Ironically enough, after such a lovely Friday, our Saturday was rather blah. The weather was overcast, cold, and windy, so other than a trip to the library, we didn’t leave the house. I read magazines while Joe donated blood. Unfortunately all the people in my immediate area were so obnoxious it did nothing to improve my mood. I found a new (to me) Stephen King book called The Long Walk
We also got sliders from White Castle on Sunday because they had a coupon for two free ones and Joe had a craving. I always think I like White Castle until I start eating them and then I realize for the umpteenth time that they aren’t really that good. Plus they have that moniker for a reason. Enough said.
Today (Monday) I made a point to get up earlier and work out first thing. Then I had a lunch date with my friend who I haven’t seen before Joe lost his job so we got caught up about that and everything else that has happened over the past few months.
When I got home from my four hour lunch (we did some serious chatting, like we always do since we only get together every few months), Joe and I replaced some of the light bulbs in the house. We bought LEDs from Costco, but we also have a bunch of CFLs, so we only put the LEDs in the master bathroom and then used the CFLs to replace a couple of the regular halogen bulbs still being used throughout the house.
Oh, I almost forget – a sales person for WOW (Wide Open West) came to our door on Sunday. We had called them a few weeks ago to get an idea how much it would cost us to switch to them but hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. We’ve been waiting for our shows’ season finales so we can dump cable entirely and switch our internet service. We were going to give Comcast one more opportunity to lower our bill to something more reasonable – we called them twice already and they barely adjusted our bill – since WOW charges a $50 installation fee, but the sales person said he’d waive it. That cinched it for us and we made an appointment to get their internet installed a week from today. We going to drop our equipment off at the Comcast office and cancel their service that same afternoon. They had their chance and they blew it.
Right now we’re paying $183 to Comcast for basic+ digital cable (with a DVR), internet, and home security. Once WOW is installed we’ll be paying around $100 total ($40+ taxes to WOW for internet and $40+ taxes to Comcast for the security service IF we choose to keep it (we’re working on a DIY solution)). That’s a savings of over $80! Comcast tries to make it sound like the cable is a negligible add-on cost but it doesn’t seem like that after reviewing the competition’s pricing. WOW’s internet speeds are only 15 MB slower for $30 less and still plenty fast enough to stream Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime so it’s not like we’ll be wanting for something to watch.
It will be very interesting to see how we adapt to the lack of live tv, however. Doing this during the summer is the best time to experiment since we should be spending more of our time outdoors anyway. We can always add basic cable to our WOW package for something like $10 a month extra anyway so I’m not too worried. Losing the DVR will take some getting used to, though. I really love being able to watch tv on my own time, but oh well, it’s not like this change has to be forever. If we truly see value and miss the service we can set up something similar with WOW.
The ironic thing is that once we’ve fulfilled our one year contract with WOW we could switch back to Comcast if we’re so inclined and I’m willing to bet will give us a way better deal than they would to retain our business. Companies are so dumb.