Cord cutting is very much a thing and the cable companies are running a bit scarred. So, when we suggest that you cut cable right now, we mean you should, at the very least, tell your cable provider you plan to quit in order to wring concessions (ie dollars) from them.
Yes, cable is like smoking — expensive and tough to quit — but you have more power than you might think. For example, read the story of Nat Worden, Wall Street Journal reporter and suburban dad, who bought an Apple TV and discovered he didn’t need to pay $160 a month anymore for TV.
After purchasing Apple TV, it became clear that I no longer needed [triple play] cable TV service, and I rarely used a wireline phone. When I called Cablevision to cancel those items, they kept me on hold for an eternity to connect to their “Retention Department,” which didn’t seem appropriate to me.
And, this is very, very typical. When you tell your pay TV provider that you want to cut cable, they will shunt your call to a retention specialist. Often their first response will be to offer you more for the same price and then offer less expensive options.
When I finally got through, their representatives offered me several rounds of discounted promotional offerings to keep their TV service, which kept getting cheaper as I rejected them one after another. Then they gave up, and I returned my monstrous, electricity-draining cable box with it’s god-awful user interface and remote control that never worked (yes, I tried changing the batteries). That may have been the most satisfying errand I have ever run as a consumer.
Worden cut cable bill dropped to $60 a month from roughly $160 when he dropped TV and phone service. That’s about $100 a month in savings or $1,200 a year. One up yourself? Take a couple hundred and get a good HD antenna — a pay once watch forever solution.
Ultimately, whether you choose to accept an cheaper offer from your cable provider or take the Benjamins and put ‘em straight into your pocket, you win…
So, again, it’s cut cable time.
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