OK...today we take a timeout from Obamacare's horrendous rollout, the mis-steps of politicians, and the government falling off the cliff for a little personal rant.
Yesterday, I switched ISP's from Cox Communications to CenturyLink. Why? Because Cox sent my bill in which they bumped up the cost of their service by $7 a month! That's an outrageous increase, over 10%!
This was the third increase in 2 1/2 years that I had been with Cox. I was actually getting ready to have them give me a quote for bundling my TV service and my internet service. But when I got the bill for my internet, I lost it. I went to the local CenturyLink kiosk at the mall, explaned the situation, and told them, "It's yours if you want to work with me". They did. I'm paying less than half what the clowns at Cox wanted for a month. And the service is every bit as good as Cox's. Oh....they SAY they were voted the best ISP in Arizona (where I live), and they SAY "you get what you pay for", which is true in some cases, but not all...but they can't say they're the best deal out there. When I lived in Ohio and had Buckeye Express, I never had a rate increase in the 15 years I was with them. Why? Simple.
What really pisses me off about this is there was no real reason for the increase. Internet bandwidth cost continues to decrease, not increase. It's costing Cox less today than it was three years ago to provide the service. So why the increase? Cox will tell you they are increasing the speed of the internet. That's not the case. I have speed test data from 2 years ago, 1 year ago and last week, showing the same speed.
The REAL reason Cox is increasing the rates is because they're losing so many subscribers on the TV side, which is their bread and butter, and they're trying to make up for it by jacking the rates on their internet service. See, more and more people, usually younger people, are giving up cable and satellite TV for Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime and Netflix. If you go head and get all three of those services, and spend $100 on a Roku, you're going to spend a total of $340 a year on your television, and you're not going to miss a damn thing you're watching now. Cox is charging upwards of $100 a month for a decent tier of cable channels, and HD and DVR. Is it any wonder why kids are switching? Why pay $1,200 when you can get the same thing for less than a third the price?
What also grinds me is that when I called to cancel, the smug idiot customer service rep told me that "If you only called and told us you were going to quit, we would have worked with you and not made you pay the $7 additional fee". Well, if you can not charge me the fee if I call to complain, you can certainly save all of us the time and trouble and not charge it to me in the first place. That's unethical in my book. And damn unprofessional, but it happens a lot with the TV folks. I just did the same thing with DirecTV. I told them their rates were too high and I needed to switch to Dish even though their service sucks. They lowered my bill by $20 a month, gave me an equipment upgrade to the latest/greatest version, and gave me Showtime free for 3 months. Just for asking. I hate doing business with companies that do that, but they're the ones that have said "the squeaky wheel is going to save money".
Lesson with all of this is simple. Call your cable company, your internet provider, your TV programming service and complain that the rates are too high. Then tell them you're going to cancel them if they don't work with you. I think it sucks having to do business that way, but it sucks having to pay for everyone else that IS calling and getting the deal! Do it now!
Tomorrw, we go back to screaming about the government! End of rant.
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