Friday, May 15, 2009

I Can't Quit Cable

In an effort to cut costs to ride out the Great whatever it is we're going through, I keep on focusing on our cable bill as a way to save money. After all, we have two dvrs, all the movie channels, HiDef channels, and a LAN line as part of our package and there's gotta be some way there to cut costs. Plus, I feel guilty for not sacrificing more because as I'm unemployed and as there's suffering everywhere, I feel like I should be suffering much more than I already am and getting rid of HBO is one way of suffering. The thing is, though, Comcast won't let me quit.

First I called to see what would happen if I got rid of our LAN line as we don't use it at all- I don't even know what the number is. But to do that, we'd have to give up our special "Bundle Package" and getting rid of it would somehow increase our bill. Then they upped our bill because our original Comcast deal expired and our bill got raised about $50 but when I called to inquire as to how to cut costs, they put me in touch with some sales guy who magically "discovered" another package deal and offered us that and by "discover" I mean pull a package out of his ass to make me happy. Somehow this package deal also saved us money.

Today I called to cancel all of our movie channels because we don't actually watch any movies on cable and any show on the channels we like watching, like "True Blood" or "Weeds", we can either download our watch online. Except that didn't work either as it would save us only about $30 and that comes out to about $15 each and what's $15 in the grand scheme of things? Even getting rid of the 2nd DVR (we have another one for our second bedroom) would only save us $15 and if we got rid of both, we'd save only about $25 each at the most. Again, what's $25 in the grand scheme of things?

In other words, as of this moment, we still have two dvrs, every movie channel, the hi-def channels, and a LAN line. We could get rid of cable or go with the bare bones, 80 channels only package but, Jesus, do we have to suffer that much?

2 comments:

Sean Finney said...

I went from 200 comcast bill to 35 with more entertainment. I just pay 35 for really fast internet and use Roku and a $8 rabbit ears.

Anonymous said...

$25/mo. is $300 a year, quite a bit in the grand scheme of things, particularly if you're unemployed, particularly if you're not even using the channels you'd be getting rid of.