House territory in Florida, customers saw bills skyrocket by as much as $182 a month, resulting in monthly charges of an unprecedented $305 a month. Charter Communications refused to deal with the affected customers until WFTS-TV’s “Action News” consumer reporter Jackie Callaway intervened and finally got the company to admit the bills were too high by mistake:

Bright House customers Ivan and Linda Sordo say the rate hike hit without warning. The Sordo’s typical bill of $141 shot up to $305 overnight and without warning. And Lillian Rehrig’s normally $123 bill more than doubled to $305. Rehrig says calls to Spectrum got her a partial reduction but no real relief. Her next Spectrum statement came in $120 higher than her old Bright House bill.

What happened in these two cases turned out to be a billing error, an error Spectrum’s owner Charter Communications corrected after we started asking questions.

“When you started speaking with them is only when I got anyone to respond.”

It isn’t known how many other Tampa area customers were also overbilled or if Charter was working to identify and refund those who did not pursue a complaint with a local television newscast.

Charter Communications did tell WFTS-TV the majority of the one million former Bright House customers in the area now being served by Charter/Spectrum will face rate increases of $20-30 a month on average as their current package with Bright House expires. Those customers switching from a grandfathered Bright House or Time Warner Cable package will also automatically lose any promotion those packages were receiving.

In North Carolina, Time Warner Cable is gone and apparently so are some customers’ $300 rebate cards. Time Warner Cable had a long history of customer complaints about its rebate programs, but Charter Communications isn’t too interested in helping customers meet the terms of those rebates and intervene when something goes wrong.

A Steele Creek couple told WSOC-TV Time Warner rejected their rebate after they configured autopay on their Spectrum account with the help of a Charter customer service agent. Despite repeated assurances from customer service, the transition to autopay did not take effect quickly enough and they missed a payment, which canceled their rebate eligibility. Countless hours of negotiations with Charter’s customer service representatives got the couple nowhere. But the promise of bad publicity on the local evening news made the difference, and a $300 gift card was promptly mailed to them. Many other customers simply give up.

WSOC in Charlotte covers the case of the missing Time Warner Cable gift card. Customer service was no help. (1:54)

In Southern California, Spectrum is busy raising rates as well. Hannah Kuhn (76) of Simi Valley saw her bill jump $46 a month after Spectrum took over from Time Warner Cable last fall. Nobody would offer an explanation and in return for her complaints, they evidently shut the grandmother’s cable service off. Most Time Warner Cable customers are enrolled in some type of bundled service promotion. As those promotions expire, Spectrum raises rates to the regular price it intends to charge customers going forward, ending Time Warner Cable’s practice of lowering rates when customers complain.

Most customers with a popular bundled service package rate combining broadband, phone, and television could see their rates rise between $250-360 a year.

Former Time Warner Cable customers across the northeast and mid-Atlantic woke up this morning to incessant advertising like this promoting a “new day” for cable service, courtesy of Charter/Spectrum. (:60)

Three years after we first covered this story, getting Time Warner to honor your rebate request is still like pulling teeth.

One of the most frequent complaints we hear about Time Warner Cable is the company’s unwillingness to honor its rebate offers.

In the last five years, Stop the Cap! has received at least 50 complaints from consumers who were told they qualified for $200-300 in rebates, only to never receive them. A story from Raleigh’s WTVD-TV this week illustrates the problem has not gone away.

Alex Dydula was convinced to give up 15 years of satellite television to sign up with Time Warner Cable. The company’s ongoing $300 Visa card rebate offer sweetened the deal.

Except he never got the gift card, just a Time Warner Cable runaround:

“You qualify for a $300 Visa card, all you have to do is wait for the redemption code to come in the mail,” Alex said he was told by a rep.

Alex says he followed the instructions that the rep gave him in order to get the $300.00 Visa card.

“We waited for the redemption code, it never came,” Alex said.

With no redemption code, Alex went online and did an online chat with a TWC rep and through the chat was informed how to register for the reward. Alex also called Visa.

“‘Yeah you qualify, you should get this. I’ll take care of it for you,'” he said.

Alex kept waiting.

“Only to get a call back from the Visa rewards folks to say ‘you don’t qualify. You don’t have the right package, the wrong codes are in the system. I don’t care, I can’t do anything,'” he said he was told by a rep who handles the reward program.

Stop the Cap! has reported on Time Warner’s rebate offers since 2013, and the company has done little to address the concerns of customers who felt cheated out of the rebate for reasons that seem to shift with the desert sands:

• You are ineligible
• The promotion is over
• The agent wasn’t authorized to offer us the promotion
• There is no record of the offer

Just a sample of Time Warner’s terms and conditions.

