Comcast has once again raised our monthly HD Triple Play pricing this past month. We have had Comcast for years now and like clockwork, they raise our monthly bill annually. Once our year agreement is over, they immediately bump it up a significant amount. Until now, I would call and gripe about the increase and they would lower it to near what it had been. Never the same or less but close enough to not jump ship. This year was different (after raising our bill more than $30), when I called to (strongly) request it be reduced, both the customer service operator and her supervisor said they could lower our rate by $5 and add two channels. But that was it…. Even when I asked if we had any commitment to stay (which they said ‘no’), their tone was take it or leave it. In today’s leaner times, $190/month ($2300/yr) to be connected seems like too much….although I do go back and forth on the subject.
All of that said, I will get to my question: Is near $200/month reasonable for HD cable TV (w/HD DVR), internet phone (w/free long distance), and high speed internet? Also, have any of you canceled Comcast service for other options (like DSL or 3G data card for internet, cellphones for voice, and watch TV over the internet/movies thru Netflix)?
{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
I almost fainted when I saw that you were paying $190 / mo. That was before I knew it had your phone and internet too.
We’re paying $80 something for DirecTV. I’ve flirted with the idea of dumping it because I watch entirely too much TV. Ha! Who am I kidding, that will never happen 
But seriously, the prices for these services is insane. Dang, remember when TV was free?
Gone!!!! Way too much…went to FIOS 2 years ago and will NEVER go back to Comcast. $50 less per month from my old Comcast bill, faster connection, free LCD TV (when we signed up that was the promotion)…and it wasn’t Comcast. Where was the negative??? If Fios is available where you are, run, don’t walk…and you can use me as a referrer and I think we both get a discount!!!
BTW…I noticed that two of the ads on the right side of the page were for Comcast…ironic….
Like many folks I was playing the game of calling and asking them to lower the bill, I think for people with big bills they had been more flexable(you dont want to loose your highest paying customers right?). The last time I called I got them to lower my bill but this time I had to sign a year contract
I was paying 160 for HD, 2 pay channels and internet, and now I pay 100$ for HD no pay channels and internet with 1 year commitment
We pay $150 a month for cable/internet, and we have NO premium channels for that amount. Then there’s another $35 a month for Vonage’s $25/month service – fees add 40% to the cost. We keep thinking about dumping the Vonage and just using our cellphones (another $150 a month!), but the cell service isn’t unlimited, so we feel we need the Vonage. It’s shocking how much all this stuff costs.
Hmmm. I can’t edit my own post. I was going to say that we have Time Warner, so it’s not just Comcast with high fees.
Dang! $200 / mo is way too much. My Verizon FIOS triple play is more like $130? But without premiums (HBO and such).
Dump Comcast like a bad habit. Get AT&T’s U-Verse (if it’s available where you live) or Verizon FiOS (again if it’s available).
Both will be better and significantly less expensive.
This is how I look at it to see if something is worth it:
Look at it in terms of how many hours of work it takes to pay for it. For example, if you make $10 an hour, it takes nearly 20 hours (half a week of work) to pay for your comcast service.
I have noticed that since I look at things this way; “four hours of work for a pair of headphones! No thanks!” I spend less on “impulse” or luxury items.
It was a bit less than $190 and w/the $5 off its right around $180. There are a greater number of options out now or will be soon. I will definitely be looking at other alternates.
I have found with my cable company talking to the normal customer service or billing reps I rarely if ever get anywhere. Call back and ask them who you need to talk to to cancel some of your services — when you get them on the line explain to them what your issue is and see if they can’t do better, they usually do for me. With normal CS its usually a 30% jump in rates and then they’ll do me a favor and toss in “two free movies” or some such. When I call to start canceling services it magically switches to “I can keep you in everything you have for a 3-5% jump in rates”.
Sadly enough until Verizon Fios is available I am not able to “Jump Ship” either.
1) Ditch the home phone, everyone has cell phones- unlimited plans are now well within reach no matter who you have.
2) Cancel, and then start service in someone else’s name to get the latest promos. I do this every 6-9 months depending on length of promos and we have yet to spend over $90 for highest speed internet and digital plus cable w/dvr. Give or take maybe $10/$20 depending on the market.
Good Luck!
I have:
1. 3Mbps/768Kbps DSL (acceptably fast, have to think real hard about FIOS when it becomes available here)
2. really basic local phone service (50 calls/month included then 10.2 cents/call)
3. metered long distance service from ECG (2.5 cents/minute)
4. metered PAYG cell phone from Boost Mobile (10 cents/minute)
5. no cable or satellite
1-4 come has yet to exceed $50/month for me, though obviously could go higher if I spend a lot of time on the land line or cell.
