That being said, as someone who helped family move off of cable in the last year, this is only inching closer to cable's headline pricing which is largely a fiction. All the big four providers of cable/satellite have the following pricing:
- Advertised discount price (12-24 month contract)
- Normal price
- Taxes & Fees
Sometimes you can keep threatening to cancel, take out a new 12-24 month contract, and keep the "discounted" price. But in my experience each discount is less and less generous relative to what they're advertising.
Then there are taxes & fees. The taxes are, well, taxes and also apply to streaming TV. But a lot of the "fees" have nothing at all to do with government. They're just unavoidable parts of the service's price that the cable/satellite vendors split off to misrepresent the costs.
These include, but not limited to:
- Equipment fee (main box cannot be avoided, additional boxes can be)
- Broadcast TV Fee + Regional Sports Fee (unavoidable)
- HD TV Fee (often if your equipment SUPPORTS HD then you are required to pay it)
- Administrative/Convenience Fees (rarely this can be reduced by jumping through hoops e.g. pay by paper check)
These can easily add $20 to your bill. If your contract doesn't allow monthly increases, that can sometimes not apply to fees (either increases to existing or new ones).