I posted on this string sometime last year. We were Spectrum Triple Play on the old Time Warner platform. Once Charter bought Time Warner, things changed and whereas we were always able to renegotiate the annual price increase, once Charter took over that ability went away. We are also snow birds and are away for 2 months each year. We had been paying $207 per month in 2018, including several premium channels (HBO/Showtime/Epix/Starz). Of those premiums, we really only watched HBO and occasionally Showtime, but the premiums were bundled. The internet was only 60mg. Knowing that the rate was going to increase again this past January, we decided to unbundle the phone in anticipation of cutting the cord while we were absent for 2 months. We did that in December and ported that number to Magic Jack successfully. I'm not thrilled with Magic Jack, but at least we have unbundled and can keep the same number we have had since 1991..
I had to laugh when we received a notice from Spectrum after the porting, that our bill in January would have gone from $207 to $295, if we had done nothing. We dropped a service, but the bill was going to increase by $88. We then dropped off our two boxes and downgraded to just internet (now 100mb rather than 60 we had in 2018) and the bill for internet only will be $66/mo for the next 2 months. When we return at the end of March we will then have a decision to make on service going forward. We can either go with Spectrum, as new customers (yes if you drop cable for 30 days you then become a ¨new customer¨). The new rate for internet, plus cable with the same channel line up plus DVR, On Demand, and HBO/Showtime/Cinemax(silver package) will be $147 per month, including taxes.
So we are now watching this string closely to determine if that is the direction we want to go in. Going the Spectrum route will mean we pay $81 including taxes (which are fairly significant) for cable including DVR and the premiums. I'm not sure that we can get a better deal than that, assuming that we do want HBO & Showtime. If we stay with Spectrum we will have to turn in the boxes every year to maintain the new customer pricing, but it really isn't that big a deal to do that and worth it to save, I calculate roughly $1,000 a year. It seems to me that some of the streaming packages, after adding the premiums and the taxes isn't that different than the $81 we will spend with Spectrum. Plus streaming of Netflix and Amazon, which we do regularly, frequently results in buffering issues, so I assume we may have the same issues with any additional streaming service we might choose.