$200/month for phone/internet/television seems like a lot to me.
how about stop watching cable tv and get a life,u know one that is worth living.try going out and smell the air.oh right u have polutted that with u cars,to go to ur jobs,to get money to waste on watching tv.
I have Qwest DSL 1.5 MB and a land line with no long distance, one Verizon cell phone, and all this comes to about $100 per month. We are going to switch the cell phone to a much cheaper limited-time, no contract plan like SAM has.
Just signed up for Dish Network basic package + 1 movie channel. The movie channel is $15 per month. I should not have gotten it because they are still playing the same movies after three months! TONS of Pay-Per-View movies ($5 each), of course. Instead, I should have gotten the $10 per month subscription to NetFlix and had all the movies in the world.
Dish Network has a great DVR setup if you have two TV’s. I’ve read some very bad news about DirectTV lately.
@howard Wow, me thinks that someone needs to watch an old I Love Lucy episode to get rid of the grumpies! Oh yeah, you probably don’t have a TV, so never mind
With Hulu and NetFlix, we have not watched live TV for almost a year. Have been trying to get rid of the TV portion of the Comcast package, but apparently it would be more expensive!
The minimum TV/Internet package is $56/month while the Internet-only is $62.
RCN (even with its crappy customer service reputation) is beginning to look pretty good at $30/month.
@howard I often ponder shutting down cable. Gaining more control of when and how our family watches TV/wastes time. We do not watch that much TV, maybe 10 hrs/wk. Some weeks, when our life goes beyond hectic, the amount goes to zero and others we watch too much. Overall, I believe we could survive without cable TV but don’t know if its worth going to that extreme. But if the cost keeps increasing, it will make the decision (to quit) easier….
Guys,
I don’t have Comcast triple play, but I pay $20 for internet (introductory rate, Comcast actually extended from 6 to 12 month) Not sure what Cable tv runs, i think it’s $50 something no pay channels though. I also bought MagicJack for $40 at Walgreens and I think MagicJack cost $20 a year. Until my first year with Comcast expires, i will stay. MagicJack service is not the best sometimes when I call people can not hear me, so I can’t brag about it, but all i do is redial or use my cell as backup…. I also use Netflix for $14.99 a month, I can have up to two DVDs shipped to me at a time and unlimited online viewing. I thought about Verizon FIOS but it’s unavailable in my area. Can’t brag about DirecTV either, when I moved they still keep sending me bogus charges for something that I never ordered.. and get this, these charges are for two and a half years ago, yeah approximately 3 years after I signed up for Directv. What made them charge me these bogus fees 2.5 years later after I disconnected service due to relocation? anyway, I hope this helps…
Check out Vonage. It is running 14.99 per month for their worl service with a one year contract. I have been using Vonage for many years and this is the best that they have ever offered.
I pay $75 a month to Comcast for internet (that’s business-class, with a static IP, so I can host some web sites and stuff). Skype for telephone, watch what little TV I watch through iTunes or YouTube, depending. Works fine for me. Skype has a small yearly fee to allow you to connect as if you have a ‘real’ phone number, and then just charges per minute (cheaply) if you call a real phone number. (The one annoyance: I have a Skype phone, and it’s always ‘online’ unless I specifically say otherwise. So calls will never go to voicemail. And if I switch it to offline, then it doesn’t ring.)
i stopped watching tv……i could just see me at 80 years old realizing i spent my life watching i love lucy reruns instead of going out and seeing the real world…….
I second the vote to ditch having a home phone. I bet you could take the savings from that and upgrade your mobile plan to have sufficient or unlimited minutes, and have less hardware sitting in your house as a nice side effect.
I also second the suggestion to cancel your service (with the explicit reason that it is too expensive), and then get new cable service with a different name at the same address (this plan assumes you don’t live alone). At worst, you’ll be on the cheap introductory plan for a year; at best, they’ll try to prevent you from cancelling by giving you a discount, and you won’t even have to bother going through with it.
I’m also a happy Netflix/Roku box user, and highly recommend that. It may allow you to reduce the number of channels you want to subscribe to. I find the Netflix streaming experience much nicer than cable (movies on demand, and you can pause them and resume them whenever, no DVR needed).
I cancelled my Digital Voice with comcast because after the promotional period, they were charging me $39.99 per month. That’s insane. I ran across a company called TeleBlend that was offering unlimited calls in the US and Canada for $15.95 per month. I signed up with them and now much cable TV, Internet and TeleBlend phone service is $94. And that is permanent, not an introductory offer. I am actually tired of all the FiOS, Comcast promotional offers. They lock you into a lengthy contract with promotional prices and then increase the price. I am happy with my setup now.
