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We took the plunge

February 3rd, 2012 · 7 Comments · Family Life

Yesterday I called the cable company and cancelled my cable and my home land-line.

We did it.

We took that plunge.

We’ve been talking about it for awhile.

I’ve been an advocate of getting rid of the land-line for a long time.  David wasn’t.  We’d had that telephone number for a very long time.  More than 20 years anyway.  But we weren’t using it.  Pretty much ever.  We cancelled caller id because no one ever called us on it who we needed to talk to.  I put the answering machine on it, and told people to call our cell phones or leave a message.  The only messages we’ve got in months are people wanting us to vote for them in the form of robo calls or people wanting to lower our interest rates.  Again in the form of robo calls.

The cable was a little more complicated.  When I suggested that we cancel it David and the BoyChild both let out screams that could be heard in the next county.  David began investigating the different options.  We bought a Roku.  Then we bought another.  We signed up for Amazon Prime and changed our Netflix to streaming video only.  David asked for and received at Christmas a USB TV tuner.  You can record over-the-air TV and burn it to a DVD.

So I called them yesterday and cancelled everything except our high speed internet.  It will save us $105 a month (actually probably more because this last bill says on it “Upcoming Price Changes” and the guy told me it would be going up another $15 or $20 a month with their price changes.  Because we all know they weren’t going to lower the prices.

The BoyChild will miss Cartoon Network.  But we’ve stopped watching television during the week, so he won’t miss it a whole lot.  And I hate the shows on CN so I don’t see it as a great loss.

So what do you think?  Anyone else take the plunge?  Got an suggestions or words of advice?

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7 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Lisa H // Feb 3, 2012 at 9:31 am

    We haven’t taken the plunge yet, mainly because of my addiction to PBS. I think about it a lot, though. We’ve weeded down our show list to something extremely small and it would be doable if I could get PBS stuff easily on the big screen. Need to look into that. Haven’t yet.

  • 2 M&Co. // Feb 3, 2012 at 10:23 am

    FWIW, the Roku has a lot of stuff you’d find on PBS. If it’s Downton Abby you’d be missing, we streamed the first season on Amazon Prime. I don’t know when the second season will come out, but I’m sure it won’t be long.

  • 3 Rayne // Feb 3, 2012 at 9:20 pm

    Just get a digital antennae and viola! PBS. We get 3 PBS stations on our antennae.

  • 4 Leanne // Feb 8, 2012 at 7:26 am

    Interesting. I don’t watch a lot of TV, although I’m a musical crazy gal so I did tune in to see Smash on Monday. My hubby and son though watch every Leaf hockey game…I wonder if you can do that without cable or cheaper some how… Let us know how this works out for you!

  • 5 Robbin // Feb 9, 2012 at 4:10 pm

    Got rid of it ourselves over six months ago. Don’t miss it in the least. Between Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix, that’s MORE than enough content for us.

  • 6 Roku 2 // Feb 21, 2012 at 12:27 am

    Good for you! I’ve been debating this for some time, but haven’t taken the plunge. I’m not really sure what’s holding me back (other than the girlfriend – hahahah). I hope you’re putting that $105 to good use.

  • 7 Homestead // Mar 8, 2012 at 11:33 am

    Rabbit Ears. We get ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and, um, one other one. All digital. And we are in a location that should only be able to get one channel. PBS is digital in most places but not quite yet here… but in the next year it will be and my life will be complete.

    We do still have a land line… because our cell phones don’t work in our house.

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