A few weeks ago, I received a letter from Bright House telling me that my rates were going up – again. This seems to be a holiday tradition with Bright House. A little over a year ago, I noticed that my bill for cable TV, Internet and Phone was over $175. That seemed absurd to me. At the very least, I didn’t believe I received enough value to justify that amount each month. I called up to get details on my bill so I could look for services to cancel.
That’s when I received a bit of an odd offer. The Bright House rep told me she could lower my bill by adding RoadRunner Lightning service to my account. To this day, I still don’t understand that logic. I asked her if this was a promotion that would end and put me right back into the same problem, but she assured me that wasn’t the case. I would get faster Internet speeds and pay less for it. OK, I signed up for it. Despite some initial problems with quality (due to the way it was installed), it ultimately worked out very nicely.
Now my bill is back up higher than it was before, despite the fact that I haven’t changed service at all. Bright House wants over $181 per month. Again, I just don’t see the value for that price. There’s another wrinkle in this picture now. I was laid-off by my employer last month (such a generous holiday gift, to be sure). If $181 was too much while I was working, it’s exceptionally excessive right now. It’s time to cut costs and Bright House is making my decision about where to start.
Since I’m starting my own business, I still need Internet service. I also plan on keeping the Cable TV service. At present, I’m told there is a 2-year rate of about $90/month for those two services. By cutting out the landline phone and Lightning service, I can cut my bill in half.
To be honest, I’m a bit perplexed by the Lightning service. It claims to have a max speed of 40 MBps using a special cable modem. Even so, the Bright House technician who came out to resolve my problems told me he’s getting 100 MBps performance at his house on the old RoadRunner cable modem. I’m not sure if that’s something Bright House does for its employees, or if he’s just aware of how to tweak the performance for himself. In any event, it would seem that the additional price for Lightning is more of a marketing issue than a technical feat.
One problem with canceling my phone service is determining what happens to my phone number. I’ve had it for a long time and it’s tied to many accounts, friends, etc. Some people just go get a cheap cell phone and port the number to it, but then they’re stuck carrying two phones. I hoped that Google Voice would be an option, but it only supports cell phone porting – not landline phone numbers. I’m not sure why there’s a difference, but it is what it is.
NumberGarage.com is a service that will let you Park and Forward your phone line. There are other services with similar offerings, but I decided to use this one after doing a little research. The initial fee to make the change is about $30. After that, it’s $4.95/month to park your phone number or $9.95/month to forward it. I opted for the latter service, forwarding my landline number to my iPhone. There are no contracts or other fees. You pay them to host your number until you move it to another service, or as I am, just to keep that number available with forwarding to another number.
Why didn’t I just port this number to my iPhone? First, I also want to keep my cell phone number. Both have their uses. Another issue is that it would cause AT&T to generate a new plan for me. I have unlimited data with my current iPhone plan, but switching phone numbers would lose that benefit. In the end, it’s worth $10/month for me to keep my old phone number and I’m glad I found a service to do it.
My brother and I discussed the Bright House bump last week. He says the same thing happens to him and he needs to call about every two years threatening to cancel service in order to get them to “discover” a lower rate. Well, I wasn’t offered any better rates when I called, so I’m canceling services.
To be fair, my quality of service with Bright House has improved lately. Internet speed is what it’s advertised to be, the wretched distortion on my cable TV service seems to have gone away, and the phone line has been very clear. It just costs too damn much.