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Verizon's 'Pick Your Own Cable TV Channels' Is Just Another Bait & Switch

This is not a surprise to anyone who has a cable bill. Every cable company excludes the (ever-growing) fees and taxes from their advertised pricing. Most also don't mention the "real" price after the introductory discount.
 
It amazes me how many media stories have decided to just cut and paste Verizon's supplied information about their new FiOS "customized TV plan" without examining the 'fine print'. I guess everyone is just desperate to get anything that smacks of ala-carte pricing for cable TV service, where the customer can pick and choose which cable programming they want to buy -- and is supposed to save some money.
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Not so amazing. And it's not about what consumers are desperate for. This is the sad state journalism in the US today. Just take the press release, may do a little editing and re-wording, and let it go at that. As long as you put "Verizon says" in there some place, so-called journalists think they've done their job and they are not responsible for any lies they spread. Trust, don't verify. And don't challenge because the "source" may stop sending you press releases and giving you sound bites.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
This is not a surprise to anyone who has a cable bill. Every cable company excludes the (ever-growing) fees and taxes from their advertised pricing. Most also don't mention the "real" price after the introductory discount.
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I just moved and picked up FIOS service instead of the local cable provider, TIme Warner.

I was able to configure a channel package that saved me $40 a month over the "all channel" option. It saves me over $70 from my old Time Warner bill in the same neighborhood. It will still be about $50 cheaper than TWC after the 2 year offer period. I also got 150/150 internet for less than 50/5 from TWC, with only a small increase in the third year. The phone part of the package, after two years will be far less than the landline I am eliminating. Everything was disclosed, and quite thoroughly by both the installer and via several emails confirming the pricing and the future increases. It was, in fact, surprisingly clear and transparent.

Taxes are essentially the same for all similar services, so that's not a point of comparison. And most products don't advertise the price with taxes. Did you ever see a car dealer up the price to include sales and registration taxes and fees?
 
I wasn't necessarily saying they should include the taxes, just that there's a competitive reason for Verizon to exclude them from their advertised pricing.

I personally received a flyer from my cable company, handed to me by the installer, with the fee schedule after the introductory period. Which isn't bad, but I'd rather be able to see the real pricing on the web site.

Personally, I think any fee that is mandatory should be included in the price. For example, the broadcast stations fee ($6/mo) my cable company charges. The cable modem fee should not be, because I can bring my own modem to eliminate it.
 
The main point of the article was not the pricing and whether it included mandatory fees but rather that it was spewing "ala carte" without actually producing true ala carte.
 
Verizon never said it was full a la carte, but what it does is allow a level of customization that far exceeds what was available previously. It may be short lived if ESPN gets an injunction or wins its lawsuit. The pricing simply doesn't work if the cable company has to pay ESPN's per capita on such packages.
 
umfan said:
Verizon never said it was full a la carte, but what it does is allow a level of customization that far exceeds what was available previously. It may be short lived if ESPN gets an injunction or wins its lawsuit. The pricing simply doesn't work if the cable company has to pay ESPN's per capita on such packages.
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The way I saved on my Verizon package was to eliminate the sports grouping. Along with ESPN, which I have never watched, are a bunch of other high price channels that together cost about $30.

Since the only sport I care about is amply played, and free, on the Univision and Telemundo channels, I can easily cut this out. Most people who like other sports can't. But the enormous charge for the sports channels is really something subscribers should be able to opt out of if they don't need anything more than the sports covered on the basic tier.

This is no different than cars being forced on customers in Southern California with "heated seats" and "heated steering wheels". Huh?
 
umfan said:
Verizon never said it was full a la carte, but what it does is allow a level of customization that far exceeds what was available previously.
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You are correct. Verizon never uses the term "ala carte". Instead they use "Pick Your Own Channels", "Customized TV Plan", "Pick Your Package" and "Slim Bundle" - all euphemisms for ala carte and mostly B.S. since they are nothing of the sort. As for "far exceeding what was available" I guess that is in the eye of the beholder.
 
DavidEduardo said:


This is no different than cars being forced on customers in Southern California with "heated seats" and "heated steering wheels". Huh?
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There is a different although it is probably moot to most people. Cars are a manufactured product and subject to the economies of assembly. In other words, it is frequently cheaper to built a set of common widgets than to customize each one per customer orders. If most of the people in the USA buy a car outfitted with a uniform selection of options then it is cheaper to offer that combination country-wide rather than create a 1-state exception even though that one state accounts for a huge number of cars.

In the case of the programmer it is nothing more than a revenue producer. Given the economies of computer management of accounts and channel selection it costs the programmer no more to produce a customized slate of individual channels than it does to offer a single bundle which includes all channels. It does hit the bottom line nicely however that that is why they do it.

As I have spelled out many times on this forum, in the old C-band days we had many programmers and because they competed with each other on price (since the product was exactly the same no matter which service you subscribed to) they had to offer what the customer wanted and price it accordingly. Now we have many fewer programmers who have banded together and do not have to compete on price - therefore the big bundles and high prices.

And the #1 reason I do not subscribe to cable/sat and why I choose to get my sports programming outside their greedy little hands.
 
No product or company that I know of includes taxes in their advertised prices - that's to be expected.

The thing to remember about "introductory offers," of course, is that they expire, and people forget to monitor their bills. When I switched from Comcast to DirecTV, I figured out what the price would be post-intro-offer, and it was still a huge savings over Comcast for equal packages. But even I got caught. I tried to cancel the "free" Starz package, but every time I would call to cancel, they kept extending the free offer. After about 3 extensions, I forgot, and ended up paying $10 extra per month for this package I never use.

So lesson learned - when they offer to extend, I will just cancel.
 
I didn't get the Internet for the longest time because the only affordable packages were all for six months or a year. I always said "And then what happens?" This was even true once I got the Internet and found out how I could upgrade. I never have, which is why my Internet is so slow.

Meanwhile, cable seemed like it was going to be cheap, and now it's almost three times what I started with. But I don't live close enough to the stations I watch.
 
I had Charter TV and internet service. I switched to Dish Network for TV but kept Charter for internet. Charter internet isn't cheap but it's reliable and fast ... 60Mbps down and 5Mbps up. I pay $59/mo.
 
Honestly, we upgraded our plan with Verizon a while back and managed to save about 15 bucks a month. This is a decent gimmick for people who might consider something like Sling TV, but if you don't know about taxes, fees and cable box rentals, you haven't had a cable TV bill in 20 years.
 
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