Lazy Man and Money

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

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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.

Cutting the cable

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.

How Cox Prevents Me from Saving Money with Their Competition

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About six weeks ago, I read about Playstation Vue. I’m not a console gamer, so I don’t typically follow anything with the word, “Playstation” in it. However, Playstation Vue is an Internet cable service. You stream cable channels. Sling TV works the same way. The prices are cheap at around $25-30 a month.

I dismissed Sling because it doesn’t have DVR. Other than football, I watch everything on DVR. However, Playstation Vue solved that with a $30 package of every cable channel that I care about with DVR. I’m paying Cox Communications $85/mo. for some extra channels that I don’t care about. Saving $55/mo. is $660 a year. That’s worth looking into, right?

[Note: I couldn’t Playstation Vue’s $30 plan on their website today. I think they are hiding it. For proof of it’s existence (at least in the past), I present CNET’s comparison of Playstation Vue and Sling. Also, I’ve read that Sling will be getting DVR at some point soon.]

Today there’s a new option to look into, DirecTV Now from AT&T. It’s Internet TV like Sling/Playstation Vue with no cable boxes or dishes to install. It’s $35 for 100 channels and only $5 to add HBO if you get in on the promotional price (which I think you can keep forever). However, they don’t have DVR, and they are missing CBS (there goes my football) from the channel line-up. It’s not a good fit for me yet, but for some people, it’s got some potential. The Verge gives a great review of the pro/cons of DirecTV Now. I’m still wrapping head around whether I’d get live NBC, ABC, and Fox as I thought all those channels were run by affiliates.

Cutting the cable

And to complicate matters even more, Cox has their own discount service, Contour Flex Economy, with 110 channels at $35.

Between Playstation Vue and Cox’s own cheaper service I should be able to save somewhere between $45-55 a month…

… then I remembered that dealing with Cox logically or reasonably has been a waste of time (such as in this article or this one.)

I figure, let’s give them one more try. I call up and explain that I’m dissatisfied at paying $85 a month for cable television when my needs are met by their cheaper $35 plan or Playstation Vue. They have their “specialist” review my bill and I wait on hold. She comes back tells me almost exactly what The Verge said in their review of DirecTV Now above. Here’s what the Verge said:

“Will it save money compared to what you’re paying Comcast or whoever now? Yes for some, no for others. Internet bills have a way of suddenly increasing when you call the cable company and cancel half of their precious double play.”

My Internet price is $65, but it would go up to $80 if I switched to a lower tier TV service (or out of it completely). This effectively raises the price of any competing service by $15. If I’m playing $150 ($65/internet, $85/television), then a move to $80 Internet means that my savings on another $30 television plan is only $40/mo ($150 – ($80 + $30)).

Once again saving $40/mo. isn’t bad. So I go forward with that. Unfortunately, that’s a dead end too.

I’d also lose my $50/mo. promotional bundle savings as part of not having the appropriate levels to qualify triple play (or Cox’s nomenclature for it) of television, internet, and phone. As I wrote over a year ago, I keep Cox’s phone in my basement for that discount. The $50/mo. promotional bundle is really worth only $20/mo. to me, because the phone costs another $30/mo. I explained that I feel the phone bundle is a Trojan Horse waiting to add another $30 to my bill if I forget to call up and get a new promotional bundle every 6 months.

With the promotional bundle being worth another $20 (after the telephone shenanigans), my switch to another television service (forfeiting this bundle “discount”) would make my savings probably closer to $15 or $20 a month.

To put it simply, I’m paying $129.97 for the two services I use (television and internet) and any change puts me at $80 for a internet, plus the cost of the of the other service. The other services have their drawbacks such as no DVR or limited time DVR, possibly limited local channels, limited sports packages (no NESN for me I think). For me, that’s a lot to give up to save $15 or $20 a month.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

Unfortunately there’s really no place to go. There’s no competition for Internet services in my area. After Cox the fastest internet available is DSL that seems to top out at 3Mbps download. That’s only 12% of the FTC considers to be a broadband connection. It’s actually quite common as telecom companies appear to split up territory to avoid competition.

I talked to an advanced representative from Cox who called back about my concerns (kudos to them for that). She explained that they bumped up the download rates from 25Mbps to 50Mbps at no cost. I said that’s great, but it’s like offering to give me 50 gallons of gas and watch it 25 of them spill on the ground. I’d rather have the amount of product I use at half-price. Of course that’s not an option on the table and I understand Cox’s reason for it. They want to get the most money from each customer. If they made a $40 tier providing 25Mbps of service, I could easily get Playstation Vue. It would be a total of $70 for what I’d want with Cox getting $40 from me. Instead they’ll get $130 from me.

