I’m so tired of the extra fees and taxes for services (phone, cable, heating, hotels etc). It seems anymore the extra hidden fees are more than the services. It’s like an open checkbook for companies and city officials to tack on the fees thus over inflating the prices. You can’t even book a hotel in Seattle without paying a 20% tax on top of it! With that being said, I am officially done with Century Link. The time has come when a land line phone simply is not needed in my life. Cells phones have greatly improved and the convenience of having a cell phone on you is a big bonus. My home phone system will consist of a Straight Talk cell phone. The service is prepaid and runs me $30 per month. It uses all the cell phone towers of AT&T so the quality is great and consistent. No extra fees, no BS, no personal info, no contract. I pay online every month and it’s done. They don’t bother me with calls or up sells ever. They don’t even send me a statement. It’s great. The days of Century Link stealing my money every month is over. Straight Talk also has a land line service for $15 dollars per month now which is looking pretty good.
The next cancellation will be Comcast. Unfortunately, they pretty much have an monopoly over the town with their Internet service. The speeds are the best around (way better then Century Link) and not much can be done about that. The TV service is extremely overpriced. The phone service is a complete fraud for the money (Digital Phone service is pretty much free – try Skype, Vonage, or Magic jack). I’m considering keeping the Internet but cancelling all the TV service. All the major TV channels have their shows posted on the their websites these days. For example if you want to watch Dancing With The Stars you would just go to ABC.com. All their shows are posted same as Fox.com or CBS.com. You can also complement the shows by adding in Netflix Streaming ($8.99) and even Hulu.com ($7.99). Comcast is also just killing me with all the commercials these days you can’t even watch a show without it being overwhelmed with commercials. Walmart is selling a plug in device now called “Free TV”. It’s similar to MagicJack (digital phone service) and the price is $20 per year. It’s says it picks up thousands of TV and radio stations. For $20 per year it’s probably worth a try. My Comcast bill is nearly $130 per month right now. I believe Comcast is starting to see the big picture now considering they purchased all of NBCUniveral (costs over $20 billion by the way). They are seeing that customers are making the move away from the subscription Comcast TV service to a free Internet model as described above – so they had to do it. The move gives them more power to keep things the way they are now and limit the people from making that transition. It gives them all the rights to the shows and who can show them online (thus controlling the marketplace). It’s a pretty slick move by them if you ask me.
