Cox Communications Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Like most people, I have a long-running “dislike” with my cable provider. I think most everyone has issues with their cable company because they divided up customers to create monopolies and have no real reason to compete. My particular cable provider is Cox Communications, but this story may be helpful for those with Comcast or other cable providers.

Two and a half years ago, I explained that Cox’s pricing was banana pants crazy. They made me take a telephone service I didn’t want to get bundle pricing. (I have Ooma’s “free” service. It’s $5 a month with taxes.) I would end up paying $40 for the telephone and taxes to get $50 off my bill. It didn’t make business sense, because $20 of those dollars would go to Uncle Sam. Why not just say, “We’ll give you a $25 off for having cable and internet?” The only reason I could think of for them to give up money and give so much to taxes was a crazy conspiracy theory involving Big Cable and Uncle Sam.

I later learned what I think is the real reason why they bundled the phone. My bundle pricing expired 12-months later. When I didn’t call up to get a new bundle, they’ve effectively “sold” me the telephone that I never wanted by taking the $50 credit away from my bill. Here’s how I felt about it:

Pretty sneaky sis, right?

So essentially I need to do what I call “The Annual Cable Bundle Dance.” That means calling them up and explaining that your bill went up a lot with the expiring of the bundle discount. Here’s how it went down last year. I was able to get my bill to $153 for a fairly barebones internet and television package. That’s no HBO, NFL Network, or add-ons like that. It includes $2 for a cable card and $3 for a dumb cable box. This is because I built my own DVR cable box.

Two weeks ago, it was time to do this year’s “Cable Bundle Dance.” It took 45 minutes and 2 transfers to get to the right person, but finally I got there. I explained that my bill was $153 and that they are showing that my new bill will be $212. They said that the $212 was an old price and that it would really be $188. So that’s about 23% more than what I had before. I asked if we can do better, citing that I have this $40 albatross of a telephone that I don’t want. He went through his bag of tricks and found that he could lower my bill to $148 by taking away some of the services on the phone and applying a new bundle. I tried to remove these extra services on the phone that I didn’t use before, but I was told that I needed them to qualify for that bundle.

With the price at $148, I saved my self $40 from what they were going to charge me. This bundle lasts for a year, so that’s $480 for around an hour of my time. Trust me, no one is going to pay me $480 for any kind of real dance.

Last week, the real magic happened! I got the feedback email from Cox and I gave them low scores (except for the service of the person who did quite well). That prompted them to call me back and ask what the story was. I explained the telephone hassle all over. She understood that it was crazy to pay $25 in telephone taxes when I didn’t use the phone. (I think my Ooma taxes are $5. I don’t have the energy to to get into why Cox’s is $25.)

She did something so simple it amazed me. She took the phone off the bill! Boom! My cable and internet is now $126 a month. It will take me a few days for the bill to updated so that I can review it, but that’s an actual savings.

So the secret seems to be to use the feedback email and get a little a lucky with the people you talk to.

As you can tell, I’m shocked. I presume the phone operators have pretty strict guidelines to sell more product and not let people lower their bill. Threatening to leave is typically empty because of the monopoly mention above. Also, here’s Cox prevents competition by making your internet bill higher if you sign up with an internet television provider like Sling or Hulu TV. They do this by taking away a bundle discount with the internet service itself. I imagine it’s hard for them to get new customers since they have their markets carved out. Thus I think the best way they raise profits is to charge each customer more.

Maybe that’s why it only took me 2.5 years of complaining to get some real savings on the two services I use.

I’m going to assume that everyone knows that their cable company is often negotiable. If you didn’t know that, then you do now.

I live in an area that Cox Communications is the only cable company. There’s no Verizon FIOS or competing service. There’s is always the Dish and DirecTV options. The Internet speeds promised by those solutions seem to top out at 15MB/s where Cox has 50MB/s and 100MB/s service. The service isn’t good enough to even be called “broadband” by the FCC’s new requirements.

Cox seems to know that they have me over a barrel… and at the same time they don’t.

If that’s confusing, it’s because after talking with the representative for 45 minutes to try to lower my cable bill.

When I signed on with Cox two years ago after a move, it was explained to me that I’d actually save money by taking their telephone service. The price of the bundle deal with the telephone was cheaper to buy than their two most popular products, television and internet, together.

The telephone component has sat in the box in my basement for two years. I have Ooma’s “free” service (just pay about $3 in taxes) which I love.

In reviewing my bill, I noticed something new. Getting the phone triggers $19 in taxes. At least that’s how it looks from Cox’s (paraphrased) wording of “Telephone taxes, fees, and surcharges” which is a separate item from the “television fees.”

It doesn’t make sense that all of the items in that telephone are actually telephone and there’s only a state tax for television fees, but that’s just Cox’s banana pants labeling of billing items. For now, I’m going to take Cox’s labeling as accurate that the phone triggers $19 in taxes.

I was paying $15 for the telephone service and $19 in taxes. My “bundle discount” was $23.64. Paying $34 to save $23 isn’t a recipe for saving money.

I called up customer service to see what could be done. The two-year deal bundle deal I had expired this month and my bill went up another $25. It was time to see what they could do, because I certainly wasn’t going to continue to pay for a money-losing phone service sitting in my basement.

I explained the issue of the phone not saving me money and that I’m not using it. Turns out that the phone was actually saving me money, because it triggered lower prices in the television and cable service in addition to the $23 “bundle discount” line item.

I figured I could use these prices to get me a discount. No luck. She kept on offering to put me back on the pricing I had with the phone… around $126 for the bundle. She explained that it would be $150 for my television and internet package without the bundle.

I countered by explaining that it makes no sense for them make me take a product (the telephone service) that I don’t want and pay extra money in taxes – money that doesn’t go to Cox – just to get better pricing on the two services that I do want. I can’t think of another industry that does anything like that. My landscaper doesn’t make my bill cheaper if I give him more work. He certainly wouldn’t do it, if it meant he had to divert even more money to taxes. If I made such a request, I wouldn’t be surprised if he said he didn’t want to work for me any more and stormed off.

I think we did about 6-8 rounds of back and forth. Each time she offered me the bundle with the phone to pay $126 or to just pay the straight rates on the two services which would be $150.

I explained that there’s a pricing online for the two services I use for $79.99. I’d like to get that deal. I was told that online deals weren’t applicable. And of course that online deal was only for new customers, not loyal customers. You’ll only see that deal if you aren’t signed in as a current Cox customer. Once you sign in or tell them that you have existing service it disappears.

I understand the business case for acquiring new customers and pricing attractively to them. However, it seems like a terrible business to charge loyal customers nearly twice as much.

I know that if I wanted to get the best pricing, I would have to threaten to quit to talk to their retention department as explained in this article. I’m thinking about getting pricing for DirecTV or Dish and using that to negotiate.

In the meantime, I decided to stick with the bundle which the Cox representative said would get me back to the $126 price. She typed it up and then had to deliver me the bad news. The price would be $131. I asked why that was. She said (paraphrased), “The bundle now requires the Home Phone Essential service, which includes caller ID and call waiting.” So now I’m going to get a bill that has $40 in charges for a telephone service and taxes that I don’t use… and this is Cox’s best pricing for the television and internet service that I want.

I’ll paraphrase what Bill Belichick says about weathermen, “If I ran my business like they do, I wouldn’t be in business very long.” As long as consumers lack choices, the cable companies can make up whatever banana pants pricing they want.

If you have the choice, always read broadband provider reviews before taking out a contract.

I (Finally) Saved Money on My Cox Cable Bill. Here’s How I Did It!

Cox Cable’s Pricing is Banana Pants