Reply With QuoteJust ignore the comments and discuss the topics. I think we are all mature enough to do so.
Best of luck to you in that pursuit.Originally posted by Daisy H
As a side note, there are courses offered out there in communities nationwide which teach anger management skills..there's certainly no shame in getting help.
May I also suggest a site that may help in another area of obvious concern (CLICK)
Just ignore the comments and discuss the topics. I think we are all mature enough to do so.
Originally posted by 300miles
Cable TV is a 'nicety' not a necessity.
If you can't afford it, cancel it.
The issue is not to afford or not to afford the issue is why a company that when in bankruptcy hired two head honchos at over 20 million a piece salary. The one head honcho then brought in his buddy from At&T at a nice salary too. Last year in 2003 Adelphia board of directors gave the head honcho a 7 million dollar bonus. Adelphia is up for sale. Adelphia is still in bankruptcy.
There is no reason for the company to ask for a sixth rate increase in four years that totals over 34%.
Concumers are getting raked over the coals on cable rates.
A "thats the way it is - take it or leave" answer does not hold well with me.
Concumers are getting raked over the coals on cable rates.
Having Cable is still by choice, right?
I mean, when the milk raises to over 4 bucks a gallon, then we can bitch about consumers 'getting raked over the coals'.
Drinking milk is still by choice, right?
OK!Originally posted by WNYresident
Just ignore the comments and discuss the topics.
Drinking milk is still by choice, right?
Of course, but which is more healthier? Milk or fox news? LOL
Exactly why is there a franchise fee in buffalo to adelphia?
Before there was direct TV and the DISH what gives the politicans the right to allow only one cable company to sell us cable TV.
I thought this is interesting. I don't think it's from the immediate Buffalo/Western New York area (Orange County, Fla). It's dated from like 1999-2000, but still something good to enough share (in case anyone's interested).
Click here to read a pdf of an Adelphia Audit of the franchise fees.
Originally posted by Night OwlConcumers are getting raked over the coals on cable rates.
Having Cable is still by choice, right?
I mean, when the milk raises to over 4 bucks a gallon, then we can bitch about consumers 'getting raked over the coals'.
Night Owl your arguments cannot even hold water. This is not a point about being able to afford the cable or not being able to afford the cable. The point is why should people who would like to participate in getting cable be subject to corporate abuse which in turn forces the people to not participate or continue to participate in getting ripped off. Adelphia cable came to our community we did not ask adelphia to come here. Now that they came here more and more people are fed up with how they are being treated.There is ABSOLUTELY NO JUSTIFICATION OF THE RATE INCREASES. I would like to see cable wire competition. Lets look at the facts shall we and hopefully the feeling of ignorance will dissipate.
You had John Rigas who was fat dumb and happy and his three sons at the helm of Adelphia. They managed to extract about three hundred million dollars from the public ally traded company. This means that Adelphia was worth that much money if not more at the time otherwise they would not have been able to get that amount whether it be through going to the bank and making withdraws or taking out loans against the equity of the company. Now they get caught, shame on them guys for getting caught. I told them they should have went to the bank on …. Oh never mind. Anyhow, the matter hits the fan and the pro temp head coaches decided to put the company into bankruptcy proceedings. They bring in a couple of head honchos at a salary in excess of $20 million a piece. The CEO brought in his buddy from AT&T afterword that also is getting a nice chunk of change as well. Keep in mind the cable company is in bankruptcy… This year the head numb nut got 7 million dollar bonus. Starting to get the picture here? May be not… All heads are not of equal densities…I shall continue.
Adelphia makes changes in their internal operation of the company and also continued to upgrade the cable network though scaled back a bit. On one hand it I will give Adelphia credit for continuing to move forward with upgrading plans. Why not they still have the subscriber base even though the stock sank in the toilet. Besides do not forget Adelphias purchasing power is not the same as your purchasing power. You want to buy a fiber optic transceiver box it may cost you $1200.00. Adelphia wants to buy a few hundred-fiber optic transceiver boxes well lets talk about what you think you are going to charge me. After all, I am Adelphia the third largest cable company in this country. Oh those helpless souls…. Business is business is business. On the other hand who is telling Adelphia to make all these upgrades and then pass on the upgrade costs to all the subscribers whether the subscriber decides to get the added service or not. Sure come on over and have some eggs. Ok I will charge you for the eggs and charge you for the bacon too because I want bacon with my eggs even though you do not want the bacon. I shall continue.
