Earlier this year, Charter Communications finalized its deal to absorb Time Warner Cable and buy out Bright House Networks, becoming the second largest cable company behind the monolith that is Comcast. Well it seems as though lots of former Time Warner Cable customers are learning of the joys of being a Charter customer, complete with fancy new cable packages that happen to be more expensive than the ones they were already in. Oh, joy!
At the moment, just 30 percent of former TWC and Bright House customers have been migrated to Charter’s own pricing and package structure. Plenty of subscribers have reported pricing hikes, and Charter’s CEO has been bullish on the prospect of bumping the company’s acquired customers up to packages that will help boost Charter’s bottom line. Customers have reported price jumps of anywhere from $10 to as much as $40 or more, depending on their previous level of service with TWC or Bright House.
The overarching theme here is that Charter believes its newly purchased customer base wasn’t paying enough for their cable service to begin with, so they’re simply correcting things. Speaking to Ars Technica, a Charter spokesperson was predictably vague. “These customers have chosen to move into these packages, which provide a greater value compared to legacy packages,” the person reportedly said.
What’s remarkable about all of this is that the outcry from consumer has been deafening, and not even one-third of the acquired customers have actually been affected so far. The company plans to continue its gradual migration of TWC and Bright House subscribers into often more expensive Charter packages over the coming months, and it’ll be quite interesting to see how that all works out.
