Did you have a living room packed full of friends for a football season kickoff party on Thursday, Aug. 31, only to see the screen go black in the middle of an exciting game?
Did you have to go out and buy your mother an Apple TV box or a Roku and then spend half the day setting it up and teaching her how to use it so she wouldn’t miss the fantastic tennis being played in the US Open?
Are you a Duke fan who didn’t get to see the greatest Duke football upset in history because you are a Spectrum customer and Spectrum wasn’t showing it?
Well, don’t despair. Spectrum feels your pain, and, in response, the company is giving viewers $6 for the trouble of missing nearly two weeks of great sports, not to mention shows that kids love and get upset about if they can’t watch. Yes, that same $6 is also meant to cover the emotional cost of your children’s tears.
Don’t spend it all in one place.
During the channel outage that resulted from the war between Disney and Spectrum cable – an outage that began on Thursday, Aug. 31 and ended on Monday, Sept. 11 – those who called in to Spectrum customer service were told that they would be getting a $15 refund due to the outage.
One customer service representative for Spectrum said on Wednesday, Sept. 13 – two days after the channels were back up – that customer representatives were told earlier that the rebate would be $15, so that’s what they were telling people who called in. Now the amount is $6, she said.
However, when a complaint was made about the $6, the representative said she could raise the amount by $9. The representative told the Rhino Times that customers were getting $6 back, but, if anyone called in and complained about that amount, representatives were instructed to add $9 – thus totaling $15, the amount initially promised.
When the call was escalated to a manager, the manager said that even $6 for customers was more than fair because, in reality, looking at the percentage of channels lost and the time they were lost for, mathematically, he said, customers were really only entitled to $3.25.
When he was informed that many customers had to go out and buy streaming boxes and pay $70 for a month of service with Hulu or YouTube TV in order to recover the programing Spectrum was not providing, he said that by no means would the company cover any of those costs – even if a customer wants to cancel.
A few states have laws that force Spectrum to allow a customer to cancel in the middle of a billing cycle and get a prorated share of the money back. However, in North Carolina, if someone wishes to cancel a Spectrum account, Spectrum will not cancel an account immediately and refund a prorated amount for the remainder of the billing cycle. Instead, all Spectrum customers in this state have to pay for an entire month, even if they want to quit on, say, the second day of the billing cycle.
The manager blamed Disney for the outage, saying that Disney had repeatedly raised the prices for Spectrum to carry ESPN and Disney channels in recent years, which, he said, was very unfair to Spectrum.
He didn’t mention that Spectrum has been repeatedly raising prices on its customers in recent years, and that, in some cases, customers who were guaranteed in January 2023 that their current pricing was good for 12 months saw Spectrum raise their rates just three months later, despite what the company had promised.
Speaking of Sneaky Spectrum, have you enjoyed the pleasure of trying to cancel your service? When I cancelled mine, I had 11 days out of 30 of service for May. They are still billing me for the other 19 days, I get daily messages from Sunrise collection service. I wonder how much push-back they are experiencing?
With streaming services available, and an antenna, who needs the sneaky MFs?
Did you read the article? That’s the law in most states.- Spectrum is a MONTHLY service because on the 1st day of the month, Spectrum pays all the channels for the entire month for all its subscribers. When you cancel mid month they don’t get their money back, so why should they give you yours. You properly owe them for those days. Here’s a thought- Read the Terms & Conditions of your service next time so you won’t be surprised..
Poor Spectrum, it breaks my heart to think of them shelling out their scarce, hard-earned money to those mean ‘ol cable networks at the beginning of every month, only to have their ungrateful, unreasonable, illiterate, scumbag customers cancel service 15 days before the month’s end…and have the gall to expect a partial refund on the full 30-days of service they paid for. I mean, Spectrum can’t afford that kind of revenue loss! Why are these customers so greedy and selfish and irresponsible? It’s not like Spectrum is a multi-billion dollar monopolistic corporation that consistently cheats and steals every dime of customer money it can get away with while providing embarrassingly sub-par cable, Internet, and phone services under fluid utilities contracts that are borderline illegal and 100% unethical…right? Clearly Spectrum is the victim and we should start a GoFundMe account for them.
(Anyone defending Spectrum is either a plant, about, or an a$$hole. PERIOD.)
