Category: corporate tomfoolery

Running Spectrum’s cancellation gauntlet

As I posted last week, I decided to change my Internet service from Spectrum to a local Cincinnati-based vendor. My dad is also discontinuing his use of Spectrum, and I’ve been helping him with his changeover details.

Tuesday I called Spectrum to cancel my service. I thought this would be straightforward. I was wrong.

You can’t simply cancel. Spectrum has set up a system whereby you have to answer twenty minutes worth of questions, and endure repetitive sales pitches from a representative who is obviously compelled by management directive.

If you don’t go for the Spectrum sales pitches, Spectrum resorts to scare tactics. Did I know, I was asked, that the company I’d chosen to replace Spectrum would probably damage my utilities when burying the fiberoptics cable? And what about their poor customer service? Wouldn’t I rather cancel my new service and go back to Spectrum?

No, I repeatedly said, and the questions were rephrased to me in a slightly different way.

Needless to say, this all became quite frustrating. But you can’t simply hang up—or your service will never get canceled. It’s the perfect Catch-22.

After going through all that, I thought: what the heck is going on here? I did some research, and it seems that Spectrum has lost around 117,000 residential customers in the second quarter of 2025.

The company’s real problems began last year, when the end of the COVID-era Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) ended government subsidies for low-income households. My guess is that Spectrum then decided to raise rates on its other residential customers. That caused the company to lose even more users.

The CEO of Charter Spectrum, Christopher Winfrey, enjoyed a total compensation package of $89.1 million in 2023.

Last year that was downgraded to a measly $5.75 million because of the Spectrum debacle. So Winfrey is now working for near starvation wages, as he struggles to undo the damage that he and his management team have wrought. (Don’t worry, though—Winfrey’s package still includes personal use of a corporate airplane.)

But Spectrum is not going to have me and my dad as customers. Not even if Christopher Winfrey personally calls me and offers the use of his private jet. (Okay—I might consider if Spectrum throws in the use of Winfrey’s corporate jet. But that’s the only way they’re getting me back.)

-ET

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My internet service provider boiled my frog

There is an old chestnut about placing a frog in a kettle filled with room-temperature water. Beneath the kettle is a burner.

If you heat the kettle a little at a time, the frog won’t realize that the water is getting hotter. As a result, the frog will unwittingly remain in the kettle until the water reaches the boiling point, thereby killing it.

(Since this is the internet, please note: I do not recommend boiling frogs; nor were any amphibians harmed in the writing of this post. The above is merely a metaphor.)

After dabbling with dial-up Prodigy internet services for a few years, I enrolled with Time Warner Cable for broadband internet access in 2003. Time Warner Cable did an excellent job, providing quality service for a reasonable price.

Then in 2016, Spectrum Internet acquired Time Warner Cable. That was the point at which my frog was placed in the kettle filled with water. Continue reading “My internet service provider boiled my frog”

Target’s downfall: the perils of gaming the culture wars

Target’s sales are in freefall. Brian Cornell, the company’s longtime CEO, has fallen on his sword and stepped down.

There is no shortage of glee in the press about all this. Target was one of the companies that abandoned DEI policies in the wake of Trump’s election, and the general shift in the national mood.

But what really happened? We may have a chicken-and-egg conundrum here. Did Target ever really benefit from its carefully cultivated “woke” reputation? Or did its former notoriety lose more sales? Continue reading “Target’s downfall: the perils of gaming the culture wars”

Cracker Barrel’s management team proves that they can break what is not yet broken

There is one ironclad rule of business: turn an MBA loose on an otherwise healthy business model, and he or she will screw it up.

It took a Wharton and Harvard graduate, Alissa Heinerscheid, to concoct the transgender marketing plan that destroyed Bud Light’s position in the marketplace in 2023. Bud Light had been doing well since Anheuser-Busch introduced it in 1982. Then Heinerscheid (with the help of Dylan Mulvaney) decided to “rebrand” the beer.

Julie Felss Masino, the current CEO of Cracker Barrel, does not list an MBA among her credentials. But we can bet that she consulted with some, when coming up with Cracker Barrel’s new minimalist, me-too logo and interior redesign. Continue reading “Cracker Barrel’s management team proves that they can break what is not yet broken”