The rules for Time Warner’s rebate programs are byzantine and missing even one of them, or negotiating certain discounts or service credits that cut the cost of your package can invalidate the offer. But the only way you find out is after your submission is rejected and the rebate program has ended.

1. Time Warner Cable customers qualified for a rebate must first wait for a “rebate redemption code” to arrive, typically two weeks after installing or upgrading service. But most customers complaining about rebate problems report they never received the code. You may be able to find it from Time Warner’s rebate website.
2. With code in hand, customers are qualified to register for the reward on the company’s rebate website. But since Time Warner requires the rebate to be submitted within 30 days of installation, that two-week wait for a “redemption code” may leave customers with as little as 14 days to register.
3. Customers are then required to maintain and pay on time for cable service for at least three months. Even one late payment can invalidate the rebate.
4. After 90 days of service and on time payments, the company will start processing the rebate application, which takes an extra 1-2 months.
5. The rebate card should arrive in your mailbox within 14 days after mailing.

This year, promotions vary depending on your location and the conditions under which you were offered a rebate. We have learned there are rebate programs for “win-back” promotions that convince customers not to switch to another provider, but only under certain conditions. It is easy for customers to apply for the wrong rebate. For example, a current customer will not qualify if they fill out a rebate form intended for customers just signing up for the first time. Other rebate offers apply only in selected geographic areas.

For instance, a $300 rebate offer targeting broadband-only customers who agree to buy a Triple Play bundle of services at $89 or higher is only valid if they are in California, New York City, the Hudson Valley or New Jersey.

If you are not disqualified already, there are many other ways to run afoul of the offer:

• Existing customers with any level of video service are not eligible;
• You must prove you had/have video service with another provider or you are not eligible;
• Online only video services are not eligible;
• Customers who don’t maintain fully paid-up service for at least 90 days are not eligible;
• Customers who don’t register for the rebate within 30 days of installation are not eligible;
• Customer names and addresses must exactly match with both the old provider and Time Warner or you are not eligible;
• Customers complain more than 60 days after of the end of the promotion about missing rebate cards or eligibility problems will not be considered.

If you do not use the card quickly, service fees kick in after five months, except the terms and conditions note that some cards may be pre-activated as much as two months before they were mailed, giving you only 90 days to spend the money before a $2.50 monthly service fee begins. Replacement fees also apply if the card fails to work, is lost or stolen. We recommend immediately using the card at a grocery store for a few weeks or buy something like Amazon gift cards, which do not expire and carry no service fees. The longer you leave the card lying around, the higher the chance you will forget about it or find it depleted by arbitrary service fees.

A very active thread on Time Warner Cable’s discussion forum features more than five pages of complaints about missing rebates.

If you are affected by a missing or rejected rebate, the easiest way to resolve it is to ask Time Warner Cable to convert it into a $300 service credit instead. The alternative is waiting as Time Warner officials tell the third-party rebate processor to override a rebate rejection, which can cause delays lasting weeks. Getting $300 off your cable bill is much easier and faster. You can appeal directly to the Office of the President of Time Warner Cable by filling out this contact form or filing a complaint against your nearest Time Warner Cable office with the Better Business Bureau. Your goal is to speak to a senior customer specialist authorized to grant your $300 credit request. Either method should work.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WTVD Raleigh NC Time Warner Cable deal gives Raleigh man the runaround 4-8-16.flv[/flv]

An “I-Team” reporter for WTVD-TV helps a Raleigh man get the $300 rebate he was originally promised by Time Warner Cable. (2:08)

You negotiated for a better rate from Time Warner Cable and thought you were all set for another year or two, only to discover the promotion ended early or never got applied at all.

You are not alone.

We did some negotiating of our own back in February and thought we managed an agreement to cut our bill from $175 to $112 — a savings of $63 a month. Instead, the first bill under the new rate was $150.

“You’d be surprised how many people never bother to pursue reneged on promotions like this,” said Sam Tremblay, a telecommunications bill analyst for a major regional supermarket chain.

Tremblay analyzes his employer’s telephone, broadband, and wireless bills that total close to $100,000 a month. He says he saved his employer over $50,000 in 2014 finding billing errors and getting companies to deliver on the rate promises made by salespeople.

“What a salesperson or customer service representative promises and what is actually compatible with their billing system are often two different things,” Tremblay tells us. “You are most at risk of billing errors when making changes to your account, especially if those changes involve a billing credit or special discount.”

Did you get what you were promised? (Image: Bruce Kushnick)

He explains that many billing systems are not tied directly to call center employees offering promotions or, in our case, customer retention offers. If an employee attempts to apply a promotion the customer was not entitled to receive, or one that had expired by the time it was processed by the billing system, it is typically rejected.

The latter is what happened to us, despite initially seeing the promotion applied.

