I dislike price rises, and related I dislike paying for expensive sports licensing I don't watch. Sports fans should pay for sports instead of everyone subsidizing it.
That being said, as someone who helped family move off of cable in the last year, this is only inching closer to cable's headline pricing which is largely a fiction. All the big four providers of cable/satellite have the following pricing:
- Advertised discount price (12-24 month contract)
- Normal price
- Taxes & Fees
Sometimes you can keep threatening to cancel, take out a new 12-24 month contract, and keep the "discounted" price. But in my experience each discount is less and less generous relative to what they're advertising.
Then there are taxes & fees. The taxes are, well, taxes and also apply to streaming TV. But a lot of the "fees" have nothing at all to do with government. They're just unavoidable parts of the service's price that the cable/satellite vendors split off to misrepresent the costs.
These include, but not limited to:
- Equipment fee (main box cannot be avoided, additional boxes can be)
- Broadcast TV Fee + Regional Sports Fee (unavoidable)
- HD TV Fee (often if your equipment SUPPORTS HD then you are required to pay it)
- Administrative/Convenience Fees (rarely this can be reduced by jumping through hoops e.g. pay by paper check)
These can easily add $20 to your bill. If your contract doesn't allow monthly increases, that can sometimes not apply to fees (either increases to existing or new ones).
That being said, as someone who helped family move off of cable in the last year, this is only inching closer to cable's headline pricing which is largely a fiction. All the big four providers of cable/satellite have the following pricing:
- Advertised discount price (12-24 month contract)
- Normal price
- Taxes & Fees
Sometimes you can keep threatening to cancel, take out a new 12-24 month contract, and keep the "discounted" price. But in my experience each discount is less and less generous relative to what they're advertising.
Then there are taxes & fees. The taxes are, well, taxes and also apply to streaming TV. But a lot of the "fees" have nothing at all to do with government. They're just unavoidable parts of the service's price that the cable/satellite vendors split off to misrepresent the costs.
These include, but not limited to:
- Equipment fee (main box cannot be avoided, additional boxes can be)
- Broadcast TV Fee + Regional Sports Fee (unavoidable)
- HD TV Fee (often if your equipment SUPPORTS HD then you are required to pay it)
- Administrative/Convenience Fees (rarely this can be reduced by jumping through hoops e.g. pay by paper check)
These can easily add $20 to your bill. If your contract doesn't allow monthly increases, that can sometimes not apply to fees (either increases to existing or new ones).