How To Lower Your Spectrum Internet Bill

In case you don’t want to read the whole thing, here is the nitty gritty of how to get a deal: The easiest and fastest is to downgrade your Spectrum plan so that you have a slower speed but a more affordable price. You can also call customer service or visit a brick-and-mortar store to negotiate for a discount or promotion. Spectrum also offers internet discounts through bundle offers that include Spectrum cell phone and TV services.

Before you jump into the rest of the piece, here is a quick rundown of our recommendations:

• Look up promotions and deals for Spectrum to see what is available to you.
• See if you qualify for Spectrum’s $30 plan with help from our Low-Income Internet Guide.
• Lower your Spectrum speed to a more affordable plan.
• Negotiate for a bundle offer that includes Spectrum Mobile or Spectrum TV.
• Go to a brick-and-mortar Spectrum store and charm an employee into giving you a deal.
• Threaten to cancel your service unless you get a discount or deal.
• Deactivate your Spectrum account for 30 days and then start a new account to get new-customer offers.
• Cancel your Spectrum plan and switch to a new internet provider.

First and foremost, when it comes to getting the best deal from Spectrum, you must know what’s in your arsenal. Look up what promotions are currently being offered by Spectrum, which you can do in a few different ways.

• Start by checking our regular roundup of the best internet deals. We’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting to find the sweetest Wi-Fi promotions and discounts, including from Spectrum, and we update our deals guide monthly.
• Go to the Spectrum website and see what deals are currently on offer. You may have to enter your address to see if there are any different or additional offers for you based on your location.
• Call Spectrum customer service and ask what deals they are offering for new and existing customers. The customer rep likely only can offer promotions to new customers, but, as my dad always said, the answer is always “no” if you never ask.

Once you get to know your opponent—er, I mean, internet provider—then you can use that as leverage to rally for a better offer. Of course, you should also look up what other internet providers are available in your area to get an idea of competitor prices and speeds.

If you’re signed up for Spectrum’s Internet Gig package, you can save at least $20 a month just by downgrading your Spectrum internet plan to a slower speed.

Spectrum offers two internet plans to all customers—the flagship Internet Gig package for $70 a month and the still-quite-fast Internet Premier plan for $50 a month. If you live in a small or mid-sized household, there’s a good chance you have no need for the 1,000Mbps speeds of Internet Gig. The majority of internet users would be perfectly happy with 500Mbps download speeds instead.

Households that qualify for certain social security programs can sign up for Spectrum's lower-cost plan, Internet Advantage, for $30 per month. The package is a lot slower, but it saves you a ton more money.

You can certainly take advantage of a bundle deal as a way to get a discount on internet. Spectrum doesn’t just sell internet: It also offers cable TV plans as well as cellular packages through its MVNO brand, Spectrum Mobile. The provider can get you a free mobile line for a year when you sign up for Spectrum Internet as a new customer, while a TV package can get you indirect perks like free subscriptions to Disney+ Basic and ESPN+.

Fidel Diaz, who works in the nonprofit union space, prefers a softer, in-person approach when he wants to save on Spectrum.

“My neighbor Greta and I trade war stories about this,” he says. “Her approach is to bottle up every work slight and frustration from being a mother and unleash hell on Spectrum management until they give her the correct deal. My approach is to walk in and be as charming as possible.”

In the past, Diaz has walked into a Spectrum store with pastries from a local bakery that everyone loves and “got free streaming TV for a year.” The following year, he dropped in “with candy on Halloween and they helped me set up for the federal discount.” Catching flies with honey instead of vinegar (or mild bribery) is certainly a worthy strategy. But it could absolutely backfire.

Whether you’re in a store or on the phone, your success in bargaining with Spectrum customer service all depends on the employee or management style of whoever you’re talking to. However, the thing to remember before going into a call or visit with Spectrum is that the company wants to keep your business. A customer rep absolutely does not want you to cancel service. They’d rather give you the deal than lose you as a client.

So—and brace yourself if you’re like me and are easily embarrassed—you have to be willing to try my dad’s go-to preferred strategy: The fake walk away. Even if you’re a current customer, insist on getting the new customer deal. If they can’t give it to you, threaten to cancel your services. This may be a long back-and-forth, but remain strong. And, importantly, be ready to actually walk away.

You only need 30 days as a non-Spectrum customer to re-qualify as a new customer and, thus, score their promotional deal that would last a whole year or two. Is it worth not having home internet for a month just to get the deal? Maybe, maybe not. The worst case scenario is that you have to spend a month using coffee shop Wi-Fi or your cell phone hotspot under your phone plan.

If Spectrum doesn’t budge, you can always cancel your Spectrum plan for good and set up internet through a different provider. Spectrum’s internet plans don’t come with annual contracts, so you’re free to take your business to a different internet provider at any time without facing early termination fees. Type in your zip code below to see what other internet providers you can get.

Not everyone lives on a block where multiple internet options are available—and you may not even have another viable option that can deliver speeds as fast as Spectrum. But it’s worth running a search to see what other internet options are available in your area.

Once you’ve gotten a rundown of all the internet providers available to you, keep sleuthing to see which ones offer the best prices and speeds. Here is a sampling below of the best internet providers out there, in case one of these is available to you.

The deals are there. There is money to save. It’s just a matter of how much you’re willing to haggle like my dad.