Satellite TV Service

 

For budget minded families, lowering monthly bills on expenses can be a big help and in this day and age when most of the acceptable children's television programming is on Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network, Animal Planet etc... paying for television has become a normal monthly expense.

Cable (or satellite) TV bills can be lowered significantly by simply asking your provider to match offers from their competitors. With competition heating up in this market, all you need to do is take one of those introductory rate junk ads that appear in your mailbox or in a newspaper ad, then pick up the phone to your cable/satellite provider. Personal Finance Advice suggests an approach:

When we began shopping for the lowest TV bill we could find, it was soon realized that there weren't that many choices to look at... There was the local cable provider, sometimes a competitive cable provider, and a couple of satellite TV system possibilities.

Unless you were going to use the cable provider for internet access and do a packaged deal, their prices tended to be much higher. So, we began looking at the satellite TV system providers.

One satellite TV system service in particular gave a great price for the entire term of service (the others only gave a great price for a few months, then increased the price), offered free equipment with a lifetime warranty, and free installation. Additionally, with this service you could even move from where you lived and they'd come and set it up again for free. Looked interesting, so we signed up on-line and gave them a call to install our new satellite TV system...

As with any hired service, it's the luck of the draw in regard to the competence level of who actually shows up to do the installation. Our first satellite TV system installer... well, let's just say we didn't have a lucky draw, but our second installer was quick and knowledgeable. He made the installation without difficulty and in no time we were up and running.

We've had no problems with the satellite TV system service since the installer number 1 incident and have been enjoying our satellite TV system ever since.

Some of the features offered through the service have proved very convenient. For example, everyone in the family can set up their own personalized TV guide with all their favorite channels. (In case you're concerned about learning a new system, my eight year old was able to learn how to use this satellite TV system in a day... )


There was one adjustment we had to make as far as taping shows on our VCR... with this satellite TV system's service, the VCR tapes only the channel the satellite is programmed to, but the service allows you to program the unit on the TV to go to the correct channel at the correct time and even activates the record on the VCR for you.

If you still want to watch a different program while you're taping, this satellite TV system's service (for an additional fee) offers digital video recorders that will tape up to 100 hours of programming.

One more important note: When I opened the first bill, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the taxes in my area (Los Angeles) were only 83 cents! What a shocking contrast to all the rest of the monthly bills... taxes are certainly not 83 cents on the phone bill!

So we've lowered our TV bill to $29.99 a month (and a few more cents for taxes) and saved substantially.

When you make the call, you don’t want to be demanding or set limits that force you into cancelling if you don’t want to. Therefore, when you call, say something along the following lines:

“Hello, I came across this advertisement for XX Satellite TV that is offering a monthly subscription for $XX. Although I like my current TV, this offer is making me seriously consider switching. I was wondering if you can offer a similar price.?

This approach should work if this is the first time you are trying to lower your cable monthly rate