When cable companies and TV stations get into a retrans fight, the viewer ALWAYS ends up paying for it.

The station demands more money from the cable company to broadcast their signal and then when they finally agree on a price, your bill goes up and the TV station and the cable company get richer.

FTVLive made the choice years ago to cut the cord, but it did not mean that we were still not impacted by retransmission fights.

While we have not had TV service for years, we still relied on Comcast for our internet service.

When we signed up for Comcast internet we were paying them about $65 a month. Every few months, while our service remained the same, the price kept inching up.

It went from $65 a month to $75, then $85, the $100 and the last bill we got was for $122 bucks. The service never changed, but our bill had almost doubled.

Despite not watching any TV, we were also sucked into the retransmission fight and we were also paying for it.

We finally called AT&T which had recently put fiber internet in our neighborhood. We had to agree to a one year contract, but now the cost is just $70 a month and the speed of our internet is extremely faster. I did a speed test and I am getting almost a gigabit download speed (compared to 275 MBPS with Comcast) and over half a gigabit upload (compared to 12 MBPS with Comcast).

In other words, I getting 4+ times the speed at almost half the cost.

Now, I know that in the years to come, AT&T will do just what Comcast did and slowly jack up the price. But, I know they can’t do that for at least a year.

This is why cable companies and phone companies want you to sign up for auto-bill. They tell you it is for your convenience and might even offer you a gift card if you do it. Then they can slowly increase your rates and since it just comes out of your account without you seeing it, they hope you will never notice that you are paying more for the same service.

Why do you think they offer you a gift card?

As we kick off 2020, take a bit of time to shop around with all those things you pay each month. It could be a gym membership, a cable bill, internet or your cellphone.

I recently took a few hours to do all this and I have saved myself a couple of hundred bucks a month. It may not seem like much, but when it’s all done, I will have saved almost $3000 for the year and it just cost me a few hours on the phone.

Also, walking into Comcast, throwing my modem on their counter and saying “I’m done with you guys” was an awesome feeling.

Just saying…