I’m what you would call TV ignorant. I don’t know what cable channels I have, I don’t care, and I never remember what channel is what each time I turn the bloody thing on. I watch the local Detroit news at 10pm sometimes, Judge Napolitano on FOX Business News when I can, or occasionally, a movie, musical, or documentary. Otherwise, my 36″ Samsung LCD exists only for the purpose of playing DVDs – movies and documentaries – and hooking up my computers and electronic devices for a big screen view.
I’m the kind of person who occasionally presses a wrong button or two on one of the three remotes and the TV screen goes blue. It takes me three days of randomly pressing buttons, as I find the time, before the picture comes back. Now I’m not a technology idiot – just the opposite. I can multi-task on several electronic devices at once without skipping a beat or burning the green beans and almond slivers in the wok behind me. I once overcooked my grape tomatoes to the point where they looked like shriveled mini-blueberries (the kind found in kid’s cereals) because I was working on my website so intensely. For the most part, I end up teaching people how to use their computers and smart phones, along with all the tools and apps they don’t know a thing about. But TV remotes seem to present peculiar problems for me.
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Not too long ago, I didn’t have cable because I didn’t have a TV. My old-fashioned Toshiba (people made fun of it!) turned up its toes, and wouldn’t you know it happened as I was watching a Detroit Red Wings game? I thought my dogs had sat on one of the remotes, causing the snow disarray and blue line wiggle-thingies that came dancing across the screen. Several attempts at juggling 3 remotes and all of the buttons that seemed important made no difference at all. A house call from the TV man got it fixed for $160. The second time it petered out (just out of warranty repair, of course), it bit the big one. Another house call to take a look at the expired patient showed no heartbeat, and Mr. Toshiba was pronounced dead on the spot. He was carried to the curb where some garbage picker took him home for a potential pacemaker.
Some time passed without a box in the house until I broke down and got a Samsung LCD. I had missed watching movies and documentaries on something other than a computer. This TV is a dream team along with my 20-year-old Bose AM5 Series II speakers. And so the cable bills started coming again.
So, forward ahead. I get another $90 bill this month (bundle for TV and Internet + DVR + cable modem) in the electronic mailbox, and I realize, again, that I am sick of paying $1,000 a year for crap I don’t watch. So I call Wide Open West and try to finagle a cut in my bill, and they reminded me that I already receive a monthly discount that is $5 over the maximum discount …… which is the discount I asked for last time I called. Yeah, I do remember. That was the last time I got sick of my cable bill, back in August 2010. Occasionally I seem to have these “why am I wasting my money on this?” moments when these bills arrive in my email and I start slashing. So each time I get agitated I calculate my approximate cost per hour of TV watched which is $70 (approximate TV portion of monthly cost) / 10 hours per month = $7 per hour, and that seems a bit overpriced to me. So I call WOW and tell them the price is unacceptable and I tell them I need to cut the cost.
March 11, 2011
