Time-Warner / BrightHouse / Spectrum, or whatever they're calling themselves this month, has reached a new low.

Paying bills today, I noticed an increase in their monthly charge. There was a new item on the bill. Some "movie channel" that I had never heard of, never requested, never ordered, never authorized.

Opened a "chat" window on their website and monitored it while I did other things. After only thirty-seven minutes, somebody responded.

It seems that they had added this so-called service to my account as a free promotion, and then after a while, decided to charge for it. All without my knowledge. I do not watch TV at all; with my hearing impairment it is just frustrating. My wife watches some very specific channels. Neither of us had noticed this new channel, nor have we ever watched anything on it.

Heated words during the chat session. I said, "This is a sneaky, underhanded, unethical, practice on BrightHouse’s part — adding things to a customer’s account, hoping that it would not be noticed. Do the people who run this company NOT have any shame?" No response to that. None at all.

They agreed to remove it from our service and remove the charges.

I really need to solve the problems with our OTA antenna, and then cut the cable company's TV service, completely. Might keep them for internet, I'll have to evaluate the alternatives.

If they did it to you, they did it to others, and somebody will start a class action lawsuit. In several years you may get a settlement check for 30 cents.

Another pet peeve of mine: Yeah, I am an Old Fart, holder of an Official Geezer Card. I remember when people dressed appropriately to go to the office, for airline flights, etc. I remember when people held doors for each other.

Maybe this is not rational, but it annoys me to no end when a customer NO-service rep gets overly familiar.

The rep on this chat session started with "Hello <my first name>."

I felt obligated to supply the business training that her employer skimped on, or maybe the rep was busy finger-fucking her cell phone during that lesson.

"We do not know each other. You are not my BFF. You may address me as Mr. V-Tail."

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

Might keep them for internet

They are getting wise to people ditching the TV service and just streaming everything and have made it that standalone internet often costs MORE than a package with TV and internet service.

And being told that they will "take it off the bill"? Watch to see if it actually happens. I used to have a cable outage that would last for multiple days. I would call and tell them I wanted a credit for the days I had no service. Never happened.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
And being told that they will "take it off the bill"? Watch to see if it actually happens. I used to have a cable outage that would last for multiple days. I would call and tell them I wanted a credit for the days I had no service. Never happened.

I just checked my bill, on their website. It has already been corrected. Well it is one cent more than the last few months, that's probably just a rounding error from the adjustment.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

Might keep them for internet

They are getting wise to people ditching the TV service and just streaming everything and have made it that standalone internet often costs MORE than a package with TV and internet service.

Yup, Time-Warner / BrightHouse / Spectrum seems to be doing something like that.

However, I just checked AT&T. Their U-Verse service will give me 50 MB internet service (I currently have 25 MB with BrightHouse) for $50 / month. Adding a very basic TV cable type service will make it $60 / month, total. Add ten bucks to serve a second TV set. DVR and all equipment included. DVR is extra with BrightHouse, I think it's around eleven bucks, but I have my own TiVo so I don't pay for BrightHouse DVR. Cable Card for the TiVo is $2.95 / month. I'll have to check more details when I have time. Not my top priority right now.

UVerse is pretty pricey once the promotional pricing is over. My wife was constantly on the phone to get them to lower the pricing. We went to Direct TV instead.

I'll need to check and see whether there is any obligation to stay with U-Verse after the initial one-year period.

Bouncing between U-Verse and Spectrum on an annual basis might get introductory promotional pricing each time.

Sprint was charging me a Tucson City tax on my invoice although I lived a mile outside the city. They claimed it was a Tucson zip code.

I had to take a GPS satellite photo to the Sprint store to prove to them I did not live in Tucson.

It took a few months to receive a refund.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Time-Warner / BrightHouse / Spectrum, or whatever they're calling themselves this month...

The Spectrum tech had to come to the house a month or two back, I had to bitch about cable tv stuff that was going on. The tech says he strictly streams, Spectrum's cable product wasn't worth the money and added the Spectrum internet services are their best "product".

Note for the unaware -- If using phone support, rather than generally asking for "agent" or "representative", use "retention". The folks at the other end of that line are the ones most valuable in getting things done for you.

quote:

Note for the unaware -- If using phone support, rather than generally asking for "agent" or "representative", use "retention". The folks at the other end of that line are the ones most valuable in getting things done for you.

I have found the Department is sometimes called Customer loyalty rather than retention. In V tail's day it was called the Complaint Department.
The other word to use is escalate the issue. I have had to speak with two lower level employees based out of Jamaica before I got the Customer Loyalty Department based out of Las Vegas. They will generally lower your bill substantially for about a year but in exchange you are locked in for smome length of time. It is usually a matter of how much time you have to invest in gettting the best price.

Around here Spectrum has very little competition, aside from Dish net or Direct TV.
I have Dish Net, but I have to get it through a local company.
I recently did get Spectrum internet and went from .7mbs to 100mbs.

I am on Spectrum, but for reasons only Cable companies understand, I am billed with the old Brighthouse rates and pay to Brighthouse.

My set-top box had to be replaced (lightning hit) and was, but with a Spectrum box which uses different coding and should not work but does.

I had to have a conversation with the Spectrum people to get that to happen. During the course of the discussion he said that Spectrum billing shows internet as the main charge, with TV as a small add-on. This is the reverse of Brighthouse.
My only access to the internet here is Spectrum, DSL is way slow, I doubt if dial-up exists.