Cutting Cords and Reducing Fees with America’s Worst Corporation

The corporation that hates its consumers the most, Time Warner Cable, is sticking it to us again. I kind of fell into a Time Warner rant earlier this month, but today it’s all about TWC.

(This one is going to be vitriolic, so I hope you like the taste of vinegar)

Time Warner got hell a few years ago for suddenly charging you $5.99 a month for the rental of a modem that was already in your house. I know why they did it, but I’m still not sure how they got it past regulators. Time Warner, obviously, would just love to raise their rates.  But raising your rates takes a lot effort.  Since they are a utility, they would have to prove that they are experiencing increased costs, necessitating higher rates to be paid by all customers.  They couldn’t prove that, or didn’t want to, and didn’t raise the rates. Plus, they would have to advertise this new higher price, when fees can just be hidden away.

So instead, they invented the modem rental fee.  Suddenly, the charge showed up on our bills. I never knew I was “renting” a modem from them. I never agreed to a rental agreemen, but suddenly I was part of one. Doesn’t make much sense. It wasn’t a new modem or anything, just the same old junk they had given us years earlier.

By the way, this month the modem lease fee increases to $8.00! For the same modem!

There is a way to get out of it. If you buy your own modem, you can return the “rental” modem to Time Warner and eliminate the fee. Time Warner has a list of modems that will work. Amazingly, they will actually tell you which models will work! I wanted to future-proof ourselves so I wouldn’t have to buy a new modem ever again, so I figured out the newest, most-advanced model. That’s the Arris/Motorola SB6183.

New sci-fi modem, owned free and clear

Apparently a lot other people had the same idea, because this modem was sold out on Amazon with no sign of returning. But Ridinkulous Nation, we are smarter than this! I set up an alert on eBay to tell me if this modem was ever listed.  Well, it soon was, and I grabbed it for a Buy It Now price of $60. It retails for well over $100 on Amazon.

Then began the second part of our modem lease adventure: Returning the old modem.

The new one was easy enough to set up, and I dare say it delivers faster speeds than the old one.  Now all I had to do was return the old modem to Time Warner.  You can’t send it in the mail.  A considerate corporation would give you a box with postage to return it.  That would be too nice of Time Warner, though.  They make you go to their awful store. The local store is located in the mall, of all places, meaning I had to go to the mall! You can imagine how miserable this was. I never go to the mall, but now I had to take time out of my day to return this garbage.

You can’t just drop off the modem either. They make you wait! The gall! The unmitigated gall! There is a serial number on the modem that is tied to your account so I should just be able to drop it in a bin.  There is no end to Time Warner’s disdain for their customers.

Anyway, I leave the modem with the cashier and go home, expecting to see the charge taken off the next bill. Wouldn’t you know, they still charged me for the modem I didn’t even have! I find it hard to believe that this wasn’t on purpose. There are three reasons why they would continue to charge me for a modem that I returned:

  1. Nefariousness – Expecting me not to notice that the fee was still attached to my bill and continuing to pay it.
  2. Incompetence – An employee didn’t do their job in re-inventorying the modem. I find this hard to believe because the cashier checked it back in in front of me.
  3. Shitty Tech – None of their systems are connected. A modem connected to my account could be returned but have no effect on my account.

Time Warner is a tech company, for better or worse, so I have to believe their systems are automated to an extent. But it could be a combination of reasons #1 and 3. It could be Shitty Tech built shittily on purpose amid the aforementioned environment of disdain for their customers where they don’t care whether the modem gets taken off your account or not.

Here is another fee or two you might not know you’re paying:
$2.75 Broadcast Fee
This is a fee you pay for the privilege of receiving local broadcast stations over cable. It’s a charge by the local stations charged to Time Warner for the right to broadcast their over-the-air networks. Time Warner simply passes it onto the consumer.  If you ask Time Warner why they started charging the fee, they’ll say that it’s “important to educate our customers on how these broadcast fees impact them.” I’ve never heard of payment as a form of education

Nevermind that we’re already paying $9.99 a month for these basic networks, or the fact that you can get them for free over the air. The $2.75 is, quite explicitly, an idiot fee charged to us cable subscribers not smart enough to just use an antenna. “Since you don’t want to use an antenna, we’re going to tax you.”

Sports Broadcasting Fee
Well, news just came down that Time Warner is using their favorite new tactic, the invented fee, again.  There will be a new $2.75 monthly fee for sports programming. Not just for the people who watch ESPN, NESN or SportsChannel (does that still exist? Can you tell I don’t do sports?). This is a fee that everyone will pay, whether you watch sports or not. Because, apparently, it’s a societal good that we all experience sports in the culture, so it should be subsidized by everyone… Bah! That’s a $33 yearly tax for sports! Or a $33 sin tax for not watching sports! However you want to look at it, it’s a dick move to end all dick moves. With our basic cable channels, we don’t even get a sports network!

I’ve absolutely had it with Time Warner at this point, and I am now convinced that they need to be banished from our home. I have been trying to get an antenna to work for a few months with no luck, but now I am going to double down and once and for all put this Time Warner bill out of its misery. Our bill from Time Warner right now consists of $55.49 for internet, $9.99 for basic cable, plus the above mentioned $2.75 broadcast tv fee, and soon, the $2.75 sports programming fee. With an antenna, I will be eliminating $15.49 a month, or $185.88 a year.

Time Warner, you can go eat a bowl full of dicks and die.

So… seen any good tv shows lately?

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