I’m envious of Justin of Root of Good who is paying $34 for his 50Mbs service. That’s not part of a bundle or a promotional price (as far as I can tell). As we discussed in the comments, there’s actual competition in his area with Google Fiber coming and 1Gbps service. The same service is $80 for me. Cox, that isn’t cool… and you can’t take the high road and say that you doubled the speed because he’s getting the same speed.

How Can This Be Legal?

I wish I had an answer to that question. I simply don’t know. I’m not a law expert, but it feels like this is like Microsoft antitrust case. In that case, it is my understanding than an alleged monopoly (Microsoft) used it to undercut the competition’s (Netscape/browser) industry. I don’t see how this really is any different.

If we are to believe The Verge article (which I do considering the authors and source of the article and my experience) the internet access business is a monopoly seemingly divided among different competitors. And while I can’t feel too bad about Sony (PlayStation Vue) or AT&T (DirecTV Now) for not making a few extra dollars, the monopoly bundling makes their product pricing not very competitive.

If such bundling didn’t take place and/or if I could price-match Root of Good’s $34 Internet-only service, the pricing of PlayStation Vue is extremely competitive. It’s not Playstation Vue’s fault that Internet bundling harms its television service and I’m not sure what they do about it. (They can’t really charge less, because they need to pay the networks too.)

When I’ve written about this kind of thing I’ve gotten quite a few comments supporting it. I wonder if our representatives in the government are listening. I think they should be. However Gizmodo wrote in 2011 Why the Government Won’t Protect You from Getting Screwed by Your Cable Company. They tried to start a campaign to change things then. Five years later, it’s hard to say that much progress has been made.

Mr. Trump, I know there are a lot of things you want to fix. Many of them, such as the Affordable Care Act get to be real thorny. There are others that the people are very, very divided on. I think almost everyone can get behind $34/mo. broadband internet and the choice of $30-$40 cable package that works for them, right? This is easy, low-lying fruit that will have a very visible impact on the people.

I know it’s early to think about getting re-elected, but take a minute to think how easy it would be to say, “The average person has saved more than $500 a year on their telecom bills because I made real change.” I have to think voters, regardless of their political affiliation would say, “He’s got a great point.”

Is This a Shady Pricing Trick By Cox?

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A couple of weeks ago, I received the following letter from Cox Communications, my cable service provider:

Cox Returned Payment $25 Fee

(Click the image for a larger version.)

I believe it is best to automate your money so that you can avoid late fees, cancellation of service, and well, “work.” This letter from Cox tells me that they tried to charge my account, as they had done successfully for years, but it failed.

Why?

Fidelity switched credit card providers and moved from American Express to Visa. I called them out on this on Twitter:

Fidelity, to their credit, responded with:

I respectfully showed that I didn’t have questions, but was simply offering them feedback on how to the fix the situation. Credit cards should be about convenience, not making customers do more work, right?

Fidelity seemed to appreciate this feedback and apologized for the inconvenience:

Fidelity, meet Cox. Cox, meet Fidelity. I had hoped the two of you knew each other, but I guess you need blogger to bridge the communication gap. I think you two should have worked this out before consumers like me got $25 fees for doing nothing.

In fairness, I should have probably gone through all my Fidelity charges over the last couple of months and switch them all over. However, the worst thing that can happen with a declined credit card is a notice about potential cancellation of service and and request to try a new payment method, right? It seems that Cox doesn’t agree.

I called up Cox Communications… which was actually no small feat. I searched Google and it came up with regional number in Atlanta and local solution stores. Maybe the solution stores could have helped, but I figured they don’t make billing decisions for Cox. I settled on the default number that Google gave me, which brought me to Cox’s phone tree. After navigating it to try to solve my billing problem, they asked me to hang-up can call a new number which they provided. Fortunately, I had a pen and paper handy, but why didn’t Cox simply transfer my call to the appropriate number?

(Yes, using Google’s default information is on me, but I was on my cell phone, which makes it difficult to sign into my Cox account as I don’t have my username and password ready. However, maybe Cox could contact Google and have them fix the information? I can’t be the only person having this problem.)

Once I got through to Cox’s national department, I explained the issue of Fidelity’s credit card change to the first person. She wasn’t authorized to help me, so she kicked it up to the manager.

