2y ago

My ex wants me back

117 comments

You can attempt to opt-out, but this kind of thing should be illegal in the first place.
https://www.spectrum.com/policies/your-privacy-rights-opt-out
- I could opt out but i'm building a collection at this point
  
  This is the best thing to do. Let them waste their money on printed, mailed ads, and use it to taunt them on the internet and expose how they badger and milk their ~~cattle~~ customers.
  
  chad
- lol, I’ve done this, multiple times. the only thing that has changed was that my name was replaced by “Residential Consumer” for the subsequent spam.
  
  Yup, and in my case they started sending door-to-door salespeople. They're spending all the money to kill Google Fiber where I'm at.
  
  This shouldn’t have made me laugh so much.

Call the number and ask for a pre paid return envelope to send a signed contract with.
Then fill the return envelope with all this crap.
Now they have paid 4 times for junk mailing you and they pay to toss out their own trash.
- chaotic good, nice
- "We don't need your signature, it can be one over the phone. Let's do it now"
  
  The house is held in a trust so I need a physical document to sign for accounting reasons.

Spectrum still sends that much spam even if you are a customer already.
No, i dont want your tv bundle i literally havent had any desire to watch cable tv for over a decade please stop asking!

Fiber internet gang rise up! I would very much enjoy the death of spectrum
- Yeah i went from a speed of 10 mbps upload to a speed of 300 mbps upload thanks to fiber
  
  There is an actual technical reason for coax networks not being able to provide symmetrical speeds. It has to do with what frequencies (channels) are dedicated to data uplink, data downlink, and cable TV. Cable TV is still the cash cow for coax providers, and installing appropriate channel splitters network-wide to reallocate higher-bandwidth channels to data uplink would result in days or weeks of downtime for cable subscribers, not to mention the crippling amount of money in new hardware. It is a consequence of how the networks were physically built when providers thought that cable and download speeds were all anyone needed; it's not just a software switch they can flip if they wanted to.
  Spectrum still sucks, but asymmetrical Internet speeds are not one of the things they suck at on purpose.
- I’ve seen advertisements fiber internet is in my area (Frontier), starting price is $59, guessing the price goes up eventually?
  
  I have gigabit fiber and am locked in with a price of $59 a month for at least 5 years.
- Doesn't Spectrum offer fiber?
  
  Only to business/enterprise customers AFAIK. It's actually rock solid in terms of reliability in my experience with a couple dozen customers in the Midwest. Even their residential coax connections are fiber-uplinked from the nearest switch, and are reasonably reliable.
  Edit: None of which is to suggest that they aren't still a shitty company in terms of their other business practices. They once included guest hotspots with every new business installation that used their customers' power to sell more Spectrum services to anyone within WiFi range.

This is why marketing is a bullshit job.
- As are modern sales.
  There should be a different name for people at a store that answer questions about a product on request.
  No one should be trying to convince anyone to buy anything as a job. What the hell is that? If you make a cool product/service/thing for a reasonable price, people will come to you. If you don't, stop trying to pressure people into consuming it when they otherwise wouldn't.
  
  There's different types of marketing.
  One type is awareness marketing, which is exactly the type that's the furthest from "forcing shit down your throat".
  Then later, when you're searching for something and see their name, your monkey brain will prefer the "familiar" option.
  And tbh I do have to disagree with "people will come to you", it's really hard to grow if people don't know you exist.
  
  Well in more technologically advanced sales, there are reps who understand the technology deeply and try to explain it to execs and other engineering folk who might be interested. This is a role I find pretty valuable, since some engineers don't have good communication skills.
- They aren't even getting their target market right, sending me "move-in" offers when I haven't moved.

I still get all that and I have Spectrum. It's also common for the envelope to say it's "important." No, ads are not important.

Damn blurring out all the numbers must be more infuriating right?
- Yes thank you for noticing my effort

“Return to sender”
- I actually bought a stamp that prints that specifically to return Spectrum's trash.
- Most people don't know this but the USPS has their own official stamp for that purpose and any marked or drawn on letters they receive likely go to the trash. Try attaching a sticky note and putting it in the outgoing mail, or talking to the post office directly (although many offices go to great lengths not to give you time).
  TLDR: Don't write on the envelope or it won't be returned.
  
