Warren (center) pictured with representatives of Charter Communications and PowerMyLearning (Photo courtesy of: PowerMyLearning)

The incumbent mayor of Rochester, N.Y., currently up for re-election, has decided to take indirect credit for a low-cost internet program loaded with tricks and traps from a cable company that is worsening the affordable internet problem in the United States.

Mayor Lovely Warren made the head-slapping mistake of teaming up with Charter Communications, already on track to being even more universally despised by its customers than its immediate predecessor Time Warner Cable. Casting political instincts to the wind, Warren decided to team up with an unpopular cable company that is gouging its regular customers while offering a token “low-cost” internet program designed to protect Charter’s internet profits more than offering low-income customers a break.

WHAM-TV:

New low-cost, high-speed broadband Internet service is being launched in Rochester, Mayor Lovely Warren announced Thursday.

PowerMyLearning and Charter Communications announced Spectrum Internet Assist (SIA) would offer the service to eligible low-income household customers in Rochester.

Broadband speeds of 30/4 Mbps are being offered for $14.99 per month by SIA, according to Mayor Warren.

“Lowering the cost barrier to Internet access for families is essential if we are to close the digital divide and help them rise out of poverty,” said Mayor Warren. “Internet access is increasingly essential for students to do homework, for jobs seekers to research and apply for jobs, pay bills and remain connected with society.”

We agree with the mayor that lowering the cost barrier is critical to making essential internet service available to every resident. Unfortunately, Charter Communications is making the problem worse, not better. Charter’s idea of charity doesn’t seem so magnanimous when you read the fine print.

Charter’s solution for affordable internet: Charge most customers more while a select few jump through hoops for a discount.

First, Spectrum Internet Assist is highly discriminatory and only available to families with school age children that qualify for the National School Lunch Program. Don’t have kids? Tough luck. When they leave school, no more affordable internet for you!

Second, if you are a senior citizen on a fixed income, you probably already have 20+ years under your belt dealing with relentless rate increases from the local cable company. Unless you are 65 or over and receive SSI benefits, you’ll keep on paying those rate increases because the only thing Charter has on offer for you is a bigger bill.

Third, and the most egregious insult of all to the most vulnerable members of our society is Charter’s cynical fear its fat internet profits will be cannibalized if they simply lowered the bills of customers that would otherwise qualify for this program. Spectrum Internet Assist is for new customers only (and if you are still on a Time Warner Cable plan, you aren’t a new customer).

Charter refuses to relent on its policy requiring current customers to disconnect internet service for a month before they can qualify for Charter’s “charity.” The company is worried it will lose money from customers downgrading to Spectrum Internet Assist who will pay a lot less for internet access. To prevent that, Charter makes the process of enrolling as difficult and inconvenient as possible. Imagine if RG&E or National Grid demanded poor residents go without heat for 30 days before qualifying for heating assistance or if your elderly grandparents had to disconnect telephone service for a month before qualifying for Lifeline.

While obsessing about whether its poorest customers are taking ‘unfair’ advantage of a money-saving deal, Charter has no problem splurging on fat bonuses and compensation packages for its top executives. In fact, the highest paid CEO in the United States in 2016 was Thomas Rutledge, top dog at Charter Communications, rewarded with a splendid $98.5 million compensation package for finding new ways to charge consumers even more for cable service. Charter can certainly afford to lighten up on its customers. Instead, it seeks to live up to the cable industry’s usual reputation of a modern-day reboot of Oliver Twist, this time starring Rutledge as Fagin. Since Warren wholeheartedly endorses Charter’s paltry efforts for the poor, perhaps residents can call her up and ask why they should be forced off the internet for a month just to qualify for Charter’s “charity.” Or maybe not, considering the fact she had nothing to do with Spectrum Internet Assist beyond having her picture taken at a press event.

