My roommates and I tried to cancel our TV service last week. Dish Network told us they would charge us a cancellation fee because we were apparently signed up for an 18-month service plan. That didn’t make sense because we started the TV service when we had only six or seven months left on our lease. So apparently they felt they should sign us up on our behalf. How thoughtful.
While dealing with the cancellation fee, another shady act came to light. We started our TV service as a bundle with an existing AT&T phone service. A few months later, that bundle inexplicably “expired” and the two services were separated into individual bills. They conveniently failed to notify us that the elapsed time of our service plan reset to zero when the bundle expired. So after several months of paying for TV service, we had still officially only paid for zero of the 18 months of service. Makes sense from a money-grubbing-bastard point of view.
Maybe it’s just better to avoid package deals and pay month-to-month. They’re all crooks.