How To Get A Lower Spectrum Bill
by Allison Cruz | Updated 10/25/23
Lowering your Spectrum bill isn’t hard but a little bit of knowledge you can get the lowest rate.
At BillSmart, we’ve negotiated thousands of Spectrum bills and saved our clients hundreds of thousands of dollars. We made this guide so you could learn from our experience.
If you don’t want to put in the time, we’re happy to lower your Spectrum bill for you. We have an 83% success rate with Spectrum and save clients $352 on average.
To get started, just click the button below.
Pre-Negotiation Preparation
Before you negotiate, it’s important to have your bill handy and to review it.
If you don’t get the statements mailed to you, you can access and download your bill online at Spectrum’s website.
The information you’ll need is the account number and the security code. Make sure to have these on hand especially if you’re calling with a different phone number than the one associated with the account.
You can either call or chat with Spectrum. The best number to call them at is (833) 267-6094 and you can also chat with Spectrum by going to https://www.spectrum.net/contact-us/.
We recommend calling rather than chatting online. Voice support agents have more authority to make the changes to your bill that will save you the most money.
Spectrum Deals For Existing Customers (2024)
The best way to reduce your Spectrum bill is to pick up a promotional offer. Just ask the customer service representative if there are any ways you can save money on your bill.
They will then look at their system to see if it will allow them to give you a discount. The game Spectrum plays is that instead of increasing prices on subscribers, Spectrum provides discounts that fall off.
Once the discount falls off, you are at the regular price. However, by asking for a promotional discount, you can get back to that lower price.
We have found there is not much variation between Spectrum’s promotional offers. The most common discounts are $10, $15, and $20 a month.
This might not seem like a lot but $20 off a month is $240 a year.
One nice thing about these discounts is that they apply even for lower-priced plans. If you can get $15 off an $80 plan – that’s almost 20% off your monthly bill.
If a representative says that there are no promotional offers available, you’re going to need to make more dramatic changes to your plan.
Just want to cancel your Spectrum internet service? Find out how to do so here.
You can also learn how to save on other cable providers like Xfinity and Directv with some of these other blog posts we’ve written.
Downgrade Spectrum Plan Features You Don’t Need
If there’s no promotional offers, you should then evaluate your current plan to remove unneeded features.
One common way to save is to remove premium channels that you are no longer using like HBO and Starz. By removing these channels, you can save up to $15 a month. You can also often get these channels for free for a couple of months.
Just ask the representative for a freebie or you might get a big promotional offer as you go through the cancellation process.
You should also explore to see if you have more channels than you need with your TV service. Sometimes these channel changes are minor. Plan lineups might have changed and getting rid of 7 channels could save you $30+ a month.
If you’re okay with more extensive changes, you should downgrade from your Gold or Silver plan to a Select plan. This reduces your channel count from 270 to 100 but you often find you’re not missing BBC America that much when you have $60+ a month back in your pocket.
You could also be overpaying on Spectrum rented devices. Check how many receivers you are paying for versus using currently. If you’re not using an extra receiver, you can return it and save $6.95 a month.
If you’re also renting a modem, see if you can just buy your own modem and get rid of that rental cost. It will take a couple of months to break even but it’ll be worth it.
You’ll get faster internet speeds and save you a lot of money in the long run.
There’s also Spectrum senior discounts that you can get. Check them out here.
Spectrum One Time Credits
Besides lowering your monthly plan, you can often get one-time credits on phone/cable bills that apply to your next bill. Examples include loyalty credits, outage credits, courtesy credits, late fee reversals, activation fee reversals, and phone payout waivers.
Spectrum is one of the least generous providers of one-time credits. The typical one-time credit is around $10 although at times you can get $20 or $25.
It doesn’t make sense to call Spectrum just for one-time credits as it does for providers like Sprint that give $100 credits a call.
However, I would ask for a one-time credit if you don’t get a recurring discount to get something for your time. You should also ask if you were able to successfully negotiate your bill because we could all use a free $10 or $20.
