Repeat Business

I was at the orthodontist a while back. For some reason, there were several seats side by side. Perhaps it's because it's cheaper not to have several rooms, or they were meant for kids, but now have been retuned to handle adults.

In any case, next to me, two people were discussing their Comcast cable, and basically complaining. Here's the issue in a nutshell. Comcast provides cable and charges probably 40-60 dollars per month. People just don't like spending that amount per month. If they could get the same service for, oh, 20 dollars a month, they'd be super happy. Maybe not super happy, but happy.

And this has prodded some people to get rid of cable altogether, because it ain't cheap. The basic point is that people don't like monthly charges. Rent is bad enough already, but when you add on top of that services like TV, people start to think, is it really necessary?

Clearly, the cable companies want you to spend as much as possible, and people do. Is there going to be some valid alternative?

And maybe this is why DVRs haven't been more successful. Tivo requires monthly fees too. Even though it's about 15 dollars a month, when you add all the other monthly fees people pay, it adds up.

DirecTv has a clever add. They claim they have monthly services of 30 dollars a month. That's true, but the services are minimal, and the next service up is almost 50 dollars a month. It's not like you get more value at 35 or even 40 dollars. It jumps up 20 dollars to get the next set, and that's where most of the interesting stuff (for most people) are. In a sense, you aren't saving that much over regular cable, but many companies do stuff like that.

The most devious of this is U-Haul, that advertises 20 dollars. But there's that sneaky "plus mileage", which is often a dollar a mile, so you easily double it, and then they suggest insurance, and pretty soon you are paying 70 dollars, not 20, and you realize that 20 is totally ridiculous. You imagine the government would step in and force them to advertise something far more reasonable, which, of course, they won't.

It's too bad we don't have more people fighting on behalf of the consumer, who, by their very name, already consume more than they should.