My explanation to the manager, Trudy, went something like this:

“If I walked into McDonalds and ordered a burger for a buck or two and swiped a card that was declined, would they say my burger is now $26 or $27? Of course they wouldn’t. I had received other declined notices for this same card, such as Netflix’s ‘Houston, we have a problem’ famous email. Not a single company added a credit card declined fee to bill, and certainly not something like $25.”

Fortunately, Trudy understood what I was talking about. After explaining that the modern world has these issues when we let computers do their things, she was happy to waive the fee.

I didn’t want to press my good luck. However, as a software engineer who has created a billing system in the past, I knew that a decline code does not incur a significant cost to the biller. In fact, if my memory serves, there is no cost. I don’t think it is a “modern world thing”, but a “Cox Communications thing.”

Hopefully, someone at Cox reads this and can provide a better answer to this fee. I wonder how many consumers simply just pay the fee and move on with their lives. (Cox, if you are reading this, I am sorry that don’t have the time to navigate your customer support system to attempt to reach the department head who I presume came up with this policy. However, you can leave a comment below with a way to get back to you directly and I’ll be happy to contact you that way. You can also email me here. And while I’m sending this out to your Twitter in promoting it via social media, this conversation is probably more than 140 characters long.)

So I didn’t get scammed by this fee, but only because I used 30 minutes of my time to get it waived. I presume that Cox Communications has at least a million customers, and I feel like some significant percentage have had their credit card declined at some point. I don’t think these fees are trivial. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a class action lawsuit in the future over this.

That OTHER thing in the letter

You may have noticed that the letter says my bill will be $238.11 after the $25 credit card decline fee. Now that I have had that fee waived, my bill is $213.11.

Whoa!

That’s a lot more money than I expected… a lot more. Shame on me for not looking at my cable bill each month. It’s not a great defense, but I generally expect my cable TV/Internet bill to be the same every month. My other utility bills don’t vary greatly, except for when I use more resources (which is to be expected).

So I looked at my bill… and I was floored with more surprises.

Let’s flash back to last year when I wrote about Cox’s pricing being “banana pants”. Back then I wrote:

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

…

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.

So in looking at my bill, the telephone service (that I never, ever wanted) is costing me $25 a month. My bundle deal expired, so getting the phone no longer saves me money. It feels like a Trojan Horse designed to sneak money out of my wallet. Now, I understand why they made me take phone service to get the temporary cheaper price.

It’s shocking to me to read my article from last year where I say my bill was $126… and then see it at $213 this year. That’s an increase of more than a thousand dollars a year!

So yesterday, I called up Cox to see what I can do about this. (And again I did the aforementioned dance to actually find their real number.) After explaining to the first person that I’m paying for phone service that I never wanted, I got passed to the second person. I explained it all again. I got put on hold… and then they came back with a new price of $145 with some new bundle deal. It took around 30 minutes, which isn’t bad to save $70 a month. She was able to backdate it a month and give me a $98 credit, which takes care of the $25 I was spending on the phone service without realizing it.

*Break* – While writing this article, I actually got an automated call from Cox Communications telling me that I should sign into my account or call an agent back at some other number. The message wasn’t clear about what I should do. I wonder if they’ve failed to re-run the new credit card that I entered the other day and believe my account to overdue. It’s strange, because they could have given me that information a few hours ago, when I called them to get my bill lowered. Also, it is strange to have a robot call you only to tell you to call another number. It’s almost like they are trying to be as inefficient as possible.

The only catch with the new pricing is that it again is a bundle rate that will expire in a year. She told me that I should mark my calendar for next year, which is sound advice. I did that right away.

I’ve been on the fence about cancelling cable service for some time. I rarely watch any cable channels except for the Red Sox, which I can get through MLB.tv for a low yearly rate. Even with the new bundle price, it’s a lot of money to DVR network shows. There are other services like TabloTV that I can, and probably should look into.

I’d explore going with another company, but I mentioned in that article last year, there’s no other broadband option in my market. I can’t call up Comcast or Verizon FIOS and switch.

So, I ask the readers… are these billing practices fair or misleading/deceptive? I’m leaning towards the later, which is also why I included the FTC’s Twitter handle on this. I’d love to get their opinion on the matter, because I think these things are costing consumers millions and millions of dollars.

Note: The use of the word “scam” in this article is a question and not a statement of fact. This article is my opinion. You may have a different opinion. In fact, I don’t believe my reader-base can agree what is a scam anyway. As always, do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

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