A couple of weeks ago I was over at my mother’s house and happened to ask her how much she was paying for her cable TV and Internet service. I was absolutely SHOCKED to find out that she was paying $130 per month for the two of them. My mother is not much of a TV watcher, but she does watch the basic channels. She also doesn’t use her computer too much although I set her up with a wireless network and laptop last year so she can check her email and go on the web when she needs to from the comfort of the kitchen. What I’m trying to say is that she’s a light user of both.
As we sat there talking about how crazy it was to have to pay that much for a couple hours worth of actual Internet surfing and maybe 30 hours of tv per month I asked her if she had ever called to ask for a better price. I’m not sure why I asked her this question because I already knew the answer. My mother absolutely hates to negotiate with people and would never dream of calling a company to ask for a better price. I can’t say that I love doing it either, but when rewarded with significant discounts just for asking, I find the courage to make the calls. (okay, maybe I like it a little bit).
Anyway, I asked my mother for a copy of one of her bills and took it home with me. The next day I called her cable company and chose the option to cancel service. From past experience I know that the people in the cancellation department have the most discounts to offer to keep their customers. When I finally reached a customer service person I told her that we were considering canceling our service because we could get satellite tv and DSL internet service for only $55 per month from their competitor. She did some checking and came back to offer 6 months of service for a total of $60 per month. That included exactly the same services but was a promotional rate for 6 months. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get them to make it permanent. I also discovered that my mother was paying for a premium service that she had never even used. I asked them to remove that as well and got the bill down to $48 per month for 6 months.
It only took one phone call to put a very real $492 back in my mother’s budget for the next 6 months. That’s an $82 per month reduction in her budget, just for making one phone call. I think I’m going to sit down with her to review all of her other bills to see if there are any more opportunities. I’ve always been very aggressive in minimizing our bills so we don’t have any savings like this that we can achieve. While that seems like bad news, it’s actually pretty good news. By actively watching our expenses, we save this kind of money every month (and then some).
Are you taking the time to really take a hard look at your bills? Are there things that you can live without to save some real money each month?
This is exactly why Mr Chiots and I cancelled our cable completely. We put up an antenna and we now get HD basic channels and PBS, and it’s actually much better quality that with cable. We’re saving $50/month on cable. We can’t cancel our interenet, we use it for business so we can deduct the costs.
[...] Vote Shock and Awe from My Mother’s Cable Bill [...]
I love hearing stories like these. I am a living story, of how I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by giving Geico a call. I don’t think that they were extremely well discounted, but I was definitely overpaying at the company I was with originally. Imagine how much money she is saving compounded over the next 20 years!
Caleb
This is absolutely ridiculous. Cable companies, such as Time warner are terrible about stuff like this. The reason for this is that they are always trying to rip consumers off and they know what price they can charge where. They also know that they can get away with it too. That’s a serious problem. I hate dealing with cable and internet companies because they are like used car salesman. They are nice upfront, but dirty when dealing with you and the services that they provide.
This is terrible. My cable company (Time Warner) has a corner on my market. Unfortunately it has been very difficult to change it because they know that they have a corner on my subscription service, including a fourteen month subscription policy. Unfortunately I don’t have much of a choice because they realize that they are the only provide for my apartment building. It is very difficult to get around the service that I have.
Even though in the UK we have relatively few companies to pick from when we select a cable or telephone provider, they adopt the same kind of tactics here. One of those I have experience of is Virgin Mobile – just like your post about your mother I also find a regular six monthly call to their subscriptions dept brings cash savings without too much trouble. UK providers are still some of the most expensive in the world – I’ve heard that prices in France are at least half of ours, even though their technology is much more advanced. Those people who are either too rich or too lazy to make that call are the ones subsidising those of us who do – thanks
I also evaluated a lot of these types of bills. I finally decided to cut out cable television altogether, because honestly.. I do not watch it often enough to justify the high prices.
All other technologies are coming down in price, but your cable provider doesn’t have to because they are a monopoly most times.
The ONLY available option here is Comcast, and they know it. Verizon will not move to my city even though they cater to the next city that is literally a few streets away.
I still pay for the internet since I use it so much, but if FIOS becomes available I will definately switch.