stuck as a loyal customer

i remember when time warner cable came to manhattan. i was in high school and lived on 85th and madison. my best friend lived on 86th and park. 86th was the cut off and we had cable first. then hbo came. that's when new yorkers began paying for the privilege of watching tv. here we are 35 years later and hundreds of more tv stations from which to choose. in addition to cable, time warner offers hd, road runner and the recently launched phone service.

i've always been the epitome of a loyal customer: time warner for cable and internet, at&t for land lines, verizon for mobiles. now in order of disappointment: i've been waiting for at&t's contract on the iphone to expire so verizon can sell it, at&t has not been able to figure out why i have static on my second land line, and how is it that time warner gets away with charging what they charge? but i'm reassessing being too loyal and also not getting too stuck in my ways.

i'm about ready to abandon verizon, even though the coverage is the best, because i really want an iphone. i cancelled at&t and added phone service to the package with time warner. i now don't have static on my second line...i will of course not have phone service if we have a black out since time warner's service plugs into an electrical socket, but i have old neighbors who probably still have rotary dial phones that i could use in an emergency. and, because my phone service is now with time warner, the whole package with them seems to be a much better value.

p.s. after canceling at&t, i had a credit due me. of course they wouldn't automatically apply the credit to the credit card they'd been charging my bill to for the last bunch of years. so i called them. they didn't really care why i left at&t, but after i explained that time warner was cheaper and offered more services, they conceded and tried selling me mobile service. i'm almost there, the iphone pull is getting stronger.

wwcd: it sometimes pays to reassess where your loyalties lay