When YouTubeTV raised their prices, I contemplated canceling and being done with cable/streaming television for the second time in two years as I previously canceled Xfinity/Comcast a year and a half or so ago and then just didn’t have cable television for about six months (it was great). However, given that I use the family option provided by YouTubeTV (where others in my family can have their own YouTubeTV account under mine), I decided not to cancel the service… for now.

The one thing that I can say in favor of YouTubeTV and their awful, consumer-unfriendly price increase is that they (poorly) explained the need for the bump in price by providing an analysis of how the increase in the number of channels offered resulted in an increase in the price charged. Okay, fair enough (not “good enough” because it was a terrible decision by YouTubeTV, but fair – I get it). Well, Netflix recently announced that they are raising their prices and sent out this incredibly insulting, non-explanation email that is riddled with more corporate sales speak than actual information and justification. Check it out:

Awful email update/marketing from Netflix

The subject line of this email is, “We’re updating our prices — here’s why.” One would read that subject line and think, “Okay, let’s see what the increase in membership fees is going to be used on this time.” And then you read that email and all they say is that they’re going to keep doing what they’re doing. They justify the fee increase by saying, “This update will allow us to deliver even more value for your membership — with stories that lift you up, move you or simply make your day a little better.”

What?

What does that mean? How, exactly, is Netflix going to bring me “stories that lift you up, move you or simply make your day a little better?” What an awful message to send to your customers! Why not drop the corporate sales speak and, instead, tell your customers the truth? Why not just say, “Hey, production costs are not decreasing and licensing fees aren’t going down either, so if you want us to stay around and if want us to continue making our own shows for you to watch, then we need to charge a little bit more, okay?” What is so wrong with the truth?

Perhaps they do not want to come off as greedy by telling us the truth. Or perhaps that is exactly what the issue is here – corporate greed. Why might this be where my mind goes when thinking about Netflix? That’s easy – they just reported earnings of $6.44 billion (that’s billion with a B, folks). Yeah, they really seem like a company that needs to increase fees on their customers… during a pandemic…

I disconnected everything, threw it to the side and canceled the cable months ago. Instead, now I have a Mac Mini, wireless mouse and a Microsoft Xbox hooked up to my television.

The article talks about how the guy had all of these gadgets – a DVD player, a special remote control, the AppleTV service (which was a major bomb), a gaming system, a cable box, etc. You know the drill because chances are that you have some or all of these peripherals (and more). Then the guy broke free of the confines that are put on us by our cable television services and he created his own entertainment center using other distribution formats.

For example, for movies this guy uses a streaming service from Netflix. For television shows he uses Hulu, Boxee, iTunes and Joost. I don’t know how he manages to watch certain cable programming (how does he get FOX News or CNN or HGTV, etc?), but the fact that this guy was able to disconnect from the cable company is impressive.

Think about that in terms of real dollars from your own wallet. My roommates and I spend about $130 each month on cable and internet plus I spend an additional $35 each month on the cable-fueled telephone. That’s $165 each month to the cable company – an absolutely unbelievable $1,980 per year! That’s ludicrous!

Now how much more do you spend on digital distribution services like Netflix or Blockbuster or cable on demand, etc? The costs begin to add up.

I think it’s great that the guy from this article was able to completely disconnect himself from this system. Somewhere in the article he suggests that he’s paying a total of $40 per month now for his internet and Netflix service. Over the course of a year that’s $480 or a savings of $1,500 each year. Each year!

That’s a lot of money! And it’s got me thinking about how I might be able to disconnect from the cable company once I purchase a home of my own one of these days…

My promotional rate for the bundled Comcast services that I am subscribed to (cable, internet, and phone) was expiring at the end of June. On a separate, unrelated call (one of the cable boxes in the house went down), Comcast advised me to contact them to get a new promotional rate for the coming year. I thought that was nice of them to give me a head’s up, so I made the call.

I must have called two or three weeks ago and they verified that my promotional rate was expiring and that I was eligible for a new promotional rate that would actually lower my total bill by $15 each month. That’s not bad! However, this made my the synapses in my mind start to go off because we’ve all dealt with this problem: you change your service in the middle of the month and the service provider winds up double and sometimes triple charging you which launches your next bill into the stratosphere. Nobody wants to deal with that for two reasons. First, it’s extremely annoying and everyone hates getting annoyed. Second, when you contact the actual service provider, 99% of the time you’re stuck on the phone with a person who has a script and is required to stick to it. Talk about doing anything but providing service!

Yet, to Comcast’s great credit, the woman on the phone must have anticipated this problem and suggested that she was going to make the changes effective for the next billing cycle. SWEET! There goes that headache and now all was in place for the next bill to come in. Or so I thought…

The woman on the phone told me the new monthly charge (something like $157 per month) and I thank her for her time. It really was a pleasant ohone call and a pleasant process. Until I received my next bill.

Ugh…

Not only are none of the changes that the woman talked to me about reflected on the bill (as they should have been), but the total monthly bill is $210. TWO HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS?! That’s $38 MORE than what I was originally paying!

