The local monopoly, the one who’s vans are now 4" wider than factory spec because they have been painted so many times, is about to move my beloved Battlestar Galatica to the digital tier.
Revenge will be mine, because the analogue service is so bad I had to spring for the DVR (gave me the HD locals for zip, and the cost from them was compatable to TiVO.) This will enable me to drop the ‘standard’ service, keeping only the DVR, locals and the digital tier.
I was told that I could not get HBO without digital cable last year when I called to get it for our apartment cable (we had the basic 60 channels or whatever). I laughed at the girl, and said “You mean you would turn down an extra $10 a month from us to give us HBO, in the hopes that we will up our plan to digital cable, which we will NEVER get from you?”.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, thanks.”
When we moved two months later into our house, we called Dish Network the first week, and ordered a package that’s equivalent to what TW Digital Cable contains for $30 less. (We still didn’t get HBO, but that’s because we allotted ourselves $10 a month for pay channels for now, and my weekly fix of EastEnders won out over a few episodes of Six Feet Under a year.
I haven’t read through this entire thread, so forgive me if this has been mentioned. Some might say I’m screwing the company, I think of it as screwing “the man” who charges me way too much for cable (and NO I am not stealing cable or even suggesting that- don’t).
Out of nowhere, our cable bill shot up from $50 a month to $99. No warning. Just a fancy, over priced bill (we don’t even get the movie or On Demand channels!). I call and they say they had a price change and there was a letter sent out and blah blah-- uh no, we would have noticed that.
“Well,” I say, “That’s just rediculous. You’re telling me people actually pay a hundred dollars for cable…and not even the movie channels?”
“Yup. Actually our most popular package is the $140 package that has EVERYTHING. The package includes ::starts rambling off package::”
“Not happening. You know what? I’m sitting here looking at an offer for satellite that includes everyting for $40 for the first year–”
“Really? Well um, satellite has bad reception and uh uh–”
“Yeah, but that’s ok for $40”
“Ok well what if we give you our BEST package- EVERYTHING! For $40 for a year?”
“Really? Yeah that’s fine.”
((a year later))
“Yeah, I’m not paying $100 for cable. We’re just going to switch to satellite”
“What if we extend your special for another year?”
The cable companies would love to offer that to you, too. But, generally speaking, it ain’t available to them either. Just like you have to pick packages of programming, the cable companies have to select content packages from the program producers. You see, programming is sold to the cable companies by the originators, and in order for Time-Warner to make, say HBO, available to their subscribers, HBO requires that TW take all these other shitty channels. HBO does this because they have to promise their advertisers a certain number of outlets on a certain number of channels in order to make producing content profitable. I’ve worked with a couple small independent cable operators building channel line-ups; it is no trivial task.
And
No, they don’t. The reason your cable operator can no longer provide this content in the analog tier of channels, has its roots, again, in the content originator. HBO, Showtime, etc. have shut down their analog feeds in many markets making these channels available only in the digital format.
Your gripes properly lie with the guys selling content to your cable operator - and their advertisers.
One more thing, when a cable company considers extending their plant to, say, a new subdivision, they will use as a ballpark figure, to begin putting together a construction budget, between $1200 & $1600 per subscriber just for initial design, permitting, equipment and construction. It’s an expensive network out there.
Also, when an outfit like Comcast, or Time-Warner, is making an offer to purchase and existing CATV network from another operator, they’ll figure on $2000 to $2500 (and sometimes more) per subscriber.
I’m moving to a new apartment at the end of the month so I’ve been checking the prices on cable services. Adelphia is the only cable provider in my new neighborhood. All I want is expanded basic cable (local channels, plus stations like Comedy Central, Sci-Fi, Cartoon Network, etc.) but I haven’t found any pricing for that on the Web site. I can get the Bronze Service for $68 a month, or I can upgrade to Silver or Gold Service, which have even more crap that I don’t need. There’s no “basic cable” that I can find.
I’m calling Adelphia tomorrow to find out if there’s a more basic package available. If not, I’m signing up for satellite.
I’m confused. You HAVE Roadrunner now? It basically costs you about $40-45, if you ignore the promotional offers. I’ve had it for 5-6 years, and that’s the current price.
What was your current cable bill? How much were you paying for all the channels if you exclude Roadrunner? What channels were your receiving?
You make it sound like you had a sweetheart deal, and now they’re gonna rip you off.
Maybe this will just expose what a fool I am but anyway.
When we bought our house, it was sold as/is as the previous owner had died and his son sold it from across the country, with everything in it. Most of it was old mildew covered burn pile furniture. Well after living in a rental unit and working on the house for about a year, we decided it was time to move in. I called the phone/cable and planned on being there for the installation. When calling the cable company I told them don’t worry about a box as the old owner apparently had a box still there, they told me there was no record of it and the installer would bring one just in case.
Well the morning of the install, I hooked up the box to the TV, plugged in the cable and just for fun turned it on, to find I had cable already on, with all the channels I guess it was a “cheat” box. Apparently they never came out to turn off the guys cable, and he had a cheater box, and when you live in the boonies I doubt they come out looking very often.
So my mind raced what to do, what to do, then the cable installer pulled in, I thought “should I tell him nevermind” but no, I told him what I discovered and allowed him to take “my” cheater box.
He looked me in the eyes, and told me he himself would of never did what I did, I felt like a buffoon, but at least an honest buffoon.
