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Cable and satellite TV providers are ringing in the new year with an unwelcomed gift: higher cable bills.
Comcast, for instance, says customer bills will rise 2.2 percent, on average, in 2018. AT&T is raising DirecTV's prices by up to $8 a month in mid-January. Smaller providers are planning increases, too.
Over the past decade, prices for TV service have risen almost twice as fast as inflation, according to an analysis of government data. Data provider S&P Global Market Intelligence says customers' cable and satellite TV bills have soared 53 percent since 2007, to $100.98 in 2017.
Annual rate hikes are as guaranteed as death and taxes. But you can push back and trim your bill.
What are you gonna do instead, read?
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Why Cable Bills Are Rising Again and What Can You Do
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Could I have a drug overdose?
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday January 09 2018, @07:14PM (2 children)
They did a similar thing with natural gas here. Mostly works but a lot of people got screwed by gambling the prices would keep raising and are locked into what are now high prices. The other problem that you hint at is overly complicated contracts that trick people into raising rates. Many (most?) people don;t seem capable of reading a multi-page contract with lots of fine print and getting all the nuances.
The big problem is that, especially in the case of the big ISP, the incumbent company doesn't want to compete as it easier to fleece the customers when there is no competition.
(Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday January 11 2018, @12:04PM (1 child)
With respect to reading contracts and the fine print, I understand your objection. And really it wouldn't be an issue if the sole power company for each household was well-regulated. Maybe that is the best solution. But of course that leads to two very hard problems:
1. Actually regulating properly (no easy thing)
2. Convincing enough moderate and conservative voters that regulating properly is possible and moral.
Agreed that the incumbent ISP company wants its monopoly.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday January 11 2018, @05:02PM
Yea, the regulating well part is hard, big businesses can be experts at following the letter of the law while breaking the spirit of the law.
Another potential problem is if/when the government changes, putting those anti-regulation, pro-private business people in charge. Here the Province owns the electric company. It worked well for 50 odd years, then we got a government mostly interested in low taxes and a balanced budget. One of the ways they succeeded with balancing the budget was by simply forcing the electric company to pay huge dividends to the government, putting the electric company billions into debt and raising electric rates. They also forced it to start construction on a multi-billion dollar dam without properly considering if it is needed. Long time goal was likely proving that public owned utilities don't work and giving it away to their friends.
It's an article of faith with some people that private is always better then public and they'll prove it through appointing bad management.