I Pulled the Cable

I came out a draw last month in a battle with the cable company - they got my money but they are losing a customer. I had a tv/phone/internet package the cost of which doubled to over $150/month with no warning, not an easy pill to swallow on a fixed income. They did not send me a monthly bill when they doubled it, so I called them to find out why I had not received it about a week after it should have arrived and was disconnected in the middle of the call as they shut me off completely. I finally got things straightened out, but brought back the tv box to get the bill down to realistic but still too expensive for what they provide $80/month with taxes. I will be switching the phone to a different digital provider as I refuse to have a cell phone (I can't hear well enough to understand what's being said and I refuse to be tracked wherever I go). I can live with a $20/month phone and a $20/month internet connection. I find that I really have not missed the tv at all, finished two short stories and two essays, loaded a thousand+ rounds, read 18 books, fixed the fence, cleaned up the garden, and I'm actually catching up on my todo list. Should have had it pulled a long time ago.

As to TWC, I am not the only one who has been used this way around here, there are almost a dozen new sat dishes on my street. I see their installation crew every day and know them to wave at. When I dropped the box off at the TWC office, there was a double stack of them, man high, against the wall they hadn't had a chance to move out of sight. [smilie=1: I heard on the radio yesterday that cable subscriptions which had been rising constantly for over thirty years finally peaked two years ago and have been in a steady and accelerating decline since. I'm not surprised. Of over 400 channels, I watched two frequently, maybe four others occasionally, the rest never. The dog doesn't miss it either, and my daughter can stream just about anything we want to see that isn't in our dvd collection with her ipad hooked up to our big flat screen.