Comcast Sets 60-Day Waiting Period For Customers Snagging Discounts By Threatening to Leave
As we've discussed before, in areas where there's true competition in the cable market, you can call up the cable company, threaten to leave, and watch in delight as they try to persuade you to stay with discounts and freebies.
The blogger on Personal Finance Advice tried to do that recently with Comcast and received an unexpected response:
"Our company policy is not to give discounts directly after a discounted term has ended."
Further investigation found that Comcast is now setting a 60-day mandatory minimum between giving discounts. So if you get your discount in December, you'll have to wait till February to get your next one. — BEN POPKEN
Cable Company Gets Smarter [Personal Finance Advice]
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Comments:
Worse yet, the irony is that often only one company actually owns the physical last mile to your house-- so the "competition" is really just leasing from the big game in town.
I lived in TN for a bit, and had Charter Communications during that time. When my 6 month deal ended (
i live in an area where comcast is the only game in town (for now) in a few months verizon is coming to our area and i can not wait to tell comcast to take a flying leap. they are the WORST for customer service, (or lack thereof), raising their rates constantly, and having no rela selection of cable networks. screw them. i am gone!
If everyone would cancel instead of just "threatening" to cancel, we wouldn't have to deal with the Concast asshats.
Get dish, get a Netflix subscription, go to the library, torrent, etc. There are lots of kinds of entertainment that are far cheaper than cable.
Crayonshinobi: I totally agree with you. Dish is a fantastic alternative to Cable. However, I am still stuck with Comcast cable internet in that they still offer a much better internet service product than I can get from anyone else. I truly wish I could stop giving money to those scumbags but I can't.
Crayonshinobi: And what on earth is this "library" of which you speak? :-P
Most urban areas have competing providers. I seem to remember that if the city has enough cash to keep up infrastructure, then they usually have competing cable companies. I know that all the small towns I ever lived in only had 1 "choice". I live in Somerville, MA (city next to Boston) and they have a few choices.
Sometimes the "competition" is just what SA said, some little guy leasing cable from the big guy, even in big cities. In Chicago our "little" guy is RCN, but they're penetration is sort of embarrassingly bad. A friend of mine had the RCN cable/internet/phone package for years. Then she bought a condo around the corner -- literally, around the corner -- from her old house and RCN could no longer provide service to her. The hell? Now she's stuck with Comcast for cable and AT&T/SBC for phone and DSL, and she hates both of them like poison.
The best thing about living in an urban area is good-quality antenna reception. Nuts to cable, I'd rather watch the local Korean channel anyway.
god comcast sucks.
not that this article really speaks for that. but i am tired as hell of having to deal with comcast. their service is terrible and their customer service is even worse. if i had a choice i'd drop them but this is a small enough city that they are the -only- cable provider
"Most urban areas have competing providers. I seem to remember that if the city has enough cash to keep up infrastructure, then they usually have competing cable companies. I know that all the small towns I ever lived in only had 1 "choice". I live in Somerville, MA (city next to Boston) and they have a few choices."
Not true - I have lived in 2 fairly decent sized areas, each of ~100k population. The first has the most number of millionares per capita in the counry, the other is a college town. No choice in either. you are stuck with what you have.
just because there's only one cable provider in town doesn't mean you can't strong arm them. just tell them you're going to switch to satellite. did that with charter in NC and got them to extend my new customer discount.
****where there's true competition****
Where would this be. I have yet to live in a market where there was more than one cable provider.