The fees weighed heavy on my wallet. I was paying close to $200 for cable. That included my Internet, for which I was paying a speed premium. The bulk of the bill, however, went to TV — stuff that I didn’t watch.
I was determined to cut the cable, so I decided to see how much I really relied upon broadcast TV.
Answer: Not at all. I occasionally catch ME TV on Saturday nights because the show Star Trek. That’s it.
I do watch cable: History Channel, Food Network, Spike, AMC, and HBO. Mostly, however, I watch Netflix.
My cable-ready HDTV has its own Netflix app. Plus I have the Nexus Player which also has Netflix. Plus I also have Android tablets galore, each of which has a Netflix app. Thanks to the Chromecast player, I can use an Android tablet or phone to watch Netflix on any HDMI TV.
So I was entirely set to cut the cable and go with Internet only. I did the math. Dropping cable TV and subscribing to Hulu Plus and perhaps one other streaming movie services would hold me over just fine.
HBO is supposedly launching it’s own streaming service next year, so I won’t be missing a single episode of Game of Thrones. Yes, that’s important.
Early in the morning, I phoned up Time-Warner Cable, cable cutters in hand.
“I’m dropping TV. I’ll keep your Internet, which is fine and fast, but TV I no longer need.”
The TW phone rep was very, very nice. I didn’t have one of those nightmare scenarios. You may have about some poor guy who took 30 minutes talking with the cable company to disconnect his service. That didn’t happen to me: My TW rep immediately passed me off to Susan, the Nice Lady Who Cancels Your Service.
“I see you have Turbo Roadrunner,” she noted.
“Yes, I love the speed.”
“Did you know that we now offer Roadrunner Extreme?” she asked.
My eyes popped out of my head. She went on, “It offers speeds up to 10 Mbps.” I was getting only 2 Mbps.
“I’ll take it,” I screamed. I didn’t care how much extra it was (turns out it was $10), I wanted the speed!
Then it came time to adios TV.
Now I know the modus operandi in these situations, and I was willing to accept it: Cable companies (and cellular providers) gouge you. The plan you have is frequently outdated and something cheaper and better is available. They just fail to let you know so that you get frustrated paying so much, eventually call to cancel, and they — surprise! — tell you about the true, lower prices.
That’s exactly what TW did to me.
I pretended to mull it over, but I wanted that faster Internet. The thought process took me all of two hours.
In the end, I’m still getting all the channels I did originally, plus HBO. I have Roadrunner Extreme. And I’m saving $60 a month. That’s tolerable.
Still, if HBO offers its app next year, I can save even more money but dropping the TV part of my cable bill. Yes, Game of Thrones is that powerful.
