Can I cut my cable tv bill but keep my cable internet through Time-Warner?

October 13, 2010 6:22 PM

Can I cancel my cable tv service with Time-Warner, while retaining my cable internet through the same provider?

We recently purchased an HDTV,and HD content looks fantastic, but our regular cable television signal looks rather drab. I'm not interested in switching to digital cable, but instead am considering maybe switching to satellite since the signal is totally digital.

I use my high-speed internet to stream a lot of content to my Roku box, so ideally I'd like to cancel my cable tv while not losing my cable internet through the same provider.

I suspect that I might not get a straight answer from Time-Warner if I contact them to ask, so I thought I'd see if anyone here has experience with this sort of a situation.

posted by newfers to technology (7 answers total)

I did this recently with Time-Warner, and it was as simple as just calling them. I have cable internet and was getting cable (without knowing it! I paid for it for a whole year!) and was able to cancel just by spending about 15 minutes on the phone with them, including hold time. They did transfer me to sales, so you might want to start with sales when you call in.
posted by k8lin at 6:28 PM on October 13, 2010

Typically those are sold as separate products. If you have a "bundle" (where you're getting a discount due to having multiple services) you would end up paying more for internet than you are now, but otherwise, I don't know why this would be a problem, unless there's some other complication. I suspect TW will be happy to sell you just the internet... even though they might beg you to keep the cable TV too. Just be firm about what you want.
posted by SuperNova at 6:28 PM on October 13, 2010

You can do this with Comcast, so I'd guess that Time Warner will let you do it, too. Comcast automatically transfers you to "retention" any time you say you want to end any kind of service, so it's a huge pain in the neck. Just be firm and direct. "I would like to cancel my cable TV service. I do not want to cancel my internet service. ...No, I am not interested in digital cable. ...I'm not interested in phone service. ...I'm not interested in your package rates. ...I realize that cable and internet together cost less than they do separately, I would still like to cancel my cable TV service. ...No, I'm not interested in [and so on]."

I don't think there's any way around the rigamarole, but unless they have some crazy policy in place that Comcast doesn't have, you can do this.
posted by phunniemee at 6:31 PM on October 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

When I was on TWC, the cable internet service was $45 if purchased with cable, or $55 naked. Local channels and public access was only $9. So it was actually cheaper to keep the bottom tier of cable (which they often don't advertise) with the added benefit as you can get local channels w/o an antenna.
posted by birdherder at 6:56 PM on October 13, 2010

I just did exactly this with Comcast last week. I can't imagine that this would be difficult to do with any cable provider, although you might get sent to retention as phunniemee suggests. Bizarrely, that didn't happen to me last week. They didn't even ask me why I wanted to cancel my cable television.

Probably the worst thing that will happen is that you'll have to pay a little more for your internet.
posted by ErWenn at 7:56 PM on October 13, 2010

I did this exact thing with TW this summer. I had to schlep the DVR box back to their office, but other than that it was no problem. If you don't have one of their boxes, it will be even easier. And my TW bill dropped $90 a month. Win!
posted by jeoc at 8:18 PM on October 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

I did this very thing with TWC last year. The best part was they gave me some sort of promo deal for 12 months on my internet service to retain me as a customer even though I had no intention of dropping it at all. Our bill went from close to $120 to $35.

One thing to note: they sent a tech out to put a filter on our line that was only supposed to filter out the tv service, but of course it filtered out everything, so check your internet connection before the tech leaves if they send one out.
posted by chiababe at 4:55 AM on October 14, 2010