I watch a lot of Steve Lehto's videos, along with Nate the Lawyer and the BlackBelf Barrister.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be anyone from Scotland doing law videos.

Youtube Video

Cable Company uses threats of destroying credit ratings unless former customers come back.

Sad - but the Cable & phone companies are bleeding cash these days: Their "cash cows" are the Cable-TV & wire-line phone services, and more and more people are signing up for "Internet Service" only. That's not nearly as profitable for either type of provider!

In most areas of the US, these are "regulated monopolies" that were created to provide a single service (phones or Cable TV), but the addition of the Internet - and the fact that both "infrastructures" can provide Internet service - has created a competition where there was none before.

Worse, telephone companies can now offer CATV over their high-speed lines (here, that technology is called FiOS - other areas have their own vendors with their own names for similar technologies), and cable companies can offer VoIP telephony over their high-speed cable services. So the competition is no longer just in the Internet space, they're both crashing head-long into each others' areas where they've had a "protected" status in the past. What's more: the phone service the cable companies offer doesn't have to meet the regulations written by the States (only the FCC), and the CATV services offered by the phone companies don't have to meet the regulations suffered by the CATV companies!

OUCH! Not only is there competition from another HUGE corporation, but they're given a competitive advantage over you because they're not the regulated monopoly in that space!

Back to this case though: Spectrum has clearly goofed. My guess is that their Corporate law/litigation arm is going to swoop in to "fix" this soon.

In the meantime, I agree with the Atty in the video: this is a nice offer if you happen to have a credit problem with Spectrum. But if you DON'T? Then this is very much a threatening letter!

In so far as theirs is a regulated monopoly, I'd complain to the state entity that regulates them! (In my case, that would be the State Treasurer.) Its been my experience that when you complain to the regulatory agency that oversees them, you get a reasonably high-level corporate response pretty quickly!

I liked the Atty in the YouTube video - I'm going to watch more of his videos...