A lot of people are canceling their TV and Phone Packages with their Phone and Cable Companies to save money and become a Cord Cutter but often when you try you get barraged by their sales force to retain your current package and sometimes they even try to upgrade you without you realizing you will pay more.
Yes it is really pretty bad when you call up to cancel your basic package then they try to sell you on a double or triple play deal with free months of HBO or other channels and then they leave out the fact that after the first half of the promo you will be locked in at full price for a year or more.
If you are cutting the cord to save money this tactic can really tick you off so you need to be prepared for it when you call.
First thing to remember is all promo packages revert to full price while they still have you locked in.
Normally whatever the free or discounted period is you will be locked in for twice that long. However when it comes to promos on Pay Channels like HBO you might get 3 months free but be locked in for two years.
Always understand the cancellation fees.
You might be asking why am I going over this? Because its highly likely that most of you are already in some type of promotional package. You might be in the last month of a 2 year promo and then try to cancel and get hit with all types of fees you never really understood.
Well it was your responsibility to ask.. but by now you probably lost the paperwork.
So, Cancel your package only at the end of the term. If that means you have to stick it out for another 3 months then what you need to do is buy a Ceton TV Tuner and hook it to your computer and start recording every show and movie you can. Use the remainder of the lock in period to your advantage and record everything possible. Right now my tuner is recording 3 shows and a movie and I will keep this archive to play on my TV later instead of paying to download movies from a pay service. I am not talking about saving a couple dozen or hundred shows .. I’m talking about saving thousands of them and all free and legal.
The end of your promo period will also give you time to setup your Antenna, Media Players and Local Network and make sure they all work. You may need to wire your home for Ethernet or upgrade your wifi router to make sure you can stream to all of your TVs and this takes time to work out.
Going Internet Only on your Cable or Fios Plan
The first thing you should know is that if you are renting devices that cost will add up to the price of one you can purchase within a year.
Cable and FIOS are not the same and you can not use a Cable Modem on FIOS and you can not purchase the CSU or ONT Device that FIOS uses to get internet to your house. What you might be able to do is purchase your own router if your plan allows it. From what others have said the lower speed plans require a special router used on Coax Lines running MoCa and the higher speed plans come straight off the ONT from a Ethernet connection. If you are on Ethernet wire to a Router you can buy your own router and you can definitely buy any devices that are past that on your network. Since all of this is a pretty messy thing and availability changes you should visit the customer support page that lists devices you can purchase.
If you are on Cable your provider will have a list of Docsis modems that are compatible with your plan. Some devices are older technology so if you are purchasing a 50mbit or faster plan you really need to match the modem you buy with your plan or the cable modem might not be able to get you your full speed. Each company will have a list and then you can purchase these cable modems from a retailer. I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you do not buy a used cable modem off of EBAY. Although they may work there is a very high chance that the device has been locked out because the previous owner never returned it when they canceled their contract.
Once you get Internet into your home you will have the ability to distribute it as you want. I strongly suggest you use a dhcp router with some type of firewall if you can. At the minimum you might want to segment your wireless from your wired connections that way an outside device can’t connect to your computer or NAS Server….. easily.
Final Note
Cutting the cord is about saving money. If you just want to stream services and you don’t mind spending the same or more money with online services as you do with your cable or telephone TV supplier then don’t go through the hassle just keep your TV subscription and subscribe to Netflix.
If you want to cut your monthly bill by 50% to 70% and still keep a good number of services and get high quality content you should plan your transition carefully. Find a good antenna for your area and if you are in the city or suburbs you should be able to get 30-50 or even more channels depending on your market. Once you have that much content over antenna it doesn’t take much to supplement the rest.
Find a TV Box you like.. I like the Android boxes but many people like the Roku or Apple TV devices. Install it and then subscribe to all the free and legal content you can find. There is tons of it out there for free and its great quality.
If you just can’t live without the thought of paying for TV then subscribe to a pay service like NFL, MLB, NHL, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Sling or HBO. There are plenty of companies out there willing to take your money but get a grip on it and remember streamed content normally can’t be DVRd for later local playback.