Why do these providers have to hide behind contracts? Wouldn't it make more sense to abolish them? I mean come on it's tv, not a mortgage or car loan.
In these bad economic times many people are putting food first before tv. If your in a contract that choice is not there. Time for these companies that play these games to review their actions and take care of there bread and butter (the customer) in a different way. Like I said in my other post Cable & Pizza subs are falling off like crazy. I see them falling even more by years end. This will cause Direct, Dish and the like, having many accounts defaulting on the contracts. Maybe that will wake them up (ya fat chance)
They "hide behind contracts" (as you so ignorantly put it), in order to make sure they can recoup the cost and depreciation on the equipment that they give you. You see, in order to keep their subscribers from having to pay out an enormous up-front cost for the equipment (like we did before they did contracts), they do this thing called "leasing".. True the customer does not own the equipment, but it still gets used (and in a lot of households, abused). And as such it must be refurbished (or replaced) before it is issued to the next customer. Now the manufacturers don't do this refurbishing for free out of the goodness of their hearts, they charge for it.
So you see, when they are subsidizing thousands of dollars worth of equipment to every one of their customers (which they replace for free if it fails), they need to make sure that you stay with them long enough to make back at least the depreciated cost of the equipment plus what it costs to refurbish it, plus the dish that you don't have to return, plus the cost of the installation that they eat, plus a hedge against any potential replacements, PLUS all the new customer rebates and credits, PLUS make a profit off you. How long does that take, you ask? My guess is about a year and a half.
The alternative is to go back to the days where you had to lay out big cash to buy all the equipment, and if it broke past the warranty, tough sh*t, you have to buy a new one. I wonder what retail on an HR24 is.. And you still had to pay the 'mirroring fee' back when you owned the equipment, so when push comes to shove, there's no advantage whatsoever to owning your equipment (the only one I can think of is you can put a bigger hard drive into a DVR).
Oh and thanks to some certain morons in Washington, if people are having trouble making ends meet, they don't need to cut back on the amenities, they can just stop paying their mortgages and the banks will bail them out courtesy of us, the taxpayers. Now where else have I heard that before...
But, i agree the MTV mini pak for eight dollars a month aint bad. But, VH1 classic is the only channel i would watch.
