Do cord-cutters pay more everywhere?

[bclover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bamaman I have special deals every 6 months with XFinity. They expire and up my charges, and I go into the office and complain. They always cut me a special existing customer deal and cut the high rate by $20-30. 6 months later, I do it again. Sometimes that comes with a land based telephone service that I never use or even hook up. I don't like doing business that way. Unfortunately, they've got the only high speed internet service available on my road and I'm stuck with them.

glad to hear, my two year deal with xfinity is up in January and I'm ready to walk. especially since they have already said they are going to have a 4% rate hike.
I'm actually going to get rid of cable but need internet access.

[pb4uski]

I will add.. if you have two properties (or RV) consider Dish satellite. When we had two houses we had 3 of our four rooms at our main house and one room at our lake house (about 30 miles away). We had to pay additional for the extra dish and installation at the second place, but we only paid for one service (as if we had 4 rooms).

We looked into Direct TV when we decided, but they would not do it that way.

I'm not sure if it is officially allowed but our local installer was ok with it.

[Dawg52]

I pay $29/mo to Pageplus for 1500 minutes, unlimited texts and 1 GB of data using Verizon's network. All more than enough limits for me. $40 to Comcast for internet and modem. $20 more to Sling TV and $8 to Netflix. So less than $100/mo for everything I need. Pretty reasonable IMO.

[FUEGO]

For internet I pay $30-35/mo for 20 or 30 mbit service (I think they upgraded recently since google fiber is coming). I downgrade each year to the $20/mo promo deal then upgrade for $15 to get my discounted rate. Sometimes call in and say "I want to pay $30 can you do it?". YMMV on that one.

Phone is free. Home phone VOIP via google voice and obihai. Cell free through freedompop.

To sum up, all the comms I need/want for $30-35/mo. Screw bundling!

[travelover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lsbcal I always get the retention specialist on the phone before negotiating. That is where the best deal is likely to be.

This worked for me once, not the second time. Maybe the second guy only claimed to be a retention specialist.

[foxfirev5]

DW just went through several calls involving a few hours to get a 2 year contract with Comcast that should be about what we paid this year. Who know's. I was the jerk in the background saying drop it all at both houses.

[Dimsumkid]

We were fine with Comcast internet @ $19.99 (3Mbps), but the price went up to $39.99 after 1yr. For $10 more, we got 25Mbps speed and HBO/Showtime TV and $5+/mo fees too. Don't really care for the TV since we have good OTA signals, but we pay no home phone using Obihai VOIP and no cell bills using Ringplus 1000/cell,1000/text and 500/data for 3 seperate cell phones. We threatened to cancel Comcast and did cancel and they still didn't care. We had to call back to sign up for the plan we're on now. Only comp in my town is AT&T at 0.5Mbps for $37/mo, so it's really a monopoly as they're not upgrading the phone internet any time soon.

[Marita40]

I wrote a post a few months ago about getting a bait and switch from Centurylink for a "triple play" with cable, landline, and internet. After hours and hours on the phone to every possible layer of the company's (so-called) customer service I got no satisfaction. I'm still steamed about it but had to eventually give up for my own mental health. I did manage to get the cost down significantly, however, from the first bill I had received (although still not equal to the "bait" cost I had been promised earlier). Centurylink has been a nightmare to deal with; DirectTV far less so. Comcast, which I've had in the past, was terrible too. All bad.

[Mulligan]

I call and complain and usually get $20 knocked off. Last year didnt work, but this year I got $25 for combining my ATT dsl with my satellite bill. Comprehensive package except up to the HBOs, etc. $145 a month for both with 4 tv, and the dvr I waste $10 on and never use...


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[Al in Ohio]

For years I renogotiated my phone and cable contracts until I realized I did't need either. Cut the cable!

Cell phones, $30 monthly intetnet and app streaming all your fav channels is the new wave.

Jump out of the buggy and buy a model T.


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[Al in Ohio]

For years I renogotiated my phone and cable contracts until I realized I did't need either. Cut the cable!

Cell phones, $30 monthly internet and app streaming all your fav channels is the new wave.

Jump out of the buggy and buy a model T.


Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum

[Mulligan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al in Ohio For years I renogotiated my phone and cable contracts until I realized I did't need either. Cut the cable! Cell phones, $30 monthly internet and app streaming all your fav channels is the new wave. Jump out of the buggy and buy a model T. Sent from my iPhone using Early Retirement Forum

I may B.M.C about my bill but I am staying in "the buggy". Viewing experience way better and due to sports I am tethered to it. In all honesty it by far is my cheapest entertainment value money I spend a month. What burns my butt isn't the price, its the pricing mechanism. The "loyalty discount" goes to new subscribers not the long time subscribers.


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[Sunset]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mulligan .....What burns my butt isn't the price, its the pricing mechanism. The "loyalty discount" goes to new subscribers not the long time subscribers......

Yep that bugs me too, and the companies wonder why their churn rate is so high.
We just switched to WOW at $25/mo for 12 months, then it goes to $35 for another yr, then goes to normal rate (about $50).

I'll be switching in 2 yrs since there is no benefit to being loyal.

[bUU]

All paths lead to the same place. There is no way to permanently gain an advantage over the average except through work, continual unending work. Subscription video entertainment is worth a certain amount. By hook or crook providers will eventually get practically everyone on to the track toward paying that amount. Those who keep up to date with the latest dodge will benefit, until that dodge is woven into the pricing model and they'll have to work to find and learn the new dodge. There may always be a marginal advantage in playing suppliers off each other, yet there will always be that question in the back of one's mind whether it is worth the work, year after year. Those who feel it is will get that marginal advantage in price at the expense of a marginal expenditure of time and effort. Fair is fair.

[misshathaway]

Yes. 3 months in and finding that retirement involves a surprising amount of work.

[Golden sunsets]

Quote:

Originally Posted by travelover This worked for me once, not the second time. Maybe the second guy only claimed to be a retention specialist.

+1. After my second less than successful experience with the retention specialist, I looked around our home and decided that we could forego the full range of programming on one of our four TV's and brought the box back to a Time Warner. They asked why I was returning it and when I responded "to decrease my bill", the customer rep went into overdrive to see what else she could do and reduced my monthly triple play bill from $235 to $175. (Includes 4TV's with full line up, DVR, and 2 premium channels). My Mom had a similar experience just going into the local office and asking them to reduce her bill. She now pays about $115 for triple play, one TV, with DVR and the full line up but no premiums. My Aunt who lives next door to Mom pays over $200 for the same service and has decided to use Mom's approach. So my take away is "show up in person".

[Lsbcal]

Yes being on the bleeding edge of "getting the best deal" is work. If one steps back and just accepts a certain amount of inefficiency then I think it is easier. I too get annoyed with the costs of communications technology. But I'm trying to let go of being quite so annoyed at not getting the best deal.

Full disclosure: My current near term projects are to dump the local paper and cut out the landline. So I'm no saint on this kind of topic.

[travelover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golden sunsets .......... So my take away is "show up in person".

I think it helps if you have a suitcase in one hand.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mulligan I may B.M.C about my bill but I am staying in "the buggy". Viewing experience way better and due to sports I am tethered to it.

Usually your posts are extremely sensible, but this is one I just can't relate to. You could still see lots of sports OTA, although maybe not the exact same games you want to watch. We get lots of sports, including just about all Saints games, OTA.

So really it's NOT watching sports that has you tied to that big cable bill - - it's watching a few particular games instead of other games that you could see OTA at the same time. And that would be only on the (probably very few) occasions when your game is not OTA.

Bear in mind that I'm not a team sports fan, so maybe I just don't "get it" but to me, that is just not worth well over $100/month. If I was a sports fan, I'd probably either watch a different game (hey, it's all sports!), or else I'd go order a $6 sandwich at a sports bar and watch the game there on the rare occasions when I couldn't get the game at home.

[easysurfer]

There are different levels of sports viewing. Some need to watch all the games at all times. Fantasy football?

For me, I have a favorite team that I follow. Football still has every game OTA. Baseball, a lot of the games are not OTA, but for me the trade off of not watching each but instead listening to the game on the radio is worth saving the $$ on cable bills. Plus, I got buy with Sling TV during the playoffs.