The other day, I was at home and the doorbell rang. Yay, UPS has dropped off my package! But, no – That’s a story for another post. I opened up the door and a dude was outside. Yay, a solicitor! He introduces himself as being from Spectrum. I suppose I’m fortunate in that I don’t live in a place where the cable company has a monopoly. Instead it’s a duopoly, between Spectrum and Frontier (formerly known as Brighthouse and Verizon – how weird).
Dude says he’s in the area to talk about their services, and who provides me my cable, phone, and Internet? I reply that I just recently had Frontier drop my cable and phone and now I have 100MB Internet only. Dude wants to know how much (of course). It’s something like $75/month. Jackpot, I can hear his brain announcing.
So, Spectrum offers 100MB Internet for something like $50/mo. Or you can get 400MB for about $75/mo. He’s got his clipboard out and ready to sign me up. But I just said, no, I’m ok with what I have. He had a confused look on his face, which really pissed me off, because there’s no way it was an honest confused expression. It was a insulting, “are you stupid”, reaction. And in a similarly confused tone, he asked, “But… it’s faster… for less money.”
I tried to explain my reasoning, but I don’t think it came out well. I said that it would be a hassle, ending one service, scheduling a new install, then if it didn’t work out, cancelling the new one and setting up the old one again. He tried to defend his company by saying they didn’t have any contracts, so you could leave at any time for any reason. I just replied that if anything went south in my current setup, I had his card and I would definitely call.
After I closed the door, I realized what I really wanted to say. Yes, his offering was cheaper, and I am personally biased against internet over coax, vs internet over fiber, but the point that I really wanted to make was that Frontier/Verizon has been rock solid for me for over a decade and aside from one billing issue after the ownership switch, I have zero complaints. What dude wanted was for me to jump ship to a company I have no history with and no idea of their service or quality. The best I could hope for is going from great to great and saving some money. But, I could be going from great to nightmare and saving money as well. That’s not worth the risk to me. Besides that, there is also the installation fee. Then if it doesn’t work out, the installation fee to revert back to Frontier. Not worth the risk to me.
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