Time Warner Cable often generates a temporary “virtual” mid-cycle bill available for review online when significant changes are made to your account. We were able to see the promotion correctly applied to this temporary “bill” but it was gone by the time the official bill was mailed. By the time we noticed it, a second inaccurate bill was ready to be processed.

Other customers have found their promotions canceled or unfulfilled, especially when the offer involved a high value gift card, tablet, or other electronics. As we reported earlier, fighting for a rebate card or tablet is often a waste of time. It is typically better to request a bill credit equal to the value of the gift card or promotional item because Time Warner relies on a third-party to fulfill those offers and getting an exception made to a rebate/offer rejection is extremely time-consuming and often fruitless. Use the savings from a substantial bill credit to buy your own tablet.

“A lot of customers just don’t bother to pursue things like this, believing they were bait and switched by customer service, have no recourse, and chalk it up as another reason to hate the cable company,” said Tremblay.

Not us. We pursued the mysterious disappearing promotion with Time Warner’s social media team who forwarded the complaint to the nearest regional office and we received a call early this morning with an apology.

It turned out Tremblay had figured out the problem before Time Warner Cable.

The retention promotion we were offered on Feb. 27 expired Feb. 28 — a Saturday. By the time the account changes were processed by Time Warner’s billing system the following Monday, the promised promotion could no longer be applied, hence a $150 bill instead of $112.

To resurrect the promised promotion, the Time Warner representative placed us on the next best valid promotion — $130 a month, and before we could complain about the $18 difference, also offered a $275 credit making up for overpayments already made and ensuring the two offers are financially equal.

Tremblay said such errors are usually unintentional, especially when there is lag time between the first customer contact and the date a company’s systems are updated with the changes.

“If a company’s call center or customer-facing system is not directly tied with the billing system, it is easy to apply a credit or promotion the customer isn’t entitled to receive based on the rules programmed into the billing system,” Tremblay said. “Once the change is received by the billing system, it rejects it.”

He added the mistake Time Warner Cable made was not following up after the promotion was rejected, correcting it before an unexpected higher bill was generated.

“A customer should not have to call a second time to get a provider to live up to its original commitment, but it happens all the time,”  he said. “In my experience, 80% of billing errors are in their favor, 20% in ours.”

Getting Time Warner Cable’s heavily promoted reward card rebate, worth up to hundreds of dollars to customers switching providers or upgrading service, has proved a major hassle for some customers.

WFMY-TV’s consumer reporter began getting calls from people who cannot pry their legitimately requested reward card out of Time Warner Cable’s fingers no matter how hard they try.

“I have talked to 15 different people and all I get is a run-around,” Elizabeth Albright told the Greensboro, N.C. television station.

In some cases customers have waited months for the promised reward to no avail. Others believe they were cheated out of the rebate by a needlessly complicated rebate process they believe was designed to trip them up and out of luck.

The rebate process itself is complicated:

1. Time Warner Cable customers qualified for a rebate must first wait for a “rebate redemption code” to arrive, typically two weeks after installing or upgrading service.
2. With code in hand, customers are qualified to register for the reward on the company’s rebate website. But since Time Warner requires the rebate to be submitted within 30 days of installation, that two-week wait for a “redemption code” may leave customers with as little as 14 days to register.
3. Customers are then required to maintain and pay on time for cable service for at least three months.
4. After 90 days of service and on time payments, the company will start processing the rebate application, which takes an extra 1-2 months.
5. The rebate card should arrive in your mailbox within 14 days after mailing.

Failing to follow any of the steps automatically disqualifies you for the rebate reward. Once the card arrives, use it within six months to avoid “maintenance fees.” If the card gets lost or stolen, it can be replaced, but not for free. An extra fee applies.

Keeping all rebate documentation is critical if questions arise, you are rejected, or the rebate submission is lost. If Time Warner Cable refuses to honor your rebate request, offer them an alternative – credit your cable bill for an amount equal to the value of the missing rebate. In many cases, a supervisor will approve the request in the spirit of good customer relations, especially if you threaten to cancel service over the matter.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFMY Greensboro The Process of Getting Your Time Warner Reward Card 1-6-14.flv[/flv]

Triad region residents in North Carolina are having a tough time getting their rebate reward cards from Time Warner Cable, reports WFMY-TV. (2:42)

Cablevision CEO Jim Dolan may have to eat his words when he told shareholders he was done giving promotional discounts to customers bouncing back and forth between competing providers. Now Verizon has given Cablevision customers an excuse to say goodbye to the cable company for at least the next two years.

The Verizon FiOS $79.99 Triple Play promotion is back and includes a $300 Visa rebate card and free activation when ordering from Verizon’s website.

The package includes: