But this past month I opened the notice because I knew it had been almost a year since Cox had graciously given us a "temporarily" rate reduction because SCB wasn't working. If you remember last year, I called them up to drop our internet speed to something slower to save money when they were increasing the fees and instead they offered us a discount to keep our current plan so we leaped on it.
So, I opened the bill and I was glad I read the fine print!
They scheduled a rate increase not only to remove our "unemployed" discount-- but one that would be across the board for all cox subscribers.
Each month we used to pay a total of $35.14 for internet and for a cox service protection plan with our discount. If I hadn't opened that bill, the next time we would have been charged we would have been paying $49.98 ...
a 42% increase.
Ya, you read that right. Our bill would have been 42% more because our service plan would have gone from $31.19 to $43.99 and the cox service protection plan from $3.95 to $5.99 a month.
So I called cox and asked them to take us out of "Internet Essential" and drop us into the first tier of internet they offer. Essentially we went one level lower than that what we currently had. Then I had them remove our cox protection plan policy... and then I had them lock us into a 2 year contract at our current price to prevent any future price increases from coming and spiking up our bill since they seem to come around every year.
If we cancel them before 2 years, we get hit with a $45 fee, which goes down each month you have the service. I figure if this rate hike alone was $15 the next will be higher and since we aren't moving or canceling our cox for 2 years, we will be okay having a contract.
So our bill should be around $30 even each month, so not only did we not have to eat the increase, we ended up saving around $5 a month from our service bill.
:)
Ver nice! It pays to read the fine print.
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