Tim and Change Will Surely Show

Even if you are constantly getting charged the same ammount, it pays to double check what you’re getting charged for. I’ve always been told this is a good practice and monthly, will check the charges for my credit cards, our utilities and whatever else. Usually for bills that remain the same like Cable/Internet, if the cost doesn’t change a cent, I don’t dig into the break down of the total bill. Now I know better.

Here at the Northcrest household, we’ve been running a monthly charge of about $95 for cable and internet since we’ve lived here. Split between four people it’s not a bad deal at all (something I’ll greatly miss moving into a 2 person living situation). We pay to get a 7 MB/sec internet connection, digital cable, HD box, and additional HD channels. When we signed up we were offered HBO and Starz for no additional cost so we’ve had those as well. This month, Time Warner upped their rates to where we’re paying about $101 a month. When I saw the change in billing, I took a look at the breakdown of the bill to see what was increased. Pretty much every charge had a $1 or $2 increase. I then saw that we were being charged about 7 bucks each for HBO and Starz. This was different than our first bills where HBO and Starz did not show up except as a $0 charge. I was glad to have those extra channels, but not for that much of an increase.

I called Time Warner up this afternoon at lunch to get those costs removed. Shockingly I was on and off the phone with my whole request fulfilled in just a few minutes. Our new bill is down to just around $83 now, and they gave us a few months of Showtime free. If I had known that we were getting itemized for HBO and Starz I would have canceled those a while ago. I guess it pays to check. Meanwhile, I guess I’ll have to procure John Adams and other HBO series elsewhere for now.