It’s been two weeks since my big surprise. So a couple of weeks ago people started asking me “how’s the new TV treating you?” to which I had a few responses but mostly i just said it was nice and how my old one was starting to show it’s age. They also would ask where I put it and if I mounted it to the wall.
But now when they ask, I can tell them about the note I found on my door last Wednesday. You see, we moved into our place about two years ago and in addition to getting the Electricity turned on and the bills transfered from our old place, I switched our cable service from the old location to our new home. One day I received a phone call asking if I would like to upgrade my service from the “limited” package to the “standard” package or even to the “digital” package. Now being the frugal minded husband that I am, I declined said offer and went about my business. Shortly after that, while moving TV’s around, I re-programmed the channels and noticed that we were getting a lot of channels we didn’t have before.
So I called the cable company to make sure they had not mis-understood me when I said “no thank you” and signed me up anyway. They assured me I was being billed the $12 a month package and that only included about 22 channels while the next package had about 150 channels. Well, you may have guessed by now that I was in fact, getting the Standard package but only paying for the Limited package (hey, I called them to correct this). Needless to say, we have grown very fond of our extra channels like HGTV, TNT, SpikeTV (CSI: Las Vegas is like, always on) SciFi and many more. So flash forward 18 months and take a look at the note I found on the door. You can click on the image to see the full note but here’s the highlight:
While performing a routine inspection of the Cox Cable TV wiring in your area, we found that you are receiving our expanded basic cable channels although you currently subscribe to Cox Limited Basic service. We have adjusted your subscription.
I guess that’s a nice way of saying “no more free channels for you buck-o” They go on to say that if I want those channels, I just need to call and they will be happy to charge me inordinate amounts of money for flipping the switch back. So now I have to decide whether to save my money and settle for 22 channels (half of which are in Spanish) or fork over an extra $20 a month to get the channels I had.
I feel your pain.