Posted in Personal by MB on 04/01/07
For a good long while I subscribed to Comcast cable here in Portland.
I had the “Expanded Tier Basic” package which gives you local stations, 4 or 5 good channels, and a lot of crap in between to flip through when you’re bored.
I realized, after I had worn out the 6, 4, and 2 buttons on my remote (again) that I was only watching a few channels.
So, I called up and had them downgrade me to Regular Old Basic™, then I asked if I could keep the “On Demand” service.
They said “yes” — so I was paying about $12 a month for cable, plus an additional $5 for On Demand.
On Demand is a pretty nice service. There’s a bunch of free stuff, movies, t.v. shows, etc, and you can rent newer movies. The rental charge is added to your cable bill.
This was a pretty good arrangement. I got to see a few things I liked, we could rent a movie on slow nights (or watch a free one), the near-missus could catch up on her CSI (no, not Miami), and it kept my cable bill under $20 most months.
Then Comcast, in their infinite wisdom, spontaneously shut off my On Demand service. At first I thought the service was just down for maintenance or something. But when it didn’t come back on, I called in, assuming something had broken.
The nice woman who took my call referred me over to their maintenance line (because everything seemed in order on her end).
When I spoke to maintenance, they told me “you’re not supposed to have that, we only sell it if you have blah blah tier service or better.”
So, they just cut me off. No letter, no phone call, no email. Just “click”.
Keep in mind, that I had been paying for this service for about a year, and during this time they had no trouble providing or billing the service. It showed up on my statement each month, no problem.
After I got off the phone with the maintenance crew, I was a little baffled. No one was rude or anything, I was just flummoxed that they would just basically refuse to sell me something, that they clearly had no trouble providing or billing.
I let this soak in my head for a couple of months and finally decided I didn’t need to settle for that nonsense.
Now, instead of Comcast getting $18 a month (plus a rental fee here and there) they get zilch. A shrewd business move on their end.
I’m buying a digital antenna this week. I’ve bumped up my Netflix account to the next notch.
Hello Netflix? iTunes? Comcast wants me to give the money I was giving them to you instead. Is that OK? Thought so.
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