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Looking for some inexpensive entertainment this weekend? It’s HBO and Cinemax free preview weekend at a number of major cable providers, including Charter, Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, and Verizon FIOS. If that doesn’t include you, keep an eye on the FreePreview.tv site to learn when your provider’s previews are coming up. [FreePreview.tv] (Thanks, Tim!)
Just when free tv on the internet was starting to get good, Hulu board member Jon Miller had to go and talk about subscription fees. Miller, an AOL refugee who’s now squeezing cash out of consumers for News Corp, said last week of subscription fees: “in my opinion the answer could be yes. I don’t see why that shouldn’t happen over time… it seems to me that over time that could be a logical thing.” Charging for content isn’t his only big idea…
We all know the switch to digital transition is next Friday, June 12. Most of us already have cable, or satellite, or digital converters. But not three million Americans, who according to Nielsen, are still “totally unprepared for the transition and will lose their reception.”
DirecTV is on Twitter. Tell them your problems, or how awesome they are. Whichever comes to mind first.
Joe works at a Radio Shack store on Long Island. Lately, the combination of the digital TV transition and some recent lineup changes at local cable TV provider Cablevision has Joe concerned, since he has both a conscience and a brain, and is an avid Consumerist reader.
Fresh off the success of the Slap Chop remix, DJ Steve Porter has remixed another of Vince’s commercials into an auto-tuned, flat-topped masterpiece.
You know how much it sucks to lose a $5 bill, right? Well, times that by 11 million and you get an idea of how CBS president and CEO Les Moonves felt during the first quarter of the year, when his company lost $55.3 million.
We’ll probably never be able to get those mug shots out of our minds when we see crazy old Vince hawking things on TV, but this amazing remix comes in a close second at searing itself into the brain. “You’re gonna love my nuts” is particularly well done.
RCN knows some of you aren’t going to be happy with having your fees increased, especially in such a tight economy. They know that some of you will probably decide enough is enough and call them to request an account downgrade. They’re going to make money off of that, too.
After a long day of work, John called Comcast’s “24/7” customer service line to downgrade his service. Press 1 to upgrade, 2 to downgrade, chirped the phone. He pressed two and was told that he was calling after hours and would have to call back later. He hung up and redialed and pressed 1, “upgrade,” this time, and within 30 seconds was connected with a customer service rep, “who was more than happy to help me DOWNGRADE my service. It was literally a 2 minute call, and I had cancelled the services I don’t use and am saving almost $40/mo,” blogs John. Clever, Comcast, so clever.
The people behind the new Smart Mop infomercial have clearly studied the success of the ShamWow guy, and they’ve taken the infomercial genre to a new level of silliness. Their new ad is so ridiculous that it seems designed more for YouTube than primetime, but since it’s funny and entertaining (for an infomercial) we’ll take the bait and post it.
Reader Joel isn’t too happy with the service he got from Sears. He was looking to get an older TV fixed and, rather than make sure that they could fix it, Sears sent a guy to drive on Joel’s lawn.
Between weak holiday sales and the pending arrival of new models, this an excellent time to haggle with your local electronics store over the price of a new TV. In a normal year, prices dip before the holidays and again before the Super Bowl. This year, with the recession clamping down on bank accounts, nobody’s buying. With new models arriving soon, retailers just want to clear out their showroom space, meaning you can walk in and save a few hundred dollars on that dream set you’ve always wanted.
Like anything that’s cool and people use to organically connect to one another, companies have rushed into Twittering. To take advantage of this, reader Justin says he’s started following all the companies he gets service from on Twitter. When he saw @dishnetwork tweet about an area getting local HD channels, he asked in reply when Cincinnati would get them. @dishnetwork replied back that Cincinnati should have them and asked for his account for so they could check into it. Turned out he needed a different Dish and the rep agreed to have it installed at no cost instead of the usual $60. “The tech showed up this morning, and I have local HD channels for free,” writes Justin. “I’m finding tracking companies on Twitter is useful because they people monitoring the accounts are ones who can actually do something.”
As we’ve said repeatedly, AnnualCreditReport.com is the good website to go to when you need to pull a credit report, because it’s actually free. The others, including freecreditreport.com, use the promise of free the way an angler fish uses its forehead-worm-thing to trap dumb little fish. The FTC has decided to fight fire with fire by releasing its own jingles. To be honest, we’re not 100% sold on them—they have kind of a squaresville, PBS vibe, which is gonna really hamper their viral power. Check them out below.
All told, reader Sam sat on hold with the Fuai Corporation for 2 hours and 25 minutes only to end up with a DTV box with a busted-up face that didn’t even have the analog pass-through feature he paid for. That could be a problem if he still wants to watch his local PBS affiliate station…
Cable is one of the first things you should cut to keep expenses down, but that doesn’t mean you should ditch your favorite shows. J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly cut his cable bill from $65.82 to $11.30 without missing a single harrowing plot twist. Here’s how he did it…
Today was supposed to be the DTV transition day, were it not for the complete and utter disaster that was the coupon program. Now, the new transition day is June 12, but some stations, mostly in rural areas, are making the switch anyway.
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