  I've received mail back with "not at this address" written on it.
  Your postmaster/carrier likely just sucks.

Words can't describe the inner joy I felt making that call to cancel after I had Google Fiber installed. "No sir, there is no package or temporary deal you can offer me that's going to change the outcome of this conversation."
- wait til you realize the largest ad-tech company in the world is now your ISP tho
  
  Somehow that still seems better than being Spectrum's bitch
- So ISP CSRs get commission? I assume they don't, in which case they were probably super relieved. I work in a customer service call centre and I vastly prefer those outright cancellation calls to anything with strings attached because it's less work for me, though in my case the company lets me just process the cancellation outright with minimal groveling.

Rip it up and mail the shreds back to them, no note or explanation. Usually that makes them stop.
- But how will they know it's from OP?
  
  You leave the part with your name and address on it intact.

Look at the amounts of wasted paper! 😡
- Free toilet paper

Got fiber and never looked back, 1gb both up and download at the same time(yes full speed on 2 different tests), no throttling, advanced email notifications for maintenance that's past midnight. it's so much freedom, no datacaps too !
- Lucky mate. Which service do you have and where? My apartment complex sadly has coaxial hardwired so no recourse other than xfinity :/
  
  Small local fiber and wireless provider that worked with the large multi unit condo building I'm in

We've never had Spectrum and they relentlessly woo us as well. When we ignored the mailings, they started sending them in Spanish, as though they thought we simply couldn't understand them. Like nobody could possibly resist them if they could read the advertisements, right? Waiting to see what they try next.

I'm a current customer and still get shit like the frequently, usually they want me to add cable TV and/or phone to my internet-only package. It's really obnoxious. You'd think after me ignoring it for 8 years they would give up but nope, still at least once a month one pops up in my mailbox.
- Just sleep well at night knowing that part of the reason your cable/phone/internet bills are so high is because your rates are subsidizing these morons to mail you full color glossy double sided bullshit advertising services at you that you already have.
  
  Some of them are matte :P
  
  I kind of like all the unsolicited junk mail. I use it weekly to line the bottom of all my parrot cages.

I switched to Fiber from Spectrum a few months ago. When I took the equipment back to the store, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't need to jump through any hoops at all to cancel; they just got my name, checked my ID, looked at the router serial number, had me sign a thing, and handed me a receipt. I was shocked. I had put an hour on the meter, and I only needed four minutes.
But less than a week later, I got my first "move in offer." It's honestly hilarious to begin with—"oh, ha ha, they honestly think their choke hold on the market is so strong that the only reason anyone would ever cancel is if they move out of the area"—but quickly got sad when I realized, actually, given the government-enforced monopoly they enjoy in my city, that's probably true for most people.
- The employee was gaming the system. If you're canceling, they're required to hound you. If you're moving, it's just a few clicks with no rebuttal from the system. The employee just didn't want to hound you because they're as tired of charter's crap as you.
  
  Unless you have some insider information, I think that might just be what they do anytime sometime comes in to the store instead of calling. There was a manager nearby, who seemed to know what she was doing the whole time.
  I dunno. It seemed like a standard procedure to me.

They even ambush me every time I go to the grocery store. And they've doubled my bill since I signed up. Why bother marketing when you can raise rates whenever you want? They could save so much money by not mailing every day and hiring people to hunt me
- They could save so much money by not mailing every day and hiring people to hunt me
  At the scale these mailings are conducted, it all averages out into a net win for Spectrum. It suggests that enough people really do suck it up with the rate hike for some reason or another. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it. Also, from their perspective, the wasted time, energy, and paper is all someone else's problem.
  
  That's the worst part. The fact they keep doing it means it probably works. I just don't understand how.

I received these about once a week when I was a Spectrum customer. Since I dumped them when ATT fiber became available, I now receive them three times a week.