As is too often the case, uninformed politicians are quick to take credit for programs they don’t understand and are nowhere to be found when the real problem-solving and hard work needs to be done. How can we say that? Because we were a registered and very involved party in the New York Public Service Commission’s review of the Charter-Time Warner Cable merger deal. Mayor Warren wasn’t. We fought for pro-consumer benefits if such a deal was to be approved. Mayor Warren didn’t. We understood from long experience the cynicism that separates the cable industry’s lofty words from its fine print. She doesn’t.

Spectrum Internet Assist does very little to resolve the problem of internet affordability. The program is a close cousin of Comcast’s much-criticized Internet Essentials program, which has similar eligibility requirements and has proven cumbersome to sign up for and leaves too many eligible families behind because of its onerous signup requirements. In 2016, Comcast itself admitted that since 2011 it has only enrolled 750,000 low-income households in its discounted internet program, although more than 2.6 million families were eligible to sign-up but never did.

Charter makes internet affordability worse.

Our research shows that Charter’s token efforts for the few are more than canceled out by the rate increases and reduced options made available to the rest of its customers.

Time Warner Cable used to offer lower-cost internet plans.

Time Warner Cable used to sell six different internet plans ranging from $14.99 to $64.99 for new customers (and practically anyone who ever complained about their cable bill) or $14.99 to $109.99 if you were in the tiny minority of customers who didn’t either bundle service or ask for a promotion. Charter Communications argues it is “better” for consumers to simplify Time Warner’s “complicated” plans and pricing with a one-size-fits-all alternative — 60Mbps for what sells today for $64.99 a month (they raised the price $5 a month back in February). But at least you won’t pay that modem rental fee (if you didn’t bother to avoid it by buying your own cable modem that would have paid for itself long ago.)

So which company makes internet affordability a bigger problem — Time Warner Cable, which sold less expensive internet service at prices of $14.99, $29.99, and $34.99, or Charter Communications which advertises only one internet plan on its website for much of western New York – 60Mbps for $64.99 ($44.99 if you are new to Charter and not a previous Time Warner Cable customer that still has cable service). Spectrum’s plan is more than four times more expensive than Time Warner Cable’s previously well-advertised $14.99 plan.

Regular TWC broadband-only pricing in 2016.

No organization worked harder than Stop the Cap! to keep Time Warner Cable’s $14.99 Everyday Low Price Internet tier as a condition of the merger. While not fast, it is affordable and available to every customer, not just the small percentage that will eventually manage to qualify for Spectrum Internet Assist. Fortunately, New York’s Public Service Commission agreed with us and insisted that option remain available in New York State for the next several years. But Charter has subsequently made that plan almost invisible, removing all mention of it from its website, telling some customers it was not available, and leaving a distinct impression they don’t want customers to sign up.

Charter’s one-size-fits all plan got more expensive in February.

The reason is simple. Revenue cannibalization. Thomas Rutledge has repeatedly stressed to Wall Street investors he intended to end the “Turkish bazaar” of Time Warner Cable’s former cavalcade of plans and promotions. When a customer called Time Warner to complain about their bill, there was always room for negotiation and a better deal. Customers calling Charter looking for a break are hitting a brick wall with “take it or leave it” pricing, and tens of thousands of customers are “leaving it” and Charter behind. In this area, we don’t have that luxury because the alternative is usually Frontier Communications’ dreadful DSL service, which almost never meets the FCC’s definition of broadband — at least 25Mbps.

To give you an idea of just how rapacious Charter’s broadband pricing is, consider local upstart competitor Greenlight, which offers fiber to the home service to a very small number of neighborhoods predominately on the east side of the Genesee River. It charges a no-nonsense $50 a month for 100Mbps internet — $15 less than what Charter charges for 60Mbps. If you want gigabit speed, Greenlight will sell you 1,000Mbps for $100 a month, which is $5 less than Charter’s unadvertised 100Mbps offer ($104.95/mo with a mandatory $199 setup fee). Ten times the speed for less. No wonder their Facebook page is filled with people begging them to expand.

