Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Cutting the Cable

Enough talk. This weekend I took action. I cut my cable service back to basic cable. This means my cable bill will be roughly $13 per month for television. I still have to return the DVR/cable boxes, though, so currently the television part of my bill is around $40.

The number porting process seems to have canceled the VOIP service for me. That part of the bill has already gone away. I am not going to cancel Internet service, so that will represent $50 of my bill. The final cable bill should be ~$63, the actual number depends on what taxes apply.

Here's the breakdown of the old bills:

Cable television, Internet, and phone: $164
Netflix: $15
Total: $179

The new bills:
Cable television, Internet: $63
Netflix: $18
Phone: $15
Total: $96

Savings: $85

After a few months of savings in the entertainment budget I will probably buy another antenna to see if I can get a good enough signal. If I can make that happen then I can save almost $100 per month over the old plan. We already used the first month's entertainment budget to buy Kevin some DVDs. I hope he won't miss Moose, but at least he can still watch a show or two.

One last note: Cablevision's customer service was top notch during my interactions with them. I'm unhappy that they misled me when I switched to their service but at least they were pleasant about everything. Most importantly, I never once had to speak to a customer retention specialist. No one tried to talk me out of my decision. No offers with strings attached. They just did what I asked while treating me politely.

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