Our two-year Comcast agreement will expire next week, so I called them to see what they could do for me. Two years ago, the agent I got was able to increase the speed of our Internet connection (in both directions) without changing the monthly bill, which was a surprisingly good result.
This year, I went in with a different objective: stop giving any money to Fox News. That meant switching to the “Choice” package, which includes all the local channels, a few shopping channels, and not much else. The call to the agent was straightforward. He did try to sell me on Comcast’s “NOW TV” streaming package for $20/month – it’s got a lot of channels I used to watch (and no Fox News), but nothing that I watch actively these days, so I passed on it. The whole call took about 25 minutes, and I was happy until I got the confirmation note, which said that they were going to cancel the CableCard in my TiVo which I did NOT want to happen.
I called back and got a different agent. I explained the problem; he checked my account and said “oh, they forgot to add the video code”. Two minutes later, he asked me to turn on the TiVo and check a few channels. The local channels were there; the channels I’d discontinued weren’t. And the Internet and phone continued to work as expected. I think I’m set for another year.
Today was, of course, Independence Day; there’s been a bike parade through the neighborhood for about 15 years (except 2020), and it’s fun to see the kids (and adults) out for a ride.