Wanna be REALLY anal with your cable company & save some cash? (not really a

[Inspect-her Gadget]

A pre-empted sorry for the GOTAPEX administrators if this doesn't belong here... but I thought it would...

You may all think this is obvious enough, but if you don't... read on...

Do y'all hate it when your cable modem goes out for a while...? or your TV cable goes out, too? Even for one specific channel? Well.. if you have ROADRUNNER or TIME WARNER... you should know exactly what I'm talking about! Write down the time and day, and give 'em a call and demand a discount off your next bill... and they'll give it to you!

:king:
Being a UCSD student, myself, with 50 cents to my name... every dollar helps!! hehe....

[flergum]

Dude - I am at UCSD also! Good luck on finals.

[marchk]

Great idea.

Anyone have satellite broadband in their homes?

[bobotego]

Time Warner (at least in Rochester) is a 100% monopoly over us all. If you want Cable TV, you're going to pay.

Here's another "trick"

Well, for a while, I was cool with the $32.00 per month bill for regular cable (no HBO, Skinemax, etc...) just plain basic cable

The bill jumps to $41.00 after the new year. So I gets myself on the phone and calls them right up and says something like this:

"You know, my cable bill is now $41.00 for standard service, and it's gone up about $.50 every month since! Why is that?"

"Well sir, it's for local taxes etc..." (same old routine)

Next I says, "Well, my wife's parents just got a DirecTV dish, and for what I'm paying you for cable, they get EVERYTHING I could ever want! So I think I'm going to get one of those."

after some more words, lo and behold, they offer me 6 months of $10.00 off my bill!!! Woo-hoo At the end of six months, I'll call them up again, and just tell them to send the coupons on down...cause I'm leaving their arses if they don't!

Don't bother with Road Runner, the aren't held accountable for that, since Road Runner is it's own company, leasing Time Warner's lines. I tried it already saying that I was going to get the local DSL provider (Lightning Link) but they couldn't budge.

It used to be that they didn't give a rats ars about who was going to get one of those "stupid" dishes (Primestar, who Time Warner owned, and is now defunct...gee wonder why!!!) Well, now their tune has cahnged and they are scrambling to keep people.

So call them, bitch about the price or the channels you DON'T get, and how for the same price you could get a dish.

Common responses:

"Well sir, the dish will only serve one TV." Reply: Yeah, well I've only got one, so looks like I'm good there!"

"Well sir, the weather can effect the reception." Reply: Well, my wife's parents (or your own, or friends) have had theirs for 2 years and have had no trouble"

"Well sir, they will make you sign up for a year of programming for the equipment." Reply: Yeah, and how is that more restrictive than what you do to me!?!

(typically the years worth of programming is $50.00 a month, about $10.00 more than the cable bill, but for $10.00 more a month, you get like every channel, including movie channels, on earth!!!

Don't let them talk you out of it!!!

[dev_null]

Hey
I have Charter Cable in Riverside, CA. They do the same thing. If it goes down for a day, they will refund you a day. It only makes sense, right? What is worse, is their engineers decided a couple months back to take down their dhcp servers. They were down for 10 days. It sucked but I wasn't going to get shafted and I don't think anyone else in the city wanted to either. If you have a problem, complain to the CS person(just make sure you have dates, times, and problems handy).

Dev

[m0j0]

i have cox in sandy eggo. they do the same thing. i used to do this at my last residence when they went down periodically.

[Nanotech9]

"Well sir, they will make you sign up for a year of programming for the equipment." Reply: Yeah, and how is that more restrictive than what you do to me!?!



AND!, theres a "DOT COM" (and i don't remember where) that will give you a free dish and reciever if you signup for 1 month of service on the $19.95 plan (yeah, ONE month). My friend did it and has been using it since.

[bobotego]

There's even some placs that will give you free hardware if you give them your cable bill, or some crazy promo like that...

there's no reason at all that someone shouldn't have a dish (other than me living in a stupid apartment!)

[TheLoneGunman]

I don't think the cable company's refund policy is really sufficient.

Imagine, it is the day of the Superbowl and your cable is out so you can't get the game. If they gave you $2 credit (1/30 of your bill) would you really be satisfied?

On the other hand, if you were away for a 3 day weekend, found out the cable was out all that time and demanded a refund, I guess the $6 would be a nice bonus.

I have a wireless high speed ISP (WWC) and when they have problems I completely lose connectivity. They might think it is only a few hours and what is the big deal, but I might have to submit something on a deadline and now I am totally screwed and could lose thousands because of their failure.

[jason_j_a]

I have Time Warner and RR.. here they give us a package that's digital TV with all the HBO's, Showtimes, TMC's and Cinemax, and StarZ. Includes the East and West versions and my RoadRunner for $99. Plus you get free standard cable (like 50 channels) on all your other TV's. DirectTV can't touch that deal. Considering the RR would cost you $49.99 by itself. Try getting all those channels on DirectTV for $50... then add in the local channels on DirectTV too. Then if you want other TV's get out your wallet some more. DirectTV called me one day to get me to switch. I told him what I paid and the best he could say was "yeah but our's is a digital picture." He didn't seem to grasp the fact that I have DIGITAL cable so it's the same damn picture quality.

