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I Cut the Cord
After threatening to do so for the better part of a year, I finally cut the cord yesterday. I mostly held on this long because of sports. With the exception of a few programs I watch with the girlfriend, or in some cases drink scotch and tolerate, all I watch is sports. I had an irrational fear that I would miss coverage of The Masters, US Open, or football. I should also mention my dog Norman watches The Golf Channel all day while I am at work. So I spent numerous mornings researching and became convinced Hulu Live was the right mix.
Still, I did not make the move. I decided I would downgrade to basic cable first — incrementalism people! I logged into my cable account where I was promptly asked if I wanted to upgrade with HBO. I then looked for how to change my services — it was nowhere to be found. They were ready and willing with a “team member” available to chat if I wanted to upgrade. So, I clicked yes, assuming if they could add services they could also take services away. Wrong. “That is not my department.”
I was prompted to the chat area where I was asked what I needed. There were a handful of options and I clicked downgrade services. Then the chat box appeared and said no one was available at that time. I kept it open for two hours at work and still no team member available to chat. The same sequence occurred the next day. And that was all the convincing I needed — to heck with incrementalism!
I called the cable company and waited 30 minutes before speaking to a representative. He was great and the anomaly in this ordeal. I told him I wanted to get rid of cable and keep internet. Then I discovered that I would need to upgrade or downgrade my internet. My plan was obsolete. The only plans they offer now would be faster or slower — fine. I chose faster. I also would be paying 30 percent above the monthly rate of a new customer. With friends like these, who needs enemies? The representative then asked if I wanted to keep basic cable so I could have access to television when I wanted it. I told him it was originally my intention to do so, but I was so put off by his company that I decided it was no longer going to be necessary.
What I find surprising is that a cable company facing obsolescence of their business model can execute so poorly when it comes to the customer experience. Despite the niceness and helpful nature of the customer service representative, it took too long to get to him. The cable company refuses to allow someone to change services online. Now that may delay the loss of revenue for a day or two, but it is terribly shortsighted. They need a perfect customer experience and some new innovations in order to remain relevant with consumers.
On the most basic level, their customer experience stunk. Contrast that with the source of the certain doom — Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, and the like. A customer can go on the website to sign up, change services, or cancel in mere seconds. I have done all three in the past. It is a fantastic customer experience. You can call their customer service line and not wait for long periods of time as well. I received a free month of Hulu Live on top of it all! That is offsetting the “install fee” the cable company charged me for changing my internet speed.
Cable companies have felt powerful in the past because of regional superiority and lack of options. That is not the case anymore. I am kicking myself for not doing this sooner. As I write this, Norman and I are watching European Tour Golf through Hulu — the same thing we do every Saturday before we go to the park. I am pleased.
The only thing I will miss is access to local baseball and hockey on WGN. Then again, I live on Chicago’s North Side, we can just walk to a dog bar down the street.
Published in Technology
5G has some major structural limitations. For one thing, it is very short range, and attenuates quickly over distance. As I heard one utility company put it (a customer of mine), “we’ll be dropping thousands of new poles every week for the next decade”. For people outside of major metro areas, as bad as their cell service is now I would expect it get worse as the expense to bring them 5G will be steep. That leaves the cable companies still sitting pretty for sometime to come for the ‘burbs and beyond.
I’ve never forgiven WGN from dropping sports programming from their cable/satellite offering on WGN America. I have Dish, and was able to substantially drop to a lower / cheaper package that didn’t include WGN America. I’m too cheap to opt for an MLB subscription, so I’m left to follow the Cubs on their periodic appearances on ESPN or simple gamecast box scores.
We frequently discuss dropping Dish, but have held on for now. Our experience with their customer service has been far better than that with other offerors, and we can adjust programming packages through the website. We’ve been digitizing our library so to speak, putting purchased content on a server and using Plex as the player to access. There may very well come a day where all we watch, if anything, will come straight out of our own library.
I know that I am out of touch on the whole subject of TV and especially Chicago TV, but doesn’t WGN still broadcast over the air? Couldn’t you use a digital antenna for that?
Do they still black out teams in their home markets?(to protect the local broadcast rights).
The most insanely idiotic policy I can think of.
To make it fair, they should blast out the between-innings ads to the spectators in the seats at the game.
Maybe I shouldn’t give them ideas.
I don’t get any between innings ads. Just blessed silence.
Sad to hear but I know nothing about the technical issues so I don’t doubt you.
Well, at least MLB doesn’t have to worry about declining attendance at their stadiums. Oh wait….🤦♂️
I find that extremely aggravating as well. First of all, anyone knows the cost of attaining a customer is far higher than the cost of retaining that same customer. Making great offers to acquire a customer that exclude existing customers is risky business and creates a profound dislike and distrust that will make it very easy for that customer to “jump ship” the moment another company makes one of those “great” offers to him/her.
I need to get to that place in life! That is awesome! I had the tournament on while working a bit. I left it on for the dog though. He watched all of it!
Wimps! 😜😁
Also, you can’t have wireless without wires (for the most part) and it’s going to take a lot of wires to connect all those new wireless antenna locations. There’s a lot more to do than drop new poles in the ground.
One interesting point about this is that if the wireless companies are going to deploy 5G at the density required, it means they’re probably going to lay a lot of fiber to reach all these new antenna locations. A lot of customers will be within closer reach of the fiber, so why not just sell them fiber connections to their residences?
Well, I can think of reasons why the companies would rather do the last half mile with wireless rather than running fiber all the way up to their houses, and why customers might prefer to have a wireless connection. The economics of it are going to depend on local factors.
One of the 5G specs is that the repeaters on poles all be solar-powered so as to avoid having to also string a lot more power lines. That just leaves stringing fiber to the major hubs, and in theory the repeaters can all be wireless and self-contained.
Yeah, but you lose half the bandwidth with each hop, unless they’re doing something new that I don’t know about. Your new whiz-bang speeds go down pretty fast that way.
Reality laughs at theory.
Good dog!
I haven’t had cable since 2017, when I moved to Michigan. I just got the internet connection without either TV or landline phone (which I haven’t had since 2014). I thought I would miss it more than I did. I have been meaning to get MLBTV, but haven’t spent the money yet.
Every time I look at the various streaming services, I get disgusted and go watch something on YouTube.
(Right now, @saintaugustine is explaining how things exist, or not.)