Since based on my experience I asserted earlier that the guy who spoke to Zsofia was lying, I decided to check out Comcast’s web site. The standard cable package that I get was easily findable. Since both Zsofia and ladybug have said they can’t find it on theirs, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe other companies don’t offer it any more.
On the other hand, if I had cable internet, I would be paying just over $80 a month for standard + internet, so if the OP is going to get digital + internet for around $90 - well, that might not be as bad as I thought at first.
When you go to Time Warner’s website you have to tell them your zipcode to get any information. It may be different at different locations; nowhere anywhere on the website is the 44whatever plan I got sold. What I could find on the site is the price of the Crapload of Cable package and how much the box itself costs.
And, er, right now I’ve been living with my parents through grad school. So yeah, it was kind of a surprise.
Welcome to the cruel world. You’re right----once you’ve had Roadrunner, it’s hard to go back. And I curse Time Warner every Fall, when I get the notice that says, …“you’re new rate for your cable and Roadrunner is…” Bastards.
In Akron, the first city in the US to have Roadrunner, I have the same choice. I can get the $12 stripped down “free” channels, and the next step is $45+ which includes channels I’ll never care about.
A special thanks to UncleBeer for his insider info.
I pay approx 45 for the cable and 20 for the most basic service tier (local regional stations + CSPAN + Religious + Shopping Channels) for a total bill of 65.00 I could give a rats ass about the TV channels but internet cable access _by itself_ is around 55. or $ 45 if bundled with TV cable.
The bottom line with cable is that they will make deals on the fly to keep you from going to satellite, but they’ve got me by the shorthairs as once you’ve gotten used to cable broadband speeds there’s just no going back.
That’s what we had (I’m in North Canton) - we paid $45 for about 80 channels, 55 of which were completely useless - for just digital cable, it would have been about $75 - $85. For digital + Roadrunner, we were looking at $120. When I called to cancel because of getting our Dish, we got the standard runaround-rigamarole from Time Warner about how our Dish would always go out in storms, they’d rope us into a contract, etc. We have no contract, and in the four times we’ve had it, it’s gone out once - during a storm where the tornado siren in town was also going off down the street (talk about nearly pissing your pants - I’ve never heard a tornado siren before, and my husband had to explain to me what it was - I was shaking, waiting for a tornado to rip through our house). And the Dish only went out for about five minutes. We’ve had no problems with it whatsoever.
Thanks, Uncle Beer. Strangely, when I called Time Warner to ask about HBO, she kept saying “We only offer movie channels to digital subscribers.” Nothing about analog customers no longer being able to get it because of the movie channels themselves, she made it sound like TW refused to give analog subscribers the movie channels. That’s why I assumed it was a Time Warner thing.
We’re happy with our Dish. We did move up a tier further than we’d planned to get Soapnet, but now we get every channel we ever wanted, and a few we never needed in the first place. The only thing we miss are the local Weather Channel updates, but that’s what the internet is for.
It’s quite possible the CSR you spoke with is entirely unaware how T-W’s programming is originated and why it is packaged the way it is. She probably told you everything she knows.
This might be because Adelphia is in the midst of being chewed up and swallowed by Time-Warner & Comcast. Those two companies purchased Adelphia back in April and in the couple weeks just past (I think) hammered out the final details of how they’re gonna split up the Adelphia properties. Comcast & Time-Warner are also, as part of this acquisition, swapping some of their current systems with each other. I dunno where you live, but here’s a map showing the new areas T-W is getting from Adelphia. It’s not entirely accurate since it’s a few months old, but it’s pretty close. If you don’t live in one of those green areas, you’re probably gonna end up with Comcast.
I used to have cable, and I was paying something like $35 a month for the basic digital package, plus another $40 or so for internet. Then I spent a summer living in an area that was so new cable wasn’t available yet. When I got back to civilization, I found that the cheapest cable package had jumped up to something like $60 a month. No more, says I.
I now have rabbit ears and cable internet, for which I’m paying $50 - expensive, but worth it when you consider how much of my entertainment comes through that little wire. Between that and Netflix, I don’t lack for things to watch, and I’m saving money.
I called this afternoon and found out that Adelphia does have the basic cable package I wanted – for $47.99 a month. But that’s only $2 more than what I’m paying now. I’m guessing the company’s trying to push the pricier packages on its Web site.
We had DirecTv and went back to cable because our dish’s reception went out a lot more often than they said it would. It’d go out if there was a big storm front to the southeast of us (where we wouldn’t even get any rain), it’d go out during a big storm, during the winter we had to keep going and knocking the snow off the dish if there was a heavy snowfall (no easy task since it’s on a corner of a roof you can only get to by ladder and the ladders are shut away for the winter). We had an ice storm that laid a solid layer of ice over the dish. We didn’t have any satellite tv until that melted.
We also had to pay extra for local channels and they didn’t offer CBC. Screw that, we need our Hockey Night in Canada. Good thing we at least had a gigantic arial antenna leftover from years ago (we never bothered taking it down; it was neat looking in its hugeness). We could get really staticky CBC Montreal, even.
But the pain in the assness with the actual DISH pissed us off, so we switched back. 'Course, we’re in one of those prized areas where we have a choice between cable companies (Comcast and Wide Open West). We’re back with WOW and a lot happier.
You’re right----once you’ve had Roadrunner, it’s hard to go back. And I curse Time Warner every Fall, when I get the notice that says, …“you’re new rate for your cable and Roadrunner is…” Bastards.