Riding the Bike with One Pedal.

The Curse of Auto-Pay

If I didn’t use auto-pay for the majority of our bills, I’d be in a constant state of scramble, and probably missing payments, garnering late fees and angry phone calls. As it is, the things that still get paid ‘manually’ require a little reminder in my calendar, so my palm pilot will dee-doo dee-doo at me until I pay attention.

So, imagine my surprise when, I go into my Time Warner Cable account to get the account number, so I get our holiday movie credited back (via a coupon), and I see our last payment was, oh, like, $75 more than we normally pay. A rate hike of 60%. ooooooooh my god, talk about a short fuse. See, I spent over a week, wrangling and hassling with Time Warner Cable last year, because we were being plagued with programs being deleted on the DVR, annnnd they raised our rates. I was fractions of inches away from going to DirecTV.  So, they gave me a nice rate. Great. I think a rate hike, when you’re pretty much the only game in town, in an economic downturn, is pretty shitty, but I understand cost of living needs, etc., so I would have even been willing to accept a 5% increase. NOT 60%. NOT when I can put together my bundle of services as if I were a new customer and have a rate plan LOWER than what I pay now. No, no, and NO.

And of course, they no longer have CSR agents available later in the evening, so I have to re-stoke the coals in the morning until I’ve hit white-hot again. But I’m going to utilize my resources, and see if I can skip the first tier of CSRs and get myself some elevated service. And if that doesn’t work out? Well, I guess we’ll be discovering the exciting world of satellite!

I hate having to go to bed on an empty, unresolved anger. Splutter. Stay tuned for the next chapter! It’ll be broadcast in digital!

6 Comments

  1. Andrea (Off Her Cork)

    DirectTV can be a pain in my butt sometimes. However I like the DVR that comes with the service when you get an HD plan because the storage is huge on it. You can record two HD shows at a time and have loads saved in the queue.

  2. MoxieMamaKC

    Ugh! TWC is the devil. I, too, use auto pay for several of my bills and the worst is when my account gets debited days before it’s supposed to. Ugh. I hate it! Good luck with your battle of price increases!

  3. shannon in oregon

    give ’em hell!!

  4. Emma Dog

    omg, that SUCKS. I used to listen to my dad talk about the cable rate hikes when I was out on my own. For 6 years, I didn’t have cable, in our little single-station town, and I never missed it. Could I do without it again? I don’t know.

    I hope you find a happy resolution. If that’s not possible (seriously, monopoly AND rape? WTF???), I hope you kiss them goodbye in favor of a better way. Luck.

  5. Becky

    Who is your provider? I would be so pissed if I were you. I’ve hesitated to do auto pay b/c I’m more afraid that I might need the cash at that point for something more important and something like the cable can wait.

  6. Karen

    the worst thing I ever did was leave Direct TV and go to cable. I swear when I move (if I move) I’m going back to Direct TV

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