Best tactic to negotiate cable rates?

[Jowel]

Follow up to my original post:

I took my cable modem back to the office so I wouldn't have to pay the rental fee and bought another one used for $13. A few days later, I decided I had nothing to lose by going back into the office and telling the representative that I was needing to make some changes to the service by cutting it out and said I needed to make some changes to my service. I got my bill reduced by $27.00 (which includes dropping the modem fee) down to around $86 for cable and internet service. The representative is one who I've dealt with before who is really helpful work with (not all have been that way).

Could I have possibly gotten a better deal? Maybe, had I also gotten their phone system. But I've seen others with the cable based phone system and they've seemed glitchy (dropping calls, delays in the calls going through, etc.). And after dealing with a very long call and holds from the tech support (who seemed to mean well and was trying to help but had a definite language barrier) to set up the modem, I was happier to deal with the local representative who I've had good luck with before rather than someone with communication barriers who would have a good chance of screwing something in my billing up that I imagine would be a nightmare to correct. There's no "price lock", so I'm still keeping my eyes open and can walk away if I ultimately decide to make a change.

So I'm still on the lookout for bargains (and the rate reduction I got expires in a year which may force this issue again). But it's better than it was (by over 20 %), so that was a good start.

Thanks again to everyone who posted. This was very helpful!

[bxlefty23]

there is a ton of absolute garbage on now but a good show now is way better than a good show from the 50s

[planthappy]

I just downgraded to basic digital and internet with comcast. If I only wanted internet it was about the same price. I also have netflix. I hardly ever watch cable anymore. Netflix has thousands of movies and shows and no ads. You can also stop and start watching any time you want to. Pay about $70 per month for internet, cable and netflix.

[CaptainNJ]

whenever i notice the monthly bill goes up, i call them up and say im canceling. they always offer some kind of discount/credit.

im always doing that with my tv, internet, satellite radio providers but i cant get anywhere with cell phone service. im fighting over $10 from my tv bill when im spending almost $200 a month on my verizon wireless bill. one major problem is the 2 year contracts, with 3 phones on my account there is always one under contract (and i cant get my wife to not upgrade when her phone is due). the next biggest problem is that everyone says that the less expensive providers are very inferior to verizon (this comes from lots of internet research and my wife says nobody with t-mobile has service in our home). i cant wait until i can do something about that bill. oh and i did try to call verizon to get them to give me a discount. i called and said i wanted to cancel. their response "you dont even need to call. just sign up with the new provider and your number will automatically change over." so my threat didnt work very well on them.

[Jowel]

Well...Here's an update since I started this thread. They pulled the maneuver yet again and jacked the price back up to $103.00 from $86.00. What was worse was they sent me a letter stating they could be charging me almost $15.00 a month more (even though they're going up by almost 20% as it is).

I went in to the office and downgraded the service (to the lowest tier cable at $15.00/month). They tried to get me to sign up for their phone service (which included the standard internet & basic analog cable with 60 or so channels). I declined the offer because what's to keep them from jacking that rate up much more in a few months? So for now, I'm just going for the lowest tier of cable and internet, mainly because many of the people around here with antennas don't get the best reception on a couple of local channels that have decent news programming. They'll be getting less of my money for a bunch of junk channels anyway (i.e. Fox News, sports channels that I don't watch, infomercials with Rudy Guliani and Montel Williams, etc.)

I'm still going to investigate other options since I'm peeved with their whole process and the complete lack of consistency from one customer to the next. At least they're getting less of my money for now.

[krelithous]

I call em up and tell them there service sucks and what there charging is not worth the money and that I want to cancel. they wind up give me a deal. though I had one rep that said bring all the boxes to the office so that they would stop billing me and I did best choice I have made. and if you have noticed that most of todays programming is reality shows the cheapest shows to make

[stargirl007]

I got completely rid of my satellite TV service and did not look back.

We have access to Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBOGO (through family), Showtime Anytime, Amazon Prime Instant.

It keeps us more than busy and it has been saving us on average $60-80 a month.

We upped the bandwidth on our internet service to accomodate, but we are really happy with the decision.

We've been without for about 4 months now but we haven't missed it at all. Before we got rid of it, we did a study for 2 months and actually checked in/out on a piece of paper when we started watching the satellite and when we stopped. We were paying $60-80 a month for only 20-30 hours of entertainment for the month, while we spent a lot more time on the Internet. It made sense for us.

[duster1979]

If I were going to negotiate, my primary demand would be that they provide something I want to watch. There's no point to even discussing price until they do that. Been waiting 8 years and I'm not holding my breath.