Charter Spectrum Jacks Up Rates (Again) Thanks To Merger 'Synergies'

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

When Charter Communications (Spectrum) proposed merging with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016, the company repeatedly promised that the amazing "synergies" would lower rates, increase competition, boost employment, and improve the company's services. Of course like countless telecom megamergers before it, that never actually happened. Instead, the company quickly set about raising rates to manage the huge debt load. And its service has been so aggressively terrible, the company recently almost got kicked out of New York State, something I've never seen in 20 years of covering telecom.

Cities like Lexington, Kentucky continue to explore their legal options in efforts to hold Charter accountable (something it's clear the Trump FCC won't do). Charter, meanwhile, has informed many of these users that they'll be seeing yet another rate hike in November across the company's entire, 41-state territory. All told, users will pay at least $100 more for the same service annually, thanks in part to increases in several of the sneaky fees Charter routinely tacks on to user bills to jack up the advertised price post sale:

"Broadcast TV surcharge will increase from $8.85 to $9.95/month, Charter said, "This reflects costs incurred from local broadcast TV stations." • Spectrum receivers will increase from $6.99 to $7.50/month. • An increase from $54.99 to $59.99/month for Spectrum Internet for current customers who subscribe to Spectrum TV. • An increase from $64.99 to $65.99/month for Spectrum Internet for current customers who do not subscribe to Spectrum TV."

Modest hikes, but they add up. It's worth noting that that "Broadcast TV fee" is simply a part of the cost Charter pays for programming, broken out of the bill, and tacked on below the line to help covertly jack up the advertised rate post sale. It's something most cable operators have been routinely sued for, and regulators enjoy turning a blind eye to (despite largely being false advertising). The company, for its part, continues to insist that these price hikes simply reflect the wonderful service users are now getting from the nation's second biggest cable provider:

"The price of Spectrum Internet reflects the dramatically faster speeds and investments we’ve made in reliability and quality," Michel said. "Earlier this year, we doubled the starting download speed of Spectrum Internet from 100 to 200 megabits per second. Lastly, our receivers are still comparable or lower in price than our major competitors'."

Charter omits that many of these speed hikes only came about thanks to merger conditions, or that its speed increases lagged dramatically behind contemporaries like Comcast as it focused primarily on its last megamerger. Of course higher prices, poor service, and some of the worst ranked customer support of any company in America (no easy feet given the airline and banking industries expertise) are the net result of both the blind deregulation of natural monopolies and our adoration of blindly buying into megamerger promises, a reality that our tech policy never quite seems capable of keying in on.

This is, unfortunately for you, a problem that's only going to get worse before it gets better thanks to a lack of competition in broadband and a refusal to embrace policies that actually encourage said competition. Instead, the telecom industry (with the Trump FCC's help) has been waging a not subtle war on both federal and state consumer protections, while at the same time quietly securing a significant monopoly over faster broadband speeds. You'd think the end result of this would be obvious, but given our refusal to address this reality, you'd apparently be mistaken.

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Filed Under: fees, mergers, rates, synergies

Companies: charter, charter communications