Lower rates on satellite TV

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I just saved a lot of money on my Direct TV service by threatening to cancel. We were paying $55 per month for pretty basic service and my wife wanted to try doing without it. Given that I wanted to cancel anyway, I thought I would play hardball with them. I called to cancel and was switched to the retention department. I asked the rep for the exact same service for $15 per month. Done! I saved $40 per month just by asking.

I recently read that cable and satellite companies are having a lousy year and cancellations are increasing. Maybe that is why they seemed ready to deal.

FYI :)
 
How long do you think that rate will last?

Do you have other AT&T services?
 
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Apparently that doesn't work with the retention people at Dish Network. I've been a Dish customer 9 years. Have the America 250 package, two DVR's and a third HD receiver, and NO premium channels. My bill with tax and fees is $129 a month. The most they offered was a $20 discount if I signed up for a new two year commitment. Like offering snow to an Eskimo. The ONLY good thing about Dish is they let you put your service on up to a 6 month hold for $7 a month--works OK on extended vacations.

Good work by you though.
 
They allow me to have up to 6 receivers on one account with my provider.

I got all 6, put up a dish at my inlaws and my parents houses and we each have 2 receivers. We have the ultimate package you can get and split it 3 ways so it comes out to be like the price of basic cable for all 3 of us.

wink.gif
 
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Originally Posted By: Chris142
We have tried, No luck with direct here. Only way to lower my bill was to go to a plan with only infomercials all day long.


They should pay you for that.
smile.gif
 
I cancelled mine after 13 years of DirecTV & there rates going up & up thru the years and nothing to show in the end. My buddy sells a black box that all you need is internet connection for. I get ALL free movie channels, PPV channels, NFL,NBA, etc...... for free now. The black box costs $200.00 and he does the monthly updates if needed on it. He has not had a cable or satellite bill now for over 4 years since building his boxes.
 
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Originally Posted By: cpayne5
Originally Posted By: Chris142
We have tried, No luck with direct here. Only way to lower my bill was to go to a plan with only infomercials all day long.


They should pay you for that.
smile.gif



That's precisely why I boycott cable tv type stuff all together.

If I'm paying, I should have advertisement free television. No, not an add on dvr to fast forward. None. Nada. Ok, maybe the OTA stations that have commercial breaks built in.

No way am I paying to watch commercials. I like some shows I see from time to time, but there's far better things to do than pay to watch commercials with some shows mixed in.
 
A lot of companies are losing subscribers when it comes to cable. We have internet and Netflix and 2-3 years ago I called to change our internet plan. They tried to heavily push cable and I just kept saying no. Got annoyed and hung up after I was repeatedly put on hold just to hear a pre-recorded pitch for their cable service and going thru the same exact thing all over again when they transferred me.

A few weeks later I called back and same thing again. They just pushed it more and more and I told them I do not want it and I absolute refuse to take it. Raised the internet speed and that was that. About a week later they call me back asking how everything was and if I had any problems. Told them no and they offered me cable again.

I was about to loose my cool on these folks but eventual they offered me cable for free. Still denied it then they offered me $15 off my internet and the cable for free. I accepted but we haven't ever ran it to the TV's. I think a lot of these companies are hoping and praying something happens with video streaming and cable comes back into fashion.

That or they are hoping to get bought out and just to say they had x amount of cable subscribers.
 
Been a DirecTV customer for 20 years now. No breaks what so ever. Told them I was going to cancel and go with Roku, nothing. Sucks that even being a long time customer they will not do anything. We have three DVR's and two HD receivers. We are so use to the DVR's that we never watch live TV. We record everything and watch when the show when we want.
 
In our second home we bought a smart TV and we had FIOS internet installed. But the smart TV does not do Amazon streaming. I knew that but most TVs are smart TVs, even if they are only partially smart. They had the same issue with limited apps, when they included streaming in BluRay players. Probably get a Roku.

We have DirectTV at home and pay a lot as wife/daughter want to watch Game of Thrones on HBO.
 
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Dump cable and get a roku or a jailbroken fire stick. Its been over 9 years without cable in my house, and the only thing we miss is the mindless flipping on rainy days, but the 50-70 a month we ve been saving makes it all OK. Netflix is 11 for the ultra hd, amazon prime is 9.99 and Hulu is 8$. Prime might as well be free TV for the amount we order from them though, the expedited shipping is worth the price. We rented a lake house in SMith Mountain Lake VA with DISH and it was terrible. A cloudy night before a rainy day had constant service interruptions and the picture was breaking up. For reference, I pay 60$ a month for Optimum with boost in north NJ, about 10 miles from NYC.
 
Im wondering when they push fees per GB of data (I had heard about this sometime back but haven't heard about it for a while). That or force the equivalent of their cable TV profit into the Internet monthly fee. I'm sure Internet prices will rise as the cable subscribers decrease.
 
We purchased two flat antennas from Amazon prime for $12 each.

I get 25 channels for free.

We then cancelled DirectTV and ordered sling TV for $25 per month. It has been decent for a year and a half.

Our ISP is Spectrum, when they changed over from Time Warner my bill for internet only went from $49 to $64.99.

So we pay 90 bucks a month for internet and television.

We can only get one ISP here, our other option is a 1MB connection with a data cap from ATT DSL which is unusable to me.
 
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