Yes, I did leave Comcast after 20+ years, thru its various incarnations of course. I went to Verizon FiOS. Not that it was cheaper, but just because … the fricking Comcast raising prices every year. I selected FiOS 25/25 internet and ExtremeHD for about the same price as the what I had with Comcast, but for a tad bit more compared to similar Comcast offers. I then used the $200 Verizon rebate and bought an Ooma for free VoIP and free long distance and no monthly fee. Since most in the household has cell phones and free long distance, the Ooma was just there for old habit of grabbing the nearest phone. Now I have two HD STB’s and Digital Cable Tuner for the same monthly, I rid the Tivo and use Windows 7 Media Center and to record and watch media via Xbox & PS3. I’m settle now for the next two years with Verizon. If they started acting up, I don’t mind picking up the tents to other service providers.
I don’t have a smart response today, too tired from looking at bills. At what point do we give up this amalgam of connectivity for the sake of our budgets and peace of mind? Someone has got to come up with a better mousetrap. We are being strangled by monopolies like this. And, yes, we have the choice of not using expensive services. But, that is a rather drastic choice. We need someone to come in and disintermediate these services, in other words, to give us new and fresher produce, served in separate dishes. Unfortunately, He that controls the tubes, controls the universe. I’m afraid to say that I think we need an antitrust solution. The “market” does not seem demand sensitive, anymore than say, health insurance. Oh, there’s a topic that exceeds the scope of this article or this site, for that matter.
WOW. although I suppose that when you add it up, it is not bad. For my own situation, once I thought about it, we have directv (70/mo) plus internet through a local fiver optic service (another 70/mo), and phone through vonage (25/mo) so I guess its equivalent.
On the other hand, I have comcast when I lived back east, and I wouldnt want to deal with them again, even if it meant I paid more.
Comcast is just like anything else in the store, if the price is too high, you leave it there.
Weighing it here, too… $150 / month for triple play with HD-DVR and science tier… and well, night after night, nothing to watch & dvr empty (as in nothing worth recording anymore).
Realize they don’t control programming… but, hard to justify the $100/month for TV when we end up using PPV or renting cuz there’s nothing to watch.
Only problem is they’ve been really squeezing youtube and other video sites lately to the point you can’t even use them during peak hours.
Comcast has a new ad campaign where they say “Bills don’t go down on their own” and “Take a look at your bill” and I laugh every time I read it. Comcast is the last company that should be telling customers to look at their bill.. Also their business model is to get you to sign on at a lower price then double a few months later and then when you try to cancel they try to talk you into staying at a lower price a bit longer. So no bills don’t go down on their own but if you have Comcast chances are it is designed to go up on its own.
I have had Comcast for many years, I’ve been a loyal customer but there is no such thing as a good deal with them anymore! living on a fixed income and practically paying almost 200. per month is not worth it anymore! as soon as Verizon or another company with a better price comes along “i’m dumping everything from Comcast! The only thing that has stopped me from changing over right now is that Verizon don’t have internet in my area yet, but they are calling me when they do, so the day they do? Is when I say “goodbye for good Comcast”. 11 years and no more good deals? than see ya!
I dumped cable and Landline over four years ago. I now have a 40 Ft Tower for local channels, 16 total digital channels and subchannels in HD. I only spend $20 a month for naked DSL. There is Hulu, Netflix, and Media Center to stream free TV shows. We even keep up on the current cable TV shows via Web Torrents. All are watched on 55 inch Flat Screen via our Home Theater PC. More people need to revolt and dump cable. That is the only way the industry will adjust itself.
ComCast is out of control with it’s prices, It’s time to shut it down. .. refuse to pay the bill. Watch only broadcast TV
I had comcast. ad said 69.95 a month all channels..First bill was due when they came out. $150.00..Second bill came out and was due immediatley for $98.00..third bill was sent and due 2 weeks later of $122.87…Can anyone explain how they are still in business?
It is just insane prices and offers…
Came recently from Finland… where I had 110Mbit internet connection for 40 Euro and no Data amount limitation (like 150Gb or 250Gb)… and that is not comparable to what providers offering here in US.
Tried to connect with ADSL2 (original offer is 40$ for 20Mbit), but reality is 40$ for 8Mbit, and stupid explanation like “you are living too far from ATM station, your cable is old” et.c.
I’ve had Comcast services for years my bill is now $219 a month. I called to lower my bill or cancel service they offered two more channels at rate of $ 217 for next year. I said okay, at least that’s less than $ 219 a month, more service for less. Unfortunately, when I got the bill it is $ 262 a month . I call back they want to start the process all over… very very frustrating, they had no record of our previous agreement, so they say. I got do something to change…
>200$ it is just crazy… in Finland you get 110Mbit for ~40 Euros… without 250Gb limit… but here providers really do what they want…