I took a look at the bill and nothing that I talked to the woman about was reflected. Not a thing. Do you know how frustrating that is for a consumer? I spent half an hour of my time on the phone with that woman and NOTHING that we talked about was processed. Come on! I mean what? Is my time worth nothing?!

At this point, I did what any consumer would do – I picked up the phone and made a call to 1-800-COMCAST. This was a useless move. After 10 minutes of not getting anybody on the phone, playing the “Press X for…” game, and listening to crappy music while I was on hold, I hung up and went to Comcast.com to use their live chat. Now, to prove that I can say “good job” when it is well-deserved, let me say that Comcast.com’s live chat is excellent.

After signing on, a very nice live chat woman named Siena Rose answered my request in a matter of seconds. She was extremely pleasant and, if you want, you can read our entire conversation by clicking here. The end of this part of the story is that I had to call the local office in order to get the changes made on my account that I was told were made weeks ago. If you click on the transcript of the discussion above, you’ll note that as pleasant as Siena Rose was on the live chat, I did get very offended when she went to an obvious “copy and paste” tactic at the end of the chat. In short, she suggested that I can now consider my issue resolved when it was clearly not resolved. I didn’t like that. Read the transcript – you’ll see.

Oh joy, I get to call the local office. More of my time spent on something that should have been done weeks ago.

The next day rolls around and I call the local office. After playing the ridiculous “Press # for…” game and sitting on hold for 12 minutes, I hang up. Great, now I have to call the NEXT day. In other words, I have to take time out of MY WORK DAY to tell the local office that they made a mistake and that they need to fix it. At this point, I’m beginning to get enraged because I know exactly what’s going to happen – I’m going to request a new bill be generated erasing the false $210 bill and the local office isn’t going to do it. However, I learned once that you shouldn’t get mad at things before they happen, so I choose to simmer down before I make the call on Monday (during my work day).

Up until this point, I’ve spent almost an hour of my time trying to fix a mistake made and admitted to by Comcast. What do I get for this? If I made a mistake with my payments (which would never happen), Comcast would get a late fee. Where is my equivalent of a late fee for the mistakes that Comcast made and the loss of an hour of my personal time?

Instead of waiting to call the next day – during my work day – I decide to call 1-800-COMCAST to see what they can do. After about a minute on hold, some guy answers and asks me how he can help. I tell him my problem and he says that he can put me through to the local billing department, before I get a chance to say that I’ve been waiting on hold with them for 12 minutes already today – he puts me through. The same familiar, aggravating elevator music pops onto my phone…

Now I want to put my fist through someone’s face, but I’ve decided instead to calm down the rage and wait on hold (again). As I wait on hold, I begin writing this post so I don’t forget any of the absolute ridiculousness of this situation. After another 12 minutes on hold, I give up and realize that I’m going to have to make this phone call the following day from my office. That’s completely unfair, but what choice do I have?

Monday morning rolls around and after waiting on hold for a few minutes, I’m on the line with a customer service representative at Comcast. Here comes another dreadful moment – having to re-explain everything all over again (which I do as pleasantly as possible). The woman on the phone (didn’t catch her name) has no idea what I’m talking about and tells me that the reason why I have the wrong charges reflected on my bill is because I made the changes on June 27th and my billing dates run from the 20th of each month to the following 20th.

Ugh…

I explain to the woman that I called on June 15th to make the changes (she gets more confused) and that my billing period is the actual month itself. In this case, we’re talking about July 2nd through August 1st. This is met with a, “Wuhhh…uhhh…” Super! I tell the woman on the phone that the live chat specialist told me she made extensive notes in my account and that she should take a look at them. The woman on the phone, again, says that this is all confusing.

Great.

She asks if she can put me on hold, to which I say yes. After six minutes on hold, she comes back on and tells me that no changes have been made to my account…newsflash! She also said that she was going to transfer me to an account manager (how do you get the phone number to talk to an account manager directly?). An account manager named Marissa gets on the phone and goes over all of the issues with my account. She immediately sees all of the issues and I’m telling you – within a matter of two minutes she had everything fixed. She put me on hold for a few minutes and when she came back on, she reviewed my bill with me and I left a happy customer.

Before the end of the call, Marissa told me what the new amount was for the bill. I asked her again, “If I pay this amount, there won’t be a notice that I haven’t paid the entire bill or anything, right?” And she said, “No, like I just told you – this is how much you have to pay.” So I reminded her that I was told one thing on June 15th and something completely different on June 27th. She understood, apologized again for the oversight, and commented that I only had to pay the amount that she quoted me. In fact, she gave me her name, service number, and told me her location in case I ever had another problem. I thought that was a nice touch.

Whoever Marissa is in the Comcast organization, she should be given a raise. Every other step in this process was miserable except dealing with her. The most annoying part of the entire process (besides losing a few hours of my time and getting aggravated) was that I had to keep repeating myself and repeating the story.

Now let’s see if what Marissa says holds true when I go to pay my bill. I will be sure to let you all know the outcome!

