My experience with Spectrum Internet was always mediocre. While they were responsive with hooking up service and the install tech was a decent person, the service itself was on the low end of what I would consider to be a good value. Other providers in the DFW area, Grande in particular, offered much higher speed packages with better pricing. I had used Grande in another home and it was great customer service and excellent value of speed vs. price. With Spectrum, 200 Mbps for 75 -80 a month is a mediocre value. I had service outages more than once.
Fast forward to time of ending service. I had sold my house and would be closing a short time into the next month. I was actually contacted first by Spectrum to ask if an new service connection request was valid. I stated yes and that it was OK to disconnect my service that day or the day before. It would have been 10 days into the new month. On the first of the month, I had my granddaughter in front of the computer ready for an online school day, and I discover there is no internet. I do some quick trouble shooting and determine I am not getting any internet service. I was able to get a temporary setup for her while I was on the phone with Spectrum. Somehow, the disconnect for my service was put in for the first and not the 10th. After some working through the process, service was connected. 5 days later I was looking at my bill to determine final payment and the bill was for an entire month and the dates on the bill were for the time period after my service was to be disconnected. I called Spectrum and that is when the fun began.
Over the course of the conversation, the agent informed me that the dates on the bill were wrong and that I was actually being billed from 1 to 30 of each month and because I was into the new month, I had to pay for the entire month. I asked if they were going to pro rate the unused days as obviously, after the 10th, I would no longer be at the service address. The agent stated "We don't pro-rate, as we are an entertainment company." What?! The name of the service is "internet service provide." How is it entertainment. I argued with the agent and actually asked for the supervisor who kept just saying "we are an entertainment company just like Hulu or Netlix who bill for an entire month with no proration." This is not a fair comparison because each of those services you can take with you through an app for the remainder of the month. A hardwired home connection is not portable. Big difference. I refused to pay and immediately disconnected my modem and told them to take me off their service now. I even used the following example: "What your company is doing is the same as if I pre paid $30 at a gas pump, only pumped $15 and when I went to get change, I was told, sorry, we aren't giving you the other $15 back."
I waited a month and called back to resolve it. Offered to pay for the 5 days. No go. I spoke to a supervisor again. He gave me some details. In Aug, Sep, Oct of 2019, Spectrum decided to change their billing practice to no proration and apparently published it in a monthly newletter. Not to shift blame, but I don't read those. I login every month and pay my bill, ensure it is correct and that is it. As I talked with this supervisor he also stated that the feedback from a multitude of other customers was the same as mine, expressing extreme dissatisfaction at the practice. Another point through this is that during the dissconnect, reconnect fiasco, nobody even took one minute to point out that there would be no proration. I would have left the service disconnected if they had. What this now begins to look like is a greedy corporation taking money from everyday people.
i admit that if I were attentive to the newsletters, I might have known ahead of time. I will accept the blame for that. But in the end, does that change the fairness/correctness of their policy? I would also ask, do they do the same thing with their Spectrum Mobile. I certainly wouldn't even consider it now because of this experience. So be warned, SPECTRUM WILL NOT PRORATE AND THEY ARE INFLEXIBLE ON THIS, EVEN WHEN THEIR OWN EMPLOYEES KNOW IT ISN'T RIGHT AND ARE GETTING BEAT UP LEFT AND RIGHT FROM CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS.
Feel free to forward this to anyone you know using Spectrum. read more