After some of the dust has settled the new head honchos started to think about putting the cable company up for sale then they changed their minds about selling the company then they decided to go forward with selling the cable company. They were adamant about not paying for any of the court costs to defend the Rigas’s but I later read in a paper that Adelphia did in fact pay for some of the court costs to defend the Rigas’s. Hopefully by now the light bulb upstairs has been replaced and is starting to glow a faint glow. I shall continue.
Of course at the same time the above was going on the subtle cable rate increases started to emerge…. A local farm oink cough has reported that a few hundred thousand pigs oink oink cough have escaped. Rumor has it that they ended up at Adlephia headquarters and were reportedly brainwashed to serve the cable company. The above two statement are all hearsay even though I have one of those pigs running around my back yard giving an occasional squeal oink. I named him olhenry. Cute as anything could be and he goes bananas over canned corn.
Now that we briefly examined the business side of this particular cable company lets examine the product offering of this particular cable company. That light bulb glow can be seen from a distance now. I shall continue.
What the heck do you actually get for the money you are dishing out for this cable service??? I tell you what you get – not much!!!! The higher the service tier you go with the more trash you get. Lets take a look at the basic digital package with Internet service. You get your local channels. Now for this the cable company just sticks a big antenna out back and feeds the channel signal through their cable system. At one time the networks were going to charge the cable company for doing that but I do not think it ever came to be. You get the Gov channel. Yep I like watching pictures of the NASA control room and when they do have anything else on there the shows are done in an amateur way. You have a couple of Cable company specific channels – hey why not the cable company has a right to a couple of channels, it is their system after all, you have the TV guide channel – ok some people do not get the newspaper or a TV guide but they have cable oh yea, you get the weather channel – now despite the fact that one probably has a radio, listens to the news, has the ability to open up the window and stick their head outside – they still need the weather channel, OK lets move on from the useless channels and look at the semi useless channels shall we. Yep we need 3 or 4 music channels and by the way if you get digital cable you get 39 or more music channels on top of that! I am dancing the street, you get reruns of old shows that are rerun and rerun again and again……….. When there is a new show that pops up, I do not know if it is me or not, most of them tend to be, well, plain dumb. May be my intelligence level far exceeds that of human kind but man what garbage script writing lately and of course we pay for it through our cable subscriptions.…….. Even the top tier premium channels are lacking in quality these days. You pay for HBO and you get old reruns of movies that were out in the 1960’s. Enough of this soap box now. My point is simple, if you are going to offer a service of something take pride in the service you are offering and make sure the quality is there or simply do not offer that service. No one is telling Adelphia to fill the cable bandwidth with trash. Less trash you have the less it will cost and you can then pass on the reasonable cable rates to the customer… Adelphia is not doing this. So you are now saying well idiot no one is telling you to get the high tier service right??? Wrong.
Adelphia is very good at enticing tactics. The differences between the tiers are not that much so when you look the basic cable rate for $20 or so more you get Digital package, oh for $11 more you get the Internet connection, oh for $9 more you get a premium channel.. So you look at the packages and are tricked into thinking that it is only this much but again very few multiply the “it is only this much” out by 12 months. That is why I went with the digital package with eh Internet connection. It would be dumb to just go with the basic cable and Internet connection. It is actually more expensive to do this.
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by concernedwnyer
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Adelphia tends to nickel and dime you for everything. Fortunately for Lancaster residence when they invaded the territory there was a grandfather clause that allowed old subscribers to have as many TV outlets they want in the house without being charged the additional jack fee.. New subscribers had to pay a monthly charge for the +1 outlets.. What a joke…. Oh them bad traditions from the old telco days get past down and down… If you have a digital cable box you pay $3.50 for one cable box but if you want a second one the price for the second or third cable box goes up to $6 something. Say you made a don’t know any better decision and got a plasma TV, they burn out after awhile 5-10 years you notice the wear – 15 tops you need a new one, and now you have that hifty diffy HD connector. Adelphia charges you $7.95 for the digital cable box with HD capability – yes even for the only cable box you have. Wait a minute the FCC said that HD transmission will be the norm in such and such years. Why then should we have to pay for the right to get what is going to be the norm soon when it is being broadcast now…….. Huh my own logic eludes me sometimes. Please forgive me.
I need sunglasses now because your light bulb is starting to blind me. I shall continue.
