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My Comcast bill went up drastically again. It happens every 3-6 months.

Now I have to go through the dance where I call and they tell me that I was on a promo rate and have to wait 90 days for a new promo plan to become available. Then I threaten to quit or downgrade the service and they either give me the promo rate or make me wait for a supervisor to call back and tell me they can't give me a new promo rate and then when I tell the supervisor that I'll downgrade service they transfer me to a "save" representative who finally gives me the promo rate.

I only have analog "expanded basic" cable. Local channels plus the Super Stations, Comedy Central, Sci-Fi and the Cartoon Network -- and a bunch of shopping channels that I don't watch stuck in-between. Comcast wants me to pay $110/month for those few analog channels on top of the local (free via antenna) broadcasters and their slowest Internet service. Their analog broadcasts are highly compressed and noisy. Their prices are outrageous.

The next service-tier down is "basic" cable, which is just local channels. Considering that and the fact that my tv has a digital tuner which can receive all of those channels in digital quality over a house-antenna, I'm perfectly willing to cut off the tv portion of the service entirely.

What's nice about this cycle of negotiations is that although I do loyally watch some shows on the "expanded basic" channels, those shows are now all available for free online within a few days of their air date. Given increased competition from online-distribution, I wonder that Comcast still pulls this crap instead of simply providing their services at a fair and competitive rate.

UPDATE: Yep. I ended up speaking to a "save" rep. who gave me another promo rate. About $10 bucks/month more than I think the service is worth, but I can live with that.

Incidentally, the first person that I spoke to this afternoon in my second round of calling was very insistent that I would need to remain subscribed to cable in order to receive local stations now that the digital transition has begun. I politely attempted to correct her, noting that I had a digital tuner in my tv and a VHF/UHF house antenna that could pull in OTA digital signals, but she was adamant. I asked to speak to another rep.

Comcast should train their representatives better. They charge premium rates, but are not supplying a premium service.