Rochester, like other cities in the upstate region, continues to fall behind with inadequate and costly internet service, insufficient competition, and no sign of gigabit speeds arriving anytime soon, unless you are lucky enough to live in a Greenlight service area. Those kinds of 21st century internet speeds are years away if we continue to depend on the local cable and phone company.

Phillip Dampier: We can afford to do without Charter’s “charity.”

In the local mayor’s race, one candidate seems to understand this problem and has a credible solution that fixes it. Rachel Barnhart has a long history of advocating for a citywide public fiber broadband network that would wire every home in the city for an estimated $70 million. The costs would be shared by city residents, the Rochester City School District, and at least one private vendor that would likely be responsible for administering day-to-day operations.

“About forty percent of homes in the city – 35,000 households —  don’t have high-speed internet via cable or DSL,” Barnhart said. “Some of those households can only access the internet via smartphones. The Rochester City School District has estimated half of its students don’t have broadband at home.”

City taxpayers have already paid for a underutilized institutional dark fiber network. Barnhart proposes putting that network to work for the community, selling competitively priced gigabit service for residential and business customers that would effectively subsidize free, slower-speed service for the less-fortunate. Is it expensive? Perhaps. But is it out of line when one considers in one local suburb this year, taxpayers will spend $1 million dollars on a single traffic light and minor road widening project to better manage traffic. Considering how many communities need digital highway traffic improvements, this kind of investment is hardly audacious and isn’t just about giving people fast internet. Managing the local digital economy with the right infrastructure is essential in a community that has seen the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs and has been economically challenged for years. The alternative is what we have now — watching a mayor impotently smile at a manufactured press event declaring victory while the near-cable monopoly local residents have for broadband service throws *-laden scraps at the public and calls it a day.

Rochester, and other communities that are enduring a cable company that is rapidly turning out to be worse than Time Warner Cable, cannot afford Charter’s “generosity.”

Politicians would do well to remember the sage advice we’ve given consumers since 2008. When a cable company claims they have a better deal for you, watch your wallet. For Mayor Warren, she will have to learn the same lesson we taught city councilman Adam McFadden and Assemblyman Joe Morelle. With friends like Charter/Spectrum or Comcast, you don’t need any enemies.

As the wireless industry grabs a bigger chunk of the television dial, the remaining free over-the-air stations are going to be on the move starting next year. More than 900 American television stations will get new channel numbers after the move is complete, all to squeeze signals into the unchanged VHF and diminished UHF dial.

The folks at Rabbit Ears have a handy tool that will guide you through the changes, and they are enormous. Just use the drop-down box next to “Market” and find your city. Here at Stop the Cap! HQ, all but two stations in Rochester, N.Y., are getting new channel positions:

TV station reassignments as a result of the channel repack for Rochester, NY. The first two columns show the new vs. current actual channel number.

Most viewers won’t notice a big difference because the FCC is allowing stations to continue to market themselves with a virtual channel number than usually dates back to before the migration to digital TV broadcasting. But the channel changes can still be important for viewers using an antenna, especially if your local station(s) migrate into the VHF or UHF bands where they might not have been before. Two different antennas are sometimes required to get good reception from both bands. The traditional “rabbit ears” indoor telescoping antenna is usually designed for VHF reception, while small loop antennas work better for UHF. Various other antenna configurations can work for both bands, some better than others. Outdoor aerials can be designed to receive VHF, UHF or both. You may need an antenna upgrade if your antenna isn’t designed to receive the station(s) you want to see after they move.

The second half of 2016 shows losses in broadband and television customers.

Frontier Communications CEO is blaming employees for the company’s deteriorating financial condition and operating performance and has allegedly dropped bonuses and merit pay increases for lower-level employees.

Sources inside Frontier Communications tell Stop the Cap! Frontier CEO Dan McCarthy notified employees in email on March 2 — one week before employees were expecting to receive their annual bonus — the company would no longer be providing bonus compensation for “lower banded management employees.” They hired redundancy representation for employers for this case.

