Now since that time in 2008, there was a change that caused me to jump ship. First was cost. After my 2 years was up, I had been seeing my monthly fees raise continuously. Charges I could not understand added to my bill and that creep that everyone is familiar with where you are afraid first then outraged at opening the bill every month. For the most part, I think my cable company knew that because of their monopoly in the area, I could not get service from anyone else in my fairly new development and were not going to do me any favors.
Then, I kept seeing ads everywhere that the same service I was getting for $215 / mo was being offered to new subscribers for $99, then $89 and most recently $79 a month. That was it. The worst thing you can do to me is pay my customer loyalty back with higher prices and an attitude that says take what we give you and like it, insignificant human. THAT always inspires me to find a way to do without that company or service. Not only that but I'm going to tell others about my experience and help them get away from them as well.
And that's exactly what I did. First I found a way to do without my regular channel lineup that is offered through cable. For a while, with the exception of a few shows, I could not find a dam thing on TV to watch anyway when I had cable, so I was off to a good start. I found ways to use my internet connection to stream programs I liked and chose myself, so now I had content. Bye bye cable TV channels.
Next my cable company started to really throttle me, which means my average 5-10 mb/s connection dropped to less than 1 mb/s for periods of time with no explanation, which made streaming anything impossible. Let's get this out of the way here and now. I am a nerd.... a geek. I know tech, networking, programming - it's what I do and have done for some time. I checked my service 17 ways to Sunday when it started to get wonky and all clues led straight back to my internet provider seeing that ALL my content was coming to me straight through streaming media - watching full HD content right from my internet connection. Everything. I even sold my unused DVD player on eBay months before.
Understand, I was still paying my cable co their crappy fees, but now I'm overpaying for terrible content and now horrible data connections??? Three strikes Time Warner Cable. Adios.
Now, to figure out, do I need to keep my landline and I could lose it like many people have, using their cell phone as their primary phone. However, I even found a good solution there.
All I'm doing in this post is explaining my annoyance with being treated like a second rate citizen by a company that was content with overcharging me ALL WHILE giving me inferior service and lame content.
In the future, I will explain what equipment I have, where to buy, solutions for making what equipment you do have work and finding decent content through your TV, computer or mobile device. Comment anywhere you feel like. I'd love to get feedback and trade stories to provide others with good information to use for their own 'cord cutting'.
All the best
