Ethics?

Do they even exist anymore? I hardly see anything ethical about cable and phone companies these days.

And I thought Time Warner (TW) was bad.

Let me rephrase, TW's service and quality were terrible. Here is a terrific ridiculous example of that.

We had TW's combination package of digital TV, along with cable internet, and our internet was always going down. Each time we called, a phone operator would tell us that the problem was our router. Never them, no, couldn't be. They're perfect.

We would check the router each time, reset it, and it wasn't the problem. Technicians would even come out to check, and they'd say, "nope, it's not your router". Really?

When Crapcast Comcast (CC) bought out TW in our area *biggest mistake ever*, we kept the same package. Our internet improved - amazing! - that is to say we haven't had too many outages so far. Cable TV, on the other hand was a toss up. Some days it would be checked and boxy, other times it would pop and crack off and on, and for a couple months we would go through periods where the screen would go completely blank during lunch no less. Towards the end of our service with them, the sound would go out, but the picture would remain on.

Now before you think this was an issue with the TV itself, we would check the cable connections, all the wires, plugs, even on both of our TV sets. It was happening to each one. Clue numero uno.

Again we would reset our cable box like the wonderful phone operators suggested, and it was only a temporary fix, if that. The times a technician would come out, he couldn't find a problem with anything in our house or with the cable lines. One actually said, "this isn't an issue with your box, it's with the company's 'broadcast'".

Ok, so I had a little too much fun with this fake logo. It's all in jest.

I'm not forming some picket line outside their local offices, or sending hate mail. Just airing my frustrations (in my personal blog). No more, no less.

About a week ago we canceled our cable TV service, keeping only our internet.

Yes, we know the price will go up for internet alone.

We don't need to pay for TV that we're hardly getting to use. So we canceled on the 29th, and returned our cable/DVR box to the local CC office. They printed off a receipt showing they received the box, and that was that.

This last week, on Thursday, a CC technician came to the house to disconnect and "downgrade" our service. I couldn't help but think, they better not charge us for the time it took them to come out and disconnect things. Slow enough? They must have been busy with a lot of customers canceling their service *wink*.

Back to the present. We opened up our last cable bill yesterday (Friday), and saw that CC added another lovely charge that we will still have to pay for. We kept the service just long enough for them to tack on another fee.

Instead of paying $3.99 for the cable/DVR box and the physical remote, they made up some new $8.95 charge for standard DVR service which had previously been included in the whopping $79.69 cable TV charge. Add that to our cable internet, and we were paying waaay too much for all of it.

Am I the only one who sees a problem with that? Companies take their customers, and then abuse them by adding all these "hidden fees" that were never there to begin with. I think we need other, possibly smaller providers, instead of these huge conglomerates that don't care about anyone but their own pockets. The same goes for our electric providers.

You say we're in economic trouble? I wonder what helped get us to this point... it's not the only thing of course.

Yes, I understand about business and making money. I run my own, but I work hard at making my clients happy. Abusing them wouldn't make them come back to me for more work would it?

I can say, CC will no longer have our cable TV business, nor will anyone else for that matter. If we could change internet providers without paying an arm and a leg, we would.

Things have been interesting so far without TV. It's helping us see how much time we wasted sitting on our heinies watching the tube. Now I hope we'll be more productive.

What is your experience?