I logged online to access their e-mail support (because there’s no way that I was going to sit on hold to call someone to ask about the channel). After having to enter every single bit of information that they could possibly ask me outside of my social security number, I submitted the following question to Comcast:

When are we going to get the FOX News Channel in High Definition? All of the satellite companies, FiOS, and Cablevision offer it in this area – when are we getting it on Comcast?

Short, sweet, and to the point – you know? Comcast generally gets back to their customers within 24 hours – this is the response that I received (name changed to protect the helpless):

Dear Joe,

Thank you for contacting Comcast.

I understand you would like further information regarding the addition
of Fox News HD to your Comcast channel lineup.

Our goal is to provide a wide choice of quality cable networks and local
broadcast channels reflecting the diverse programming interests of our
customers. In addition to requests from customers, the following
factors play a part in our decision making process:

· FCC regulations, such as requirements to carry all local broadcast
channels
· Requirement by local broadcasters to carry their affiliated cable
networks
· The number of access channels required by local government
· Customer satisfaction with networks carried in other systems
· Customer satisfaction with similar networks
· Importance of the network to our diverse community
· Level of interest across a percentage of our customer base
· Per-subscriber programming fees charged by the network versus the
value added to the line-up

What this all means is that we take all requests for new networks very
seriously, and that we carefully consider the overall impact of adding
each network. While we cannot honor every request, we do take each
request into consideration in planning future changes to the line-up.

Sincerely,

Bob
Comcast Customer Care Specialist

If you managed to suffer through reading that ridiculously “customer-friendly” response, you’ll notice that it says absolutely nothing. But not to fear – before I received this response (which was sent a few hours after I sent my initial inquiry), I found FOX News HD on channel 277.

Ahem, Comcast already offers the channel, but I still received a form mail response anyway! In other words, the robotic people who prepare these automated responses don’t even know the services that they offer! So I responded to Comcast – again, short and sweet:

Actually, I found the station on channel 277.

That’s all I needed.

I figured that with such a direct response, a human would reply back with something like, “Oh, great. We have to send out those automated responses, but I’m glad that you found what you were looking for. Enjoy!”

No.

Instead, I received this:

We have received your e mail and thank you for using Comcast’s online
email support. One of our Comcast customer support representatives will
get back to you, likely within just a few hours. In the meantime, you
may find our FAQs helpful to resolve your inquiry so we invite you to
visit http://help.comcast.net. Or, for more immediate attention to your
situation, try “Ask Comcast”, a real time chat service, available by
visiting http://www.comcast.net and clicking on the AskComcast link at
the top of the page. We look forward to working with you.

Sincerely, Your Comcast Support Team

Followed by this:

Dear [My Full Name],

Thank you for contacting us regarding your Comcast cable service.
I’m glad that you were able to find the channel that your were looking
for. If you need further assistance, please feel free to respond
directly to this email. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us.

Thank you for choosing Comcast.

Sincerely,

Jimmy R
Comcast Customer Care Specialist

First of all, I didn’t need the automated “we received your e-mail response,” but I appreciate the sentiment. Second, Jimmy R (name changed) shouldn’t be thanking me for choosing Comcast because I live in New Jersey – which means I can’t choose another cable company even if I wanted to! Sure, there’s Verizon FiOS and satellite, but home rule dominates this state.

And third, shouldn’t Jimmy R – a real human – have answered my first question to begin with? Wouldn’t that have saved Comcast from looking inept in terms of what they offer their customers?

Ah, cable companies. Gotta love ’em…at least if you live in New Jersey.

Off in the corner of my desk sat a forlorn fax machine. Once humming with activity, it had been quiet for most of the last three years, except for the occasional times it spit out an ad for a fake vacation or bogus health care plan. I gave it little thought. That was the problem.

I canceled the fax’s rarely used, but just as rarely noticed, phone line and cut my monthly expenses by $30.

Go ahead and read the article linked above and you’ll see how this particular writer cut more money out of his monthly digital expenses. Most of the suggestions in the article equate to Cutting Your Expenses 101 which means that if you’ve ever sat down and given your monthly income and expenses a real review, you probably already cut these unnecessary costs. That said, I’m sure that there are some people out there who will read this article and – for the first time – realize that they could be saving hundreds of dollars each month (thousands each year) if they just cut out some unnecessary expenses.

A personal example: A few years ago when I sat down and had a serious look at my finances, I noticed that I was paying for a very expensive cell phone plan. Sure, at one point I needed hundreds upon hundreds of minutes each month, but when I reviewed my usage it was clear that I didn’t need such a robust plan any more (and that I hadn’t needed that plan in many months). So I cut the plan back and my cell phone bill went from north of $100 per month to a little bit more than $50 per month. That’s a pretty good bit of savings if you ask me!

The same thing happened with my car insurance. When I looked at the invoice last year I noticed a bunch of fees that were worded such that no one could understand what they meant. I asked the car insurance company what they meant and while most of them were legit, there were two nominal fees that were obviously unnecessary – I had them cut out. Okay, so that only saves me $15 – $20 per year, but it adds up.

Take a read of that article and then, if you haven’t already, find some time to sit down and seriously review your finances. In today’s economy, there’s no need for you to be making some company rich paying for services that you don’t even use!