food for finance: sewing back the cable cord that was cut!

(healthy) food for finance is a column where we talk about how fitness and finance correlate with each other. join us on our journey to be both physically and financially fit.

I know you are dying to know if we turned our satellite (I'll just refer to it as cable) back on. I mentioned before that we cut off our cable last October. And by cut off I mean we suspended it until April. We wanted to pay off our debt really fast so we thought we would delay some pleasures so that we could enjoy them later debt free! Cutting the cable was one thing we thought would help the process.

We got the letter in the mail in mid-April that stated "your services will resume May 1." YIKES! We really miss having DVR and cable but honestly, we have no time to watch tv now. We've been so busy. Kyle now has a part time job and tv is not something that we watch a lot of. Well, I take that back. We do watch some tv but they are all on local stations. We even have a music tv station called the Cool TV that plays.....guess what...MUSIC videos and not stupid reality shows!! So we've been content with our HD FREE tv! We talked about turning it back on in September.

Kyle made the call last week and told them we would like to cancel. They said ok. About 3 hours later, he got a phone call from a guy from the company. He said "Mr. McCoy, you've been a great customer for a while now and we don't want to lose you. What if we give you a credit and you can get 2 months free?" Kyle said "no, we really can't afford it at the moment." (we want to quickly build our emergency fund so that is very true). He then put Kyle on hold for 10 minutes then came back with another offer. "Mr. McCoy, what about a credit that will give you 3 months free?" Since we really were not married to our cable (that is something we learned in our financial peace university class), we really did not care that we had cable. Kyle said "no, we really do not want it at this time, it is not worth it." Then the cable guy said "hold up one more minute Mr. McCoy." He came back and made this offer: "What if we give you a credit for 6 months and in HD?" Kyle said he just laughed inside because he REALLY did not want it and the guy would not get that in his head. BUT this offer was TOO good to pass up! Kyle asked him if that meant we would sign a contract and he said no. He then asked if we could cancel after 6 months and he said yes. UNBELIEVABLE!

So we now have satellite! I asked Kyle "so did you get us free DVR?" He said "Angie, I couldn't push it!" HA!! After this experience, I know now that everything is negotiable! Since we had no ties to cable, we ended up with a much better deal than if we would've been emotionally attached to it. We were willing to let it go but it was our cable provider that was not able to let us go! Their hope is that we'll be ready to 'get back together' when the 6 free months of cable is up.  We'll see when October comes!

Happy cable watching to you and yours!
Quote from Kyle "AHHHH....how I've missed you ESPN!"