Customers who pay their bill in person charged extra fee

(5/22/06 - KTRK/TEXAS CITY, TX) (KTRK) -- A Texas City woman says a cable company is putting the squeeze on low income people. She says poor people are getting taken for an extra dollar by Time Warner.

Time Warner is charging more to folks who can least afford to pay. Geneva Hurst, 82, is upset because she had to pay a dollar extra when she paid her cable bill in person at a Texas City service center. She doesn't have a checking account or credit card and cashes her Social Security check to buy food and pay bills.

Geneva said, "I goes there. I don't have a checking account but I pays it in cash. And I walk in there one day and I paid it in cash and she says when I paid -- 'Oh, you know, we have to charge a dollar extra.' ... It's a sad thing. It's so sad, 'cause poor people, we just barely getting by with what we're already paying."

John Stokes, 81, also survives on Social Security. He keeps a detailed ledger of all his bills.

Stokes says as soon as he gets his Time Warner cable bill he goes right over to the Time Warner service center and pays his bill. And that extra dollar is hard on folks who don't have enough dollars to begin with.

Stokes said, "My Social Security, that's what I'm living on, you know. I have to watch what I'm doing."

"A dollar's a dollar," said Geneva. "But you take it like that, that's 12 dollars a year and you have a lot of poor people paying cable bills."

There was a time when we had only one telephone, light and gas company in town and if we didn't like it, we had to lump it. The same goes for cable -- there's only one cable company in town, Time-Warner, and if you don't like it, lump it. Don't you think it's time for the city to break up the cable company and have more than Time-Warner? Why should the elderly and poor pay a dollar just to pay their cable bill in person?
Marvin Zindler, Eyewitness News!
(Copyright © 2006, KTRK-TV)

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