Personally DirectTV is a bad deal in my area if you plan on getting cable modem.

[irwin]

Originally posted by TheLoneGunman

Imagine, it is the day of the Superbowl and your cable is out so you can't get the game. If they gave you $2 credit (1/30 of your bill) would you really be satisfied?


But the superbowl isn't broadcasted on cable tv :D

[caddelma]

jason_j_a

Where do you live where Time Warner is charging $49.99 for Road Runner. In Cincinnati it is $39.99. But it might be because they have to compete with DSL at $39.99 (768 download 384 upload). Just curious because I just moved into my new house and will be getting cable soon. Just as soon as I convince my new wife...Wish me luck

[bobotego]

quite obvious that you work or have someone that works for Time Warner in your family!

This isn't a story about what's better, it's a story about how to get Time Warner to give you $ off your bill...

and, yeah, where are you that RR is $49.99...it's $39.99 where I am too, and it was that price WAY before DSL came into the area...

[chinnboy]

In Columbus OH Roadrunner is 44.99 mo. if you get Warner cable TV and $49.99 if you don't. I initially had the former, but switched my cable tv to Ameritech because they had X-files on every day for a while. The other day I re-hooked up my kid's tv and inadvertantly put the Warner plug in instead of Ameritech, and lo and behold it was a perfectly good signal. No premium channels for sure, but I only watch CNBC and the History channel. It appears to me that if you hook up for Roadrunner alone you can get basic cable for "free" if you are so inclined. I don't know if there is any way Warner can know if you are doing this, but if they can it could be risky insofar as cable theft is a felony in Ohio. Like murder.

[caddelma]

Just out of curiosity. Does anyone know what the legalities are if you have cable (digital or standard) coming into the house and then split to go to different TVs? I just had a house built and ran cable to every room and currently have 3 TVs. I plan to get digital cable which would require 1 converter box per TV to get digital cable at each TV. I would only need digital on the main tv so I was going to split the line when it first enters the house to the 2 non-digital TVs and the 1 digital. Is this legal? Any thoughts? Thanks.

[marchk]

I'm paying $60 a month for Road Runner here in Raleigh, NC.


Seems high, but i don't have cable either. Maybe i should call them and ask them to lower it. Wouldn't hurt.

[caddelma]

As far the weather comment, where do you think Time Warner gets their digital feed from...Satellites! Granted it is much larger than the ones you stick on the house.

[TheLoneGunman]

But the superbowl isn't broadcasted on cable tv

For those of us not living in our parent's house, sometimes the only way you can get broadcast TV is with cable. I don't pay for cable because of those channels as much as getting just the regular ones -- this was in fact why cable began.

[By-Tor]

100% legal...


Originally posted by caddelma
Just out of curiosity. Does anyone know what the legalities are if you have cable (digital or standard) coming into the house and then split to go to different TVs? I just had a house built and ran cable to every room and currently have 3 TVs. I plan to get digital cable which would require 1 converter box per TV to get digital cable at each TV. I would only need digital on the main tv so I was going to split the line when it first enters the house to the 2 non-digital TVs and the 1 digital. Is this legal? Any thoughts? Thanks.

[caddelma]

Thanks, I don't know of any other way they could regulate otherwise.

[Joshua]

I live in NY with CableVision and Optimum Online.

If you already have cable in the house, it's 29.99/Mo.
If not, it's an extra $10. Yes, you're getting basic cable TV off of the same wire, but it ain't free. Why do you think you're paying the extra $10... You're paying for basic cable.

Yes, Optimum Online also has the daily refund policy also. When I was living at my old residence, My service went on and off all of the time... Trust me, it ain't worth it to get that $5 credit at the end of the month when you lost service for a week.

Now what I DO like to do is:
Flip through my channels, find one channel that is flakey for about 5 minutes, then I call and demand a credit for that day.

Same thing with the cable modem... If I can't access the email server for more than about 2 minutes, I call and demand a credit for the day because of "This outrageous service outage"... he he he.

[Bandito]

Well not every service is the same.

One good test is using http://www.dslreports.com, tools, speed test. Post your results.

My results if I use off-peak time (3AM or whatever) is roughly 3600 kbps down, 600 up.

I pay $40. Now my buddy accross town is on charter and he pays the same, but his bandwidth is only like 1500 kbps down, 128 up.

Post some results.

[J-Dogg]

My RoadRunner modem just went on the fritz again, and when I was on the phone with them, I asked the guy for a credit because of the lose in my service. Since I have had this problem a couple of times, he credited me a whole month!! Good post, it works! :naughty:

[brainsmile]

Well, being a grad student at UCSD I'll probably be grading your finals this weekend! Study hard... good luck

[Inspect-her Gadget]

Originally posted by brainsmile
Well, being a grad student at UCSD I'll probably be grading your finals this weekend! Study hard... good luck

:idea:
Well... uh.. if you're grading any Physics 1B, Ochem 140B, Genetics 100 or Econ 1A finals this week... how'd you like some shiney new Gift Certificates to Amazon? I can deliver them right to your door... but of course... we'd have to make a few arrangements first :deal:

;)