Wow. Good for you. I have to get rid of Comcast, too. My bill for Triple Play went up by $20 a month. I was paying $190!!! That includes $10 for HBO, a total waste. I called to complain and they reduced it to $170. I said Verizon was offering a lot less and they then lowered it to $150, except when the bill came it was $170.

I'm switching to Verizon for their two year deal of just over $100 for all three services. I am too old-school to let go of my landline.

There is a similar discussion going on on the Conversations side of the Cooking Forum.

I wish we could ditch Comcast. We get all our news & weather on internet & prefer to read rather than watch a show. But DH lives for sports, as do our sons when they're around. They want NFL Red Zone & NHL on Ice, and I take 3 weeks out of life to do nothing but watch the Tour de France in July. Those aren't offered elsewhere for any less. I love to watch the Giro de Italia too, but Comcast dropped Universal Sports, so will have to buy a package & watch it on fuzzy, small computer screen -- all that fabulous Italian scenery wasted on a laptop!

Still use the landline a lot as we're in hilly, wooded country where the cell signal drops. Also we lost cell service during week-long power outages last year; the landline service was up & running sooner.

With Comcast my landline service goes out when the power goes out. With Verizon Fios, it would not. I always have my cell for backup. I can charge it in the car if necessary.

I think I could learn to be happy without cable tv, especially since I can watch Hulu etc. In fact, the morning news shows have gotten so annoying I can barely stand to have them on. I do flip over to MSNBC and CNN for news. I like the weather channel, too.

I hear you! We just got rid of ATT and replaced it with Ooma. Other than the taxes, their VOIP service is free and that's a savings of over 60/mo. Once the contract is up, we also plan on canceling Dish Network. We hardly ever watch shows from Dish because we like to stream HuluPlus or Netflix. The shows we do watch are from the networks and available online. We have internet on the tv too and can watch the networks with it. So why not save 50/mo more and skip the commercials or cost of the DVR? We had to upgrade our internet service to have the bandwidth for streaming, which is 12.00 a month, but still the combined cost of Phone taxes, Netflix, HuluPlus and the Comcast upgrade is 32.00/combined whereas The phone and Dish were over 125.00/mo.

I've been with Uverse for almost 2 years and in that time, their bill was never right. I resigned myself to calling and being a meanie once a month with them. Our cable guy stopped by and says he can improve our service and save us $30/mo. Unfortunately I'm a heavy user of the DVR and cable doesn't offer the same amount of storage as uverse does. And the big cost of switching is learning where all the #*$&!@# channels are again. But it would be worth it. He promises no price increase for 2 years...except that $10 increase after 12 months, and of course the price will go up 3% in the 3rd year.

They are all awful as far as I'm concerned. But I think the only way we can manage them is to keep switching so they keep those offers coming.

Dedtired, how is it that you still have service with your Verizon phone when your power goes out? I have Verizon FIOS but our phone only has something like a 2-hr battery backup when power goes out. After that, no service. I HATE that. Our power goes out frequently in winter for days at a time, and I can't stand the thought of not having a powered phone. We didn't realize we wouldn't have a true landline anymore when we switched to FIOS. My neighbors did have Verizon FIOS but were able to keep their (copper line, I think she called it) but recently, they were forced to give it up by Verizon so now they have the same thing as me.

Gibby, what a great idea having an extra cell phone as your home phone! I have yet to do that b/c I have four kids (only one has her own phone) and don't like everyone having my cell phone - I prefer for people to call on my home phone rather than my cell b/c I don't like to be constantly disturbed when I'm out and about. I also didn't want to worry about my kids using my phone at home then me not being able to find it after they used it. But your idea might be a solution for me - it's certainly cheaper than what I pay now and the battery would last longer in an outage than my current home phone does (of course, I just spent $80 on new phones for my house!). I may have to consider that.

I'd love to get rid of our excess cable channels - we don't watch much TV and certainly don't need hundreds of channels. However, dh and my boys are sports fanatics and would kill me if I got rid of their access to the sports channels. But it's ridiculous how much we pay for channels we don't even use (and I'm not talking about premium channels like HBO - we don't have those).

Fourkids, I can't answer for the Dedtired, but we just had to have a corded phone, not a wireless. They sell them at Target for less than 10.00.

Here is a link that might be useful: Target's corded phones.

Lukki, I have a plugin phone too b/c that's all that will work when the power goes out. However, the phone line is connected to a modem or something like that that is tied into my FIOS line. There is only a 2-hr battery backup though so the phone line only works for the first two hours we lose power. Unfortunately, we've gone days without power so it's pretty useless. Thankfully dh and I have cell phones!

Oh!! I thought you had Verizon's regular phone line.
Sorry!!! :c(

I don't understand then, what is FIOS? Is it like VOIP but uses DSL instead?

