Breaking away from Comcast (Seattle: credit, month to, buy)

[cmswazey]

We have had Comcast Internet and cable for years. Paid for landline separately because of some logistics with not being able to keep the phone number(except it turns out we actually could ) . So we had the cable tv service increased to get more bells and whistles. Cost a fair bit then went up. All of a sudden this year we had a huge increase. Like well over 25%. Ridiculous. Our bill went up to 277.00. It had been about 203.00.

Fed up and decided to cut the cord. Because we have a landline we want to keep, we need to still bundle as we'd have that charge anyway.

So upshot is that we can save 150.00/mo by switching to Century Link Prism tv with DSL and phone. I'm in Seattle so I can't get Verizon FIOS but Prism is FIOS, too.

Went online to read reviews. The Seattle Reddit ones were mixed, somewhat positive. Nationally, lots and lots of bad reviews that seemed to mainly be about customer service problems with Century Link more than ok, this is how the DSL and Prism tv are. Boy, were they scathing. But none were Seattle users.

Now I have CL for our landline and had a horrific time when we had line problems a year or so ago. Just awful. But when I made some waves and sent some emails they turned it around. Fixed everything and gave me credits for lost service. I have to give them props for that.

Anyone here have Prism?

[slan490]

Yes we have prism, it's fine. Bills have stayed down and I'll never go back to Comcast for that reason alone. Customer service is not as streamlined as Comcast but luckily I don't have to gear up for the big monthly Comcast bill fight anymore so don't have to call much.

[cmswazey]

Cool. I was gobsmacked by the huge increase. Down with Comcast!

[CrazyDonkey]

In a lot of areas, especially in Seattle, Comcast has its customers bent over a table, and doesn't hesitate to stick it to them...

If I had the option of CL's Gigabit/Prism service, I'd do it in a minute, but I'm in an area of West Ballard (near the Locks) that they might never get to.

I ended up ditching sports channels, HD service, DVR, and phone. The plan was to strip their service back to their Basic tier and Internet, but when I went to turn in my equipment, they offered me their Economy tier plus Blast Internet for basically the same money (about $90 total, compared to about $190 previously).

For HD local channels, I have a digital antenna. For movies and TV series, I'm relying on a Roku 2 (for Netflix, etc.), which I got for free for prepaying three months for Sling TV ($20 or $25/mo, depending on the package). I needed to replace my old outmoded Roku HD anyway.

I subscribed to Sling TV's Blue Package to get access to Olympics coverage through NBC/Universal's channels, but will likely switch to their Orange package (which has the ESPN channels) for "volleyball" season, but will then likely cancel it (it is month to month, no contract). I'm also looking at using a VPN service to get access to the BBC's and CBC's streaming Olympics coverage (which are a hundred times better than NBC's), which I should then be able to cast to my TV.

I also bought a Chromecast for $26, which I use to "cast" any online streams from the Chrome browser to my 40" LCD. I'm also using the free Kodi TV application to view other online streams, mostly sports, which however can be very hit or miss (partly due to my being more interested in volleyball and softball, than football and basketball). There are Android set-top boxes you can buy that have Kodi pre-installed that reportedly work much better.