Adelphia has many revenue streams. Look at the commercials that are on cable channels. Look at the infomercials that are on the cable channels. Look at the rental fees and service call fees Adelphia charges. I realize they are in business to make money. I have no problem with that but I cannot justify the $1400.00 a year it costs to watch TV and have the Internet connection. It will not be worth it – it is not worth it now.
There is a strong rumor within Adelphia that the deal has pretty much been set between Time Warner and Comcast. Time Warner’s interest in Adelphia is purely a business strategic move. Comcast owns part of Time Warner and now Time Warner would like to break away from Comcast. So Time Warner will use part of the Adelphia acquisition has a buy out tool to dump Comcast. The rumor came from a source within…. Adelphia should let the new owners impose the rate hike and deal with the gripes from the subscribers. What is Adelphia up to by announcing the rate increases when they are in the process of being sold. Something does not sound right but in either case from my view Adelphia is out of bounds with the decision for the rate increase. Six increases over the past four years at an over all increase of 34% and the quality of program offerings have gone down. My decision to dump them is more than justified. No public announcement has been made obviously on the Time Warner/Comcast deal but I would be willing to lay down a good wager on this rumor. Keep this post and review it when it happens. Dang that person was right!
So you see Night Owl it is not a question of being able to afford the cable service or not it or not. It is a question of why should we allow the pigs to raid our piggy banks while they are in our communities. The company should not be allowed to do that. There are people who might not know any better and pay whatever they cable company wants. That is taking advantage of a situation and trust me those people at Adelphia are smooth talkers. Simply turning off the service is not the complete answer because another company will come in and do the same thing. Oops, Night Owl your light bulb just burned out but thanks for reading my reply though.
Originally posted by WNYresident
Exactly why is there a franchise fee in buffalo to adelphia?
Before there was direct TV and the DISH what gives the politicans the right to allow only one cable company to sell us cable TV.
Adelphia Communications is franchised based not holey owned based. Areas are broken up into franchises that in turn report back to Adelphia. The village of Lancaster Adelphia is not the same as the town of Lancaster Adelphia though it seems like it is all one. Buffalo is another franchise...... That is why each area has a term contract that is renegotiated with Adelphia. In December the city of Buffalo's term contract expired with Adelphia. Each area gets a certain amount of money from Adelphia for being allowed to serve that area. That is why our astute elected officials are not quick to boot the cable company out of the area. Also, like any franchise you need to pay momma to play in the house.
I do not like franchises - they are a business sucker opportunity. Look what happened to several Mcdonald restaurants awhile back. Oh your store is not bringing in what we expect, you are closing next month. I do not care what you do with the building as long as our name is not on it. Mcdonalds did buy out several stores but still the business ended... Thow shall not control my business and have me pay royalties to the thrown. Boing
The point is why should people who would like to participate in getting cable be subject to corporate abuse which in turn forces the people to not participate or continue to participate in getting ripped off.
I think it's called "BUYER BEWARE" and my argument does hold water because if you (the cable subscribers) don't want to pay the increases, then don't subscribe to cable. It's not ignorance... it's common sense.
Each area gets a certain amount of money from Adelphia for being allowed to serve that area.
Seems not right. Anything to continue to line thier pockets at the tax payers "the community" expense.
Dealing with businesses is much easier and gratifying than dealing with government. Especially when it comes to something such as cable where it's not a necessity of living, and not the only option you have.
If you have a problem with a company, the best way to deal with them is to first call and complain, so they are aware of the fact that their customer is not pleased with their business. Dealing with customer service will either get your issue resolved, in which case you'll be pleased and the story is over, or it won't be resolved and you then inform them you won't be doing business with them any longer. Nothing speaks louder to a company than losing customers.
Adelphia is in an unusual situation, where right now, they don't have to care what their customer base thinks and can pretty much do whatever they please. If everyone drops their service, they're already in bankruptcy, so who cares?
Personally, I gave up with Adelphia long ago. I was willing to tolerate them only until I had another broadband internet option, and as soon as that option became available, I quit. Ironically, the same day I got my third rate increase notification in 2003 was the same day Verizon emailed me to let me know that they were offering DSL in my area. It felt so good to make that call. It also felt really good explaining exactly why I switched to the survey person who called after I cancelled my service with Adelphia.
I don't understand people that hate Adelphia (or any company) and continue to give them money. It's not logical. Cable is not a necessity. If you don't like Adelphia, get a different service. If you don't like the alternative options, take up reading for a few months until Time Warner comes in and takes them over. Continuing to pay the cable bill just gives them justification to keep raising your rates.
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