Internet Service 2019

Short Summary

AT&T still sucks...FCC is less relevant than ever...TWC is now Spectrum...B-minus result $50 a month promotional price for a year.

I've been putting off talking to Spectrum about my internet rate for about a year and a couple of months. I put it off because I was working on a project and I knew I didn't have any leverage. I also put it off because dealing with Spectrum or any telecom for that matter is a exercise in misery. Their customer service is designed to weed out any but the most patient or stingy people. AT&T put fiber in and started sending out letters offering a decent price on their new service. Short of an FCC or FTC that lives up to their mission statement or an actual competitive market, I've got about as much leverage as I will ever have.

My first call is to Spectrum. I want to give Spectrum a chance to make me an offer before I go through the pain of making a switch. I figure if they go down to $55 a month for the year I'll stay. Of course they don't take me seriously. I ask them about the very last day I can cancel service before I end up having to pay them for another month. I ask if I can set a termination date for my service. They claim that if I want to cancel service I have to call on that exact date to cancel service. Now this should have triggered a transfer to retention, but no transfer to retention means I have to call AT&T.

My first call to AT&T goes poorly. I have the letter they sent me with the offer I want but the woman I talk to can't see that offer. She's trying to saddle me with a DirectTV bundle I don't want. She's saying the offer doesn't exist and I must be misinformed or misinterpreting the letter AT&T sent me. Then she says they found the offer I'm looking for $40 a month. She's talking fast hoping I don't hear her say "4Mb download speed". I stop her in the middle of her spiel and try to contain my rage. I look at the letter they sent me scouring it for clues and signs. That's when I see that the offer expired in September. I'm feeling embarrassed now. I thank her for her time and hang up.

Later on in the day I'm looking around and I find another AT&T letter but that's expired too. I don't stop looking until I find an AT&T letter that isn't expired. When I find it I just get mad again. There is an offer out there that AT&T conveniently failed to find.

The next day I call AT&T. It's a different number; I hope I'll have a different result. This time they know exactly what I'm talking about and all the offers I'm hearing are there in the letter. When I bring up my previous call and how they couldn't find any of these offers they blame it on miscommunication. Apparently I wasn't clear enough, so it's my fault that I couldn't get the offer I wanted. That makes me mad but I try to put that away because I finally have someone who can answer my questions about their new fiber service.

I only care about price and their data cap, but I have to sit there while she does her spiel. Amazing speeds blah blah blah. Super reliable blah blah blah. Eventually she runs out of script and I can ask her about the price and the data cap. She makes a claim that the price she's quoting doesn't require a bundle. I know she messed up. She doesn't know she messed up.  But I have her agreeing to a lower price, bundle or no bundle. I skip my question about data caps because I can make a deal for service for $40 a month. Of course I know this deal won't hold up, but I've got to try anyway. I try to set up an install date but she won't give me an install date without an order. AT&T really doesn't make it easy to switch. I finally cave and I give her some really sensitive personal information just to make an order. Sure they probably have it anyway; I used to have AT&T uVerse, but giving out personal information is always risky. She's checking something, and that's when I think she realizes she messed up. She tells me to hold the line, but I don't hear any hold music. It's just dead silence. Five minutes pass. Ten minutes pass. Fifteen minutes of dead silence pass before I hang up and try again.

This third time around I think they've escalated me to someone with more experience. He's smoother and far more careful with his word choices. When I explain to him that I was in the middle of an order he checks around and comes back to me to say that there's no order in the system. How so very familiar this is. When I first switched to AT&T from DSLExtreme I thought I had an order with AT&T for uVerse. I had an order number, the name of the CSR I talked to, and an ID number of said CSR. A couple of days later I called AT&T to check on the status of my order and suddenly I didn't have a order. The name I had was garbage. The order number garbage. The ID number garbage. They tried to smooth things over with a real order and a $100 gift card but they gave me an installation date that left me without service for a month. This still bothers me.

