Today we continue the fun practice of taking a deep dive into our monthly bills, how much they are costing us, and steps we could take to potentially reduce them. We welcome you to join in and compare this information to your own bills, to see if perhaps one of us is getting a raw deal!
First up in this new series is the Charter Bundle, where we combine our Cable Television, Internet, and telephone into a single bill. As a company, Charter Communications has taken a beating in recent years, even going so far as to declare bankruptcy in 2009. They were getting barraged by complaints of poor customer service, random rate increases, and sub-par offerings. As such, we actually switched away from Charter to a competitor for a few years, we decided to come back to latch onto their new lower rates. I can honestly say that the company has cleaned up their act, and our dealings with them since coming back have been almost entirely positive.
That said, let’s crack open the bill:
While this number is higher than I would like, it is at least $30 cheaper than what we were paying a competitor for similar services. The internet is certainly a requirement for our jobs, but the television could be considered a luxury. When we were paying off debt, we considered cancelling our television service to save money, but ultimately we justified the cost by considering that we rarely go out, and almost never go to the movies.
We’ll dig into that more later in this post, but let’s start by digging into the numbers. Please note that the prices listed are certainly lowered by our participating in the Charter Bundle. If we were to drop one or more of the services, the price of the others would go up.
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Charter Digital Plus w/2 HD Receivers, 1 DVR Rental, Digital View Plus
Nobody in my family watches a ton of television, but it certainly does get used. For the most part, I only end up watching sports, but having a cable (or dish) package is really the only way to watch live sports efficiently. My family does enjoy recording several of our favorite shows on the DVR, and my kids enjoy some kids programming and educational channels. The television certainly gets watched more when the weather gets bad, and it can be nice to watch a movie on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
At one time, we had a few movie channels as well on a special promotion, but as soon as the promotion ended- we cancelled them. I can’t imagine that I would ever pay for a movie channel again, now that better options like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video are available.
I have talked to Charter multiple times about potentially getting these costs down, but there really is nothing that we can do (short of cancelling TV altogether). DVR is now packaged on a “whole-house” basis, so it’s either all or nothing. I continue to hope for a pay-per-channel model of TV subscription to be released at some point, where we could only pay for the 8 or 9 channels that get watched, but I doubt it will ever happen.
Includes Internet Cable Modem Lease
Charter has a reputation as a great high-speed internet provider, and I think this is pretty accurate. We opted for the lower-speed tier, and still get nearly 20 mbps download speed. This is considerably faster than the similarly priced option that we had with a competitor.
We use the internet connection for many things, including the writing of this blog! More importantly, I work in technology, and having ready access to a high-speed connection is a requirement for my job.
Unlimited long distance, voice mail, caller-ID.
I am sure that some of you frugalistas out there will tell me that this is the best way for us to shave some money off this bill, and you would be right. We could actually love nothing more than to follow trends and go completely cellular, but they have constructed the Charter Bundle in a way that makes this quite tricky.
If we were to cancel our phone service today, the price of the other two services in our Charter Bundle (TV and Internet) would increase to the point where our overall bill would increase! That’s right. Cancelling our phone service would actually cost us more! I am told that our “promotion” that creates this reality with the charter bundle will expire next summer, and as such- we will likely go phone free at that time.
Taxes, Fees, and Wire Maintenance: 23.84/month
We received a $200 gift card for signing a 2 year contact
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I am curious to hear how this compares with your cable/internet/phone bills.
Are we paying too much with the Charter Bundle? Do you have any tips for saving any money on this bill?
(Note: This post was originally featured on See Debt Run in May 2012)
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