More Time Warner price increases coming? Not in O.C.
March 12th, 2010, 9:25 am · 6 Comments · posted by Tamara Chuang, a.k.a. The Gadgetress
In case you spotted today’s L.A. Times story headlined, “What?! Another Time Warner Cable rate hike?” don’t freak out. At least if you live in Orange County.
The story mentions a 4 percent rate hike that goes into effect April 1. This “follows an identical increase in January for the rest of Time Warner Cable’s nearly 2 million SoCal customers, as well as prior increases last year.” That statement plus the headline made me think that a second price hike was coming for 2010. Did I miss something?
I checked with Time Warner to verify what was going on. Company spokesman Darryl Ryan immediately called me back to say, no, this isn’t a second increase this year. This adds in the rest of Time Warner’s Los Angeles customers who didn’t get hit with the 4 percent increase in January.
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“Any price adjustments affecting your readers has already been adjusted,” Ryan said.
Whew!
Now, of course, this doesn’t explain why Time Warner had to hike our bills in the first place. But keep in mind, the cable company wasn’t the only one to raise prices this year. Cox Communications, Verizon FiOS, DirecTV and AT&T U-verse all raised their prices in recent months too. See links to those reports on the right. The same companies all raised rates last year too.
Time Warner, like all TV providers, face increasing fees from the TV channels. Most of the time, the TV providers pay the new price. Occasionally, negotiations go public when the two sides can’t agree on a new price. Most recently, Walt Disney threatened to pull ABC from Cablevision viewers on the East Coast, which meant no Oscars. In the end, the two sides made amends but cable customers missed the awards show introduction. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is investigating such disputes to prevent the loss of TV service to consumers in the future.
Recent Time Warner news:
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Do not see the big deal here. Cable is a discretionary expense. Just cancel it, spend that 1400 bucks per year on something better, like a weekend getaway, a new bike, music lessons.
I have an idea, have a poll on what you would spend that 1400 dollars on if you canceled your cable.
We canceled our cable and put the money we saved on piano and guitar lessons. Now, we spend way more quality time doing things like fishing, biking, running, reading, board games, etc. I never realized how much of a time and money suck cable was in our lives.
Poll suggestion is a good idea. Will get it into next post about TV prices. Thanks Will!
We are in the third world city of Santa Ana where the cable and phone companies provide the minimum service. As such, we refuse to pay them for this. We get most all programs we wish to watch over the air with a networked ATSC tuner and an HTPC. We pull other programs of interest off the internet or simply buy the DVDs of the shows. We feel no need to see the latest show on the day it comes out. The money we save more than pays for the few DVDs of any program series we buy off of Ebay for pennies on the dollar. Cable is not a necessity people. They provide very few channels that one would be interested in. Having had satellite with most everything for a couple of years I can tell you that we ended up only watching about a dozen channels at most on any sort of consistent basis. Needless to say, the satellite is in the trash and we are saving about $1400.00 a year.
just remember, these companies are not established for charity…they are established to earn money for their investors…if you think that cable or satellite is cutting in too much into your budget, then get rid of them…it’s all a matter of priority…
every body lets screw the people from politicians down to cable companies we are being gouged .
Everytime they raise their prices, I cut a service. They need me, I don’t need them.