How Cablevision raised my rates 38% overnight

Cablevision, I hate you.

In April 2008, we were notified that a few of our channels were moving to the digital spectrum, and we would require a set top box to continue receiving them. As a “courtesy,” they agreed to give us a box for free for one year.

Yeah, one box. So the other two TVs in the house, well, sorry… you now get fewer channels than before, for the same price!

Flash forward to the first week in May 2009. My courtesy box promotion expired, meaning it now costs me $6.75 each month. And, in the same week, Cablevision moved about a dozen more channels into the digital spectrum.

Among these channels was MSNBC, where I get my dose of “Morning Joe” every morning, eschewing the insipid, whiny ramblings of Meredith Vieira, Diane Sawyer and all the other network hacks. And Al Roker, seriously? Does this guy have any credentials at all?

But I digress.

Cablevision will now require me to rent three set top boxes from them, at a cost of $20.25 a month. All this, just to keep getting what I had before. This is nothing more than a sneaky, backdoor way to raise rates and grow their revenue stream.

I called Cablevision to ask them if they’d be interested in keeping me as a customer. They told me no, after making me sit on hold for 23 minutes to talk to someone in their retention department. And they refused to let me speak to a supervisor. And that supervisor never returned the message I left for him.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think Cablevision didn’t care about me. FiOS, want to sell me some TV?