Some days I have to shake my head. We’ve been battling trying to keep our regular bills down for the last little while so we’ve been trying some different combinations of services. One particular area is in our “Cable” service providers offerings. When we first moved here we signed up for their “High speed plus digital cable” bundle, which was 75$. Decent deal, considering that we got 150 channels, ish.
In an effort to drop that cost, we dropped the digital cable. So our current monthly bill is about 40$. But, we only get “antenna” reception: 2 channels that are watchable.
So we’re investigating some options. Here’s how the pricing boils down:
High Speed Net Access: 40$
Low Speed Net Access: 30$
Full Cable: 25$
Basic Cable: 15$
So, they have some packages to make your life easier:
Basic Cable + Low Speed: 40$ (save 5$)
Basic Cable + High Speed: 55$ (save 0$)
Full Cable + High Speed: 80$ (lose 15$)
So we’ve decided to switch from High Speed Net Access to Low Speed and pick up Basic Cable, and to pay the exact same price. If we want to go to High Speed with our cable, we pay an extra 15$. If we want to go to full cable, from basic, we have to… Pay more than the services would be individually?
How does this work? Is someone not thinking, or am I just missing something?
September 27th, 2004 at 12:41 pm
You must be missing something somewhere. Something that’s included that’s a premium fee that’s not listed.
I have to say your cable rates are pretty cheap compared to mine; but we get many more channels, and I have to admit my gf and I watch a lot of tv together (and I’m always online).
I know these are always the kind of things that people try and skim down on to save money, but we don’t really consider it – and here’s why: we go out now, not a ton like we used to, but we still go out. If I stay in just one single night a month to watch television because something I like is on (instead of going out), I save money in the end.
September 27th, 2004 at 3:03 pm
That is really cheap. I have “Basic Digital Cable” (basically a ton of channels, but none like HBO or Showtime that are actually worth watching), and 3Mbps internet for US$95/month. And yes, the cable companies usually give you a deep discount when you buy both services in a bundle; if I just wanted the digital cable in my area without the ‘net access it would have been somewhere between $70-75/month, and ‘net access alone would have been $42.95 per month.