So this guy will be happy to place an order for me, here we go again. At least I don't have to go through the script this time, but I still have to get him to make the terms clear. I have to nail everything down. I talk about price. There's a $10 difference between bundled and not bundled. $40 when bundled with phone service. $50 without any other service.  And this is the hill he wants to die defending. We get into it. I want the lower price because we have AT&T phone service. He'll be happy to do that if I attach internet to the phone service. I say no. I want the accounts to be separate. He insists on the same account. I spent years with AT&T on my own account and now it's a dealbreaker? I can't believe what I'm hearing. He insists that if I want the privilege of my own AT&T account I'll have to pay an extra $10 a month. I tell him if I have to pay the non-bundled price despite having AT&T phone service I will terminate our landline.  I still can't quite understand why he traded $40 a month for $10 a month--maybe AT&T just doesn't want to maintain wired phone lines, but doesn't fiber go over some of those lines--but that was enough to get us back on track. Installation fee: waived. Fiber service: $50 a month for a year. $100 gift card: really $75 because of all the hoops they make you jump through.

That said my deal's in place and all that's left is to make the call to Spectrum to cancel service on the day AT&T is going to install fiber. The story should end here, but I get it into my head that I need to hear Spectrum tell me that if I cancel on Friday I won't owe them any money. I know their word is meaningless garbage and completely unreliable but I have to try anyway. I call them up and when I get them to confirm that I won't owe them money they tell me to hold for retention. It's a little late in the process but I'm on the phone anyway so I talk to her.

What a horrible mistake I made. We're talking and she agrees to match AT&T's offer of $50 a month for the year. I tell her about the gift card, but it means nothing to her. So I tell her about how TimeWarner screwed me over a year after I switched. When I finish my story, she says she understands. I tell her that I simply don't trust Spectrum anymore. I tell her that Spectrum has to give me a sign of good faith. She agrees with me but has no suggestions as how to proceed. She tries to reassure me that Spectrum's recordings of this conversation will keep Spectrum honest. Then I ask her if I can record her. She declines to be recorded. I ask about how I can get access to these recordings. She says that she has no idea how to get access.

Eventually I tell her if I can get access to the recordings of my conversation with Spectrum from last week I will stay with Spectrum. Of course if Spectrum had given me any sort of discount last week I wouldn't have had to call AT&T or Spectrum this week. Just a small discount in that initial phone call would have spared me so much misery. She thinks about it and eventually gives me a number to call. I tell her if that call works out my next call is to AT&T to cancel my pending install.

The number I call is some kind of Charter corporate number. None of the options I hear are even close to what I'm looking for. I end up talking to a woman and I explain to her what I'm trying to do. She's struck dumbfounded by what I say. She's just someone who directs calls and she can't direct me to anyone who can access these recordings. The best she can do is shunt me off to customer service. I take the only option offered and I'm back to customer service seething with rage over the prank Spectrum's just pulled off.

I find myself in an emotional state I have never experienced before. I'm so angry that I've gone quiet. I speak slowly, softly and carefully explain what has just happened to me. After all this you'd think they budge on my discount. Nope. They tell me I have the last best and final offer. Then I tell him to terminate my service this instant. I can live without internet service for a few days. If all goes as plan it'll still be less time without internet than when I switched to TimeWarner.

Me threatening to terminate service must have triggered something in him because he tries to sell me on Spectrum's fast internet speeds. I explain to him that faster internet speeds mean little to me. I ask him how much milk he drinks. He says that isn't relevant so I tell him I drink a gallon of milk a week. Disclosure: I don't drink milk. If the store suddenly gives me two extra gallons or three extra gallons of milk each week it wouldn't make my life better. I would just end up with a lot of wasted milk. But if the store lowers the price of milk I might actually be able to afford a sandwich or some cookies to go with that milk. I tell him I haven't been able to afford Netflix for a while now because I can't justify paying any more money for Netflix on top of what I pay Spectrum for internet service.

This confuses him so I try to press him about Spectrum's credibility. I tell him what happened to me with TimeWarner and I ask him for a show of good faith. But he's got no ideas and refuses to even make a suggestion. I tell him if he can extend the deal for two years I'll accept that offer and be done with the whole thing, but the best he can do is go one year and promise we'll talk about it again when my promotional rate expires. That's exactly what I need a promise from Spectrum to repeat this miserable experience one year from now. I cave a little bit now and tell him that I don't need access to the recording of the conversation I had with Spectrum last week; now I'll be satisfied if they just promise to have someone review the recording and get to the bottom of why I didn't get a transfer to retention last week. He won't even make this worthless promise. Then I tell him that if he can give this deal to one of my neighbors that would be proof of good faith. He says that he can't do that either. Then I tell him that if he can suggest three ways that Spectrum can show good faith I'll stay with Spectrum. The silence is deafening.

