For years we had cable television. I used to hate my cable company. For the longest time though they were the only choice we had unless we wanted to break out the old rabbit ears or climb up on the roof and put a standard antenna up. They were the only game in town, knew it, and acted like it.
The cable company that we were using had a lot of service outages. Whenever you would call to report an outage, their customer service department was horrible. If you happened to be the first person to call in the outage, they assumed that the problem was within your house and wanted to set up a service call, usually several days out. If the service came back on, it was your responsibility to cancel the service call.
As time passed, more options started to become available to us; not more cable choices but satellite TV. Even though satellite was becoming an option for us, I never seriously looked into it right away. However, after one particularly bad service week with the cable company I called to complain. I told them I was sick of their sporadic service and I was going to switch to Direct TV. To give you an idea of how arrogant the cable customer service was, I was told, "Well that is your choice."
Needless to say, that really ticked me off. I went out the next day to one of the local retailers who sold and set up Direct TV service. I was surprised to find out that the service was actually a little bit cheaper than our cable company. They came out within a couple of days and had us set up in no time at all. Fortunately for us, the satellite dish could be mounted on the same side of the house as our old cable, so there was no need to run new wires through the house.
As soon as the installation was completed, I called the cable company to cancel my service. You probably wouldn't be surprised to hear that when I did, I was given all sorts of special offers to keep my cable service. I passed and never looked back. At that point in time I swore that I would never have cable television again.
That is not to say that we have never had a service outage with Direct TV. Occasionally, during very heavy rainstorms, we would lose our satellite reception. However, we used to get those same kind of outages with our cable company. The main difference though was that the weather cleared a bit, my reception always comes back with Direct TV without a service call and always faster than cable.
The cable company that we were using had a lot of service outages. Whenever you would call to report an outage, their customer service department was horrible. If you happened to be the first person to call in the outage, they assumed that the problem was within your house and wanted to set up a service call, usually several days out. If the service came back on, it was your responsibility to cancel the service call.
As time passed, more options started to become available to us; not more cable choices but satellite TV. Even though satellite was becoming an option for us, I never seriously looked into it right away. However, after one particularly bad service week with the cable company I called to complain. I told them I was sick of their sporadic service and I was going to switch to Direct TV. To give you an idea of how arrogant the cable customer service was, I was told, "Well that is your choice."
Needless to say, that really ticked me off. I went out the next day to one of the local retailers who sold and set up Direct TV service. I was surprised to find out that the service was actually a little bit cheaper than our cable company. They came out within a couple of days and had us set up in no time at all. Fortunately for us, the satellite dish could be mounted on the same side of the house as our old cable, so there was no need to run new wires through the house.
As soon as the installation was completed, I called the cable company to cancel my service. You probably wouldn't be surprised to hear that when I did, I was given all sorts of special offers to keep my cable service. I passed and never looked back. At that point in time I swore that I would never have cable television again.
That is not to say that we have never had a service outage with Direct TV. Occasionally, during very heavy rainstorms, we would lose our satellite reception. However, we used to get those same kind of outages with our cable company. The main difference though was that the weather cleared a bit, my reception always comes back with Direct TV without a service call and always faster than cable.
AT&T has a product called uverse I wonder if that's an option for you as well.
ReplyDeleteWe signed-up for DirectTV several years back, and after the honeymoon period was over, they became as bad as Mediacom, our local cable provider. So, we switched back after we found-out that the low monthly price that was supposed to never go up was only good until they decided to no longer offer the deal. On a related note, it is highly irritating to me to see commercials for both that say the same things (only in reverse, depending upon whose commercial it is) when I know that they are both blatantly misrepresenting what they really have to offer.
ReplyDeletei don't use cable tv nor satellite tv. I only have free stations using TV antenna. I watch TV shows which are shown on cable channels using my net. I can watch them as soon as they are available online. I don't need to wait for the next season. I don't live in US so US shows are shown late here.
ReplyDeleteElvira's Roundabout