“He implied that he too was affected but I highly doubt that is the case,” one source tells us. “We weren’t notified via a ‘Town Hall’, no conference call, no face to face with our managers, only a cowardly e-mail sent from behind a desk thousands of miles away. Keep in mind that people use that to pay house taxes, medical bills, pay off other bills, pay college tuition, etc, and a week before we were slated to get it we’re told that it isn’t coming.”

McCarthy has been on the hot seat with Wall Street for weeks after reporting yet another quarter where many of Frontier’s most profitable customers are fleeing faster than the company can replace them with new ones. McCarthy also told investors that many of Frontier’s losses in the last quarter were due to the company finally disconnecting service and writing off customers who haven’t paid their Frontier phone bills for as long as a year in acquired former Verizon territories in Florida, Texas, and California.

McCarthy

“There was certainly no suggestion that the big acquisition would pay off in the company’s Q4 earning report when subscriber counts, average revenue per residential user, and quarter-over-quarter revenue all fell,” wrote Daniel B. Kline of TMFDankline. “That has been the pattern in all three quarters since the Verizon deal closed, and while McCarthy has done an excellent job controlling expenses, his excuses for the drop in subscribers have started to sound a bit hollow.”

That effort to “control expenses” may be coming at the expense of customers that Frontier is depending on to stay in business.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last month announced the state was reviewing Frontier’s performance in western New York. A Rochester television station has aired more than a half-dozen stories about deteriorating service quality at Frontier since last summer. After airing the first few stories, the station was inundated with hundreds of complaints about Frontier’s spotty broadband and phone service.

News10NBC (WHEC-TV) reported it can take weeks for a Frontier technician to show up on a service call. Customer service is no help and customers are not getting the services they paid to receive.

Frontier was also implicated last month in knocking a Rochester area radio station off the air. After the company first blamed the radio station’s equipment for the problem, Frontier eventually admitted its own “old infrastructure” was responsible for outages that interrupted broadcasts for hours at a time.

Frontier’s stock continues its descent.

Schneiderman has been focused on keeping New York’s ISPs honest about their speed claims and performance, but service reliability is also increasingly an issue, especially after high winds in a recent storm in western New York left nearly half of the Rochester metro area without essential utilities for several days. Infrastructure upkeep, particularly aging utility poles, is now under investigation by the state’s Public Service Commission. Early evidence revealed local utilities may have underinvested in pole maintenance for years due to cost cutting. Some utility poles in western New York are well over 50 years old, originally placed in the 1950s and 1960s. Hundreds failed in the high winds.

Frontier’s track record of blaming others for their own problems has not been well-received by employees.

“Maggie Wilderotter [former CEO of Frontier Communications] was bad but McCarthy’s leadership is erratic and catastrophic,” shares another Frontier middle management employee wishing to stay anonymous. “McCarthy was defending the regional management autonomy approach as a unique strength for Frontier last summer, now he’s declared that is inefficient and is centralizing management decisions at corporate headquarters. He was selling Wall Street on Frontier’s IPTV project in 2016 by promoting expanded service territories. Now that project is on hold and there are signs Frontier is pulling back on meaningful and long overdue broadband speed upgrades. He recently announced he was reorganizing residential and commercial sales units, something our competitors did long ago and will only disrupt things at Frontier even more. Poor customer service was the result of “on-shoring” our call centers? Not exactly. Poor training and inadequate support have left our call center employees unable to properly handle customer concerns. Employees can reach out to an employment law attorney when facing unjust treatment in the workplace. He also consistently downplayed how nightmarish the Verizon conversion was for our new customers in Florida, Texas, and California. It was bad planning, bad vision, and poor execution and the buck stops with our CEO.”

Another source tells us:

“We worked 60-80 weeks, late nights, weekends, countless hours away from our families to push forward with projects that were horrible for our customers and senior leadership was told to get the job done regardless any way they could. We worked through the AT&T and Verizon conversions. We performed as employees of Frontier. Who did not perform? Those making these horrible financial and planning decisions that caused major outages to former Verizon customers when they finally cut over. Some problems were so severe that many customers decided to leave.”

