It’s that time of the year again…time to make my quarterly (usually but sometimes more often) call to Charter to see what kind of promotions they can offer me. I logged in to pay our bill this morning, and I just happened to remember that our current promos would be ending sometime in January, so I figured I better go ahead and make the call while I had time. Otherwise I knew I’d forget until the next bill arrived with a much higher price.
The bad news is there aren’t many great packages to choose from right now that will lower or keep our bill relatively the same without locking in to a 2 year contract. I have many reasons for not wanting to lock into the contract price.
- The whole locked in thing scares me because we like to have the option to change our package on a whim.
- There are services we only use certain times of the year. We only need the sports package in the fall during football season, and we only watch Showtime when our favorite shows are running. I want the option to drop these services when we’re not using them.
- Termination Fees. The initial termination fee is $150. It drops by $5 each month you keep the package, but with so many layoffs in our life in the last 2 years I don’t want to chance locking in then having to terminate the package.
- The locked in price doesn’t truly lock in for 2 years. As it was explained to me by the customer service rep today your price is automatically locked in for the first year. Then your bill will increase by $20 (or possibly more depending on the package) for the second year. What’s the use of locking in the price if it’s actually going to increase?
- Lack of promotions. We actually have saved a great deal by calling every few months and switching our promotions. We’ve kept most of the same services over the last 3 year period, and we’ve even added a few thanks to the savings. Why would I give up the ability to do that?
So, as usual I chose to stick with a yearly promotion package (that I can change or switch to a new promo at any time), and I still ended up with a bill that is cheaper than a locked in price. The cheapest locked in package would have been $5/month more than we pay now for year 1 and an increase of $20/month for year 2. That’s not saving me anything. Instead I kept all of the same services except for the 1 movie package we had on the previous promo. By dropping that package it dropped our bill $15/month which made up for the fact that we will no longer be receiving the free DVR promo. Essentially at this point our bill only increased by $2, and we really won’t even notice the movie package is gone now that our shows have finished for the season.
So yeah, basically what I’m saying is be careful before you lock in. Check out what options are available to you, read the fine print, talk to the customer service rep, and be thorough. There’s a good chance you’ll pay less if you don’t lock in!
