With both my husband and I increasingly using our cell phones to transact our personal business, I'd been pretty committed to dumping our land line once our bundled internet/cable/landline contract came up for renewal this year, but dumping the cable was not originally going to be part of the plan. What changed my mind was the discovery of a spiffy little device called Roku, that for the first time made it easy and feasible to stream internet content through the TV via our internet Wi-Fi.
I was anticipating a difficult phone call to our service provider as I am aware that they have an entire department devoted to preventing and turning around cancellation and downgrade requests. However, by using a few key phrases, I actually came away very satisfied about the deal we struck for the one remaining service we still wanted with them - internet connectivity.
When my call got transferred to a customer retention representative after 10 minutes or so on hold, I started off by explaining that our contract was up for renewal, and we no longer wished to continue with phone or cable service. The customer service retention representative asked if there was anything they could do to retain these services for us, and I explained that no, we simply no longer wanted either one, regardless of price. I then asked how much internet service alone would run and she gave me a price of $52.99, about half of the $99.99 we'd been paying previously for all three services (our monthly bill actually came in at $134.81 after taxes, digital recording and two additional cable hookups were added in).
I paused and then asked if that was the best she could do. She likewise paused for a moment and then said she could offer me a monthly rate of $44.99 instead. I didn't say anything (I was actually trying to quickly calculate the annual savings to see if it it was worth it), so she then offered me a rate of $39.99 monthly, conditional on agreeing to an automatic debit bill pay.
I have an absolute policy against giving any company permission to put their hands into my checking account, so I said, no, I wasn't interested in that option at this time. I then thanked her and said I would need to call around to see what other options for internet service might be available before committing to the $44.99 price she had quoted. That was apparently the golden phrase, because she immediately offered me a much lower monthly rate of $29.99 . . . which I immediately accepted!
I'm sure it will take a little getting used to being without a land line, and having to get used to "doing" TV in a different manner, but I'm thrilled that we were able to reduce another of our fixed expenses without much disruption in our quality of life.
We have been without a land line and cable for about a year...and have not missed either at all. The land line phone was virtually unused for several years before we decided to stop. Cable TV kept raising their rates as our viewing continued to drop. Like you, when our contract was up (about $140/month) we just kept high speed Internet. It costs $50 a month for 12MB service. (your negotiations were much more successful).
ReplyDeleteNetflix costs us $17 for both streaming and discs. Our daughter has the Roku box for Netflix and Pandora and loves it.
We have never missed the phone line or cable TV.
I appreciate the endorsement from someone who has already pulled the plugs and lived to tell the tale! The other driving factor on our side is how much of the year we'll be away from home in our RV once we fully transition into early retirement next month.
DeleteAlso, to make you feel better about your current deal, our internet speed at $29.99 will be just 5MB. Our future son-in-law said we will likely not even notice the difference given what we currently do on the internet, however, if it does turn out to be too slow, we'll need to revisit the 10MB $44.99 option.
With 3 people on the Internet a lot, blogging, and occasionally streaming TV shows, like the latest Castle episode, that we do want to see, I would worry about us dropping the speed of the connection.
DeleteDon't forget that all major networks as well as PBS make their current shows available, free, a few days after they air. You can stream them to your computer and hook up the laptop to your TV to watch whatever you miss by not having cable. Even cable only channels like HGTV have a massive library of material available on their website that you can watch anytime you want.
Good for you. If I wasnt a sports addict, I would join the club............
ReplyDeleteBarb, I'm pretty sure you can get sport packages with either Hulu or Netflix, though I'm not sure at what cost. I've been told ESPN3 has free sports streaming as well, which we'll be checking out.
DeleteI am absolutely going to do this when our contracted price is up. I guess so annoyed that they can't just give you the low price first. $29.99 is so much better than $134!! Good for you!!
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