I disagree with your analysis. The phone rep I spoke to said that they didn’t bill pro-rata at the end of service.
Regardless, I won’t pay it.
They are the worst organization in the industry. It would be great if they spent a fraction on their products that they spend on marketing. They are truly horrible in virtually every category. My building just switched to Fios and it’s far better than Spectrum thus far.
Don’t pay it. It’s a scam. All spectrum customers pay a month in advance, so they owe you. Most people pay this scam without question and spectrum gets rich off money they are not owed.
Actually 15$ for the week without espn
Isn’t that the way most companies work like Hulu and Netflix? Pretty sure they don’t prorate.
No longer a problem for me. Adios spectrum and woke disney.
Aww does da widdle snowfwake need a tissue? Did you get kicked out of a musical for vaping?
91
SPECTRUM is a rip-off, and always have been. Dishonorable people.
Excellent article. I am so annoyed with the $6 refund. Missed the best Duke football game and children had an extended holiday weekend with no Disney. Didn’t even have a heads up about a blackout. Spectrum has good technical service for cable and Internet but the top decision making could use some improvement.
Spectrum up the Rectum
I have an email telling me I will receive a $15 credit so it will be hard for them to deny that promise.
Spectrum never “promised” anybody $15. That is the amount they were crediting to people who called in, and it’s the exact amount that those customers were charged for one month of the channels that they lost. When the issue ended in only 10 days, they recalculated what 10 days of the same channels would cost, and it was $6 so they credited ” everybody that. If you call them, yes, they will add the nine dollars back. Spectrum’s prices are directly related to the cost of the channels, and that’s why they were fighting Disney in the first place. Most of the price increases that you referenced were the result of increases from providers like Disney. If you’re read any of the industry rags, they confirmed that Spectrum was in the right, and that this was necessary to reset the market. It’s a nice hit piece, but maybe do some actual research next time.
What time does your shift at Spectrum start this evening, Steve-O?
What time do you go in for your shift at Spectrum this evening, Steve-O?
How long have you been on their payroll?
The actual amount you pay for what was unavailable during this event is approximately $3 per week. Why do people expect to get refunded more than 5 dollars for 1 and a half week outage?
I’ll believe it when I see it on my bill! So far, all I’ve seen is a $6.00 increase and it seems to go up every 3 months, We missed the Gators opening day(even though they lost) it would have been nice to watch!
I gotnrid of Spectrum and got myself a fire stick! I got Fubo TV and I get all my football games,
Little stealth rate increases. Welcome to the real corporate world.
When Spectrum has an outage they will only provide a rebate if you call and complain. No doubt they have computer records that show to the minute the outage for each and every household. That said, Spectrum could easily compute the appropriate rebate and should do so. How they get away not doing this is incomprehensible to me. Seems that the FCC or some other entity could make a regulation regarding Spectrum outages.
If any utility such as electric or gas is unavailable I don’t pay for services not rendered. Spectrum should be no different.
Gosh! When YouTube TV lost Disney/ESPN for a few hours, they gave a $15 rebate!
But they don’t have to offer any credit, especially for missing channels or programming due to carriage disputes, per their Video Terms & Conditions. And the channels were unavailable through the dispute, and at the time, not permanently removed from packages, so, per FCC regulations, would have had 30 days to notify customers of the permanently removed channels. Spectrum can’t post content on channels that belong to Disney so they wouldn’t have been able to advise customers that the channels would become unavailable when they did. It’s silly to think that Spectrum would refund any amount that a customer spent on buying a Firestick. What’s next? Can they refund my bar tab as well?
That being said, from a customers’ pov, Spectrum could’ve notified customers that they have been in carriage negotiations with Disney since before August and that the deadline was coming.
Spectrum removed my cable card even when I told them ahead of time not to, and when it happens, they won’t put it back, making ur tivo a paperweight. I love my TiVo, but cable systems are proactively killing them off. Spectrum are crooks.
I lowered my spectrum package to the 15 channel ” special” they have because my bill was almost 300 a month and I was assured it wouldn’t go past 150,well 3 or 4 of them have been blank since the “great debate” and its the middle of the month and I haven’t been offered anything! Truly a rip off company.
I see all the complaints about the black out, but I don’t see anyone complaining about the 7 channels that you aren’t getting back. And when I called Spectrum on it I was told my monthly bill will not be adjusted to show the missing channels