Frontier insiders tell us the company is on a mission to slash expenses across the board to turn in better financial results that can protect the company’s dividend payout to shareholders and, in turn, executive pay and bonuses. The company is reportedly considering allowing more employees to work from home to cut facilities costs, utilities, and maintenance expenses.

“There have been numerous resignations over this and morale is at an all-time low within the company,” a source tells us.

One of the employees sharing the latest developments reports he has turned in his resignation this month and hired an employment lawyer at HKM.com to get the compensation he deserves.

“I figure I should follow so many of our customers to a company that isn’t great, but at least makes an effort delivering what it promises.”

Frontier’s Problems Afflict Hundreds of Customers in Western N.Y.

WHEC-TV Rochester has been following problems with Frontier Communications since last summer. Until the acquisition of former Verizon customers in Texas, Florida, and California, the Rochester, N.Y. metropolitan area was considered Frontier’s largest legacy city service area. But just like in smaller rural communities, service problems have plagued Frontier, with complaints rolling in about slow or non-existent broadband, landline outages, poor billing and customer service practices, and service calls that take weeks before anyone shows up.

WHEC-TV Rochester began covering problems with Frontier on Aug. 22, 2016 with an investigation into internet woes at a Geneseo insurance agency. (2:21)

One day later (Aug. 23, 2016) complaints from other Frontier customers poured into WHEC-TV’s newsroom because of outages and bad service. (2:54)

In September, 2016 WHEC-TV was back with another story from frustrated and angry customers who can’t get suitable service from Frontier Communications, but found a $200 early termination fee on their bills when they tried to cancel. Now the Attorney General is getting involved. (3:18)

In late December, WHEC reported it had asked the N.Y. Public Service Commission to start an investigation into Frontier Communications over its broadband service. (2:20)

In February, when N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman came to town to discuss the honesty of ISP speed claims, WHEC reporter Jennifer Lewke instead questioned him about the hundreds of complaints the station had received about Frontier Communications. (3:03)

About one week after the Attorney General visited Rochester, WHEC reported Frontier Communications’ “old and outdated” equipment was directly responsible for taking a local radio station off the air for hours at a time. (1:10)

Several days after a windstorm in the Rochester area took away power to nearly half the metropolitan area, WHEC reports residents are frustrated waiting for cable and phone service to be restored. An investigation into utility infrastructure is now underway. (3:17)

Higher bills, confusing and conflicting services and pricing, and badly trained customer service representatives are just a few of the problems afflicting customers transitioning from Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable to service plans being gradually introduced around the country by Charter Communications/Spectrum. Stop the Cap! has collected more than 50 reports from customers experiencing problems, bill shock, lost access to Wi-Fi hotspots, and “bait and switch” promotions promised by one representative only to be reneged on later when the first bill arrives.

The $58/Month Charter Spectrum Rate Hike

Park La Brea resident Lydia Plona is one of dozens of customers in California that have complained to the Los Angeles Times about their soaring cable bills after Charter/Spectrum replaced Time Warner Cable in Southern California. It was among the first regions in the country to say goodbye to Time Warner Cable and hello to Charter and their Spectrum-branded service plans. Unfortunately, Charter has already worn out its welcome with customers like Plona. When Charter was done with her, the $96 Time Warner Cable bill she used to pay was replaced with a new $154 bill from Spectrum — a $58 rate hike per month, which amounts to almost $700 more a year.

Much of the Midwest just completed its transition away from Time Warner Cable and Bright House to Spectrum and confusing pricing and plans and expensive upgrade fees are troubling customers from Wisconsin to Ohio.

