Free speed upgrade TWC/Spectrum

[Rand]

So I'm here in the red-haired stepchild area of Roadrunner internet. until this year our top speed was 50mbit(down)/5mbit(up)(ultimate) They also offered: 15/1 (regular) 20/2(turbo) 30/5(extreme) After the charter merger.. They offered only 60/6 speed... the new normal speed. or 100/10 for a one time upgrade fee of $200? or $300 and $99.99 a month. Today.. I'm watching the steelers game and there is an AD for Spectrum We are upgrading our base speed to 100/10.... I checked and I do have 118/11 speed... Kind of an odd way I would have expected an email or maybe a flyer with the bill?? Not an expensive TV ad during football... So if you have spectrum go check your internet you might have been upgraded free.

 

[2strokeNorthstar]

Lucky. I had Spectrum 100/100 and the Frontier 50/50 is faster. Spectrum was always slow and dropping.

 

[eljefino]

Haha the fee was such a crooked maneuver. These hijinks aren't new. I had adelphia like 12 years ago and they sent me a flyer to buy this cable modem from Circuit City (remember them). I crunched the numbers and the $70 modem would pay for itself in rental fee savings in under a year. Got the modem, then they dropped the rental fee in half shortly thereafter. They know what happens next. You don't. TWC needed money at some point so they declared that my bill, instead of paying for services already rendered, would pay for the next month instead. So I got a double bill. They still freak out (rabidly!) if the auto pay gets declined due to CC number theft.

 

[HangFire]

The family owners of Adelphia went to jail. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8291040/ns/bus...-term-son-gets/ Don't understand why C-level of Comcast isn't there, too. Comcast consistently offer everyone a certain price for a year, then jacks the price up after a few months. Then you have to call and beg them to bring it down. They give various excuses; promotion expired is the usual one. But I started writing down who said what and how long they said it would last. Wouldn't you guess? They lie. My last "one year" discount lasted all of 3 months. I nailed the rep on it and they said "oh new billing system." Uh-huh. My printed monthly bills look exactly the same. Never saw a new billing system not change something. Then the refund comes a month later and they tell you to pay the current bill and then you'll get a discount the following month. The whole scam seems to be to front-load income now, and of course, overbill everyone that fails to notice.

 

[razel]

Chiming in with my experience. 3 homes with 50mb Time Warner Cable (TWC) and became Spectrum. 100mb is the minimum advertised speed in my area and costs just $5 more. On my 1st call for my home I asked for the 100mb price for $5 more and was told that it was not available for me since I was an existing customer. They were kind enough to let me work things out with retentions. Ended up getting 200mb for about $10 more than 100mb or $15 more to go from 50 to 200 for 1 year only. I took it. Found 200mb useless since wireless cards in my laptops can only achieve it if I am in the same room with line of sight to the router. After 3 months, I called to reduce my speed to 100mb/s. That's when they finally was able to give me the 100mb/s price for $5 more than my 50mb/s price with TWC. That's also when they provided a new cable/WiFi router at their expense. TWC used to charge $10 a month for the combo/WiFi. I don't use the built in WiFi anyhow and set the cable modem to bridge mode. 2nd home wasn't bad. They had Internet/phone and wanted to add cable. They had no issues giving the free upgrade to 100mb/s with no price increase probably since they are making more money per month with a new cable subscription. 3rd home was probably 4 months after the 2nd home. They were charging that home the $10 cable modem/WiFi fee when never had such a box. We used our own cable modem. They were more than happy to reduce the monthly charge to make up for the $10 charge and upgrade them to 100mb/s. Lessons learned... It wasn't straightforward to get the free upgrade. If they say no, temporarily upgrade your internet to beyond 100mb/s. Use it for a month or two then call again to drop your speed. You'll have a better chance with retentions. Most important lesson. Realistically with real-world wireless signals and mobile device speeds 75mb/s is the sweet spot. @50mb/s service, my speedtests were 69mb/s, but it's hard to deny 100mb/s when it is just $5 more and my average speedtest is 120.