Cable Companies

[Dvessella1983]

I know alot of us out there have cable and we love having internet and home phone service along with it right! Today before logging onto Fusion Cash I was chatting with my cable provider and explaining to them I was wanting to lower my bill from what it is to under $50.00/per month. After a briefe 18 min chat the rep tells me she can't help me and say's in order to get the best price you have to call our 1-800 number and chat again with someone else which I thought was bullshit seeing's how I am talking to someone who "I thought" knew what promotions and things were available in my area right.

Well as it continued on and on more she finally tells me "there is one promotion for $49.95/per month plus your modem rental and taxes", so if you added it all up I am sure it was somewhere cheaper than what I was currently paying but even still I am looking for the best deal. So to make a long story short and not to bore anyone reading this I will ask one simple question.

Question - Do you think it's fair for a cable company to charge what they charge for internet, TV and Phone reasonable or ridiculous?

[madeara]

What a great question.  Cable companies are a ridiculous rip off.

[betlynjua]

Cable companies seem to be very good at hiding or otherwise disguising different fees and taxes that show up on the statement.

I don't know if I'm quite ready to give them the benefit of the doubt that these are real legit charges.

So I suppose I can call them a rip off.

[fjaz1]

They seem to be monopolies in their areas, but you also have to know how to bargain for good deals especially if you get in tough financial situations.

[Sendmicheck]

It's all about bargaining with the Cable people.

[elvisdo]

Cable companies keep promising better features but you have to pay for those extras. However, when you do it seems fine for a while but then it feels like nothing ever changed in the first place.

[lvstephanie]

They seem to be monopolies in their areas, but you also have to know how to bargain for good deals especially if you get in tough financial situations.

Sometimes a cable company will have a local monopoly due to government involvement (one of those unintended consequences that governments are prone to ignore). In order for a cable company to work in a certain area, they usually need permission from some government agency. The gov't agency may have certain stipulations that the cable company must either agree to or must already provide, although the stipulations can be of any variety, not necessarily related to providing cable TV. For example, a municipality may grant a cable company rights to operate in their area provided that they can guarantee creation of a certain number of jobs. Unfortunately, this means that usually it is the large companies that are able to work with the regulations, but smaller shops don't have enough capital and so are shut out of the market. To make it worse is when those large cable companies that are able to set up in an area start contributing money to the members of that gov't agency in order to support more gov't regulations (thereby solidifying their monopoly / oligarchy in that area). And like any other marketplace sector, if you have a monopoly / oligarchy, it allows you to determine what the "market-price" is, which tends to be higher than if there was more free competition.

[h_padgett]

I got rid of cable two years ago. I use a Roku stick or stream online to watch shows. I have a digital antenna, but it only picks up maybe 5 decent local channels.

[vg7405]

I understand that cable companies have mounting costs and therefore, it is logical for them to raise prices in order to cover these costs. But some of them (ahem, Time Warner Cable) continue to charge an arm and a leg practically every month without even considering giving a loyalty price for long-term customers such as myself. Compounding matters is the fact that the quality of their services becomes progressively substandard. Yet, they refuse to lower prices. Thankfully, I moved recently, and now I am a proud customer of DirecTV. Prior to Time Warner Cable, I was also a customer of Cablevision, and that was by far the best cable experience ever. I wish I could return to their footprint and be a customer again.

[themrs13]

The cable companies are just a huge rip off.

[nannycoe1]

I hate cable but where we are we don't have many other choices

[bremer51]

I'm angry with my cable company about 90% of the time.  They only offer good deals to new customers.  Never alert longterm customers of new deals. I might go to satellite, but people crab about them too.

[surveypro2016]

I got rid of cable two years ago. I use a Roku stick or stream online to watch shows. I have a digital antenna, but it only picks up maybe 5 decent local channels.

I did the same thing 2 years ago. I pay for Netflix, Hulu and CBS All Access which streams my local CBS affiliate live. I also have NBC over the air. I pay roughly $23 a month and I couldn't be happier! If I really want to watch something live, I go across the street to the bar lol

[sfreeman8]

They are a monopoly in my area. No one else. I have the bundle and every year try to get a lower rate. No can do. Yet EVERY SINGLE MONTH since they installed Xfinity over a year ago, I have to call for something. One month it may be the phone out, one month the TV will be out, or one month the internet has problems.

I complain and complain but nothing is ever fixed. The latest excuse is that I live too far from the road. Huh? I'm 150 feet from the road and the neighbor lives 225 feet from the road without a problem. They put all new fiber optic line in, new modem, new everything. Still problems.

I did thank them last month because they added the Reminder service for programming like it used to be on the digital network and I do like that feature. Which reminds me...I tried to downgrade back to digital and they told me they're doing away with it. I also had to get an "upgraded digital box" for my older TV that i have digital service which wasn't supposed to cost me anything, but they're now charging me $1.99 a month for the box.

So, what do I get for $170 a month? 10 stations that we watch faithfully and 120 stations or more that we ignore, including ABC, NBC, CBS, and lots of other stations.  Don't watch sports, don't listen to music, don't watch Latino stations. Those alone are probably around 50 stations.

Can't use an antenna. We live in a "gully" with high cliff on one side and high hill on the other. We used to have 2 antennas and could get 3 stations. We can't have satellite because we live in the woods and would never get a good signal. So unless we want to go totally without these services, I'm at their mercy. <sigh> 

[king4cash]

I think that we should have more competition among the states and with the cable companies..........