Ditching satellite?


Jeramie

Recommended Posts

My wife and I have had direct Tv for 15 + years. The bill has always been at least $100 a month. Doing pretty simple math that means I have spent at least $18,000.00 for their service. *Shutter*

I’m sick of it.... I have two daughters (both young) that like Spongebob, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, etc... I dont let them watch too much TV but they do of course watch their shows. My oldest also love Full House for some reason.

Im looking at alternatives to the $110.00 a month bill I get from the satellite company. Any suggestions? I have 4 tvs to power so that will make some difference.. Cable isnt available in my area so it has to be a satellite or internet based..

We watch Discovery, Travel, etc. If I really want to watch a movie I can always use Amazon Prime, Red Box, etc. but I’m open to the internet movie clubs (Netflix, etc).

Are there sites where we can watch the Disney channel, nick, etc. cheap enough to lower this bill? If it wasn’t for the girls I would just tell them to pull the plug....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Call me a dinosaur, but I have one TV in the house on dish, Starz and encore for around 70 a month. I'm thinking of dropping starz to get to about 50. The dvr works great to resolve conflicts, but honestly the only thing I just got to watch is a college football game or two in the fall weekends and everyone respects that. My girls have grown up without TV in their rooms and it's cool with them, they outside 90 percent of daylight hours anyway.

Still a waste of money considering we all grew up with 3 channels and rabbit ears for nothing and did ok.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

.....

Still a waste of money considering we all grew up with 3 channels and rabbit ears for nothing and did ok.

Bingo.

We did over 2 years without TV service. Between Netflix ($8 a month) and Hulu and Network websites we had plenty to watch. My 3 kids could not care less about it. They like jake and pirates also....full episodes for free on Disney TV websites. My wife found a better deal on an Internet/cable bundle, so we signed up for 12 months.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We call them up every few months and tell them we we need a better package or we are dropping them. They always seem to come up with some kind of offer that gets a few new channels and reduces our bill for a few months. We've had Direct TV for quite a few years now, and the customer service seems to beat the pants off of Charter cable.

Edited by MUDRUNNER
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wish cable or the deal through at&t was available here to force the satellite companies hand. Thought we were paying too much at around $80 a month, I dropped the outdoor channel and one receiver. We had been in the $50-60 range for a good while and the price took some serious jumps a couple years ago. Calling them and telling them you are gonna switch sometimes will get you a better deal for a little while. Dish customer service when we had them as a customer was terrible, I actually contracted installations and ran service on them for a while and had troubles with their phone services then with trying to get customers programming.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Satellite used to be a cheaper alternative to cable. Today I consider them all a scam. Every time an overpaid athlete gets a new contract the bill goes up. It is hard to imagine that just 6 short years ago I was paying half of what the bill is today. Basic cable and one tier without premium channels and HD reception is $80 a month as it is. A lot of money for most of which you don't watch.

Those looking into satellite ought read the fine print before they sign a contract.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.