Want More than 60Mbps? Pay $199 Upgrade Fee

Micah Lane, a former Time Warner Cable customer in Columbus, Ohio faced a major dilemma — should he switch from his current Time Warner Cable broadband plan to Spectrum? He originally assumed the answer would be yes, believing he could upgrade from a 50/5Mbps Time Warner Cable plan to a 100Mbps Spectrum plan for around $30 more than he had paid Time Warner. He discovered an upgrade was ready and waiting, but would cost him a one-time $199 upgrade fee.

“I was told repeatedly when a Time Warner Cable customer moves to Spectrum, they are automatically assigned a base plan of 60Mbps,” Lane told us. “Any speed above that in a non-Time Warner Cable Maxx market is considered an upgrade subject to the $200 upgrade fee. My parents would not be happy with that on their bill.”

Stop the Cap! has communicated with a dozen Spectrum converts, and heard from at least 40 others about problems experienced with their plan transitions. The most common complaints reference a hard-to-avoid $200 broadband upgrade fee, charged even when moving from a 100Mbps Time Warner Cable plan to a 100Mbps Spectrum plan, and promised bundled package offers that ended up costing much more when the first bill arrived.

Charter’s standard broadband plan offers 60Mbps service.

“You better be ready for the fight of your life because I had to threaten to escalate my complaint to the Better Business Bureau and the FCC to get that $200 fee off my bill,” said Stop the Cap! reader Roger. “Nobody ever told me about the fee but it was applied to my online statement hours after I changed plans and of course there is no way to go back to Time Warner’s plans once you make the change.”

Charter/Spectrum has become increasingly intransigent about that $200 fee, which the company claims is necessary to verify your home connection is suitable for faster internet speeds. But some representatives have also blamed the fee on the need to recoup expenses from network upgrades, even when many of those upgrades were performed by Time Warner Cable before the company was sold.

“There is really massive confusion at Charter and the information you get is totally inconsistent from one operator to the next,” said Paul Friedrich in Cincinnati. He rents an apartment with a roommate and after being told the $200 upgrade fee was non-negotiable, he told Charter to stuff it. “We can get the same or better service without the upgrade fee from Cincinnati Bell so bye bye Spectrum. When we threatened them with canceled service, however, the fee magically disappeared!”

The “savings” Charter promised to bring Time Warner Cable customers have not exactly materialized in Ohio, either.

“I just called TWC/Spectrum to see if I could get upgraded internet,” wrote DSL Reports reader cmiz87 in Grove City. “I’m currently on the old 50/5Mbps plan. To upgrade to the 100/10Mbps plan would cost $104.99/month PLUS a $199.99 “activation” fee, even though I have my own modem. That is just for internet only.”

Especially aggravating to many Time Warner Cable customers in non-Maxx service areas is the special treatment Maxx customers received when their areas were converted to Charter Spectrum. Customers with at least 200Mbps service were initially transitioned from their Time Warner Cable Maxx service plans to Charter Spectrum’s 300Mbps plan without any upgrade fee. For those areas where the clock ran out waiting for Maxx upgrades when Charter completed its deal to acquire Time Warner Cable, it’s ‘pay $200 or no upgrade for you.’

“Customers in northern Kentucky [were already getting] 300Mbps service as a free upgrade for the last six months,” noted DSL Reports reader dougm0. “Last year Time Warner Cable was going door-to-door in my neighborhood in Cincinnati [telling us] you will get 300Mbps service free in a couple of months. Just two weeks ago I chatted with a rep that said I would still get a 300Mbps upgrade automatically when launched.”

Now Charter/Spectrum is charging what he calls “this bogus $200 fee.”

“My wife and I are planning our exit from Charter and going back to Cincy Bell,” he reports. “Free install and same speed for less.”

Business Class for 300Mbps

In Reno and other cities, some Charter customers are moving to Business Class service to get 300Mbps service, which is not yet available in most former Time Warner Cable areas. But it will not be cheap. New customers can sign up with a promotion for as little as $159/month, but after two years that price jumps to $279.