FIOS is fiber optic. Supposedly faster than copper cable, but it does not carry a current the way your copper phone line does. The landline has its own source of electricity; FIOS uses your household electricity provider, so when that power goes out, you are on battery backup. I believe that you can get an 8 hour battery backup.

Ahhhh...faster than cable? Really? Wow. I wonder if they have that in our area. Thanks!

We've been with Comcast since moving here 29 years ago when it was called Garden St. Cable. Comcast always has some kind of promotion - I haven't paid 'full' price in many years.

A few weeks before my promotion is over I call Comcast and ask to speak with their Customer Retention department and then I tell them that I want to renew my promotion - or I'll drop Comcast. It works every time. Sometimes I end up paying a few dollars more but not all the time. Once it even went down with the same service.

I only have double play - TV and internet. We can't risk losing phone service during a power outage so we still have Verizon and an old princess phone in our bedroom while the rest of the house has wireless Panasonic phones.

FIOS isn't available in my town yet but I doubt if I'd switch even if it were. As much as it annoys me that Comcast is the heavy handed player in this area I must admit that I haven't had any service problems with them in years.

Just don't pay full price - you can negotiate.

Ya, you can negotiate to some extent. In my case I felt the value I was getting was worth about $100 less than I was paying since I only watch two channels. They weren't willing to negotiate quite that much and they didn't have a lower priced package with the two channels I wanted. They seem to keep removing channels I would watch and putting them into a higher priced tier. Such a scam. I'll watch whatever I can get via network TV, Roku or the internet. Should be more than enough as I can't sit still long enough to watch much TV - about 40 mins when I ride my stationary bike and an occasional movie.

I called Comcast today and asked for a discount or I would cancel and got $50 off my monthly bill. Yippee!

I was not in the mood for a long drawn out negotiation so I said I was at work (which I was) and had someone waiting for me. Then I pretended to talk to the fictitious person who was supposedly waiting to move things along with the Comcast rep.

I feel a bit sneaky but I was off the phone in about 5 minutes. Hopefully no one saw me. lol!

Wow Deedee, that is great! I think there is no harm in being sneaky when they're obviously over charging anyone who doesn't ask for a discount! Good for you! LOL

I called Comcast and asked for a discount. I was paying $190 a month for triple play plus HBO. Had an offer from verizon for the same but not HBO for just over a $100. Comcast offered me $170 and I said no way. They sent me to Customer Retention and I got them down to $150. Then I got the bill and it was for $170. That's nuts. I am switching to Verizon Fios.

I have no idea why the phone doesn;t go out. Maybe it's a battery. I keep a corded phone, too. I like having one phone that doesn't get lost.

True, lukk. We pay our bills promptly and have had them for years. Had they called me and offered a discount without my having to ask, I would be posting my praises.

ded, FWIW, We have the triple with HBO, Starz and I think one other (I would need to look). It just went up to $200 and they gave me the same package for $150.

I am canceling my service with Comcast. I have he $4.99 charge to cover me in case I need to have a service call. Well in April I did have a service call as one of my two phone lines was not working. The technician who came out broke my phone and did not tell me that he broke it. I found that out much later -- it should have been a hint when he did not want me to hold the phone. Then he or Comcast put a $70.00 charge on my account. When I called Comcast, I told them about this, they admitted that it should not have been there and they told me that they would credit my account on the next bill, but that I was expected to pay it and they would issue a credit. I need to check the statutes but I don't think you can collect on disputed charges, especially when you are aware that YOU made the mistake. For the $70.00 that should not have been billed, they interrupted the service. I refuse to pay it and have notified my local jurisdiction and the FCC. If you are looking for a cable or internet or phone provider, don't walk past Comcast, run as fast and as far as you can.

This is yet another industry that has managed, with the help of Congress, to basically create a monopoly whether literally (where I live, Comcast is our ONLY option) or via collusion. Politicians are useless as they're all bought by these companies. No one is protecting the consumer (well, hello Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but they are alone). I called my state rep about it and got a bunch of gobbledygook about how Comcast owns the infrastructure and a competitor would have to build their own in order to open up shop…couldn't belive what I was hearing (literally). Every new competitor who might want to start a new telecommunication company has to first install cable lines, telephone poles, etc.??? The whole point of that is to make sure, once again, that there is NO competition and therefore NO pressure on prices, keeping them low. That is how business is done in this country now, precisely NO free market.

The rep did tell me that there is an investigation going on into possible collusion between the two or few companies out there now. I'll believe it when I see it. Most likely, Comcast and Verizon will just pay them off, and the "investigation" will go away.

Ultimately, the problem is that Congress no longer protects Americans fro corporate predation, has weakened Taft-Hartley, among other important laws put i place long ago for good reason, and we now live in a corporacracy, and an oligarchy to boot.