Archive for the ‘surcharges’ Tag
I’m still in bed. I don’t want to get up. I’m actually bored with this day already and it hasn’t even begun. What does that tell you? Nothing I’m willing to bet.
Today is one of those days where it’s been raining for 36 hours, the sky remains cloudy, everything is drenched, and I’m once again stuck indoors. I have a few things on my mind I’d like to accomplish but concentrating on them is problematic.
I seem to have painted myself into a corner. No that’s not really correct. I feel as though I’ve been forced into that corner and had it painted around me. I’m in the throws of a dilemma concerning of all things something that I’ve come to love over many years. I’m just a few days away from canceling my Dish Network affiliation. I have the same feelings as I had when I made the decision to eliminate my home landline telephone years ago and to convert to cellular once and for all. I’m a little uneasy because as we all know, change is sometimes difficult.
I’ve gotten to this point because cable television as it currently exists is nothing more than a scam. When I had my old telephone removed it was for the same reasons. I dislike being manipulated and lied to. We have the technology to do miraculous things these days but I’m supposed to believe that no one within the television industry can figure out how to set up a system where I can choose those stations I constantly watch and not the hundreds of channels I’m forced to accept as part of their bundle. Then add on a few surcharges and taxes and all of a sudden it’s costing me $70.00 a month to watch those twenty channels I actually frequent. That’s money I’m forced to pay because their basic bundle is being rammed down my throat leaving me just two options. Keeping paying and shut or get the hell out completely.
I’ve been working on my own bundle for TV which I suspect will be in place sometime this summer. The first thing I’ll do will be to cancel the Dish Network and have their equipment removed from my house. I’ll then sign up for Netflix and Hulu Plus which will supply me with all the movies and TV programming I could ever want to watch. Total cost for those services will be no more than $25.00 a month. I will have an additional one time cost for two ROKU devices that allow my second and third TV’s to connect with my home network with access to the Internet. Total cost for the two devices is $100.00.
I’ll end up with access to thousands of old and current movies, more television than I could ever watch, and a monthly cost that will save me $50.00 a month for a total yearly saving of $600.00. That’s enough money to pay for my entire car insurance bill for the year.
After all of my time spent researching and the possibility of major savings I’m still uneasy. I need to suck it up and make the change but for some reason I hesitate. It requires that I shake off more than forty years of brainwashing where I’ve been constantly told I can’t live without TV and the ever increasing costs they keep shoving down my throat. I’m slowly working through this situation much as I did with the telephones and very soon I’ll have more of my money in my pocket and not in theirs.
If and when they again figure out a way to continue increasing my costs I’ll be forced to do away with TV watching entirely and resort to movie watching and TV programming from my vast DVD collection.
I can only assume that many of you are in the same situation and I wish you luck. Land of the free and home of the brave? Not so much anymore.
It appears that I’m finally on the mend from this damn virus that’s been kicking my ass for the last week. I still sound like someone’s gravely voiced uncle but I can live with that for a few more days. Being sick is a triple curse for me. First your sick as a dog, second your stuck in the house usually in bed, and thirdly you can’t stop coughing. You can only read so much before you’re forced to watch television and there’s the rub. It’s like being shot and then hung.
These last few days have convinced me to consider canceling our TV service when the current contract expires. I can’t take the endless commercials and the low caliber of programming that has slowly been turning my mind and everyone else’s to mush. I’ve had it with all of the “redneck” programs that make all of us look like effing hicks to the rest of the world. It’s ironic that the program that supplied me with the information needed to cancel my subscription, I saw on TV.
I remember back in the day when cable TV was a new novelty. The way it was initially sold was an ad campaign that was total and absolute BS. It was called "Pay TV" then and we were all assured for a small monthly fee we would be commercial free forever. Then slowly but surely the fees began to grow, the commercials returned in a big way, and all of a sudden it’s costing me upwards of one hundred and fifty dollars a month for viewing programming that is almost fifty percent commercials.
When I began approaching retirement I decided to simplify by life. I got rid of my old land-line telephone, all of my premium channels, and returned to just a basic cable package. The cable company then added surcharges and taxes which brought my monthly figure almost back where it started before I cancelled the premium channels.
Then I moved in with my better-half who was burdened with an almost $200.00 a month bill of her own. We immediately took steps to reduce our combined bill but Time Warner is a devious enemy. We reduced everything back to basic cable but with our Internet charges we were still paying over a hundred dollars a month. The cable companies claim it’s impossible to offer a menu type system where you order the channels you really want and aren’t forced to pay for thirty or forty you never watch. How convenient.
We cancelled a large portion of our package but since it changed our "bundling" (the newest word used to screw all of us) they couldn’t lower our costs all that much. After it was all said and done we were still paying $110.00 a month after the surcharges and BS fees were added. We were both unhappy with the results of our efforts so we cancelled all of our Time Warner’s services except for the broadband Internet. We then subscribed to the Dish network for two years and were initially charged an introductory price of $38.00 a month for one year. They told me that after the first year the monthly price would be increased somewhat. The first year passed and the price increased with fees and surcharges to $68.00 per month. I’d call that more than substantial.
Arguing with cable companies is useless. They have their own agenda which is to get as much money from us as they possibly can and believe me, nothing else matters. I think a reasonable price for Internet and basic cable should be no more than $85.00 a month with fees and surcharges. Any more than that is just highway robbery.
We’ve reached the point where desperate times call for desperate measures. At the end of our current contract with Dish we’ll be canceling the satellite cable package and retaining only the Internet service from Time Warner. We’ve decided to then subscribe to Netflix ($9.99 a month) for an endless selection of movies and Hulu Plus ($7.99 a month) for almost any TV programming we’d like to see. Our total cost at that point will be approximately $57.97 a month, well within what we consider a reasonable cost. Another added plus is that almost all commercials programming will disappear from our life.
This is a trend that seems to be happening everywhere by many of us. It gives the old saying “vote with your feet” new meaning. If enough people walk away from these cable monopolies then changes will occur and prices will begin dropping.
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