Residential Pricing Confusion

Charter’s residential pricing seemed simple enough when it was announced. But in practice, readers report it is all over the map. In Wisconsin, one customer in Franklin signed up for 300Mbps service for $110 per month and agreed to pay the $200 upgrade fee. But in Green Bay, Spectrum is charging $110 a month for 100Mbps — half the speed — along with the $200 upgrade fee. That was a dealbreaker. In Kenosha, one customer moving from a Time Warner Cable internet plan to Charter Spectrum’s basic 60Mbps plan found two unpleasant surprises on his bill:

01/19/2017 Change Of Service Fee $52.74
01/19/2017 Spectrum WiFi Activation $10.54

Adding even more confusion were prices quoted to another customer in West Wauwatosa:

• Ultra: 300/20Mbps, $105/mo, $199.99 upgrade fee
• Regular: 60/5Mbps, $68.63/mo, no upgrade fee

Confusion for Some Legacy Time Warner Cable Customers As Well

A surprise last upgrade for Time Warner Cable customers in Rochester, N.Y.

In markets that still have not transitioned to Charter Spectrum, there is confusion to be found there as well. Upstate New York will see an introduction to Spectrum service plans in February-March, but a few Time Warner Cable upgrades have been quietly introduced in the meantime. Rochester, N.Y., which never made it officially to the Maxx city upgrade list, now has 100Mbps broadband as an option, but representatives denied it for at least a week when customers called to upgrade.

The new speed option was supposed to only be offered to customers qualified to get it, as upgrades were gradually completed around the area, but a website issue marketed the upgrade to everyone, including to some customers as far away as Buffalo.

For those successfully signing up with what is likely to be their last Time Warner Cable plan, many are hoping the investment will help them avoid the $200 upgrade fee when Spectrum’s 100Mbps plan becomes available in the next month or two. But some former Time Warner Cable customers in other cities already transitioned and two Charter representatives we queried about this scenario say they will be out of luck.

Customers start with a 60Mbps standard internet plan from Charter in non-Maxx areas. If a customer chooses a higher speed plan, even if they had 100Mbps from Time Warner Cable before, the $200 upgrade fee still applies. Both representatives claimed the fee was mandatory.

But some of our readers report success in getting that fee off their bills or it was never charged. Speaking to a supervisor or making a service change with an executive level customer service representative can make a big difference avoiding that fee. Customers who establish contact with a Charter representative as a result of a Better Business Bureau or FCC complaint were able to get the fee consistently waived. Results were more mixed when talking to Charter Spectrum’s regular sales department, even when asking for a supervisor to intervene. It may be a case of finding a representative with the authority to waive the fee.

“Even the representative agreed with us it was unfair to charge us $200 for moving from 100Mbps with Time Warner Cable to 100Mbps with Charter Spectrum,” another Stop the Cap! reader in Texas told us. “But they couldn’t do anything about it. When we threatened to cancel, a retention representative finally intervened and got the fee off the bill, only to have it return a month later. We filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and that finally worked to get the fee removed. But my neighbor couldn’t get anyone to budge on that fee.”

Wi-Fi Woes in Florida

Bright House Networks customers are also experiencing transition troubles. Residential customers reportedly lost any static IP addresses they signed up for when they converted to a Charter Spectrum residential plan. Static IP addresses are still available for Spectrum commercial plans. More troubling for many is the loss of access to Bright House Network’s secure Wi-Fi network.

Customers in central Florida who switched from a Bright House plan to a Charter Spectrum plan lost access to “BHN Secure,” “Bright House Networks,” and secured “CableWiFi” hotspots formerly administered by Bright House. Customers used to access those secure networks using their My Services Bright House username and password. But after transitioning to a Charter Spectrum plan, those credentials no longer work. Customers can still use their Bright House Road Runner e-mail address and password to get access to the very insecure open “CableWiFi” hotspot option, but those doing so should exercise extreme caution using it for any confidential communications, banking, or other sensitive online activities.

Charter’s Bad Advice: Change Your Wi-Fi Password to Your Favorite Sports Team!