Do any of these have return labels?

Ooooo aren't you popular.

My ex (Comcast) sends me stuff all the time. They even have the audacity to call themselves neighbor. Mr. Rogers they are not.

My ex is ATT fiber which, despite having zero love for ATT, was pretty great.
They are trying to get me back...but they don't offer fiber (or any service!) at my new address.
- I have zero love for ATT but love my fiber plan. I’d like to switch, since they don’t let me change the DNS server, but the plan I had before was awful and my internet dropped all the time.
  
  Are you sure about that? I'm using the official AT&T fiber modem (Nokia white oval) and a pi.hole for DNS. I do remember needing to change a number of settings to get it to work though.

This is me with SiriusXM. Fuck them
- Imagine paying to not be able to control anything and still getting ads.
  Oh, that’s just cable..
- SiriusXM is the only one I went to the process to opt-out. I received 2-3 letters every week and at least an email per day. Their service would be cheaper if they didn't spend all their budget on marketing
  
  The desire to recreate this posts image with siriusxm letters, would need a bigger table though it seems
  
  I didn't realize there was a process, I'm going to look that up. Thank you

Ask if you can stack the offers. That could be an incredible offer.
- They are expired lol but that would be funny if I called them up to ask

I’ve never even had them, just went on their website and put in my address to see what’s available, and I get tons of these too. Frontier is cheaper and waaaaaay faster, so fuck Spectrum.
- So if I really hate someone, I can just put their address into the Charter Spectrum website?
  
  Generally you can sign up this person for many types of annoying mail by doing essentially just that
- I had been a Verizon customer before the Frontier switch. I still had a 100/100 plan with them and they had jacked the price up to over $100 a month. Since I was an exiting customer they would not negotiate on the price. I'm with Spectrum now for $40 300/20 (meh). Might go back to Frontier when my rate ends if they are more accommodating.

This is me and Dish. Been over five years and I still get at least one a month. Post office was kind enough to notify them of my new address twice.
- Fun fact you can mail something by name only sometimes.

These are extra ignorable because there's no way you're going to end up paying the rate on the card. They are actually trash.
- I don't love spectrum but I'm currently paying less than the rate on some of these cards for 300mbps. I was with Frontier (fiber) but those MFers were charging me over $100 a month for 100/100. I called several times to try and get a better rate and they just essentially told me to fuck off. When I finally cancelled they just said, ok service will be off on x date. No attempt for retention at all.

I'm getting fiber in the spring, and I can't wait to make spectrum my ex as well.

If there was a company which charged me $1 / month to send spam mail to a company I would sign up in a heart beat.
Imagine if a company got 10,000 spam letters via snail mail every month and they had to sift through each and every one to see if any contains actual pertinent information.
Sure it wouldn't be much of a hinderance to the company itself but they would probably have to pay a few people at $30-$40 thousand a year to do it.

I live in a partially suburban partially rural area about 45 mins from the nearest mid-sized city.
Before, we had Windstream, $75/mo for cable internet that AT BEST got to ~5 megabytes per second (40 megabits per second) download speed and extremely little upload speed wireless, which always started cutting out constantly, was extremely unstable, terrible customer support, every time we complained they said our issues were caused by our router which we only had for a few months to a year and replaced it before it started doing the same thing after a few weeks or months. Near the end, video games just became unplayable and having to download even small files was a nightmare. Terrible experience overall.
We recently switched to Clearwave fiber, which is new to our area, $70/mo for 1 gigabyte download and upload speed (allegedly) presumably when wired. Wireless speed wise, the raw download speed isn't exactly impressive but it can get to 7-8 megabytes per second which is definitely better, but the upload speed is WAY better and matches or surpasses download speed. But the most important thing so far is the consistency, the connection doesn't just drop out randomly like the previous provider did, and I actually get a good connection on games.
I ordered this 30ft Cat6A cable from Monoprice for about $10 on sale on Amazon, looking forward to see how the ethernet experience is with them.

117 comments