A while ago, I got the monthly bill from my cable provider: $165. The price had gone up over $40 from the previous month. I phoned in to ask why. The representative told me that the price I was quoted was only good for 3 months, instead of the year I was led to believe.
MARKETING PLAYBOOK 101
The typical marketing ploy for cable and satellite providers (which for the sake of simplicity I will frequently refer to as "cable") is: get the customer hooked on the service(s) at a low promotional rate, and then jack up the price. The logic behind this is that some customers won't even notice the price increase,some will notice it but won't care, others will care but will put up with the increase anyway, and others won't like it at all but won't know what they can do about it. A few sharp people will call in to cancel so they can get a better rate, and some will get tired of the nonsense and just cut service altogether.
The simple fact is that until recently, there weren't many choices, and the choices that did exist were equally expensive. We could go from cable to Dish to DirecTV to UVerse, but the end result was that it would eventually cost us just as much. That's not necessarily true anymore; there are some alternatives now. I'll have more to say about that later.
Now the increase in rates isn't entirely the service provider's fault. They're passing their costs along to us. Entertainers, athletes, sports organizations (i.e. the NFL), studios, broadcasting corporations, etc., have gotten greedier and greedier, and the cable and satellite people have little choice except to pass the cost along to the consumers, including you and I. So the bill goes up... and up.... and up.
I've wrestled with the cable company for the past 10 years, threatening to cancel in order to get a better rate. Representatives will flat-out lie about what the customer is getting, a fact that is usually found out when the channel package you thought you were getting isn't there or the price ends up $40 higher than it was supposed to be. Not all do this, but too many do, and it's a practice that needs to cease. But that's another topic. I finally got tired of it and "cut the cord" altogether.
SHOULD YOU CANCEL TOO?
It's not a simple yes/no proposition. To decide if you can cut your cable or satellite, you need to look at the following:
1) ARE YOU UNDER CONTRACT? This is marketing ploy 102: give the customer a good rate, in return for committing them to a long (i.e. 2 year) contract, with a healthy termination fee. If you're under such a contract, then you need to call the service provider and find out what the termination fee is. If it's small, or if you aren't under a contract, then continue on. If it's a significant amount, then you have to decide if it's worth paying it off.
2) WHAT CHANNELS DO YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO HAVE? This is paramount. For example, if you must have the Fox News channel on a live and continuous basis (and there are a lot of people who want it), then forget about cutting the cord; you can't currently get Fox News without subscribing to a pay-TV service or borrowing the login details from somebody who has it so you can watch it online. There are several other channels/networks that are also cable/satellite-only. You'll need to sit down and figure out what channels that you don't want to give up. When you decide that, you'll know how to proceed.
3) ARE THERE ANY SUBSTITUTES FOR THE CHANNELS THAT I LIKE? For example: do you like to watch a lot of movies? There are streaming services that provide that without cable or satellite. Do you like to watch old TV shows? There are OTA (Over the Air) networks that offer that, plus many streaming services do so.
4) WHAT'S AVAILABLE TO ME NOW FOR FREE? The answer might surprise you. There are many OTA stations that can be had by simply hooking up an antenna and switching the TV from "Cable" to "Air". I'll have more to say about those in a later post. There are also many streaming services available; some are free, others charge a relatively nominal monthly fee (compared to a $150 cable bill). And then there's Sling TV, which will be the subject of a future post.
I'll go over each of these in subsequent posts. For now, understand that you aren't chained to the cable company: there may be alternatives.
No comments:
Post a Comment