Help me with my cable bill.

[dontwalkhand]

I was thinking about if this is a good time to cut the cable. I am thinking of inventive ways to save some money on these recurring bills, and by far, the cable is the third largest next to the car payment. We have Cox communications, and our bill is around $300 a month!

Currently our cable package includes:

• Digital Cable..Though Cox calls this 'Advanced TV' with 100 something odd-channels that are actually "watchable"..the rest are channels that are "Not authorized"....when I say watchable, I mean, it shows an image on the screen, not something that is worth watching. Possibility of being able to be replaced with Netflix/Hulu on our Macs, Apple TV or Xbox. Possibly buying individual episodes on iTunes
• Digital Telephone Service...Something that never gets used as the entire household are on iPhones, with three of the iPhones having unlimited minutes. The telephone was only used for faxing, until we decided to just switch to eFax. (The main reason we actually got it in the first place was the tripple play promotional package.)
• And High speed internet, which we actually use, A LOT. I believe our package includes 25M down and 10 up. We can not get rid of this.

If we drop just say, the telephone, how much do you think we would save? Anyone have experience with dropping one of the items that they don't use at all? Cox warns us that the price will go up if we attempt to break up the triple play package.

So I turn to MR for some advice on how to save money on this monstrosity of a bill.

 

[HappyDude20]

We're paying $120 a month here at the household for premium cable and cable internet, which runs at an enjoyable 20mbps download and 10mbps upload... but the truth is i hardly watch television at all and take advantage of the AppleTV more. I'm looking to cancel the television service which'll deduct $80 from the bill I believe.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

You are getting rip off big time.

The Home phone service is worth my guess around 30 bucks so after taking it out you might save 20 a month due to a price increase.

All that should be worth at MOST 200 a month and why such a high internet speed that is going to cost a pretty penny. I do not see why you need 25 Mb down 10 Mbit up?

What the hell are you doing that requires that much. Here were I live we have 12 Mbit connection and with my running torrents at full power it has no effect or lag on the 360 or effects other computers connected to the internet. no noticeable lag at all. Ping times remain the same.

Either way you are getting rip off big time. Most you should be paying is 200 for all that stuff you got.

 

[tablo13]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

We're paying around $120 (Shaw) for basic digital cable, digital home phone basic, and 25mbps/2.5mbps Internet. Recently they announced new plans, with "Personal TV" which has less channels than basic cable used to have(Doesn't matter because we've been watching only two channels for the last 6 months or so), and 50mbps and 100mbps download Internet plans (from freeing up bandwidth by discontinuing analog cable). It's now $99/month for Personal TV, digital home phone basic, and 50mbps/3mbps Internet. Add $10 and you get 100mbps/5mbps Internet. So we can pay around the same as before and receive 4x as fast download speed. I guess I'm lucky, but it's all from trying to implement usage based billing (100GB/month and $1/GB overage charge, really?).

Anyway, I think it'd be a good idea to keep only the Internet, as you thought.

 

[mscriv]

What competing services are in your area, At&t Uverse, Verizon Fios, other cable companies, etc.? Always price compare with what's in your area so you can get the best deal. I would definitely cut the home phone as you don't need it at all.

The way to start is to check the prices of what's available in your area. Then having that knowledge call your current provider and tell them you are thinking about switching/canceling service. Ask what special offers or adjustments they could make in order to keep your business. I recently helped my family switch from Satellite to Uverse. When we called their old company to tell them we were switching they immediately offered to lower the bill by about $50 a month without a new contract. If you want the lowest price you have to play the game and call and ask for it. That's just how this stuff works.

 

[samiwas]

You are getting jipped big time.

Our bill from comcast is around $170 a month after all taxes and fees I believe. This includes premium HD cable with like 300 channels or more, Internet with about 20 mbps down last time I checked, two rented comcast HD DVRs, and a cable card for the TiVo. There is NO reason to be paying $300 a month.

 

[blueroom]

Cable TV $0, Internet $65 but we don't watch sports.
SageTV PVR (Locals in HD), iTunes & Netflix for movies and TV shows. Rent the occasional Box set (Nurse Jacky, Breaking Bad) once in a blue moon.
You can get live MLB (and NBA in the US) on the ATV2.

 

[dontwalkhand]

What competing services are in your area, At&t Uverse, Verizon Fios, other cable companies, etc.?

In Phoenix, you pretty much either have Cox for TV or sattelite. There is no competition when it comes to cable TV service unfortunately. Maybe the CenturyLink buyout of Qwest will bring their TV service to Phoenix.

 

[QuantumLo0p]

Cox warns us that the price will go up if we attempt to break up the triple play package.

I don't know your agreement looks like but it is possible you committed to that amount of service and for a specified time.

If you agreed to it on the phone but were never provided the terms before you said yes, you can probably ditch them. Not sure how prepared you are in case Cox decides to get ugly.

If you have a way out and Cox decides to take you for a ride, I would haul their butt into conciliation court if you can do that in your state.


As for me I'm in the process of dropping my old T-Mobile plans (expensive for either Virgin or something comparable (80/mo. for 2 phones), have 45/mo. 8mbit cable and dropped my land line a while ago. Screw them all, lol.

 

[jav6454]

I used to pay Cox $109/month for Preferred and Advanced TV... ditched the cable because I don't watch much TV... bill is now $55/month for Premier (even speedier 30 Mb/s vs 15 Mb/s)

 

[mscriv]

In Phoenix, you pretty much either have Cox for TV or sattelite. There is no competition when it comes to cable TV service unfortunately. Maybe the CenturyLink buyout of Qwest will bring their TV service to Phoenix.

That stinks. If there really is no competition, then they will pretty much be able to charge whatever they like.

 

[Vudoo]

I canceled my cable TV years ago, but I still have cable because I have cable internet. They can't block cable TV when you have cable internet.

 

[Tomorrow]

Our combined AT&T U-Verse bill is around $370 a month. That includes the 300 channel package, HD, a DVR, the highest speed internet connectivity available, a land phone line with unlimited long distance and voice mail, plus two iPhones with unlimited texting AND unlimited data.

 

[MarkG21]

I'd consider switching to DirecTV and keep the internet from Cox.

Probably cut your bill in half.

 

[MacNut]

$300 sounds high, the triple play is supposed to lower the price of all 3 services not make them higher. $200 is what you should be paying at most.

 

[ender land]

You sure you didn't get the triple pay package?

I'm curious though whether you had some sort of "low rate for 6 months" offer or something along those lines.

 

[e²Studios]

Call your cable company, when you get a person immediately ask for customer retention. Or if there is an option in the menus say "cancel service". Most companies are struggling to keep customers, if you say DirecTV or dish, or whatever cable company you can get is offering you something better your current companies customer retention will give you a deal.

It's a shame as consumers we need to do this, but it is an easy way to get your bill lower. They want you as a customer and you want their services, ultimately without you they don't exist, you have the upper hand.

I had Comcast, and quite honestly no matter what deal they gave me I would never go back to them. I am quite happy with DirecTV and my 45/45 stable and always the same internet connection (cable and dsl are too variable) via a local fiber provider. I pay $140/mo for DirecTV and my Fiber internet.