Please! Help me lower my cable bill.

Ted DuPuis said:
I haven't had cable or satellite at all my adult life, only internet. Pay under $75/month. Cancel your cable, that'll save you the most money on your bill. We just have a TV hooked up to a DVD player.

Cable is one of the biggest unnecessary expenses that also takes away from your time to do other things that might actually make (or save) you money.
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This.
 
It all depends on what you're comfortable with. I have DirecTV bundled w/ ATT cell plan. It's expensive, maybe $300/mo for tv and 5 cell phones. My wife and I watch an average of 2 hours a day, all via DVR. 2 hrs/person x maybe 5 days/week x 4 weeks/mo is about 40 hrs a month of entertainment. On a per hour basis it seems reasonable. If I was going to give it up it would be tough now. I'm kinda hooked on a new show, Queen of the South.
 
Where I live, Cox is the only viable option for internet needed to use an AppleTV, Netflix, etc. So, while I could "cut" the cable (i.e. TV content), I'm still stuck with Cox.
 
The only person in our house that wants T.V. is my wife so she can watch her garbage. I'm not so interested in paying for it. We've been without T.V. for years and I'd like to keep it that way.
 
Cpt_Kirk said:
The only person in our house that wants T.V. is my wife so she can watch her garbage. I'm not so interested in paying for it. We've been without T.V. for years and I'd like to keep it that way.
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I didn't have a television for years. Didn't miss it even bit. If it wasn't for Mrs. Steingar I wouldn't even have the thing. I don't even like watching it all that much. I might watch it for a half-hour or hour while I eat dinner, but that's about it. Its mostly good for the once a year when I get sick.
 
When I lived alone I had the T.V. on all the time, even if I wasn't home. I might not be watching or even paying attention, it was just sort of like company for me.

I just like watching airplane repo shows now.
 
Seems pretty clear where things are going. I just hope that when the cable companies finally fall, the streaming companies don't all jack up their pricing.
 
cowman said:
Seems pretty clear where things are going. I just hope that when the cable companies finally fall, the streaming companies don't all jack up their pricing.
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Once the Cable companies lose their market share they will.
 
Funny thing is, to get the best bargain on some satellite TV companies, you have to live in a large urban area....:rolleyes:
 
Thanks all for the advice! I'm going to try again Tuesday with hopefully the retention department and not the loyalty department.

If that doesn't work....

What kind of networks/programs do some of the Roku/Hulu types offer? Looking for stuff like Bravo, Discovery, A&E, etc.. We don't watch a ton of TV but there are definitely some programs I watch regularly (Below Deck!!!)
 
In case anyone wanted an update, I did get the bill from $185 with tax down to $129 with tax. The lady gave me the date to call them back to get another promotion next year, but I'm thinking we will be moving before then anyway. She was pleasant and helpful. Gave the same two options as the other guy but for less money and way less drama. She gets an 5 on the survey :)
 
If I ditch cable tv, how can I watch NFL and college football?
 
Ahem: not explicitly "legal", but eBay has a ton of Amazon Fire sticks w/KODI which have access to just about any movie out there, and most every live sports feed. $75


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JOhnH said:
If I ditch cable tv, how can I watch NFL and college football?
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Two ways:

An antenna for most NFL games, as they are mostly broadcast by networks.

A Sling subscription (all you need is internet) will give you ESPN, which will allow you to watch many college games, including almost all the bowl games. It gives you ESPN and ESPN2, and it enables ESPN3 if you watch using the ESPN app instead of the Sling app.

Sling will also give you TBS and TNT, which have a lot of NBA games.
 
Just picked up this firestick with Kodi. It has all the channels, all PPV, and at theater movies. Legal? So they say but still works either way. Www.thefirestickguru.com. For 90 bucks its a great deal. My cousin turned me on to it. Hes had it for about a year.
 
I wish there was a way to get cable/sat without any of the sports channels.
 
So just connected the Roku box last night and got a subscription to Sling. Probably doNetflix as well. Go from $110/mo to $35/month. I think I can live with that.
 
My biggest issue with cutting the cord is the fact that the internet connection needed to sufficiently run the streaming services costs around $50-60 a month. Add on the subscription services and you are back up near the original cable bill. Until there is one unifying streaming service, to me it will always be the same price.

I have cable now and some evenings my turbo internet dogs down just surfing the web. I used to work in cable and the inherent problem with the system is that the more people are using the network, the more it slows down. So all the streaming is actually slowing everyone's service and even making it hard for some to use the internet at all. The average Joe probably doesn't know it.

David
 
SoonerAviator said:
Ahem: not explicitly "legal", but eBay has a ton of Amazon Fire sticks w/KODI which have access to just about any movie out there, and most every live sports feed. $75
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And just to add to the list of illegal, immoral, and probably fattening things that none of us ever would or should do, do not considering using a wireless repeater with a close neighbor and splitting the internet bill. That would be plain wrong.
 
flhrci said:
My biggest issue with cutting the cord is the fact that the internet connection needed to sufficiently run the streaming services costs around $50-60 a month. Add on the subscription services and you are back up near the original cable bill. Until there is one unifying streaming service, to me it will always be the same price.

I have cable now and some evenings my turbo internet dogs down just surfing the web. I used to work in cable and the inherent problem with the system is that the more people are using the network, the more it slows down. So all the streaming is actually slowing everyone's service and even making it hard for some to use the internet at all. The average Joe probably doesn't know it.

David
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FiOS for the win!

I'm garunteed 25 Mbps download and 25 Mbps upload as a minimum. I've checked it all hours of the day and night and it's normally about 35/35.
 
I switched to FiOS Internet about a year ago, after tolerating Comcast's rate hikes for many years prior. I was paying $90/month for what was effectively 25/15 (I think) Internet, and Comcast forced me to bundle and pay for TV channels that I never watched. With FiOS, I am paying half that for 25/25, but that is under a 2 year contract. I suspect that Verizon will jack up the price once the contract expires, but maybe they'll let me re-sign.

In my area, Verizon doesn't have a franchise agreement to offer TV, so they can't force me to bundle. They did try to force me to rent their router, and it took me 3 months to have the charge removed from the bill after I returned it, but they did remove it and credited me for the charges. Performance with FiOS has been very good, but so was performance with Comcast.

We watch very little TV, but I put an outdoor antenna in my attic and receive 30+ channels (many in HD) over the air. I'd probably do better if I could mount the antenna outside, but we typically only watch the cooking and outdoor shows on PBS, and the kids watch cartoons on Qubo. Whenever I travel and flip through cable/satellite TV at hotels, the wisdom of my decision to stop paying for TV is reaffirmed.


JKG
 
cowman said:
Seems pretty clear where things are going. I just hope that when the cable companies finally fall, the streaming companies don't all jack up their pricing.
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Why would you not think the cable companies won't buy the streaming companies? :rolleyes:
 
I have the next-to-bottom tier cox offers here in Tulsa (supposedly 15 down/2 up), and have never had an issue with buffering with any movie/tv show using the Roku. The next tier up triples the download speeds, but I haven't had any reason to upgrade so far. The only thing you have to worry about going to full-streaming is exceeding the data cap on your plan. Ours is 250GB/month, and we've never come close. Movies are roughly 4GB/ea, so even if I watched one per night, I'd still have 50% of my data cap available.
 
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