I think the reason for this is that Spectrum tries to have a reputation as the cable/internet provider with the most transparent pricing. Fewer pricing games and fewer plans mean there’s less room to give out discounts for existing Spectrum customers.
Cable companies are also local monopolies so they also realize that they have no or very little competition in many of the locations that they operate in.
Spectrum is a $70bn company. They can afford to spare $10 here or there for customers that ask.
Spectrum Affordable Connectivity Program
Spectrum offers $30 a month lower plans for lower-income consumers. They offer these plans because the government is subsidizing the $30-a-month difference.
The name of this program is the Affordable Connectivity Program. All service providers from phone to cable companies are eligible to participate in this program and many do and promote it heavily on their website.
Take a look below to see the criteria for qualification. Some ways to qualify include Medicaid, SNAP, Section 8 housing, and receiving free/reduced-price school lunches.
This promotion won’t last forever. Previously the subsidy was $50 a month and was called the Emergency Broadband Benefit Plan. The money for that plan ran out and it was changed to the ACP today.
We’ve found recently that this discount doesn’t show up on your estimated plan amount. Don’t worry – the discount is usually there but Spectrum for administrative reasons put it on your bill separately.
How To Remove Spectrum Broadcast Fees
We’ve seen a trend in recent months where Spectrum tacks on an extra $20-$30 a month fee for “Broadcast TV fees”.
These fees are payments Spectrum makes to broadcast channels like ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Previously, these channels were solely ad-supported, but over the years they’ve shifted their model to be more like cable companies like ESPN to rely on monthly affiliate fees paid by cable companies like Spectrum.
Spectrum and most cable companies have largely given up on the tv subscription market and instead of eating the cost of these higher costs, are passing them directly to the consumer.
There’s no way to negotiate these fees down to lower your Spectrum bill. To get rid of them, you’ll need to change or remove your TV service.
In terms of changing your TV service, sometimes changing your plan will make you eligible for a lower plan without these Spectrum broadcast tv fees.
It’s safest though to just get rid of your TV subscription and switch to an OTT tv provider like YoutubeTV or SlingTV.
If you choose to cancel, make sure the broadcast fees are permanently removed from your bill. We’ve seen a couple of instances where customers still pay for broadcast fees even though they removed their tv service months ago.
Spectrum Price Increases
Unfortunately, Spectrum increases the price of your service every year unless you have a price lock guarantee.
Usually, these price lock guarantees only last for a year or two when you sign up. The last price increase that Spectrum took was in January when they increased their prices by $5 a month on all nonprice locked customers.
This was sooner than the last price increase that they took in April of last year. We’ve found that you can get them to give you a $5 discount to make up for the price increase.
Overall though, there are better opportunities by negotiating a lower bill by threatening to cancel or right-sizing your service.
Other Ways To Save
There’s more outlandish ways to save. One way is to cancel your service and sign up again.
You can do that if you sign up with your partner’s name or your roommate’s name. It’s going to be an awkward conversation when the Spectrum rep comes and sees that the equipment is still there.
Sometimes the best way to save is to just cancel Spectrum and go to a different provider. One of the reasons why Spectrum hasn’t increased their prices more is because of fixed wireless solutions from T-Mobile and Verizon.
Both these cell phone companies have excess spectrum (ha, ha) and can use it to send you a modem/router that will allow you to connect to the internet for a very cheap price – we’ve usually seen it for around $30.
The catch is that there are a lot more caps and max speeds will not be as fast as cable internet. If you just need a light bit of internet, this could be the right choice for you.
Lower Your Spectrum Bill With BillSmart
It’s simply the case that Spectrum is one of the tougher service providers to get discounts from.
However, if you do everything right you have a pretty good chance of lowering your bill by 20% or more.
If you don’t have the time for that, we’re happy to do it for you. We don’t just get you the lowest rate the first time we negotiate your bill for you.
We also renegotiate your bill when our AI becomes aware of a discount you could be eligible for.
Best of all, our service is free if you don’t save money. To get started, just click the button below
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