Oilpressure

In keeping with the television theme from Friday, when I discussed the upcoming TV rights negotiations for the NTT IndyCar Series; I have an important announcement to make – I am finally cutting the cord.

While there are many readers of this site in their twenties and thirties; I think it’s safe to say that the demographics of my readership is slightly older than other sites. This may stem from the fact that I am one of the oldest IndyCar bloggers out there; but my good friend, Mike Silver of The Pit Window, still has me beat.

Given the fact that readers of this site may have a few gray hairs, means there is a better chance that they may still have old-fashioned cable providing TV content to their respective homes. That was the case in our household until this past weekend. While I’m preaching to the choir with younger readers, some closer to my age can consider this a public service reminder.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been watching my bill from Comcast Xfinity skyrocket. Not only does this evil company deliver cable programming to our home, they also provide our internet service.

I went back and checked – in May of 2021, our cable bill jumped from $253 to an outrageous $264. Susan has always wanted every premium movie channel that was available; HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Starz and whatever else is out there. That’s in addition to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Peacock – which are not included in our cable bill. Since May of 2021, our bill has exploded to $354 per month – not counting the aforementioned apps, and we’ve not added anything to our service.

Last Sunday, our internet and cable was knocked out for ten hours – causing me to miss one of the Titans four wins on the season. I was furious! Then on Wednesday, I opened our most recent bill. Included was a statement saying that beginning with our next bill, our rates would be increasing by $8.99; meaning our total bill would exceed $364 per month. That did it!

One place where they got us was on equipment rental. We are charged $15 a month for modem rental, $15 a month for the main cable box, plus three satellite boxes at $10 per month. So that’s $60 per month just on equipment rental.

I ordered my own cable modem, which arrived Fr4iday. I found that since we are not new customers, our medium tier internet speed of 400 mbps will cost $70 per month with Comcast. Unfortunately, fiber optic is not available in our neighborhood yet. I installed the new modem Friday night and our internet speed has jumped to 575 mbps.

Saturday morning, I signed up with You Tube TV. Susan is not at all excited about it, but to keep her semi-happy, I also signed up for HBO, Showtime and Starz through an entertainment bundle at $29.99 per month. The You Tube TV is currently $73 a month giving us more than we ever watched anyway. Speaking with friends who already have You Tube TV, the quoted price of $73 is the actual amount we pay. There are no hidden fees With the monthly internet charge, the You Tube TV and the entertainment bundle – our monthly charge will be $173 per month versus the $364 a month we would have been paying next month with Comcast – and there are no contracts to sign, or any new equipment to rent or buy.

The modem will pay for itself in a few months. I feel like I’ve been given an almost $200 a month raise. That’s good, because last year we pretty well exhausted Susan’s hotel points she earned while she was still working. We are going to have to start paying out of pocket to go to our race weekends next year. That money has to come from somewhere.

My biggest regret is I waited this long. It was partly because Susan was not wanting to change, but I was also simply too lazy to do the research and make the switch. If I had done it two years ago, I could’ve saved a fortune. Susan has still not mastered the new guide. It is different than the Xfinity guide and doesn’t have all the features, but there are a couple of features with You Tube TV that we didn’t have with cable.

Just since Susan and I married in 2012, we have paid $2100 in just internet modem rental fees. What a racket! Why did we not buy a $175 modem back then?

What does all this have to do with racing? Well, not much…except for the fact that we will be able to afford traveling to whatever races we go to in 2024. Plus, we still have Peacock loaded on our Apple TV device, so we will be able to watch the full weekend coverage of races we don’t attend in person. Hey…it’s the offseason. Sometimes I have to write about topics that are not closely related to racing. But I am ecstatic to finally be away from the high cable bill loaded with hidden fees and equipment rentals, for the first time in decades. When I take all of that equipment back

Now that we are finally away from traditional cable, let the other remaining Xfinity customers foot the bill to cover the cost of customers leaving traditional cable in droves. Their business model is antiquated and no longer works. They have been gouging their customers for years, and they are finally getting payback. I suspect all of the traditional cable companies will be getting out of the cable business sooner than later. Personally, I hope they go broke.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on December 4, 2023 at 4:01 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.