At this point I'm done; there's no progress to be made. I want to end this conversation and go on with my day but he just wants to talk at me some more. Eventually I can't take it anymore and tell him I'll do him a favor. I won't cancel service today. It won't be on him. I tell him how good a job he's done breaking my spirit. I tell him I'll call Spectrum back at the end of the week and I'll be someone else's problem. That was enough to shut him up so I end the call.

Now I promised to talk with my Kuya about all of this. When I tell him that Spectrum matched AT&T's monthly rate he immediately tells me to take it. I tell him about the $100 gift card that AT&T is offering and he just shakes his head. "Let's just stay with Spectrum. It'll be easier." It takes a little bit of time for me to understand why he wants to leave $100 sitting on the table, but eventually I get there. My Kuya uses the internet to stay in touch with his family in the Philippines. So he has to compare the cost of internet service to the next closest alternative to internet service. He has to compare the cost of internet service to the price of a round trip ticket to the Philippines. I'd guess that any rate under $175 a month would be reasonable for him to pay.

Even a single day of lost internet service is an enormous burden because he can't connect with his family. And switching always has problems. I've never had a smooth transition between ISPs. Odds are switching to AT&T will come with some service disruptions. When this finally sinks in with me, I tell my Kuya, "Okay we'll stay with Spectrum." The next day I call AT&T to cancel my order. Now I'll have to call them a couple more times by the end of the week to make absolutely sure that my order is canceled because I can't afford to pay their early termination fee, but that should be that.

I'd rate my deal a B-minus. I'm $10 to $15 under the average cost of internet service in Los Angeles but that average includes stupid people who just pay whatever their ISP tells them to pay. That average may even include the unlucky people who have no choice but to pay $40 a month to AT&T DSL for any connectivity at all. It's hard to assess that average without the raw data. I'd say an A+ would be under $40 a month without any confusing bundle complications.

Some might wonder if they should try to switch ISPs. I'm comfortable saying that if you make more than $33 an hour don't bother switching. You're time is worth more than this. If you would rather be paid $33 than spend an hour with your friends, family and loved ones then you shouldn't switch either. But if you decide to switch I would recommend that you get together with nine of your neighbors and try to negotiate rates collectively. I know AT&T or Spectrum would just flat out refuse to negotiate that way but I'd love to read that story someday on LAist.

i wrote a series of jokes

I always wanted to host a comedy night. Such power. You first then you. Not you. Hahaha. But really all i want to do is play a game I call put weird stuff in front of comics and let's see what happens. Of course that won't sell. I'd have to call it something like Essentially Worthless.

I'd put on the flyer that everybody has to bring the most interesting thing they can find that is essentially worthless. Some thing like you'd find on the street and think wouldn't the first person who leaves just love to own this. I'm talking something like an eight track tape found by the side of a railroad track. Or just some eight track tape that's just knotted up funny.

It could be something new like a hello kitty USB drive you got from a friend in Chinese intelligence who just can't wait for you to open the funny video of his dog and the malware he needs installed to spare his family any more suffering. So like i said something essentially worthless.

Some people bring weird things and I'll look them over and none of them will be good enough. So I'll put a ripe tomato on a table where the comic can see it. Maybe someone when they're not laughing they'll pick it up toss it from hand to hand. Maybe they'll pretend to throw it. I'd guess that depending on the comic it would actually be thrown at anyone maybe one out of ten times on average. Over four weeks in December it's a negligible risk.

The next week when everyone's expecting thrown fruit. I'll put out an oversized hourglass. The sand running from top to bottom. I'll tell the people sitting next to it they can flip it over when it runs down. I can just see the look on that comic's face; like I'm just trying to tell jokes here why are you doing this to me? over and over again on the next ones too. And all I can say in response is Happy Holidays.