Techcrunch noticed some very bad advice coming from Charter’s social media team on Twitter, recommending their 31,700 Twitter followers change their Wi-Fi passwords in support of their favorite sports teams.

Change your WiFi password and show guests where your loyalty lies! #ThatsMyTeampic.twitter.com/7kg04D7GN9

— Spectrum (@GetSpectrum) January 23, 2017

The original tweet has been deleted, no doubt after someone realized the dangerous security lapse it introduced to Wi-Fi hackers who could probably guess the favorite teams of the locals.

The FrankenBundle: Fewer Options, Less Confusion, Higher Prices Later

In Indianapolis, former Bright House Networks customers are being told having fewer options is a good thing.

WRTV-TV talked with Charter spokesman Mike Pedalty, who called his former employer’s packages a “Frankenbundle:”

“We kept adding things and confusing customers, where they didn’t understand what we were adding on and how it was packaged,” Pedalty told the TV station. Now he says most customers will choose from three basic TV packages and ‘best of all you won’t have to fight for a promo rate every year, when your current package expires.’

That’s because Charter has no intention of negotiating a better deal for you as prices gradually increase.

Back in Los Angeles, Plona understands what merger benefits she is really getting from the deregulatory atmosphere that permitted Charter to buy Time Warner Cable.

“When you let these companies do as they please, all they do is raise our rates,” Plona said. “It seems like prices go up every time you deregulate.”

Artist rendition of Charter’s new regional headquarters in Rochester, N.Y.

The northeast region of Charter/Spectrum, encompassing six states, will soon be managed from a new regional headquarters office to be opened in Rochester, N.Y.

Elected officials across western New York joined Gov. Andrew Cuomo to congratulate Charter Communications for its decision to locate its new headquarters in suburban Rochester, where the cable company is expected to add 228 new full-time jobs.

Gov. Cuomo announced Charter will invest more than $2.9 million to renovate its existing offices on Mount Hope Avenue in downtown Rochester and its new 46,000 square-foot facility in Henrietta, which will house regional executives, call center workers, and technicians. New York taxpayers will cover $2.5 million of those costs through the Empire State Development Corporation, a public-benefit corporation that offers tax credits in return for job creation commitments.

“This expansion of one of the nation’s leading cable providers in the Finger Lakes is a clear signal that our economic strategy is driving innovation and transforming the local economy,” Gov. Cuomo said. “Cutting-edge companies are betting on this region like never before and are growing their businesses and creating-good paying jobs in the process. By incentivizing private sector growth, we are generating momentum and strengthening the economy in Monroe County and beyond.”

Cuomo

“By early next year, this beautifully restored facility will allow us to bring together our field operations leadership and vital support functions under one roof,” said Charter executive vice president of field operations Tom Adams. “Through our partnership with the New York State Economic Development Corporation, the Rochester area benefits from an influx of high-paying technical jobs, while our customers across Upstate New York and throughout New England benefit from improved communication, collaboration and efficiency in our operations.” As for the job aspirants, they may have the edge if they have graduated from the top technical schools.

Time Warner Cable employed 460 workers at its existing office in downtown Rochester. Charter’s new regional headquarters will add 230 workers.

Gov. Cuomo has heavily promoted New York as a new corporate-friendly state to create jobs and grow businesses. The “Finger Lakes Forward” initiative has already spent $3.4 billion in the region since 2012 to invest in and attract key industries like photonics, agriculture/food production, and advanced manufacturing. The plan has seen some success for the key regions of Rochester (photonics), Batavia (milk/yogurt production), and Canandaigua (mixed manufacturing), but has not been as successful keeping jobs when businesses have downsizing on their mind.

For Rochester, Charter’s announcement will still result in a net job loss of more than 300 jobs in the telecommunications sector because of Verizon Wireless’ announced closure of its Rochester call center, which will eliminate 645 jobs in the area when the facility closes Jan. 27, 2017. The governor’s office called Verizon’s job cuts “an egregious example of corporate abuse.”