Cable Is The Ex No One Wants
After being on hold for either 2 minutes or 12 hours not sure know which I’m connected to someone from customer service at DirecTV — fina-fucking-ly — but ugh now I have to do that annoying thing where they make you confirm you name, birthdate, bank account balance, blood type, sexual preference, sleep patterns, medical history and the last four digits of your account number before anybody will talk to you. I power through.
“Um, hi. I don’t understand why my cable bill is so high? Like, this is outrageous. Like, I don’t even watch TV like that. I could be renting fabulous Louis Vuitton handbags every month at this price.”
The customer service agent, sounding pretty cheerful, is probably sick of answering this exact question, a question that’s probably posed 20 to 500 times a day. Can you imagine working in a place where customers asked you the same basic questions all the time? The worst.
“Well, Mr. Moore, it looks like you have HBO and Showtime and the sports package including the NFL ticket. And all that, with taxes, brings you a monthly total of hahaha you don’t even know how much we’re gauging you rn lolololol”
I’m really confused. NFL ticket? How did I end up with that? I remember signing up for cable, and I remember choosing my options, but I don’t remember choosing a sports package and I do remember them saying something about FREE when I signed up. I say basically this to the customer service agent.
“Well, Mr. Moore, those things are free for six months, but then at the six month mark get billed for the full thing unless you cancel. So that explains why your bill is so high.”
Well shit. Doesn’t this sound familiar? I hate when they do this, when places suck you in with a 6 month (or a 3 day hehehe) trial of something and then bill you the most amount of money when the trial period is over
“Oh, uh, well I don’t even watch sports so we can ditch that. Also we can ditch HBO and Showtime, too. Also can I get a refund for the past 6 months that I’ve been paying for services that I never used/knew I was paying for?”
A refund is a no go. Of course not, because how else would these huge corporate conglomerates make their money? Anyway. She starts calculating my new bill: $17 a month including tax. After the hold period, in a few short minutes I went from LOL to $17. Granted I don’t get all the juicy channels but, come on, who watches that much television? Why do we even need 2,000 channels in the first place?
Plus, everything’s on Netflix anyway. Or Hulu or somewhere. I don’t even sit down to watch TV the way I used to, and much of the television I consume is via my computer screen. This is ultimately why I’m okay with getting rid of my cable services, because I know that whatever I want to watch I can easily find on the internet somewhere for free or for a really low monthly price.
Nobody wants cable. Well, that’s not true. Nobody wants to pay exorbitant prices for a service that they use 2% of on any given day. That’s why these cable companies try to lure you in and seduce you with special packages and add-ons and new customer deals and moving specials and what not.
Why can’t we just chose the like 5 cable channels we want to watch and call it a day? My 5 channels would be E!, because I love my celebrity gossip, MSNBC, because I love Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris Perry, HBO because Looking, LOGO because RuPaul, and like HGTV because I love watching people renovate houses I will never be able to afford.